Her Sister's Secret

by E. V. Seymour

  It’s quite an intimate act to shift furniture with someone. There needs to be a level of synchronicity, give and take, an intuitive knowledge of whether someone can or can’t manoeuvre a sideboard, for example, around a corner or through an exit or entrance. The doorways to the cottage were narrow and my spatial awareness that day was off. To get the right level of clearance, we were forced to upend a long refectory table with a stretcher base. God knew what it weighed. More than once, Rocco and I mirror-imaged each other’s moves, in close quarters; breathing heavily, sweat pooling, fingertips grazing. Every time we connected it was like being struck with a cattle prod. And his eyes, bloody hell, they were the colour of bourbon and he never took them off mine. It wasn’t only the heat that was hunting me down. When we went upstairs to clear the garret-like top, I thought I might vaporise.

  Rocco had boxed his grandmother’s less important items. The bed, thankfully, stayed put so we had the van packed in no time. I squatted on my haunches, knackered.

  “Cold drink? I bought sparkling elderflower and Pepsi.”

  “I need a caffeine hit.” I mopped my face with the sleeve of my T-shirt – not very ladylike and definitely not very sexy, yet he stared at me in way that was searching, haunting and intense. I flushed under his unnerving gaze. It was as if he knew every part of me: body and soul. Instinctively, I knew this man could mash me up inside. But that wasn’t all. I was vulnerable and knew it. Images of dead creatures and knives in places they shouldn’t be assailed me.

  “You’re allowed, you know.”

  “Allowed what?” I failed to rein in the shaky note in my voice.

  Cool as you like, he answered my question with another: ‘How many days has it been?” Rocco didn’t need to spell it out.

  “A little over a week.”

  “There’s no right or wrong way to feel.”

  “Not sure others would agree.” I should be at home in sackcloth and ashes and mourning. With me agitating, I only made things worse with my parents. And now there was the threat of litigation against my brother-in-law to add extra pressure.

  I glanced up at Rocco. Maybe, he could be useful if I got him on a subject with which he was familiar. With his experience of medical insurance claims, he might be able to throw some light. I explained the threat of legal action.

  “Outside my field, but a spouse, nearly always the wife will submit a claim of dependency. Was the dead man the sole breadwinner?”

  “No idea. He had two children.”

  Rocco thought for a moment, eyes sparking with insight. “Is there any suggestion that your sister was driving dangerously?”

  I told Rocco about the booze, to which he raised an eyebrow.

  “Don’t ask.”

  “Were there witnesses?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the police are actively investigating?”

  I nodded.

  He rubbed his jaw. “Technically, the widow could submit a claim against the estate of the negligent party, in this case, Scarlet’s.”

  “On the grounds that she was culpable?”

  “’Fraid so. You know there’ll be an inquest?”

  “Uh-huh.” I wondered what the ruling would be and, clasping my knees, rested my face in my lap. I felt drained of every bit of energy.

  Rocco disappeared and returned with drinks. He rested the ice-cold glass against the side of my hand. It made me start, like he’d pressed a lighted cigarette to my skin. I took it, glanced up, met his eyes. “Shit situation,” he said.

  I agreed. No other way to describe it.

  Feeling instantly disloyal for discussing family business, guilty for working, confused about my brother, anxious about connections I couldn’t connect, fearful from when the next threat might come, I headed straight to my parents to see if peace had been restored. There was also a chance that the police had supplied more information. Like Dad said, they would dig up Scarlet’s contacts.

  The air, dense with thunder bugs and flies, clung to me as I stepped out of the car. A hum of voices drifted from behind the gate that separated the drive from the garden. At first, I thought it was Mum and Dad. The nearer I drew, the more identifiable one of the speakers became: Dad. The other male voice I didn’t recognise. Something about the estuary accent, the pitch, not high but low and insistent, told me that the discussion was private. I wondered where Nate was. Was he the reason for the clandestine conversation? I edged forward, heart throbbing, pulse tripping, and the sound of gravel under my trainers give me away. l

  “Molly.”

  Hand on chest, I spun round and came face to face with my mum’s numb expression.

  “What are you doing?”

  Snooping. Eavesdropping. Earwigging. Take your pick; none of them put me in a flattering light. “I thought it was you and dad.” Truth or lie, she’d be cross either way.

  She let out an exhausted sigh. Fresh shadows had appeared under her eyes giving her the spectral appearance of one who never sleeps. Shoulders hunched, her once tall, lithe body looked shorter, reduced and stooped. My heart creased with pain because I could see how lost she was.

  “Mum,” I said, starting towards her. To my shock, she backed away.

  “Your father is talking to an old colleague.”

  My stomach somersaulted. “What about?”

  “A phone call made from a pay phone to Richard Bowen’s mobile.”

  “So what?”

  “It was from the hospital.”

  “You mean where Scarlet worked?”

  Mum nodded, pale and sad.

  I made a face. “It’s a little tenuous, surely? Do the police know the content of the call?” Could they even do that? Mum hitched her shoulders. She didn’t know either. “It could have been anyone calling,” I insisted.

  “It was made an hour before the accident.”

  “How long did it last?”

  “Seconds.”

  Fear tripped through me as I imagined Scarlet’s voice whisper in my ear. Meet me. Had she set Bowen up? I expected my mother to be bullish and stubborn and uncompromising in defence of my sister. Instead, she appeared ready to fold. I could read the expression in her eyes: weary, defeated and dismantled.

  “What does it matter? Maybe Scarlet did call the man. Maybe there was a relationship. Oh yes, I know what people are saying. I’m not stupid.” Her voice climbed with hysteria and then abruptly came to a halt. Squinting against a sudden stab of sunshine, a single tear tracked down her cheek.

  “Oh, Mum.”

  “Please don’t.” She raised a hand, warding me off.

  I stared in consternation. I needed her to reach me as much as I longed to reach her, yet she was erecting all kinds of barriers. Her gaze concentrated on the ground; she spoke with neither malice nor anger. It would have been better if she had. “Why did you hate her so very much?”

  I gasped. “Mum, how could—”

  She looked up, questioning, still with the same quiet tone. “Scarlet told me about your row, what you said, how you accused her.”

  A shiver rolled down my spine, from the base of my neck to my sacrum. Denial was pointless. “It was stupid and nasty.”

  “Days before she took her own life.”

  “I didn’t mean it. None of it.” I was gasping. Memory burnt a hole in my head. Shame savaged me. “I’d had too much to drink and—”

  “Envy is one of the deadly sins, Molly.”

  Speechless, I watched as she turned and walked away. The ground fled from underneath me. Mum had known all along and hadn’t said a word. Worse, Scarlet had been devastated. And now she was dead. The fear I’d held back for days smashed right through me. What if this were the real reason she’d got drunk, took her eye off the road and died? What if all the other avenues I’d pursued were nothing more than white noise, irrelevancies and blind alleys?

  I listened, really listened. As daft as it was, I hoped that Scarlet’s voice would transcend time and space and somehow speak, reassure and convince me that I was no
t the cause of her distress. The only sound was my mother’s brisk footsteps crunching across the gravel.

  Half mad, I fled to my car, fired up the engine and pressed my foot flat to the floor. Gravel spitting. Blood pumping. Nerves aflame. In no time at all, I was back at the cottage I’d left only minutes before. Rocco Noble instantly opened the door, the ‘nice surprise’ smile on his face vanishing when he registered the stricken expression on mine.

  “I’ve done something terrible,” I cried, throwing myself at him. “It’s all my fault. Oh my God, I killed my sister.”

  Chapter 29

  One second, I was gabbling a confession, sobbing all over Rocco Noble, the next ripping off my clothes. Mutual and brutal. Want and take. A weird distillation of sex and death.

  “Christ. Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I’m not.”

  Sleeping with strangers was outside my experience. Not on a first date and this definitely wasn’t one of those. Not like that. Not ever.

  I felt as if I’d been in a cage fight. My bottom lip was swollen. I had a graze on my knee and a bruise on the inside of my thigh. Rocco wasn’t in much better shape. Any longer, we’d have eaten each other alive. Wondering what the hell had just happened, Scarlet streaked through my mind. Is this how she’d behaved with Bowen? With that overpowering desire to connect, forget, obliterate, at any cost? Passion like that could explain why she’d driven him off the road; one final ‘fuck you’.

  I rolled over and studied Rocco’s face, the way his hair fell over his left eye, the smooth planes of his cheeks, the dimple on his chin, those lips that had searched my body. “So, what are you on the run from?” I knew why I was fleeing. But him?

  He threw back his head and laughed. “Me?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Takes two to tango.” Or, in our case, fuck each other’s brains out.

  “I simply went with it.” His top lip curved in a suggestion of a smile. Couldn’t tell whether he was teasing, dissembling, or it was the truth. “You think too much.” He ran an index finger delicately from the corner of my eye down my cheek, along my jawline. Part of me felt relief that there was no deep discussion of feelings, that sex was nothing more than a transaction based on physical attraction and desire. The other part felt leery.

  “God, I have to go.” I sat up, scrunching the covers up around my neck. My eyes searched the room for my clothes, which lay scattered, telling their own story.

  “Why?”

  “Because this is madness. I shouldn’t be here, and you have places to be.”

  “Ah, change of plan.”

  I gave him a sharp look.

  “It’s cool. I didn’t trick you, if that’s what you’re thinking. I took time off to see a good mate who broke off his engagement. Well, he had,” Rocco said, as if his friend were several brain cells short of the full complement. “Seems they’re all loved up and back together again, my services no longer required.”

  I wasn’t sure I believed him.

  “Honest,” Rocco said, in response to my less than enthusiastic endorsement. “You don’t think I’m that devious, do you? As I recall, you came to me last night.” His smile was warm and trustworthy. When his fingers tiptoed up my naked arm and slipped the covers down, I couldn’t resist.

  Early sunshine spilled from the narrow lattice-window across the bed, illuminating the pair of us. To me, it felt like a searchlight.

  “You were pretty upset last night,” Rocco said. “Want to talk about it?”

  “No.” How could I tell him what I hadn’t told anyone else?

  I might have known, I raged. You always were the bloody blue-eyed girl –

  Molly, that really isn’t fair. Scarlet blanched, taken aback by the venom pouring out of me.

  Not fair? What would Little Miss Perfect know about injustice? How come you get to have when I have to borrow?

  Molly, I—

  Sure, Mum and Dad helped me out, for which I’m genuinely grateful, but I have to pay it all back

  “That’s hardly my fault.”

  Yes, it is. You’re always creeping round Mum. Makes me sick.

  “Did you know that guilt is the most corrosive of emotions?”

  I gave a start, unsettled that this man could read me so well. “Who do you think you are, my shrink?” The attack in my voice was unmistakable.

  “I didn’t mean to intrude.”

  “Yes, you did.” I didn’t know him. He didn’t know me. End of.

  “Molly, I—”

  “If you must know, I laid into my sister a few days before she died.”

  “About what?”

  “It’s no longer important.” So what if my parents gave her money to buy a house when I’d been forced to take out a loan?

  “It clearly is.”

  “I was jealous, okay?” Monstrously so. The hitch in my voice gave me away. Quick to pick up on it, Rocco elevated an eyebrow, the intensity of his gaze enough to force false confessions from the innocent. No way could I lie to him, so I told him the truth about my parents’ ‘no strings’ gift to my sister. “When they generously loaned me money for a deposit for my home and business, I’d always been expected to pay it back.”

  “And do you?”

  “Religiously. Every month.”

  He shifted position. The butterfly tattoo on the top of his arm spread its wings. “Could the gift have been part of some sophisticated tax dodge? You said your dad works with your brother-in-law?” Only for now.

  “My dad wouldn’t dodge so much as a missing item on a bill. Used to be a police officer.”

  “You never discussed it with your parents?”

  It would have been the honest thing to do. Scarlet had suggested it, but I didn’t want honesty. I wanted retribution. In that one fatal moment all the jealousy I’d stored for the best part of twenty years came tumbling out and I was savage.

  Throughout my tirade, Scarlet stood, white-faced and scared. Worse, I’d never apologised, and I’d never had the balls to talk to Mum and Dad. I could burrow under the covers on Rocco Noble’s bed, but I couldn’t hide from the guilt that cackled at me long and loud. Unsparingly, I described the rest of the argument – my argument –to Rocco. Shoot the messenger was my style because it suited me.

  He didn’t excuse the inexcusable, exonerate or let me off, which was pretty honest of him if rather alarming. He shook his head, disappointed, I’m sure. I wasn’t fooled when he gave my shoulder an affectionate squeeze that utterly crushed me inside. “Had Scarlet lived, things would never have been the same afterwards and that’s on me.”

  “You can’t know that.”

  “I know how much I hurt her.”

  “Don’t you think you’re over-analysing because of the accident?”

  It was a fair observation, but nothing could shift the blame. I’d half-expected him to throw me out once he’d digested how vile I could be.

  Feeling as if I’d been hit by a summer cold, I lay exhausted, yet unable to sleep other than in brief snatched moments, Scarlet last on my mind as I dropped off and first as I came to. Staring into the shadows, I pictured her face staring back, haunting. Rocco, when not exploring every inch of my body, slept the way he lived: happy. Disinterested in words, he rarely talked. Me, I only needed to feel something other than the great deadweight of guilt and grief and fear that was weighing me down. Rocco seemed to get it and asked no questions.

  I crooked myself up on an elbow. “You said you’d lost someone.”

  “My mum. Heart attack,” he said sadly. “We were close, so it was tough.”

  Something behind his eyes briefly flared, shattered and drifted away. Is this how I looked to others? His long fingers smoothed the sheet as if to wipe away the past.

  “What about your dad?” I said.

  “Don’t really see much of him.”

  “I can’t imagine what that must be like.” And I couldn’t. Love them or loathe them, we were family, ‘brand Napier’ Scarlet would often joke, that huge source of st
rength and human weakness. Except one of us was now missing.

  And I still didn’t know why.

  Chapter 30

  “As lovely as this is, I have to go home.” I’d been there for most of the weekend. Here, I could physically and mentally regroup and nobody with malicious intent could reach me.

  “Trying to get rid of me?”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “Good,” he whispered, sliding his warm hand down my flank, drawing me close, making me tingle, “patch things up with your mother later.”

  My body tensed beneath him. I’d deliberately switched off my phone and my parents would be worried sick. Conceivably.

  I made to move. Rocco pinned me down. Playful. A languid smile spread slowly across his mouth. When he pressed first his lips and then his skin against mine, I thought I could stay that way forever.

  Afterwards, we lay together, his lips a feather’s touch on my neck. Tender. Gentle.

  “Hey,” he said. “What’s up?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “Sorry, of course, Scarlet. What was she like?”

  I took a moment. I hadn’t done right by my sister when she was alive. I had a chance to set the record straight now.

  “Quite simply, she was brilliant. With Zach, with Mum, who isn’t the easiest woman on the planet, brilliant with everyone. For Scarlet, family was all.”

  “The kind of woman with everything to live for,” Rocco observed.

  Except Rocco didn’t know the half of it.

  “Tell me about Richard Bowen.”

  “You ask a lot of questions.”

  “That wasn’t a question. It was a request.”

  “Had an interesting private life with a mistress and child.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  He hitched a shoulder. Why did I feel that Rocco was trying to pull a dressing off a badly healed wound?

  There were dozens of messages on my phone, via Messenger, on Facebook and Twitter, and through my emails. And numerous missed calls, four from Lenny, two from Chancer. “Molly, darling, are you all right? You left in such a tearing hurry the other day. Gather from Zach you had a bit of a spat, which comes as no wonder as your brother is a lovable pillock. Anyway, hope you’re okay. See you soon and come and talk to me, otherwise I’ll come and find you, ha-ha!”