A Sister’s Gift

by Giselle Green

  ‘Can’t you imagine, Hol? You’re getting what you wanted at long last, love.’ His voice takes on the slightest edge. ‘We’d best drop it, OK?’

  A shiver goes through me then. By the gently burning fireplace I glance up at the one and only wedding photo ever taken with the three of us in it. I move closer to it now, peering up at it. You’re getting what you wanted at last. That’s what she said to me too, isn’t it, the day I married him. My fourteen-year-old sister had refused to be in any other picture and I’d been so radiantly happy, so filled with my own good fortune and joy that I hadn’t properly noticed her absence till the end. Oh, she’d been moody and sullen and just generally difficult the whole year prior to the wedding. Ever since Flo had died in fact…

  ‘OK,’ I say softly. ‘But will you please, please just come home?’ Scarlett might have morning sickness for ages yet – she mightn’t be able to escape this place as she intends to, for quite a while. ‘You can’t stay away from here indefinitely. And I can’t leave her.’

  ‘Hang on a minute, love. They’re posting some new flight info up on the departure board…’

  He falls silent for a while and I take down the photo and stare at it more closely. I always thought of this as the time when I was at my happiest. Newly married to the man I adored and not yet aware that our union would be blighted by my infertility. I always thought Scarlett looked so sweet in this picture, too – her hair full of tiny yellow roses that match her pale primrose dress. It was only in the months after this was taken that she really changed, became so rebellious and angry and aloof. I thought maybe it was just her hormones kicking in, combined with all the upheaval – Flo’s passing away and the change at home because now we were three. I never for one moment thought it might be because I got married. To Richard.

  I frown, my fingers gliding over the glass of the frame. I remember asking her – begging her, in fact – to smile just for one photo, just one.

  ‘It’s all right for you,’ she’d said. ‘You’ve got what you wanted now, haven’t you?’

  To be married to him, she meant. I remember how, even at the time her words had jarred. The way she had spoken them, they’d fallen about my senses like the heavy, sickly-sweet scent of the coriander I’d brushed up against one time in Flo’s herb garden, all out of sync with the freshness of the lavender and thyme. Back then I’d thought – maybe she’s cross because she’s lost Flo and now she thinks she’s going to lose me too? But what if it was the other way around? What if it was really Rich she was frightened of losing and not me at all? They’d been friends all that summer long. They’d been dancing together in that barn for weeks before I even met Rich. Was she in fact angry at me for taking Rich away from her?

  Is she still angry?

  My legs give way and I sit down on the edge of the couch.

  ‘Rich?’

  ‘I can’t come home while she’s still there. I won’t.’ And you – I think miserably now – what are you so scared of, why won’t you come back? You don’t fear you might have feelings for her too, do you? ‘I don’t want to be around her.’

  Why? I feel my voice catching in my throat because I cannot ask him. He is so far away from me at this moment – not just in miles, but in his heart, too. Now I think I know, I have caught a glimpse, of the reason why. Could it be because of something that I have not dared to let myself see, so blinded by the thing that I longed for and wished for all these years?

  ‘I’ve got to go now, darling. I’ll ring you when we land at Gatwick. We’ll sort something out, OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  The rain splashes down outside, the water running in a column just outside the window where the guttering has broken again, a torrent beats down right onto the plastic bags I left outside the front door. I’ll have to bring them in again, I suppose. All Scarlett’s discarded rubbish that I didn’t get out to the refuse men in time. I wanted her back, didn’t I? I wished for that. And I wanted her to stay but now, as long as she’s here, Richard won’t come home.

  I put the phone back in its cradle and go back to the door, reaching it just as the doorbell goes three times in quick succession. My heart sinks. If that’s Beatrice I’m going to have to let her in – I’ve put her off twice this week. But it isn’t.

  ‘Right, Ms Hollie.’ Duncan’s standing there with his hands in his pockets, pale face set and determined-looking as I open the door. ‘She’s in today, I know, because I’ve been watching the house – so don’t bother denying it. She’s in. You’re in. And Richard’s not. Today you’re going to let me in, aren’t you?’

  Hollie

  ‘This is a nice place you’ve got here. A very nice place.’

  Duncan is leaning back comfortably on the largest sofa, the china teacup I’ve just handed him perched precariously on his knees. I invited him in. What else could I do?

  ‘I remember your sister brought me back here once or twice when…’ He pauses, obviously thinking better of whatever he was going to say, then abruptly changes course.

  ‘So is she coming down to see me or isn’t she?’

  ‘She isn’t.’ I sit down on the armchair opposite him. ‘She’s been throwing up all morning and she’s lying down right now.’

  ‘A bug?’ he raises one eyebrow sarcastically. ‘What a coincidence. Just as l’il ol Duncan comes along. But she’s not going to get out of it so easily this time, I’m afraid.’ He jumps up now as the sound of a car draws up outside, tweaks back the curtains a little. ‘Who’s that?’ He indicates outside with his head.

  ‘That’ll be Jane, the midwife. She’s due in to visit Scarlett today. My sister hasn’t got a bug. It’s morning sickness. She’s pregnant, Duncan.’ I look directly at him, expecting him to laugh that one off as well, but he doesn’t.

  He turns from the curtains, stares down into his teacup.

  ‘Well, I’ll be blowed. Then it’s true,’ he breathes. ‘And…do we know whose it is?’ His eyes meet mine suddenly. I catch a glimpse of something that looks remarkably like pity.

  ‘We do know.’

  ‘It’s your husband’s, isn’t it?’ he says softly and I feel my face go red. How does he know that? Scarlett had to be such a blabbermouth, didn’t she? She told Beatrice, I’m pretty sure. She probably will have told Lucy Lundy and all her mates, too. Word gets round quickly…

  ‘Poor Hollie.’ Duncan lies back on the sofa again, draining his cup. ‘You poor woman. She took him from you after all.’

  ‘She most certainly did not!’ I glower at him. What does he mean, after all? ‘My sister offered to become a surrogate for me so it has all been done with my blessing.’

  ‘Really?’ He looks dubious.

  ‘Look – what is it you actually want from us, anyway? I’ve let you in. I’m talking to you but she won’t, so say your piece and just leave…’ We both look towards the hallway as the front doorbell goes. I hear Scarlett trundling along in her slippers to answer it and I know he hears her too.

  ‘What do I want?’ He moves to stand a little back from the lounge door, peering into the darkness in the corridor, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. ‘I want her. I’ve loved her for such a long time, you know.’ I hear his voice catch in his throat. ‘But what you’ve just told me confirms some suspicions I’ve had. It certainly puts a different complexion on things.’

  The front door closes and we can hear the two women chatting on their way to Scarlett’s bedroom. He’s silent for a time, listening to the low murmur of voices. His eyes follow the line of sound though he can no longer see them. I don’t like him being here. I don’t feel comfortable with it. But is he dangerous? Should I be inching away from him, making for the phone? But what would I say? There’s an irate ex-boyfriend of my sister’s in the house and he’s threatening…he’s threatening what? I have no idea what he’s planning – or even what he’s capable of. I’ve always thought him creepy and sleazy but would he really do us any physical damage, especially now he knows she’s expecting? I doubt it. He be
lieves in retributive karma so I don’t reckon he’ll try anything funny. He’s spiteful, though. Last time, on the phone, he spoke before of pulling her job out from under her, didn’t he? Would he do that? Could he do worse?

  I look at him uncomfortably now. Scarlett knows him better than I do. I warned her just now when I went to make the tea for him that he was here – I had to, I didn’t want her wandering in – and she went as white as a sheet.

  ‘Get rid of him,’ was all she said. She’s scared of him. My unflappable, devil-may-care sister was truly spooked at the thought that he was in the house. But why?

  ‘She’s betrayed us both, hasn’t she, in the end?’ He’s sat back down again now, almost sagging, leaning his chin against his open palm, propped up on the armrest.

  ‘I’m sorry? Look, what’s your grievance, Duncan? Spit it out, why don’t you? What did she do to you?’

  ‘All right, I’ll tell you, fine.’ His eyes take on a malevolent glint ‘Seeing as you ask. She did a very naughty thing. You know that marvellous assignment she wrote that landed her the PlanetLove job? She faked it. And I helped her, God help me.’

  ‘You helped her?’ I say faintly.

  He shrugs. ‘She’d spent three months that summer trying to get it right and she couldn’t. We’d been working on a similar project at uni after all, and my results were heaps better than hers. I knew I was onto something that could land her the job she was after and she knew it too. So we struck up a deal…’

  ‘A deal that entailed her passing off your work as her own?’ I say slowly. I remember her now, staying up till all hours towards the end of that summer, in tears a lot of the time, re-drawing diagrams from a folder, sketching out plants…’She had to hand-draw some of the pieces so they’d be her own work, right? But those were just the sketches. You’re saying now the experimental results were your own?’

  ‘Something like that,’ he affirms. ‘I helped her enormously. She’s not the most academic of people at the end of the day, is she?’ He smirks. ‘We faked a load of results that we couldn’t get right – I mean, that we couldn’t get to prove the premise she was after demonstrating.’

  ‘How very scientific of you.’

  He shrugs again. ‘Not ethical maybe, but in the long run we figured it’d be for the greater good, you see. Because of what she’d bring to that job that other, more academic applicants wouldn’t. Her humanitarianism, for one.’

  ‘And your end of the deal was…?’

  ‘She promised to become my wife, Hollie. To have and to hold till death do us part. That’s what she said.’

  She promised to marry him? God, even for Scarlett that’s…that’s too much. I try not to let him see how taken aback I am because I can sense he’s telling the truth.

  ‘How very ironic, don’t you think? You helped her to cheat -but you never imagined that she’d be capable of turning that cheating streak on you.’

  His eyes take on a haunted look. ‘Why would I think that? I trusted her. I loved her, Hollie, and no, I didn’t think she’d do that to me, betray me. Would you?’

  I shake my head, an involuntary shudder going through me when he says that.

  ‘The deal was, after she’d been there for a while she’d recommend me for a post within the camp and I’d join her. We both knew I had a year to run on my course before that’d be even possible so I didn’t begin to worry till last autumn.’

  ‘And has she been in contact with you all this time?’ I look at him disbelievingly.

  ‘On Facebook, yes. We kept in touch. She was happy to send lots of chatty messages until – well, until last August when I reminded her of our deal. Then she seemed to think she was going to be able to back out of it! She claimed she didn’t realise I still had any expectations. Can you imagine that? I’ve been in love with her all this time and she’s betrayed me. You love her too,’ his eyes narrow now, ‘and she’s done the same to you.’

  ‘No, she hasn’t, Duncan. Scarlett hasn’t done anything I didn’t ask her to do…’

  ‘I’m afraid she has. You may have asked her to be your surrogate but you didn’t ask her to have an affair with him, I’m sure? Look, I saw them together, up at your husband’s flat, a few weeks back. They’d been – you know – going at it, or so I reckoned. Your old man left first. When your sister came out she was all red-cheeked and puffy-eyed like she’d been crying.’

  I gasp. He knows!

  ‘I think I need to stop you there…’

  ‘No, Hollie. Don’t stop me. Listen to me.’ He comes over and puts a commanding hand on my arm. ‘I saw them, OK? I saw them kissing. They’d left the curtains slightly open…’ His eyes glaze over suddenly, he looks – strangely enough – as if he is savouring the memory, but I can’t bear it. I can’t sit here listening to this and at the same time I find myself unable to move, unable to stop his words.

  ‘She was wearing some very pretty underwear.’ Duncan breathes in now, remembering. ‘Pink, it was, with flowers on it, but she’d already taken off her bra. She’s shapely, your sister, you can’t deny it…’

  ‘You…you’re lying.’ My hand is trembling so hard I nearly break the china cup when I put it down on its saucer. Fuck! What am I doing using a china tea-set anyway, nobody cares about such niceties any more, maybe not even Richard, who’s always said he loves the way I’m the only person of my generation who doesn’t use mugs. Maybe he doesn’t love it? Maybe he’d rather I cared more about other things, like…like sallying around in Agent Provocateur underwear like Scarlett does.

  ‘I’m not lying and you know it. I told you, they were standing by the curtains. If it’s any consolation to you it looked like he took some persuading – a man with a conscience, your Richard – but she can be pretty persuasive, your little sister,’ Duncan tells me solicitously. ‘Obviously once they moved away from the window I couldn’t see any more. But I don’t suppose it takes too much imagination to fill in the blanks. She slept with him, OK? Now you tell me she’s expecting…’

  ‘What on earth would you have been doing up there watching them anyway?’ I feel my face flame red with embarrassment. I don’t just hate Scarlett at this moment, I hate Duncan too, for bringing all the intimate details right to my attention. ‘You have been stalking her, haven’t you?’ I turn on Duncan defensively. ‘First you phone me saying you’ve been watching her in the garden, and now you know where she’s been with Richard.’

  ‘I wasn’t stalking her.’ He looks hurt. ‘I knew it was one of the properties you owned. It was empty. If she wasn’t with you – as you’d claimed – she might have been staying up there. That’s the only reason I went.’

  Now Duncan knows. But he can’t prove anything, can he? Nobody can really say that’s what they did.

  ‘I’m surprised at your reaction, Hollie.’ He seems genuinely taken aback for a minute. ‘I’ve just told you I saw your sister with your husband and all you can worry about is what was I doing up there. What about what they were doing together up there? Doesn’t that trouble you at all? I’m telling you the truth, I swear it. Don’t you believe me?’

  ‘I…’I think fast, pushing down my mortification that other people too might be speculating about what went on. ‘I don’t know what to think. You say she betrayed me with him?’

  ‘I’m certain of it. If she wanted to get pregnant for you there are more civilised ways of going about it,’ he says knowingly. ‘Which wouldn’t have needed any contact between them.’

  ‘How,’ I say carefully, ‘are you so certain? She could have been taking a shower and not realised he was in that bedroom and…’

  ‘No!’ He looks affronted. ‘I’m not that stupid. She had her arms round him, Hollie. I saw them at the window together. And – I’m sorry to say so – but she had that look on her face when they eventually came out that said it all for me. She had the look on her of a woman who’s just got what she wanted, if you see what I mean. The cat that got the cream.’

  I wince. That might be just a l
ittle too near to the truth for my liking. ‘You just said she’d been crying?’ I protest.

  ‘That too. It was odd. Maybe she felt guilty after all? Either way, Hollie, putting together what I saw and what you’ve just confirmed to me, she’s betrayed you, face it. Just like she did to me.’

  ‘If what you’re telling me is true, Duncan…’

  ‘I swear on my life that it is.’

  ‘Then we are both injured parties,’ I say slowly, turning my face to him so he can clearly see my eyes. I’m not faking the pain, either. If Scarlett really is a traitor that’s something I’m going to have to deal with later. For now, I’m just holding onto the thought that -that maybe Duncan’s exaggerating everything out of all proportion. Making out he saw and knows more than he really does, just to get me on his side so he can get his revenge. Let’s face it, if I can’t even trust my own sister, why should I trust him either?

  ‘What are you suggesting we do about it?’

  ‘I want you to back me up,’ he says eagerly. ‘Do you remember anything about her behaviour that summer before she sent the papers off to be assessed?’

  ‘I remember that she was desperate to get the job, to go to Brazil. I remember that she was convinced she hadn’t done anywhere near enough the amount of work she needed to do to get it.’

  ‘She’d done the work all right,’ he comments. ‘But experiments don’t always run smoothly. Things didn’t go according to plan. The key thing is,’ his eyes narrow, ‘I recall her telling me that she’d asked you to post off the assignment in the end because she ran out of time, is that true?’

  I nod. He pauses and pulls a scruffy-looking manuscript out of his bag, and hands it to me. ‘Did you ever look at it? Could you say if this is what she asked you to post in the end?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because,’ he squirms impatiently, ‘the ungrateful little minx – after all the work and effort I put in to help her out – rang me up and told me that the assignment she’d put in, in the end, was her own. She’d felt guilty, she said. She’d not been able to go ahead with our plan. I think it was her way of jettisoning me from her life, now I look at it. She didn’t want to keep up her end of the bargain, so she pretended that my end never happened. I don’t believe her for one minute though – do you?’