Second Life Read Online Free PDF

song on the radio just after this picture was taken, but yes. Yes,
he was sometimes.’
    ‘Why?’
    I don’t want to tell her the truth. Not all of it.
    ‘He was just . . . he was a little bit lost, I think, by this point.’
    ‘Didn’t he have family?’
    ‘Yes. They were very close, but . . . you know? Drugs make things like that difficult.’
    She looks up at me. ‘Drugs?’
    I nod. Surely she can see it?
    ‘Did you love him?’
    ‘I loved him very much.’ I find myself willing her with a fierce hope not to ask
what happened, just like I hope that she won’t ask how we met.
    She must sense my reluctance. ‘It’s an amazing photo,’ she says. She puts her hand
on my arm. ‘They all are. You’re very talented. Shall we look at some more?’
    I turn to the first page. Here Kate has pasted a picture taken much earlier; black
and white and deliberately bleeding at the edges. Frosty, made-up, but not wearing
her wig, putting her heels on. She was sitting on our couch, an overflowing ashtray
at her feet, next to a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. It was always one of my
favourite photographs.
    ‘Who’s that?’
    ‘That’s Frosty. A friend.’
    ‘Frosty?’
    ‘I can’t remember her real name. She hated having to use it, anyway.’
    ‘She?’ Anna looks shocked, and I understand why, I suppose. In the picture Frosty’s
hair is cropped short; even with the make-up she looks more male than female.
    ‘Yes. She was a woman.’ I laugh. ‘Actually, she was sort of neither, but she always
called herself she. She used to say, “You gotta decide, in this world. There’s only
two bathrooms in the bars. There’s only two boxes on the forms. Male or female.”
She decided she was a woman.’
    Anna looks again at the picture. I don’t expect her to understand. People like Frosty
– or even people like Marcus – aren’t part of her world. They aren’t even part of
mine any more.
    ‘What happened to her?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘None of us thought Frosty would last long. She was too fragile
for this world . . . But that might have just been our own melodramatic nonsense.
The truth is, I left Berlin in a hurry. I left them behind. I have no idea what happened
after I’d gone.’
    ‘You didn’t look back?’
    It’s an odd phrase. I think of Lot’s wife, the pillar of salt. ‘I couldn’t.’ It was
too painful, I want to say, but I don’t. I close the photo album and pass it back
to her.
    ‘No. They’re yours.’
    I hesitate.
    ‘Keep them. This, too.’
    She hands me a box that was on the floor next to Kate’s bed. It’s a biscuit tin.
On the lid are the words Huile d’Olive , a picture of a woman in a red dress.
    ‘It’s for you.’
    ‘What is it?’
    ‘It’s just some personal stuff of Kate’s. I thought you should have it.’
    So this is what’s left of my sister. This is what I’ve come to take home. Back to
her son.
    I’m nervous, as if the tin might contain a trap, a rat or a poisonous spider.
    I take off the lid. The box is full of notebooks, photos, paperwork. Her passport
is on the top and I open it to her photograph. It’s recent, one I haven’t seen before.
Her hair is shorter and I can see she’d lost weight. She looks almost like someone
else.
    I look at the expiry date. It’s valid for eight more years. Eight years she’ll never
need. I snap it shut and put it back, then close the box.
    ‘I’ll look at the rest later,’ I say. I realize I’ve begun to cry, for the first
time since she died. I’m exposed, raw. It’s as if I’ve been slit open like one of
Hugh’s patients, neck to groin. I am flayed, my heart a jagged slash.
    I put the box down. I want to get away, to find somewhere quiet and warm where I
can stay for ever and not have to think about anything at all.
    But isn’t this what I came for? To mine the memory of my sister, to make sure there
is a tiny part of her that survives for Connor? To feel something, to say sorry,
to say goodbye?
    Yes,