Sister: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

asked me to tell you she’d been, in her broken fractured English, and then hurried up the steps.

    Yes, Miss Freud, I was angry she wasn’t you. Not her fault.

    I went up the basement steps and rang on Amias’s doorbell. He answered it, fiddling with the chain.
    ‘Do you know how Tess got all those expensive baby clothes?’ I asked.
    ‘She had a spree in the Brompton Road,’ he replied. ‘She was really chuffed with—’
    I impatiently interrupted him, ‘I meant how did she afford it?’
    ‘I didn’t like to ask.’
    It was a reprimand; he had good manners, but I did not.
    ‘Why did you report her missing?’ I asked.
    ‘She didn’t come and have supper with me. She’d promised she would and she never broke her promise, even to an old man like me.’
    He unhooked the chain. Despite his age he was still tall and un-stooped, a good few inches taller than me.
    ‘Maybe you should give the baby things away,’ he said.
    I was repelled by him and furious. ‘It’s a little premature to give up on her, isn’t it?’
    I turned away from him and walked hurriedly down the steps. He called something after me, but I couldn’t be bothered to try and make it out. I went into your flat.

    ‘Just another ten minutes, and we’ll call it a day,’ Mr Wright says and I’m grateful. I hadn’t known how physically draining this would be.
    ‘Did you go into her bathroom?’ he asks.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Did you look in her bathroom cabinet?’
    I shake my head.
    ‘So you didn’t see anything untoward?’
    ‘Yes, I did.’

    I felt exhausted, grimy and bone cold. I longed for a hot shower. It was still two hours till the reconstruction was on TV, so I had plenty of time but I was worried that I wouldn’t hear you if you phoned. So that made me think it was a good idea - following that logic which says your crush is bound to turn up on the doorstep the minute you’ve put on a face mask and your grungiest pyjamas. OK, I agree, logic is hardly the name for it but I hoped having a shower would make you phone. Besides, I also knew my mobile took messages.
    I went into your bathroom. Of course, there wasn’t a shower just your bath with its chipped enamel and mould around the taps. I was struck by the contrast to my bathroom in New York - a homage to modernist chic in chrome and limestone. I wondered how you could possibly feel clean after being in here. I had a familiar moment of feeling superior and then I saw it: a shelf with your toothbrush, toothpaste, contact lens solutions and a hairbrush with long hairs trapped among the bristles.
    I realised I’d been harbouring the hope that you’d done something silly and student-like and gone off to whatever festival or protest was on at the moment; that you’d been your usual irresponsible self and hang the consequences of being over eight-months pregnant and camping in a snowy field. I’d fantasised about lecturing you for your crass thoughtlessness. Your shelf of toiletries crashed my fantasy. There was no harbour for hope. Wherever you were, you didn’t intend to go there.

    Mr Wright switches off the tape machine. ‘Let’s end it there.’ I nod, trying to blink away the image of your long hairs in the bristles of your hairbrush.
    A matronly secretary comes in and tells us that the press outside your flat has become alarming in number. Mr Wright is solicitous, asking me if I’d like him to find me somewhere else to stay.
    ‘No. Thank you. I want to be at home.’
    I call your flat home now, if that’s OK with you. I have been living there for two months now and it feels that way.
    ‘Would you like me to give you a lift?’ he asks. He must see my surprise because he smiles. ‘It’s no trouble. And I’m sure today has been an ordeal.’
    The printed polyester tie was a present. He is a nice man.
    I politely turn down his offer and he escorts me to the lift. ‘Your statement will take several days. I hope that’s all right?’
    ‘Yes. Of course.’
    ‘It’s