Sister

Mr. Wright is looking at me and I wonder how long I have been silent.

“What was your reaction to the postmortem?” he asks.

“Strangely, I didn’t mind about what happened to her body,” I say, deciding to keep Chagall and trailing clouds of glory in reverse to myself. But I will confide in him a little. “A child’s body is so much a part of who they are, maybe because we can hold a little boy in our arms. We can hold the whole of him. But when we grow too large to be held, our body no longer defines us.”

“When I asked you what your reaction was to the postmortem, I meant whether you believed its findings.”

I am hotly embarrassed but thankful that I at least kept Chagall to myself. His face softens as he looks at me. “I’m glad I wasn’t clear.”

I still feel heatedly ridiculous but smile back at him, a tentative first step to laughing at myself. And I think I knew, really, that he wanted me to talk about its findings. But just as I’d chosen to ask DS Finborough why the postmortem had been done so quickly, with Mr. Wright I was again putting off its results. Now I must address it.

“Later that day DS Finborough came round to the flat with the postmortem report, to give me the results.”

He’d said he’d rather do it in person and I thought it kind of him.

From your sitting-room window I watched DS Finborough coming down the steep basement steps, and I wondered if he was walking slowly because they were slippery with ice or because he was reluctant to have this meeting. Behind him was PC Vernon, her sensible shoes giving her a good grip, her gloved hand holding the railing just in case—a sensible woman who had children at home to look after that evening.

DS Finborough came into your sitting room but didn’t sit down or take off his coat. I’d tried to bleed your radiators but your flat was still uncomfortably cold.

“I’m sure you’ll be relieved to know that Tess’s body showed no evidence of any sexual assault.”

That you had been raped had been an unarticulated anxiety, corrosively hideous at the edge of my imagining. I felt relief as a physical force.

DS Finborough continued, “We know for definite now that she died on Thursday, the twenty-third of January.”

It confirmed what I already knew, that you had never made it out of the park after seeing Simon.

“The postmortem shows that Tess died because of bleeding from the lacerations to her arms,” continued DS Finborough.

“There are no signs of any struggle. There’s no reason to believe that anyone else is involved.”

It took a moment for the meaning of his words to make sense, as if I were translating a foreign language into my own.

“The coroner has returned a verdict of suicide,” he said.

“No. Tess wouldn’t kill herself.”

DS Finborough’s face was kind. “Under normal circumstances I’m sure you’d be right, but these weren’t normal circumstances, were they? Tess was suffering not only grief but also postpartum—”

I interrupted him, angry that he dared tell me about you when he didn’t know you. “Have you ever watched someone die from cystic fibrosis?” I asked. He shook his head, and was going to say something, but I headed him off. “We watched our brother struggling to breathe and we couldn’t help him. He tried so hard to live, but he drowned in his own fluid and there was nothing we could do. When you’ve watched someone you love fight for life, that hard, you value it too highly to ever throw it away.”

“As I said, in normal circumstances, I’m sure—”

“In any circumstances.”

My emotional assault had not dented his certainty. I would have to convince him with logic: muscular, masculine argument. “Surely there must be a connection to the threatening phone calls she was getting?”

“Her psychiatrist told us that they were most likely all in her head.”

I was astonished. “What?”

“He’s told us that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis.”

“The phone calls were delusional and my sister was mad? Is that it now?”

“Beatrice—”

“You told me before that she was suffering from postpartum depression. Why has that suddenly changed to psychosis?”

Against my hectoring anger, his tone was so measured. “From the evidence, that seems now to be the most probable.”

“But Amias said the phone calls were real, when he reported her missing, didn’t he?”

“But he was never actually there when she got one of the phone calls.”

I thought about telling him that your phone was unplugged when I arrived. But that didn’t prove anything. The calls could still have been delusional.

“Tess’s psychiatrist has told us that symptoms of postpartum psychosis include delusions and paranoia,” DS Finborough continued. “Sadly, many of the women suffering also have thoughts of harming themselves, and tragically some actually do.”