Sister

I flinched from it and went to the door.

As I opened it, I felt tears on my face before realizing I was crying.

“How could you have just left her there?”

“It wasn’t my fault she killed herself.”

“Is anything ever your fault?”

I am back with Mr. Wright, the smell of Simon and his flat still pungent in my memory. I am grateful for the open window, the faint scent of newly mown grass reaching us from the park.

“Did you tell the police what Simon had told you?” Mr. Wright asks.

“Yes, a junior of DS Finborough’s. He was polite but I knew it would do no good. The man following her was her murderer, but he could also have been a product of her supposed paranoia. The facts that pointed to murder also backed up the diagnosis of psychosis.”

Mr. Wright looks at his watch, five-fifteen. “Shall we call it a day?”

I nod. Somewhere at the back of my nose and throat linger the remembered particles of dope and aftershave, and I am grateful that I can go outside and breathe the fresh air firsthand.

I walk across St. James’s Park, then get a bus to the Coyote. I know you’re curious about how I’ve come to be working there. Initially I went to question the people you worked with, hoping someone could give me a clue about your death. But no one could help—they hadn’t seen you since the Sunday before you’d had Xavier and they didn’t know much about your life outside the Coyote. Meanwhile, my boss in the States had, “with great reluctance, Beatrice,” let me go, and I had no idea when I’d get another job. I knew my share of the mortgage for the New York apartment would soon eat up all my savings. I needed to earn something to live on, so I went back to ask Bettina for a job.

I was wearing my only clean outfit, which was a MaxMara pants suit, and Bettina thought I was joking to start with but then realized I was genuine.

“Okay. I could do with an extra pair of hands, two shifts at weekends and three during the week. You can start this evening. Six pounds per hour plus free dinner cooked by me if you’re doing a shift longer than three hours.”

I must have looked a little startled that she had offered me such immediate work.

“The truth is,” said Bettina, “I just really fancy you.” She giggled at my horror-struck face. “Sorry, I couldn’t resist.” Her laughter at my shockability reminded me of you; there was no cruelty in it.

As I did my shift that evening, I thought that because you had died, there was, of course, a part-time position that had needed filling. But recently I discovered that someone else had already taken the job, so she’d hired me out of loyalty to you and sympathy for me.

I get home from the Coyote at almost midnight and don’t expect many, if any, press. It’s too late and in any case after the frenzy of the last few days they must have got all the pictures and footage they need. But I was wrong. As I get near, I see there’s a gang of them, their huge lights shining, and illuminated in the middle is Kasia. She’s been at a friend’s house for the last two days, until I thought the press attack would have died down enough for her to return. She’s living with me now, which I think you’re pleased about but curious about how we fit. Well, she has your bed and I have a futon in the sitting room, which I unroll each night, and we somehow squash in.

As I get closer, I see how shy she looks, anxious about the attention, and exhausted. Feeling furiously protective, I shoo photographers and journalists out of the way.

“How long have you been waiting?” I ask her.

“Hours.”

For Kasia that could mean ten minutes upward.

“What happened to your key?”

She shrugs, embarrassed. “Sorry.” She’s always losing something and this reminds me of you. Sometimes I find her scattiness endearing. This evening, I have to admit to being a little irritated. (Old habits die hard, and to be fair, I’m exhausted after a long stint at the CPS, a shift as a barmaid, and now I’ve got the press shoving cameras into my face for what I imagine to be a poignant-moment shot.)

“Come on, you need something to eat.”

She’s only a week away from her due date now and she shouldn’t go too long without food. She gets faint and I’m sure it can’t be good for the baby.

I put my arm around her to usher her inside and the cameras click in synch.

Tomorrow, next to the picture of me with my arm around Kasia, there will be similar articles to the ones there were today about my “saving” Kasia. They actually use words like that: “saving” and “owing her life to,” comic-book words that are in danger of turning me into someone who wears pants on the outside of her tights, switches outfits and personas in telephone booths and has web coming out of her wrists. They will write that I was too late to save you (that telephone booth change just not quite quick enough), but how because of me, Kasia and her baby will live. Like all of us, their readers want a happy ending to the story. It’s just not my story. And my ending was a strand of hair caught in a zipper.

8

thursday

I am walking across St. James’s Park toward the CPS offices. The sky is blue again