Sister

“I’d really better answer that.”

“When should you disconnect the shared mortgage and bank account and mutual friends?”

I picked up the phone, glad of an excuse to interrupt this conversation. “Hello?”

“Beatrice, it’s Mummy.”

You’d been missing for four days.

I don’t remember packing, but I remember Todd coming in as I closed the case. I turned to him. “What flight am I on?”

“There’s nothing available till tomorrow.”

“But I have to go now.”

You hadn’t shown up to work since the previous Sunday. The manager had tried to ring you but she had only got your answering machine. She’d been round to your flat but you weren’t there. No one knew where you were. The police were now looking for you.

“Can you drive me to the airport? I’ll take whatever they’ve got.”

“I’ll phone a cab,” he replied. He’d had two glasses of wine. I used to value his carefulness.

Of course I don’t tell Mr. Wright all of this. I just tell him Mum phoned me on the twenty-sixth of January at 3:30 p.m. New York time and told me you’d gone missing. Like you, he’s interested in the big picture, not tiny details. Even when you were a child, your paintings were large, spilling off the edge of the page, while I did my careful drawings using pencil and ruler and eraser. Later, you painted abstract canvases, expressing large truths in bold splashes of vivid color, while I was perfectly suited to my job in corporate design, matching every color in the world to a Pantone number. Lacking your ability with broad brushstrokes, I will tell you this story in accurate dots of detail. I’m hoping that as in a pointillistic painting, the dots will form a picture and when it is completed, we will understand what happened and why.

“So until your mother phoned, you had no inkling of any problem?” asks Mr. Wright.

I feel the familiar, nauseating, wave of guilt. “No. Nothing I took any notice of.”

I went first class—it was the only seat they had left. As we flew through cloud limbo land I imagined telling you off for putting me through this. I made you promise not to pull a stunt like this again. I reminded you that you were going to be a mother soon and it was about time you started behaving like an adult.

“ ‘Older sister’ doesn’t need to be a job title, Bee.”

What had I been lecturing you about at the time? It could have been one of so many things; the point is that I’ve always viewed being an older sister as a job, one that I am ideally suited for. And as I flew to find you, because I would find you (looking after you is an essential part of my job description), I was comforted by the familiar scenario of being the superior, mature, older sister telling off the flighty, irresponsible young girl who should know better by now.

The plane started to descend toward Heathrow. West London sprawled beneath us, thinly disguised with snow. The seat-belt light came on and I made deals with God: I’d do anything if you were found safe. I’d have made a deal with the devil if he’d been offering.

As the plane bumped clumsily onto the tarmac, my fantasy annoyance crumbled into sickening anxiety. God became the hero in a children’s fairy story. My powers as an older sister dwindled to still impotency. I remembered viscerally Leo’s death. Grief like swallowed offal made me wretch. I couldn’t lose you too.

The window is surprisingly huge for an office, and spring sunshine floods through it.

“So you made a connection between Tess’s disappearance and Leo’s death?” Mr. Wright asks.

“No.”

“You said you thought about Leo?”

“I think about Leo all the time. He was my brother.” I’m tired of going through this. “Leo died of cystic fibrosis when he was eight. Tess and I didn’t inherit it, we were born perfectly healthy.”

Mr. Wright tries to turn off the glaring overhead light, but for some reason it won’t switch off. He shrugs at me apologetically and sits down again.

“And then what happened?” he asks.

“Mum met me and I went to the police station.”

“Can you tell me about that?”

Mum was waiting at the arrivals gate wearing her Jaeger camel coat. As I got closer, I saw that she hadn’t brushed her hair, and her makeup was clumsily applied. I know; I hadn’t seen her that way since Leo’s funeral.

“I got a taxi all the way from Little Hadston. Your plane was late.”

“Only ten minutes, Mum.”

All around us lovers and relatives and friends were hugging each other, reunited. We were physically awkward with each other. I don’t think we even kissed.