Sister

“I got out my credit card to pay her phone bill. Since she’d lost her mobile, I’d paid the landline one every month. It was my birthday present to her and she said it was too generous, but it was for my benefit too.”

I told you I wanted to make sure that you could phone me, and talk to me as long as you wanted to without worrying about the bill. What I didn’t tell you is that I needed to make sure that if I wanted to ring you, your phone wouldn’t have been disconnected.

“This bill was larger than in previous months. It was itemized so I decided to check it.” My words are slower, dawdling. “I saw that she’d phoned my mobile on the twenty-first of January. The call was at one p.m. her time, eight a.m. New York time, so I would have been in the subway getting to work. I don’t know why there were even a few seconds of connection.” I must do this all in one go, no pausing, or I won’t be able to start again. “It was the day she had Xavier. She must have phoned me when she went into labor.”

I break off for just a moment, not looking at Mr. Wright’s face, then continue, “Her next call to me was at nine p.m. her time, four p.m. New York time.”

“Eight hours later. Why do you think there was such a long gap?”

“She didn’t have a mobile, so once she left her flat to go to the hospital, it would have been hard for her to ring me. Besides, it wouldn’t have been urgent. I mean, I wouldn’t have had time to get to her and be with her for the birth.”

My voice becomes so quiet that Mr. Wright has to bend toward me to hear.

“The second call must have been when she got home from the hospital. She was ringing me to tell me about Xavier. The call lasted twelve minutes and twenty seconds.”

“What did she say?” he asks.

My mouth is suddenly dry. I don’t have the saliva needed to talk. I take a sip of cold coffee, but my mouth still feels parched.

“I didn’t talk to her.”

“You were probably out of the office, darling. Or stuck in a meeting,” said Todd. He’d come back from Amias’s, full of incredulity about your paying your rent in paintings, to find me sobbing.

“No, I was there.”

I’d got back to my office from a longer-than-expected briefing to the design department. I vaguely remembered Trish saying that you were holding for me and my boss wanted to see me. I asked her to tell you I’d call you back. I think I made a note on a Post-it and stuck it on my computer as I left. Maybe that’s why I forgot, because I’d written it down and didn’t need to hold it my head. But there are no excuses. None at all.

“I didn’t take her call and I forgot to phone her back.” My voice sounded small with shame.

“The baby was three weeks early; you couldn’t possibly have foreseen that.”

But I should have foreseen that.

“And the twenty-first of January, that was the day you were given your promotion,” Todd continued. “So of course you had your mind on other things.” He sounded almost jocular. He had single-handedly found me an excuse.

“How could I have forgotten?”

“She didn’t say it was important. She didn’t even leave you a message.”

Exonerating me meant putting the responsibility onto you.

“She shouldn’t have had to say it was important. And what message could she have left with a secretary? That her baby was dead?”

I’d snapped at him, trying to shift a little guilt his way. But of course the guilt is mine alone, not for sharing.

“Then you went to Maine?” asks Mr. Wright.

“Yes, a last-minute thing, just for a few days. And her baby wasn’t due for three weeks.” I despise myself for this pathetic attempt to save face. “Her bill showed that the day before she died and the morning of her death she phoned my office and apartment fifteen times.”

I saw the column of numbers, all mine, and each was an abandonment of you, indicting me again and again and again.

“Her calls to my apartment lasted for a few seconds.”

Just until your call was put through to voice mail. I should have put on a message saying we were away, but we hadn’t, not because we’d been carried away in the spontaneous moment, but because we’d decided it was a security risk. “Let’s not broadcast the fact we’re away.” I can’t remember if it was Todd or I who’d said it.

I thought that you must have assumed I’d be back soon, and that’s why you didn’t leave a message. Or maybe you simply couldn’t bear to tell me your ghastly news without hearing my voice first.

“God knows how many times she tried to phone my mobile. I’d switched it off because there wasn’t any reception where we were staying.”

“But you did try ringing her?”

I think he’s asking this question out of kindness.

“Yes. But the cabin didn’t have a landline and my mobile had no reception, so I could only phone her when we went out to a restaurant. I did try, a few times, but her phone was always engaged. I thought she was chatting to