Sister

I hadn’t told Mum about my arrangements for Xavier to be buried with you, fearful of the confrontation, but I couldn’t put it off any longer.

“Mum, I really think that she’d want Xavier—”

Mum interrupted. “Xavier?”

“Her baby, she would want—”

“She used Leo’s name?”

Her voice was horrified. I’m sorry.

She went back into the sitting room and started shoving clothes into a black bin liner.

“Tess wouldn’t want it all just thrown away, Mum; she recycled everything.”

“These aren’t fit for anyone.”

“She mentioned a textile recycling place once; I’ll see—” But Mum had turned away and was pulling out the drawer at the bottom of the wardrobe. She took a tiny cashmere cardigan out of its tissue paper. She turned to me, her voice soft. “It’s beautiful.”

I remembered my astonishment too when I first arrived at finding such exquisite baby things among the poverty of the rest of your flat.

“Who gave them to her?” Mum asked.

“I don’t know. Amias just said she had a spree.”

“But with what? Did the father give her money?”

I braced myself; she had a right to this information. “He’s married.”

“I know.”

Mum must have seen my confusion; the softness in her voice had gone. “You asked me if I wanted to ‘put an A on her coffin for good measure.’ Tess wasn’t married so the scarlet letter, the badge of adultery, could only mean that the father was.” Her voice tensed further as she noted my surprise. “You didn’t think I understood the reference, did you?”

“I’m sorry. And it was a cruel thing to say.”

“You girls thought that once you got to A levels you’d left me behind. That all I ever thought about was the menu for a dull supper party three weeks away.”

“I’ve just never seen you read, that’s all.”

She was still holding Xavier’s tiny cardigan, her fingers stroking it as she spoke. “I used to. I’d stay up with my bedside light on while your father wanted to go to sleep. It irritated him but I couldn’t stop. It was like a compulsion. Then Leo was ill. I didn’t have the time anymore. Anyway, I’d realized that books were full of trivia and tripe. Who cares about someone else’s love affair, what a sunrise looks like for page after page? Who cares?”

She put down the tiny cardigan and resumed shoving your clothes into a bin liner. She hadn’t taken off the wire hangers, and the hooks tore the flimsy black plastic. As I watched her clumsily anguished movements I thought of the kiln at school and our trayload of soft clay pots being put inside. They would bake harder and harder until the ones that were imperfectly thrown would break into pieces. Your death had thrown Mum way off center and I knew, as I watched her tie the bin liner into a knot, that when she finally faced your death, grief was a kiln that would shatter her.

An hour later, I drove Mum to the station. When I returned, I put your clothes from her frantically crammed bin liners back into your wardrobe; Granny’s clock back onto the mantelpiece. Even your toiletries were left untouched in the bathroom cupboard, with mine kept in my toiletries bag on a stool. Who knows, maybe that’s the real reason I’ve stayed in your flat all this time. It’s meant I’ve been able to avoid packing you away.

Then I finished wrapping your paintings. This was just preparing for an exhibition, so I had no problem with it. Finally only four paintings were left. They were the nightmarish canvases in thick gouache of a masked man bending over a woman, her mouth ripping and bleeding as she screamed. The shape in her arms, the only white in the canvas, I’d realized, was a baby. I’d also realized that you’d painted them when you were under the effects of the PCP, that they were a visual record of your tormented trips to hell. I saw the marks my tears had made when I first looked at them, the paint streaking down the canvas. Then, tears were the only response open to me, but now I knew that someone had deliberately tortured you and my tears had dried into hatred. I would find him.

The office is overheated, sunshine pouring in through the window warming it further, making me drowsy. I drain my cup of coffee and try to snap awake.

“And then you went to Simon’s flat?” Mr. Wright asks.

He must be cross-checking what I am telling him with other witness statements, making sure all our time lines coincide.

“Yes.”

“To question him about the drugs?”

“Yes.”

I rang Simon’s bell, and when a cleaning lady answered, I walked in as if I had every right to be there. I was again struck by the opulence of the place. Having lived in your flat for a while, I had become less dulled to material wealth. Simon was in the kitchen, sitting at a breakfast bar. He looked startled when he saw me and then annoyed. His baby face was still unshaved but I thought that, like the piercings, it was an affectation.

“Did you give Tess money to buy baby things?” I asked. I hadn’t even thought of the question until I was inside