Sister

“Because Simon knew about Emilio Codi’s affair with Tess,” replied the Pretty Witch. “They probably each kept the other one quiet.”

I couldn’t put off my question any longer.

“Do you think either of them could have killed her?”

The group was silent, but I sensed embarrassment and awkwardness more than shock. Even the Pretty Witch didn’t meet my eye.

Finally Benjamin spoke up, to be kind to me I think. “Simon told us that she had postpartum psychosis. And because of the postpartum psychosis she committed suicide. He said that’s what the coroner’s verdict was and that the police are sure about it.”

“We didn’t know whether he was telling the truth,” said the shy-faced boy. “But it was in the local paper too.”

“Simon said you weren’t here at the time,” ventured Annette. “But he said that he saw her and she was …” She trailed off, but I could imagine what Simon had told them about your mental state.

So the press and Simon had convinced them of your suicide. The girl they knew and had described to me would never have killed herself, but you’d been the victim of possession by the modern-day devil of puerperal psychosis, a devil that made a girl with joie de vivre hate life enough to end it. You had been killed by something that has a scientific name rather than a human face.

“Yes. The police do believe she committed suicide,” I said. “Because they think she was suffering from puerperal psychosis. But I am certain that they are wrong.”

I saw compassion on some faces as they looked at me, and its poorer cousin pity on others. And then it was “already past one-thirty” and “classes start in ten minutes” and they were leaving.

I thought that Simon must have manipulated them against me before they’d even met me. He’d no doubt told them about the unstable older sister with her loopy theories, which explained why they had been more embarrassed than shocked when I’d asked them about murder, and their awkwardness toward me. But I didn’t blame them for wanting to believe Simon rather than me, for wanting to choose a non-murderous death for you.

Benjamin and the Pretty Witch were the last to go. They asked me to come to the art show in a week’s time, were touchingly insistent, and I said I would. It would give me another opportunity to question Simon and Emilio.

Alone in the cafe, I thought that Simon had not only lied to me about his “project,” he had even embellished it: “They’re for my final year portfolio.… My tutor thinks it’s the most original and exciting project of the year’s group.” I wondered what else were lies. Had you really spoken to him on the phone the day you died and arranged to meet? Or had he followed you that day, as he so often followed you, and everything else was a construct so I wouldn’t suspect him? He was clearly highly manipulative. Had there really been a man in the bushes that day, or had Simon invented him—or more cleverly, your paranoia, which had conjured him up—to take the focus off himself? How many times did he sit on your doorstep with a huge bouquet, hoping he’d be found and appear innocently waiting for you, even though you were dead?

Thinking about Simon and Emilio, I wondered, as I still do now, if all very beautiful young women have men in their lives who appear sinister. If I had been found dead, there would be no one suspicious in my life, so the focus would have had to go outside my circle of friends and former fiance. I don’t believe outstandingly beautiful and charismatic women create obsession in what would otherwise be normal men, but rather they attract the weirdos and the stalkers; flames in the darkness that these disturbing people inhabit, unwittingly drawing them closer until they extinguish the very flame they were drawn to.

“And then you went back to the flat?” asks Mr. Wright.

“Yes.”

But I feel too tired to tell him about returning to the flat that day, to have to remember what I heard there. My words are slower, my body slumping.

Mr. Wright looks at me, with concern. “Let’s end it there.”

He offers to get me a taxi but I say that a walk will do me good.

He accompanies me to the lift and I realize how much I appreciate his old-fashioned courtesy. I think Amias would have been a little like Mr. Wright as a young man. He smiles good-bye and I think that maybe the little sparkles of romance haven’t been doused after all. Romantic thoughts pep me up a little, more sweetly than caffeine, and I don’t think there’s any harm in entertaining them. So I shall think about Mr. Wright, allow myself that small luxury, and walk across St. James’s Park rather than be squashed in a crowded tube.

The fresh spring air does make me feel better and inconsequential thoughts make me a little braver. When I reach the end of St. James’s Park, I wonder whether I should continue my walk across Hyde Park. Surely it’s about time that I found the courage to confront my demons and finally lay to rest my ghosts.

Heart pumping faster, I go in through the Queen Elizabeth gates. But like its neighbor, Hyde Park too is a riot of color and noise and smells. I can’t find any demons at all in all this greenery, no whispering ghost amidst the ball games.

I walk through the rose garden and then past the bandstand, which looks like a pop-up from a children’s storybook, with its pastel pink surround and sugar-white top held up by licorice sticks. Then I remember the bomb exploding into a crowd, the nails packed around it, the carnage, and I feel someone watching me.

I feel his breath behind me, cold in the warm air. I walk quickly, not turning round. He tracks me, his breath coming faster, lifting the hairs on the nape of my neck. My muscles tense to a spasm. In the distance I can see the Lido with people. I run toward it, adrenaline and fear making my legs shake.

I reach the Lido and sit down, legs still jittery and my chest hurting every time I take a breath. I watch children splashing in the paddling pool and two middle-aged executives paddling with their suit trousers rolled up. Only now do I dare turn around. I think I see a shadow, among the trees. I wait until the shadow is no more than the dappled shade of branches.

I skirt round the copse of trees, making sure I keep close to people and noise. I reach the other side and see a stretch of bright-green new grass with polka-dot crocuses. A girl walks barefoot across it, her shoes in her hand, enjoying sun-warmed grass, and I think of you. I watch her till she’s at the end of the polka-dot grass and only then