Sister

see the toilets building, a hard dark wound amidst the soft bright colors of spring.

I hurry after the girl and reach the toilets building. She’s at the far side now, with a boy’s arm around her. Laughing together, they’re leaving the park. I leave too, my legs still a little wobbly, my breathing still labored. I try to make myself feel ridiculous. There is nothing to be scared of, Beatrice; it’s what comes of having an overly active imagination—your mind can play all sorts of tricks. Reassurances pilfered from a childhood world of certainty: there’s no monster in the wardrobe. But you and I know he’s real.

17

tuesday

At the CPS I squeeze into a lift. Bodies are unwillingly pressed against one another, sweat smelling of burned rubber. Surrounded by people, in the bright light of morning, I know that I will not say anything about the man in the park. Because Mr. Wright would just tell me, correctly, that he’s in prison, refused bail, and that after the trial he’ll be sentenced to life imprisonment, without parole. Rationally, I should know that he can never hurt me again. As the lift reaches the third floor I tell myself sternly that he is not here and never will be, that he is an absence, not a presence, and I must not allow him to become one, even in my imaginings.

So this morning is one of new resolutions. I will not be intimidated by a specter of imagined evil. I will not allow him any power over my mind as he once had over my body. Instead, I will be reassured by Mr. Wright and Mrs. Crush Secretary and all the other people who surround me in this building. I know that my blackouts are still happening, and more frequently, and that my body is getting weaker, but I will not give way to irrational terror nor to my physical frailty. Instead of imagining the frightening and the ugly, I will try to find the beautiful in everyday things, as you did. But most of all, I will think about what you went through—and know, again, that in comparison I have no right to indulge myself in a phantom menace and self-pity. I decide that today it will be me who is the coffee maker. It is nonsense to think that my arms are trembling. Look, I’ve managed to make two cups of coffee —and carry them into Mr. Wright’s office—no problem.

Mr. Wright, a little surprised, thanks me for the coffee. He puts a new cassette into the recorder and we resume.

“We’d got to your talking to Tess’s friends about Simon Greenly and Emilio Codi?” he asks.

“Yes. Then I went back to our flat. Tess had an ancient answering machine that she’d got in a garage sale, I think. But she thought it was fine.”

I’m skirting round the issue, but must get to the point.

“When I came in, I saw a light flashing, indicating the tape was full.”

Still my coat, I played the message, which was just something from a gas company, unimportant. I’d already listened to all the other messages, other people’s one-way conversations with you.

I took off my coat and was about to rewind the tape when I saw it had an A side and a B side. I’d never listened to the B side, so I turned it over. Each message was preceded by a time and date in an electronic voice.

The last message on the B side was on Tuesday, January twenty-first, at 8:20 p.m. Just a few hours after you’d had Xavier.

The sound of a lullaby filled the room. Sweetly vicious.

I try to sound brisk, and a little too loud, wanting my words to drown out the vocal memory in my head.

“It was a professional recording, and I thought whoever had played it must have put the telephone receiver against a CD player.”

Mr. Wright nods; he has already heard the recording, though unlike me, he probably doesn’t know it by heart.

“I knew from Amias that she felt threatened by the calls,” I continue. “That she was afraid of whoever was doing this, so I knew he must have done it many times, but only one was recorded.”

No wonder your phone was unplugged when I arrived at your flat. You couldn’t bear to listen to any more.

“You phoned the police straightaway?” asks Mr. Wright.

“Yes. I left a message on DS Finborough’s voice mail. I told him about Simon’s fake project and that I’d also discovered a reason why Emilio would have waited till after the baby was born to kill Tess. I said I thought there might be something wrong with the CF trial because the women were paid and Tess’s medical notes had gone missing, although I thought it unlikely there was a link. I said I thought the lullabies were the key to it. That if they could find out who had played her the lullabies, they’d find her killer. It wasn’t the most moderate or calm of messages. But I’d just listened to the lullaby. I didn’t feel moderate or calm.”

After I’d left my message for DS Finborough, I went to St. Anne’s. My anger and upset were visceral, needing physical release. I went to the psychiatric department where Dr. Nichols was having an outpatient clinic. I found his name written on a card pinned to a door and pushed past a patient who was about to go in. Behind me, I heard the receptionist remonstrating but took no notice.

Dr. Nichols looked at me, startled.

“There was a lullaby on her answering machine,” I said. Then I started singing the lullaby, “Sleep, baby, sleep / Your father tends the sheep / Your mother shakes the dreamland tree / And from it fall sweet dreams for thee / Sleep, baby, sleep.”

“Beatrice, please—”

I interrupted. “She heard it the evening she got back from the hospital. Only a few hours after her baby had died. God knows how many more times he played her lullabies. The phone calls weren’t ‘auditory hallucinations.’ Someone was mentally torturing her.”