Sister

He must have seen it in the paper. I was right about that photo of me, my arm around Kasia, being in all the newspapers.

“Yes. The next morning I played her the lullaby on the answering machine. But she just assumed it was a friend who’d been unknowingly but horribly tactless.”

“Did you tell her what you thought?”

“No, I didn’t want to upset her for no reason. She’d already told me, when I first met her, that she didn’t even know Tess was frightened, let alone who may have been frightening her. It was stupid of me to play her the lullaby.”

But if I’d seen her as fully my equal, would I have told her what I thought? Would I have wanted company in this, someone to share it with? But by the time I’d spent that night listening to her snore, by the time I’d woken her with a cup of tea and cooked her a decent breakfast, I’d decided my role was to look after her. Protect her.

“And then the answering machine tape ran on,” I continue. “There was a message from a woman called Hattie, whom I didn’t know, and hadn’t thought important. But Kasia recognized her, and told me she was at the ‘Mummies with Disasters Clinic’ with her and Tess. She assumed that Hattie had had her baby but didn’t expect her to call. She’s never been close to Hattie; it was Tess who always organized their get-togethers. She didn’t have a phone number for Hattie but she did have her address.”

I went to the address that Kasia had given me, which makes it sound easy, but without a car and a rudimentary knowledge of public transport, I found getting anywhere stressful and time- consuming. Kasia had stayed behind, too self-conscious about her bruised face to go out. She thought I was going to see one of your old friends out of sentiment and I didn’t correct her.

I arrived at a pretty house in Chiswick and felt a little awkward as I rang the bell. I hadn’t been able to phone ahead and wasn’t even sure whether Hattie would be there. A Filipina nanny, with a blond toddler in her arms, answered the door. She seemed very shy, not meeting my eye.

“Beatrice?” she asked.

I was perplexed about how she could know who I was.

She must have seen my confusion. “I’m Hattie, a friend of Tess’s. We met at her funeral, very briefly, shook hands.”

There had been a long line of people queuing to see me and Mum, a cruel parody of a wedding reception receiving line, all waiting their turn to say sorry—so many sorries, as if it were all their faults that you had died. I had just wanted it to be over with, not to be the cause of the queue, and didn’t have the emotional capacity to take in new names or faces.

Kasia hadn’t told me that Hattie was Filipina; there was no reason why she should, I suppose. But it wasn’t just Hattie’s nationality that surprised me, it was also her age. While you and Kasia are young, one foot still in girlhood, Hattie is a woman nearing forty. And she was wearing a wedding ring.

Hattie held the door open for me. Her manner demure, deferential even. “Please, come in.”

I followed her into the house and strained to hear the sound of a baby, but could hear only a children’s TV program from the sitting room. I watched her as she settled the blond toddler in front of Thomas the Tank Engine, and remembered that you had told me about a Filipina friend of yours who worked as a nanny, but I hadn’t listened to her name, irritated by another of your trendy liberal friendships (a Filipina nanny, for heaven’s sake!).

“I’ve got a few questions I’d like to ask you, is that okay?”

“Yes, but I have to pick up his brother at twelve. Do you mind if I …” She gestured toward the ironing board and laundry basket in the kitchen.

“Of course not.”

She seemed so passively accepting of my just appearing on her doorstep and asking her questions. I followed her into the kitchen and noticed her flimsy cheap dress. It was cold out, but her shoes were old plastic flip- flops.

“Kasia Lewski told me that your baby was in the cystic fibrosis trial?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you and your husband both carry the gene for cystic fibrosis?”

“Clearly.”

The tone was sharp edged from behind her meek facade. She didn’t meet my eye, and I thought I must have misheard.

“Have you been tested for the cystic fibrosis gene in the past?” I asked.

“I have a child with CF.”

“I’m sorry.”

“He lives with his grandmother and father. My daughter is also with them. But she doesn’t have cystic fibrosis.”

Both Hattie and her husband were clearly CF carriers, so my theory about Chrom-Med treating healthy babies wasn’t going to be backed up by her. Unless, … “Your husband, he’s still in the Philippines?”

“Yes.”

I started to imagine various scenarios as to how a very poor, very shy Filipina woman could become pregnant when her husband is back in the Philippines.

“Are you a live-in nanny?” I asked, and I still don’t know whether it was a crass attempt at small talk or whether I was hinting that the dad of the house was the father of her baby.