Sister

“Were you jealous?”

Mum hesitated a moment, then shook her head. “It wasn’t jealousy, but looking at her made me see what I had become.” She breaks off. “I’m a little drunk. I allow myself to get a little plastered, actually, on Leo’s birthday. The anniversary of his death too. And now there’ll be Tess’s and Xavier’s anniversaries, won’t there? I’ll become a drunkard if I don’t watch out.”

I held her hand tightly in mine.

“Tess always came down to be with me on his birthday,” she said.

When we said good-bye at the station, I suggested an outing together on the following Sunday, to the nursery at Petersham Meadows, which you used to love but couldn’t afford. We agreed we’d choose a new plant that you’d like for your garden.

I got the train back to London. You’d never told me that you visited Mum on Leo’s birthday. Presumably, to spare me the guilt. I wondered how many other times you visited her until the bump started to show. I already knew from the phone bill that I’d been cruelly neglectful of you, and I realized it applied to Mum too. It was you who was the caring daughter, not me, as I’d always self-righteously assumed.

I ran away, didn’t I? My job in New York wasn’t a “career opportunity”; it was an opportunity to leave Mum and responsibility behind as I pursued an uncluttered life on another continent. No different from Dad. But you didn’t leave. You may have needed me to remind you when birthdays were coming up, but you didn’t run away.

I wondered why Dr. Wong hadn’t shown me my flaws. Surely a good therapist should produce a Dorian Gray– style portrait from under the couch so the patient can see the person they really are. But that’s unfair to her. I didn’t ask the right questions about myself; I didn’t question myself at all.

My ringing phone jolted me out of the self-analysis. It was Christina. She made small talk for a while, which I suspected was because she was putting off the reason for her phone call, and then came to the point.

“I don’t think Xavier’s death and this other baby’s death can be linked, Hemms.”

“But they must be. Both Tess and Hattie were in the same trial at the same hospital—”

“Yes, but medically there isn’t a connection. You can’t get something that causes a heart condition serious enough to kill one baby, and kidney problems—most likely total renal failure—which kill another baby.”

I interrupted, feeling panicky. “In genetics, one gene can code for completely different things, can’t it? So maybe—”

Again she interrupted, or maybe it was the bad connection in the train. “I checked with my professor, just in case I was missing something. I didn’t tell him what this was about, just gave him a hypothetical scenario. And he said there’s no way two such disparate and fatal conditions could have the same cause.”

I knew that she was dumbing down the scientific language so that I would understand it. And I knew in its more complex version, it would be exactly the same. The trial at St. Anne’s couldn’t be responsible for both babies’ deaths.

“But it’s strange, isn’t it, that two babies have died at St. Anne’s?” I asked.

“There’s a perinatal mortality rate in every hospital and St. Anne’s delivers five thousand babies a year, so it’s sad but, unfortunately, a blip that wouldn’t be seen as remarkable.”

I tried to question her further, find some flaw, but she was silent. I felt jolted by the train, my physical discomfort mirroring my emotional state, and the discomfort also made me worry about Kasia. I’d been planning a trip for her, but that might be irresponsible, so I checked with Christina. Clearly glad to be able to help, she gave me an unnecessarily detailed reply.

I finish telling Mr. Wright about my phone call with Christina. “I thought that someone must have lied to the women about what their babies really died from. Neither baby had had a postmortem.”

“You never thought you might be wrong?”

“No.”

He looks at me with admiration, I think, but I should be truthful.

“I didn’t have the energy to think I might be wrong,” I continue. “I just couldn’t face going back to the beginning and starting again.”

“So what did you do?” he asks, and I feel tired as he asks the question, tired and daunted as I did then.

“I went back to see Hattie. I didn’t think she’d have anything to say that would help, but I had to try something.”

I was grasping at straws, and I knew that, but I had to keep grasping. The only thing that might help was the identity of the father of Hattie’s baby, but I didn’t hold out much hope.

When I rang Hattie’s doorbell, a pretty woman in her thirties, whom I guessed to be Georgina, answered the door, holding a child’s book in one hand, lipstick in the other.

“You must be Beatrice, come in. I’m a little behind; I promised Hattie I’d be out of here by eight at the latest.”

Hattie came into the hallway behind her. Georgina turned to her. “Would you mind reading the children the cow story? I’ll get Beatrice a drink.”

Hattie left us to go upstairs. I sensed that this had been engineered by Georgina, though she seemed genuinely friendly. “Percy and the Cow is the shortest, start to finish in six minutes, including engine noises and animal sounds, so she should be down soon.” She opened a bottle of wine and handed me a glass. “Don’t upset her, will you? She’s been through so much. Has hardly eaten since it happened. Try to … be kind to her.”