Sister

injections.”

By the time I got to St. Anne’s Hospital from Hattie’s house in Chiswick, it was late, past midnight. But I had to find out straightaway. When I arrived, the wards were in darkness and I realized this wasn’t the most sensible time to start asking questions. But I’d already pressed the buzzer on the maternity ward door, and a nurse I didn’t recognize was opening it. She looked at me suspiciously and I remembered that the security was to prevent babies being stolen.

“Can I speak to the senior midwife? I think her name is Cressida.”

“She’s at home. Her shift finished six hours ago. She’ll be back tomorrow.”

But I couldn’t wait till then.

“Is William Saunders here?” I asked.

“You’re a patient?”

“No.” I hesitated a moment. “A friend.”

I heard the sound of a baby crying, then more joining in. A buzzer went. The young nurse grimaced and I saw how stressed she looked.

“Okay. He’s in the on-call room. Third door on the right.”

I knocked on the door, the nurse watching me, and then I went in. The room was in semidarkness, just lit by the open doorway. William woke up instantly, fully alert, presumably because he was on call and was expected to be functioning at 100 percent immediately.

“What are you doing here, Bee?”

No one but you has ever called me that and it was as if you’d lent him some of our closeness. He got out of bed and I saw that he was fully dressed in blue scrubs. His hair was tangled from where it had been on the pillow. I was conscious of the smallness of the room, the single bed.

“Do you know who gives the women on the CF trial their injection?” I asked.

“No. Do you want me to try to find out?”

That simple. “Yes.”

“Okay.” He was looking businesslike, totally focused, and I was grateful to him for taking me seriously. “Are there any other patients, apart from your sister, whom you know about?”

“Kasia Lewski and Hattie Sim. Tess met them at the CF clinic.”

“Would you write them down?”

He waited while I fumbled in my bag and wrote down their names, then gently took the piece of paper from me. “Now can I ask why you want to know?”

“Because whoever he is wore a mask. When he gave the injections, when he delivered the babies.”

There was a pause and I sensed that any urgency he’d shared with me was dissipated.

“It’s not that unusual for medical staff to wear masks, especially in obstetrics,” he said. “Childbirth is a messy business, lots of body fluids around; medical staff wear protective gear as a matter of course.”

He must have seen the disbelief on my face, or my disappointment.

“It really is pretty routine, at least in this hospital,” he continued. “We have the highest percentage of patients with HIV outside Johannesburg. We’re tested regularly to avoid infecting our patients, but the same isn’t true the other way around. So we simply don’t know when a woman comes through our doors whether or not she’s ill or a carrier.”

“But what about giving the gene? Giving the injections?” I asked. “That procedure doesn’t have fluids around, does it? So why wear a mask then?”

“Maybe whoever it was has just got into the habit of being cautious.”

I had once found his ability to see the best in people endearing, reminding me of you, but now that same trait made me furious.

“You’d rather find an innocent explanation than think that someone murdered my sister and hid his identity with a mask?”

“Bee—”

“But I don’t have the luxury of choosing. The ugly violent option is the only one open to me.” I took a step away from him. “Do you wear a mask?”

“Often I do, yes. It might seem overly cautious but—”

I interrupted. “Was it you?”

“What?”

He was staring at me and I couldn’t meet his eye. “You think I killed her?” he asked. He sounded appalled and hurt.

I was wrong about conflict with words being trivial.

“I’m sorry.” I made myself meet his eye. “Someone murdered her. I don’t know who it is. Just that it is someone. And I have probably met that person by now, talked to him or her, and not known. But I don’t have a shred of proof.”

He took hold of my hand and I realized I was shaking.