Sister

“I’m sorry, Bee, coming in at the last minute, the Americans at the end of the war and all that.”

“But if we’re being honest, they’re the reason we won.”

“I think both of us should go. And I’m glad we have a little time to ourselves first.”

He reached over to my face and stroked a strand of hair away from my eyes.

He kissed me.

I hesitated. Could I step off my mountainside—or that moral tightrope you had me on?

I turned and walked into the flat.

He followed me and I turned and kissed him back. And I was grabbing the moment as hard as I could and living it to the full because who knew when it would be taken away? If all your death has taught me, it is that the present is too precious to waste. I finally understood the sacrament of the present moment, because it’s all we have.

He undressed me and I shed my old self. All of me exposed. The wedding ring was no longer hanging around his neck, his chest bare. And as my cool skin felt the warmth of him on me, my safety ropes fell away.

Mr. Wright produces a bottle of wine from a carrier bag, with two plastic cups from the water dispenser at the CPS offices, and I think how like him it is to be so thoughtful and organized. He pours me a cup and I drink it straight down, which is probably not sensible. He doesn’t comment on this, just as he didn’t comment on my having sex with William, and I like him so much for not being judgmental.

We lay in your bed together, the low rays of early-spring sunshine coming in through the basement window. I leaned against him and drank the tea he’d made for me, trying to make it last as long as possible, still feeling the warmth of his skin against mine, knowing that we would have to get out of bed, reenter the world again; and I thought of Donne chastising the busy old fool of a sun for making him leave his lover and marveled that his poetry now applied to me.

For a moment the wine has boosted me a little, I can feel it warming my body.

“William went to the bathroom, and looked in the cupboard. He found a bottle of pills with a hospital label on them. It was the PCP. It had been there all the time. He said many drugs are illegal on the street but are legally prescribed by doctors for therapeutic reasons.”

“Did the label give the name of the prescribing doctor?”

“No, but he said the police could easily trace it to Dr. Nichols through the hospital pharmacy records. I felt so stupid. I’d thought that an illegal drug would be hidden, not openly on show. It had been there all the time.”

I’m sorry; I’m starting to repeat myself. My mind is losing focus.

“And then …?” he asks.

But we’re nearly at the end, so I summon what remains of my mental energy and continue.

“We left the flat together. William had left his bike chained to the railings on the other side of the road, but it had been stolen, though they’d left the chain. He took that with us, and joked that we could report the theft of his bike at the same time.

We decided to walk through Hyde Park to the police station, rather than take the ugly road route. At the gates of the park there was a flower stall. William suggested we lay flowers where you’d died and went to buy some.

As he spoke to the stall holder, I texted Kasia two words: “odcisk palca”—and knew she’d understand that I was finally putting on my own fingerprint of love.

William turned to me, holding two bunches of daffodils.

“You told me they were Tess’s favorite flower. Because of the yellow in a daffodil saving children’s sight.”

I was pleased and surprised that he had remembered.

He put his arm around me and as we walked into the park together, I thought I heard you teasing me, and I admitted to you that I was a big fat hypocrite. The truth is, I knew that the affair wouldn’t last, that he’d stay married. But I also knew that I wouldn’t be broken by it. I wasn’t proud of myself, but I did feel liberated from the person I no longer was or wanted to be. And as we walked together, I felt small green shoots of hope and decided I would allow them to grow. Because now that I had found out what happened to you, I could look forward and dare to imagine a future without you. I remembered being here almost two months before, when I had sat in the snow and wept for you among the lifeless, leafless trees. But now there were ball games and laughter and picnics and bright new foliage. It was the same place, but the landscape was entirely changed.

We reached the toilets building and I took the cellophane off the daffodils, wanting them to look homegrown. As I laid them at the door, a memory—or lack of one—tugged its way through, unbidden.

“But I never told you that she liked daffodils, or the reason.”

“Of course you did. That’s why I chose them.”

“No. I talked about it with Amias. And Mum. Not you.”

I had actually told him very little about you, or me for that matter.

“Tess must have told you herself.”

Carrying his bunch of daffodils for you, he came toward me. “Bee—”