The Sister

“If you were told,” she perseveres, “you might find you understood yourself better. You could find ways of adjusting yourself—if you wanted to—or at least being aware of it. It’s far better to know,” she says, swirling her tea to dissolve the sugar. “It’s a great shame not to know, not to be told. It’s not right,” she says as she moves to the window, cup and saucer in hand, and stares private thoughts into the jungle beyond.

“If you’re that barmy, it won’t make much difference,” I say jovially, a little to fill the silence and a little under my breath. I am not sure about her mood.

“Maybe,” she says softly.

I thought she’d find it funny, but I can tell she’s elsewhere in her thoughts. Could that be sadness in her stillness by the window? It was just an observation, and I wouldn’t want it to turn into a serious dispute, but I don’t mind being old-fashioned. I don’t take to all these modern ways of thinking that Vivien’s latched on to. What about all the poor old ladies who don’t have the wit to see through all the mental diseases they’ve been labeled with and can’t get on with being themselves? They’ll turn into nervous wrecks, worrying about their next affliction. Then, after all that, they might find they’ve only got an overactive thyroid. It occurs to me that Vivien might be thinking of Clive.

“Do you think Clive knew?” I ask softly.

“What happened to Clive was different,” she says sharply, turning back to face me. “That was all his own doing. He deserved every demon he got and he knew it.”

I hadn’t meant to provoke another onslaught about Clive. “I think you’re taking your anger with him a bit far. Why don’t you just admit you had differences and accept them?” I say, very reasonably, I think.

“Oh, Ginny, it’s always so simple with you, isn’t it? Don’t you ever see that?” Vivien’s cup rattles on its saucer as her temper starts to simmer.

“I’m only trying to—”

“Well,” she cuts me off, “I’ve been trying desperately,” she says, putting the cup and saucer on the window seat beside her, “to help you see it, to help you understand things, to help you see for yourself that things aren’t so simple and sometimes they need to be questioned. I didn’t come home to tell you this, but I can’t hide the truth anymore. I can protect you from other people but not from the truth.”

There she goes again, talking in riddles. I never asked her to come home.

“The problem is,” she continues, “that you wouldn’t know the truth if it came and looked you in the eye. That was always your problem.”

I’m not listening to her rant because I don’t want to. I’m trying to work out what might have happened in Clive’s head, I mean at the molecular level, to lead to his dementia.

I flinch as Vivien clutches my shoulders near my neck and shakes me. “Ginny!” she shouts.

“What?” I say, startled out of my reverie.

“You’re not there. It’s so convenient for you to go off somewhere else and not listen, isn’t it? Don’t you want to know the truth?”

“What truth?”

“All of it. Everything.”

“Like what?” I raise my voice, exasperated with her.

She pauses for a moment, enjoying my full attention. “Like your own mother was murdered,” she says finally.

I watch her studying me. It’s as if she’s looking for the pain she may have inflicted. Then I laugh. I mean, what can you do? Actually, it’s a proper little giggle, as if she’s made a joke. And I can’t believe she’s not laughing too. I can’t believe she’s serious.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Vivien!” I sputter.

Then she does something most peculiar. She clenches her fists and stamps her right foot hard, three times in a row, as if she’s stamping on a scorpion and making sure she’s done the job properly. She looks like an eight- year-old having a tantrum.

“How can I make you just try to understand?” she shouts. “Once. Just think about it once. Look at me! Look at me!” She grabs either side of my face and directs it up to hers. “Do I look like I’m making it up?”

She doesn’t.

I tell her again, softly, “Vivien, she fell down the cellar steps. I was there. I saw her lying at the bottom. I promise you, it was an accident.”

“You’re wrong, Ginny. You saw it wrong,” she shouts.

“What on earth makes you think so?” I say quietly, flabbergasted.

“I just know.” For a moment she’s lost for words. “Most people just have that sort of intuition, Ginny.”

I’m not going to say it out loud because there’s no knowing what she’ll do, but I can tell you: Vivien’s gone completely doo-lally. You can’t have intuition sitting in London about someone being murdered in Dorset. You either have the facts or you don’t—I’m sure you’ll agree with me. Besides, I’m a scientist and I’m afraid I don’t work with intuition.

Vivien flops onto the cushions on the window seat, bringing her legs up to rest them on a stool in front of her.

“For a while I thought it was you who had done it,” she says, more calmly now, like the opening of a great story.

I’m astounded. I’m shocked. I’m mortified. “Me? Oh, for goodness’ sake, Vivien, you’ve gone bonkers,” I blurt out. But she ignores me and continues, in a calm, even tone, as if the story must go on whatever the audience’s reaction.

“I thought Clive and Dr. Moyse knew and were covering up for you.” She is looking at her legs stretched out on the stool in front of her as she speaks. I am standing a yard or so away, towering over her with my hands on my hips and, I’m sure, my jaw dropping. “Dr. Moyse had officially told the police not to interview you. He got a court injunction so they weren’t allowed to. He said you had some sort of disorder, that you were unstable.”

“Oh, Vivien, the things you think of! It’s absolute nonsense. It was nothing like that at all.”

“I know. I know,” she says, relenting. “I worked out later that you couldn’t have known anything about it or you would have told me.”

“Exactly,” I say indignantly.

“You would have told everyone.”

“Of course.” But even as the words form in my mouth I already feel the tightening of a trap.

“So then I realized it was Clive who’d pushed her and you’d been covering up for him.”

“What? Vivien, I’m afraid you’ve gone quite mad.” I’m more than a little irritated now. Why she has to keep throwing in ridiculous theories and casting all sorts of doubts over our beloved parents’ memories is beyond me. “Clive didn’t do it and I didn’t cover up anything for him,” I tell her firmly, but as I say it, I know my efforts to change her mind are in vain. “This has all been festering for years in your head, but can’t you see it’s nonsense?”

“You weren’t aware that you were covering up for him,” she trudges on. “You still aren’t aware of it. The police were banned from interviewing you, even though I kept telling them they had to.”

“Oh, rubbish, Vivien. Even if the police had talked to me I wouldn’t have told them anything differently. Maud fell down the stairs.”

I can’t take this any longer. She’s the one who doesn’t know what was going on. I look down at my watch and fiddle with its face with my thumb and forefinger, blocking out whatever Vivien is saying, trying to decide if this is it, if I have finally to tell her the secret I’d promised myself and Maud to keep from her for the rest of my life. Suddenly I can see how dangerous such secrets can be. You keep them to protect people, but in the end they are even more destructive. I took away the truth, so over the years Vivien has filled the void with ludicrous ideas. Surely the truth will stop her raving about Clive or me murdering Maud and put her mind at rest.

“Vivien,” I say, gathering my resolve, “I have to tell you something.” She doesn’t answer, but gets up, slides her footrest over, and sits on it beside me. She’s very quiet and I know she’s ready to listen. What I am about to tell her will be a shock, a revelation to her, and I close my eyes so that I don’t have to see it on her face, the