Second Life (2 page)
I stop talking. Adrienne knows the rest; I don’t need to carry on. She knows the
reasons Hugh and I took my sister’s son, that for all these years Kate has been happy
with the situation. What neither of us knows is why that has changed.
‘Will you talk to her?’ I say.
She takes a deep breath, closes her eyes. For a moment I think she’s going to tell
me I have to sort it out myself, I can’t come running to her every time I argue with
my sister; it’s the sort of thing my father used to say to me. But she doesn’t, she
just smiles. ‘I’ll try.’
We order and eat our lunch. We discuss our mutual friends – she asks me if I’ve seen
Fatima recently, did I know Ali has a new job, she wonders whether I’m planning on
going to Dee’s drinks party at the weekend – then she says it’s time she left, she
has a meeting. I tell her I’ll catch up with her on Saturday.
I can’t resist going through the gift shop on my way out. They’d wanted to use my
picture of Marcus on the cover of the brochure but I never replied to the email and
instead there’s a picture of an androgynous-looking guy sucking on a lollipop. I
didn’t reply to the requests for interviews either, though that didn’t stop one of
the magazines –
Time Out
, I think – running a piece about me. I was ‘reclusive’,
they said, and my picture was one of the highlights of the exhibition, an ‘intimate
portrait’, both ‘touching and fragile’. Bullshit, I wanted to reply, but I didn’t.
If they want ‘reclusive’, I’ll give it to them.
I look again at the lollipop guy. He reminds me of Frosty, and I flick through the
book before moving over to the postcards arranged on the display rack. Normally
I’d buy a few, but today I just get one,
Marcus in the Mirror
. For a moment I want
to tell the cashier that it’s mine, that I took it for myself, and that, though for
years I’ve actively avoided it, I’m still glad they used it in the exhibition and
I’ve had the chance to own it again.
But I don’t. I say nothing, just murmur a ‘Thanks’ then put the card in my bag and
leave the gallery. Despite the February chill I walk most of the way home – through
Covent Garden and Holborn, down Theobald’s Road in the direction of Gray’s Inn Road
– and at first I can think of nothing but Marcus and our time in Berlin all those
years ago. But by the time I reach Roseberry Avenue I’ve managed to move on from
the past and instead I’m thinking about what’s happening here, now. I’m thinking
about my sister, and hoping against hope that Adrienne can make her see sense, even
though I know she won’t be able to. I’m going to have to talk to Kate myself. I’ll
be firm, but kind. I’ll remind her that I love her, and want her to be happy, but
I’ll also tell her that Connor is almost fourteen now, that Hugh and I have worked
hard to give him a stable life and it’s important it isn’t upset. My priority has
to be to make her realize that things are best left as they are. For the first time
I allow myself to consider that Hugh and I probably ought to see a lawyer.
I turn the corner into our road. There’s a police car parked a few doors from the
house, but it’s our front door that’s open. I begin to run; my mind empties of everything
but the need to see my son. I don’t stop until I’m in the house, in the kitchen,
and I see Hugh standing in front of me, talking to a woman in a uniform. I take in
Connor’s towel and trunks, drying on the radiator, then Hugh and the officer
turn
to look at me. She’s wearing an expression of perfect, studied neutrality, and I
know it’s the way Hugh looks when he’s delivering bad news. My chest tightens, I
hear myself shout, as if in a dream. ‘
Where’s Connor?
’ I’m saying. ‘
Hugh! Where’s
our son?
’ But he doesn’t answer. He’s all I can see in the room. His eyes are wide;
I can tell that something terrible has happened, something indescribable.
Tell me!
I want to shout, but I don’t. I can’t move; my lips won’t form words. My mouth opens,
then closes. I swallow. I’m underwater, I can’t breathe. I watch as Hugh steps towards
me, try to shake him off when he takes my arm, then find my voice. ‘Tell me!’ I say,
over and over, and a moment later he opens his mouth and speaks.
‘It’s not Connor,’ he says, but there’s barely enough time for the relief that floods
my blood to register before he says, ‘I’m sorry, darling. It’s Kate.’
I’m sitting at the kitchen table. I don’t know how I got here. We’re alone; the police
officer has left, her job done. The room is cold. Hugh is holding my hand.
‘When?’ I say.
‘Last night.’
There’s a mug of sweet tea in front of me and I watch it steam. It has nothing to
do with me. I can’t work out why it’s there. All I can think of is my baby sister,
lying in a Parisian alleyway, rain-soaked and alone.
‘Last night?’
‘That’s what they said.’
He’s speaking softly. He knows I’ll remember only a fraction of what he tells me.
‘What was she doing there?’
‘They don’t know. Taking a short cut?’
‘A short cut?’
I try to picture it. Kate, on her way home. Drunk, probably. Wanting to shave a few
minutes off her journey.
‘What happened?’
‘They think she’d just left a bar. She was attacked.’
I remember. A mugging, the officer had said, though they don’t know yet if anything
was taken. She’d looked away from me, then. She lowered both her gaze and her voice,
and
turned to Hugh. I heard her, though. ‘She doesn’t appear to have been raped.’
Something within me collapses as I think of it. I fold inwards; I become tiny, diminished.
I’m eleven years old, Kate’s four, and I have to tell her that our mother isn’t coming
back from the hospital this time. Our father thinks I’m old enough to talk to her,
he can’t face it, not this time, it’s my job. Kate is crying, even though I’m not
sure she understands what I’ve told her, and I’m holding her. ‘We’ll be fine,’ I’m
saying, even though part of me already knows what will happen. Our father won’t cope,
his friends will be no help. We’re on our own. But I can’t say this, I must be strong
for Kate. For my sister. ‘You and me,’ I tell her. ‘I promise. I’ll look after you.
Always.’
But I hadn’t, had I? I’d run away to Berlin. I’d taken her son. I’d left her to die.
‘What happened?’ I say again.
Hugh is patient. ‘Darling, we don’t know. But they’re doing everything in their power
to find out.’
At first I’d thought it would be better for Connor to stay away from Kate’s funeral.
He was too young, he wouldn’t cope. Hugh disagreed. He reminded me that our father
hadn’t let me and Kate go to our mother’s and I’d resented him for the rest of his
life.
I had to concede he was right, but it was the counsellor who decided the matter.
‘He can’t be protected,’ she said. ‘He has to deal with his grief.’ She hesitated.
We were sitting in her office, the two of us. She had her hands folded on the desk
in front of her. I was looking at the marks on her hands, tiny abrasions. I wondered
if she was a gardener. I pictured her, kneeling beside flower beds with pruning shears,
deadheading roses. A life she can return to, when this is over. Unlike us.
‘Julia?’
I looked up. I’d missed something.
‘Does he
want
to go?’
When we got home we asked him. He thought about it for a while, then said he’d like
to, yes.
We bought him a suit, a black tie, a new shirt. He looks much older, wearing them,
and walks between me and Hugh as we go into the crematorium. ‘Are you all right?’
I say, once we’ve sat down.
He nods, but says nothing. The place feels drenched with pain, but most people are
silent. In shock. Kate’s death was violent, senseless, incomprehensible. People have
retreated within themselves, for protection.
Yet I’m not crying, neither is Connor, and neither is his father. Only Hugh has looked
at the coffin. I put my arm around our son. ‘It’s all right,’ I say.
People continue to file in behind us and take their seats. There is shuffling, voices
are hushed. I close my eyes. I’m thinking of Kate, of our childhood. Things were
simple, then, though that is not to say they were easy. After our mother died our
father began drinking heavily. His friends – mostly artists, painters, people from
the theatre – started spending more and more time with us, and we watched our house
become the venue for a kind of rolling party that sputtered and faltered but never
quite stopped. Every few days new people would arrive just as others left; they would
be carrying more bottles and more cigarettes, there would be more music, sometimes
drugs. Now I can see that this was all part of our father’s grief, but back then
it had felt like a celebration of freedom, a binge that lasted a decade. Kate and
I felt like unwelcome reminders of his past, and though he kept the drugs away from
us and told us he loved us, he was neither inclined nor able to be a parent and so
it’d fallen
to me to look after us both. I would prepare our meals, I’d put a squirt
of paste on Kate’s toothbrush and leave it out at bedtime, I’d read to her when she
woke up crying and made sure she did her homework and was ready for school every
day. I held her and told her that Daddy loved us and everything would be all right.
I discovered I adored my sister, and despite the years between us we became as close
as twins, the connection between us almost psychic.
Yet she’s there, in that box, and I’m here, in front of it, unable even to cry. It’s
beyond belief and, somewhere, I know I let her down.
There’s a tap on my shoulder. I turn round. It’s a stranger, a woman. ‘I just wanted
to say hello,’ she says. She introduces herself as Anna. It takes me a moment to
place her; Kate’s flatmate, we’d asked her to do a reading. ‘I wanted to tell you
how sorry I am.’
She’s crying, but there’s a kind of stoicism there. A resilience. ‘Thank you,’ I
say, and a moment later she opens the bag on her lap. She hands me a sheet of paper.
‘The poem I picked . . . d’you think it’s okay?’
I scan the poem, even though I’ve already read it in the order of service. ‘To the
angry,’ it begins, ‘I was cheated, but to the happy I am at peace.’ I’d thought it
an odd choice, when surely anger is the only response possible, but I say nothing.
I hand the sheet back. ‘It’s great. Thank you.’
‘It’s one I thought Kate might like.’ I tell her I’m sure she’s right. Her hands
are shaking and, even though the reading isn’t long, I wonder how she’s going to
get through it.
She does, in the end. Though upset, she draws on some inner reserve of strength and
her words are clear and strong. Connor watches her, and I see him wipe a tear away
with the back of his hand. Hugh’s crying, too, and I tell myself I’m being strong
for them both, I have to keep myself together, I
can’t let them see me fall apart.
Yet I can’t help wondering whether I’m kidding myself and the truth is I can’t feel
any pain at all.
Afterwards I go over to Anna. ‘It was perfect,’ I say. We’re standing outside the
chapel. Connor looks visibly relieved that it’s over.
She smiles. I think of Kate’s phone calls over the last few weeks and wonder what
Anna thinks of me, what my sister had told her.
‘Thank you,’ she says.
‘This is my husband, Hugh. And this is my very dear friend, Adrienne.’
Anna turns to my son. ‘And you must be Connor?’ she says. He nods. He holds out his
hand for her to shake it, and for a moment I’m struck again by how grown up he seems.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ he says. He seems totally lost, unsure how he’s supposed to
behave. The carefree boy of just a few weeks ago, the child who would race into the
house, pursued by three or four friends, to pick up his football or his bike, seems
suddenly to have gone. The boy who would spend hours with his sketch pad and some
pencils has disappeared. I tell myself it’s temporary, my little boy will be back,
but I wonder if that’s true.
We carry on talking, for a while, but then Hugh must sense Connor’s distress and
suggests they make their way over to the cars. Adrienne says she’ll go with them,
and Hugh turns to Anna. ‘Thank you for everything,’ he says, and he shakes her hand
again before putting his arm around Connor’s shoulders. ‘Come on, darling,’ he says,
and the three of them turn away.
‘He seems a nice lad,’ says Anna, once they’re out of
earshot. The wind has whipped
up; there’ll be rain soon. She smooths her hair away from her mouth.
‘He is,’ I say.
‘How’s he coping?’
‘I don’t think it’s really sunk in yet.’ We turn and walk towards the flowers that
have been arranged in the courtyard outside the chapel.
‘It must be hard for him.’
I wonder how much she knows about Connor. She and my sister were old friends; Kate
told me they’d known each other at school, though only vaguely, through other people.
A few years ago they’d reconnected through Facebook and quickly realized they’d both
moved to Paris. They met for drinks and a few months later Anna’s flatmate moved
out of her apartment and Kate moved in. I’d been pleased; my sister hadn’t always
found it easy to keep friends. They must have talked a great deal, yet Kate could
be secretive, and I imagine the painful subject of Connor was something she might
not find easy to raise.
‘He’s okay,’ I say. ‘I think.’
We’ve reached the south-west wall of the crematorium, the wreaths, the white chrysanthemums
and pink roses, the sprays of white lilies pinned with handwritten cards. I bend
down to read them, still not quite understanding why it’s Kate’s name I see everywhere.
Just then the sun breaks through the clouds and for the briefest of moments we’re
lit by its brilliance.
‘I bet he’s quite a handful,’ says Anna, and I stand up. Connor’s a good lad, no
trouble at all. We decided to tell him the truth about his background as soon as
he was old enough to understand it.