My Sister's Bones by Nuala Ellwood
This novel is dedicated to my father – a ‘great good’ man.
‘When the dumb Hour, clothed in black,
Brings the Dreams about my bed,
Call me not so often back,
Silent Voices of the dead’
Alfred Tennyson
Prologue
She is safe now. Free from her demons. Her final resting place is still and tranquil, a little watery pocket of calm. She would have liked that, I think to myself, as I watch a pleasure boat sail into the dock. She would have thought it appropriate.
It is hard to believe that after such a violent death she could ever find peace, but I hope she has.
My sister. My beautiful sister.
‘Go safely,’ I whisper. And as I scatter her ashes into the water I breathe a deep sigh. Perhaps this is the end.
The boat fills up with tourists and their excited voices fill the air as we stand here, three broken souls, saying our last goodbyes. But as I watch her go I am struck once again by the thought that’s been haunting me ever since she died.
Of the two of us, how is it possible that I am the one who survived?
PART ONE
* * *
1
Herne Bay Police Station
Sunday 19 April 2015
10.30 a.m.
‘Would you like me to repeat the question?’
The doctor is speaking, but it’s hard to hear her over the voices.
‘Kate?’ The doctor shifts in her seat.
‘Sorry, can you repeat that?’ I try to focus.
‘Shall I close the window? It’s quite noisy out there.’
She goes to stand up, but I put my hand out to stop her. She flinches and I realize she may have mistaken my gesture for aggression.
‘No,’ I say as she sits back down awkwardly. ‘It’s fine. I just thought I heard . . . nothing. It’s nothing.’
I mustn’t tell her about the voices.
She nods her head and smiles a half-smile. This is familiar territory. Auditory hallucinations; voices in the head. As a clinical psychologist, this will be heaven for her. She takes her notepad and points her pen at a fresh page.
‘Okay,’ she says, and a glint of silver grapples with the rays of the morning sun as her pen swipes across the paper. ‘These things you can hear, Kate, can you describe them to me? Are they discernible voices?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I reply.
‘You find them difficult to make out?’
‘Look, I know what you’re doing here,’ I say tersely. ‘But you won’t succeed because I’m not what you think I am.’
‘What do I think you are?’
‘A mad woman who hears voices, who sees things, imagines things. You think it’s all in my head.’
But as I speak they’re back, fading in and out like a radio between frequencies. Shaw says something but I can’t hear for the screams. The old woman wailing; the young father running through the streets holding the blasted body of his baby girl in his arms. My old faithfuls, the ones that return to me whenever I am under stress.
I can’t help myself. I put my hands to my ears and hold them there. The voices dissolve into a low hum, like the sound you hear when you place a conch shell to your ear. I see my mother, her cheek pressed against mine. Listen, darling, can you hear it? That’s the ocean talking to you. And I believed her. I believed that the sea lay hidden inside the shell, though what I was hearing was really just the air bouncing off the curved cavity. I believed her because I needed to. She was my mother and she never lied.
‘Kate?’
I see Shaw’s lips move. She’s saying my name. I stare at her for a moment and she stares back. Her eyes are a dirty green, the colour of the winter sea inside my head. It’s getting louder now, the waves pounding on the rocks.
‘Kate, please.’ Shaw starts to get up. She’s going to get help.
I force myself to take my hands away from my ears and clasp them together. The peridot bracelet that Chris gave me on our eighth anniversary ripples down my arm and gathers in a spool at my wrist. I run my finger along the surface, rubbing the stones like the genie’s lamp. Make a wish, I think to myself. I remember the night Chris gave me the bracelet. We were in Venice. It was carnival time and as we weaved our way through the misty streets marvelling at the elaborate costumes of the revellers he slipped something into my pocket. ‘To the next eight years,’ he whispered, as I clasped the bracelet on to my wrist. I close my eyes. Please bring him back.
‘How’s your sleep been recently?’ asks Dr Shaw. ‘Any nightmares?’
I shake my head and try to focus, but all I can think of is Chris and that trip to Venice. The smell of Venetian canal water lingers in the air.
‘It’s very pretty,’ says Shaw, gesturing to the bracelet.
‘Apparently the peridot stone protects against nightmares,’ I whisper.
‘And does it work?’
I carry on rubbing the stone with my finger and thumb. It is strangely comforting.
‘Does the stone work, Kate?’
She’s not going to let this go. I take a sip of water from the plastic beaker they gave me an hour ago. It is tepid and smells of chemicals, but anything is better than the stench of the canals.