My Sister's Bones(4)

But as I reach the landing I stop. My throat tightens, and I stand for a moment looking at the closed door of my mother’s bedroom. It’s still there. An ancient foot-shaped gash in the wood panel. I find I am trembling. It’s like being back there, thirty years of distance gone in a flash. Why on earth did she never replace it?

I will myself not to go in, to wait until morning when my brain will be ready, but it’s no use, my hands are already pushing at the door. I breathe in sharply. My father’s anger permeates the space and it feels like any moment now he is going to come charging at me, ask me what the hell I think I’m doing snooping around like this. But all is silent as I step into the gloom.

Nothing has changed. I stand incredulous, looking at the collection of dusty furniture. The same mahogany chest of drawers; the same heavy velvet curtains; the same horrid brown wallpaper with spiky dandelions threaded through it. I see my mother’s head hitting the wall over and over again, my father’s hand holding her hair while he smashed her into the golden flowers. The room smells of damp fabric and cheap air freshener. Paul has obviously tried his best to spruce it up but my mother’s blood is all over this room. Even if the visible marks are gone I can still smell it in the air: a musty scent of fear.

I close the door and step out on to the landing. A framed picture of the Sacred Heart looms ominously in front of me. The bearded Jesus holds his hand out towards me, a blazing heart pulsating in his chest. I hated this picture as a child, couldn’t bear to look at it. For me it symbolized everything that was wrong with my family: blind faith in the face of violence and adversity; submission to a greater good. ‘Blessed Jesus pray for us,’ I read aloud as I stand in front of the faded picture. Underneath those words in spindly blue handwriting my mother has written the names of her children – two living, one dead – her husband and, finally, always last, herself.

‘What good did you ever do us?’ I shout and my voice echoes through the empty house.

I glare at the beatific man in the frame. What kind of God takes a child’s life away? I read my little brother’s name again and wonder for a moment what it must have felt like to drown, to gasp and flounder and call out for a mother who never came. I think of another child who didn’t make it and I close my eyes, trying to keep the images at bay. Enough, I tell myself, and with a sweep of my hand turn the picture over to face the wall.

I am delirious with sleep as I open the door to Sally’s old room. Someone – most likely Paul – has made the bed with freshly laundered sheets and there is a large fluffy towel neatly folded on the chest of drawers. The thought of a long hot bath is tempting, but I know it is not a good idea with strong sleeping pills in my system. Still, a shower might help.

I take the towel and make my way back across the landing to the bathroom. I turn on the light and am greeted by a sight so horrifying it makes my toes curl: my reflection in the full-length mirror. Here I am, looking all of my thirty-nine years and then some. My face is lined and puffy, my hair a thick ball of greying wire wool. I make a mental note as I turn on the shower to check in with Anton for a full head of highlights as soon as I get back to London.

The water burns my skin and as I scrub my face I smile at the futility of worrying about my appearance. What are a few grey hairs compared to the horrors of the last few weeks? My life has imploded and all I can think of is a cut and blow-dry.

But then I remember my lovely friend Bridget Hennessey, one of the most fearless journalists I have ever known and my mentor when I started out. She had just come back from reporting on the war in Kosovo when we met and had endured a mock execution at the hands of a rebel gang. For ten days she was held hostage with a sack tied over her head while the sound of gunshots rang out from the room next door. They told her they had killed her driver and cameraman and that she would be next. The psychological torture she endured would have sent most of us mad but she held herself together until she was released. I remember watching her in the newsroom as she calmly typed up the account of what had happened, her perfectly manicured fingernails tapping at the keyboard. I sat there with my unkempt hair and bitten fingernails and wondered how she could have gone through such a terrifying ordeal and still think it necessary to get her nails done.

‘But that’s the whole point, Kate, my dear,’ she said when I asked her about it later. ‘Real life can’t stop – it mustn’t stop, otherwise those bastards have won.’

I step out of the shower and wrap myself in the large white towel. Warmth envelops my body and I close my eyes, imagining I’m in our favourite hotel in Venice and Chris is waiting for me in the bedroom. I can feel his rough warm skin next to mine as I walk along the corridor; his fingers working their way inside me; the taste of mulled wine on his lips. But the bedroom is empty and cold and the feeling dissolves as I slip under the polyester sheets and close my eyes.

Moments later I am in a shop filled with dust. It swirls around the room, seeping into the cavities and crevices like poisonous gas. As I step further inside, the dust thickens and I can’t see. My mouth is dry with fear but I must keep going.

This shop was once full of customers, full of life. Piles of travel brochures and black-market cigarettes lined its shelves and a small boy ran down the aisles telling his stories to anyone who would listen, but now all is silence as I walk through the mounds of rubble.

The ground is different here, slick and wet, and when I look down I see my boots are covered in dark red stains. I’m no longer walking on rubble but trudging through thick, glutinous blood.