My Sister's Bones(8)

‘She’s my niece,’ I reply. ‘I had to see for myself that she was safe, which is more than can be said for Sally.’

‘Look, I know you’re angry with her,’ says Paul. ‘But Sally’s really deteriorating. Can’t you put this silly feud behind you and make up?’

‘I’m sorry, Paul, I just think there’s something odd about a mother who gives up like that,’ I say, taking my plate and scraping the fish and chips into the bin. ‘I mean, does she even care?’

‘Come on, Kate, that’s not fair,’ he says, wiping his lips with a piece of kitchen paper. ‘Of course she cares. Hannah’s leaving destroyed Sally. Her drinking got worse, she lost her job. She was in bits. She knows deep down it was her behaviour that drove Hannah away – the drinking, the arguing – she knows that and it’s eating her up inside.’

As I stand at the bin I see my sister’s terrified face all those years ago in the maternity ward. She was so young, just fourteen when she had Hannah, still a child herself. I remember sitting by the side of the bed, the baby in her little plastic cot, and Sally looked at me and said: ‘What do I do with it, Kate?’

‘They loved each other really,’ says Paul, his voice interrupting my thoughts. ‘You should have seen her the first Christmas without Hannah, she was beside herself. But then you couldn’t have seen it, cos you were never here.’

He picks up his plate and takes it over to the sink. ‘She’s your sister, Kate. She needed you then. And she needs you now.’

‘I tried,’ I say, watching him as he skitters about the kitchen like a large confused bird. ‘But she wouldn’t listen to me.’

‘No, you tried being the big reporter,’ he says. ‘Investigating and phoning contacts. Which was great, because you helped us find Hannah. But Sally didn’t need to be interrogated; she just needed you to be her sister. She needs you now, Kate.’

‘Okay, Paul, but one thing at a time,’ I say, standing up and opening the back door. The house stinks of stale vinegar and I need some air. ‘Let’s sort out Mum’s affairs first and then, well, I’m not promising anything, but I’ll think about it.’

‘Thanks, Kate. It would mean so much to Sally and to me if you buried the hatchet,’ says Paul, grabbing his jacket from the kitchen counter. ‘I better get back to work now. But listen, I was thinking, you haven’t seen your mother’s grave yet. I can take you tomorrow in my lunch hour if you like.’

The words ‘mother’ and ‘grave’ sound strange and I want to shake him and tell him he’s got it all wrong, that my mum’s just gone to the shop and she’ll be back in five minutes.

‘Kate, are you okay?’

My eyes cloud with tears but I don’t turn round. I can’t let him see me cry.

‘I’m fine,’ I say, blinking. There’s a solitary pink rose at the far end of the garden. If I stare hard at it the tears will stop.

‘But I would like to see the grave,’ I say, still staring at the flower. ‘If you’re sure it’s not too much trouble.’

‘No trouble at all,’ he says gently. ‘I’ll pick you up tomorrow. Twelve thirty?’

‘Perfect,’ I say, turning from the door. ‘And thanks, thanks for all you’re doing. I do appreciate it.’

‘Not a bother,’ he says. ‘See you tomorrow.’

I hear the door shut behind him and I sigh with relief. At last I can be alone with my thoughts.

Stepping outside, I look at the garden. It’s a mess, a tangle of weeds and broken plant pots. My mother was a keen gardener. She’d grown up on a farm and I think part of her still yearned for the countryside. The vegetable plot she cultivated here was her little haven; a reminder of her childhood. She would spend hours in this garden tending to the potatoes and carrots and runner beans that she grew. Sometimes in the summer holidays I would join her and we would weave in and out of the beds, munching raw beans. ‘One for the pot and one for us,’ she would say, her eyes shining with relief that for a few hours at least she was free of him. While he was at work she could be herself; she could laugh and sing and be a young woman again. Sometimes she would bring out her poetry books and we would sit on the patio and read together. It was my mother who I got my love of words from. She’d been all set to become an English teacher but abandoned her dream when she met my father and fell pregnant with me. ‘Back then careers and children didn’t mix,’ she once explained to me. ‘You had one or the other. Never both.’

I kneel down next to the spot where the rose bed had once been and place my hand on the gritty, dry soil. My mother had drenched the garden in flowers: tea roses with rag-doll heads, sweet peas that grew like clusters of fragile butterflies curled around teepees of twisted willow; nasturtiums with giant paw-shaped leaves that spilled out of an old tin kettle; candy-cane-striped peonies. And all along the path tall delphiniums that gave the garden an element of Edwardiana, of girls in white dresses and men in boaters. They were certainly an uncommon flower in suburban Herne Bay but that was probably why my mother liked them. It set her apart from the neighbours.

But now the flowers are gone and all that remains is a mess of weeds and dry soil. This rose bed has haunted my adult life. I see it when I’m walking down the street in Soho or holed up in some bombed-out hotel. I see it when I close my eyes and pray for sleep. It’s the bittersweet symbol of my childhood and as I kneel here I touch the ground and remember how it felt beneath me as I lay shivering in the cold.