First Born(7)

The Chrysler Building. The UN. The Empire State Building. We drive closer to Grand Central Station and I ask the driver, ‘Are we about ten minutes away?’ and he replies with a shake of his hand.

I frown at this and he says, ‘This time of day.’

I call Dad and let it ring three rings and then end the call. He calls back almost immediately, three rings, and then ends the call. That’s how my family communicates. Free of charge.

It feels all the more horrendous that my sister should die when our parents are in America visiting her for the first time. It’s normal to feel safer than ever when your parents are close by.

We pass the MetLife Building and then the New York Public Library, and it is imposing. I hear sirens from across the street and instinctively I pull my seatbelt tighter. I realise my hands are balled into tight fists and my fingernails are digging into my palms. The in-cab TV plays a commercial for pain-relief medicine.

The driver makes a few turns and pulls up on a street corner. ‘Bedfordshire Midtown Hostel,’ he says.

‘Thank you,’ I say, looking up at the sign. He’s right. It says Hostel, not Hotel.

No sign of Mum or Dad so I get out of the cab and the noise is everywhere. More sirens and horns and engines and people shouting into their phones. A gargantuan ants’ nest of a city.

He hands me my bags and I hand him sixty-five dollars and he says, ‘Enjoy New York.’

If only he knew.

I pull my bags close to my body and the door of the hostel opens and Mum steps out. She has aged a decade since I last saw her.

She smiles, but then she shakes her head and she weeps. Dad’s right behind her but she’s blocking the doorway. I drag my bags to her and I start to cry again. The pain in her eyes. At losing a daughter but also at seeing her live right in front of you, a reminder too exact to be any kind of comfort. If I were just a sister or a brother I’d have been reassurance. Straightforward support. But she looks at me and she sees KT.

She puts her palms to my cheeks and they are dry and cool. I shake my head and the air leaves my lungs and she says, ‘I know, Molly. I know. Oh, my God,’ and we squeeze each other and she falls to her knees and I fall with her. Half in and half out of the hostel. Me on the street and her just inside. Dad behind. We collapse in a heap and I cry quietly into the familiar crease of her neck and she wails. I smell Nivea skin cream.

Dad bends down and rubs my back. He says, ‘Oh, Moll,’ and he rubs both our backs and then he says, ‘Best come inside, both of you.’

We stagger over the threshold and I see the reception area through tears. ‘Are you OK?’ I ask Mum.

She nods and bites her lip and then shakes her head and says, ‘Not really, but I’m so pleased you’re here, Molly.’

‘We’re both pleased,’ says Dad. ‘We’ve got your room ready – right next to ours, it is. A safe spot.’

The hostel reception still says ‘Bedfordshire Midtown Hotel’ so I’m not sure if this place is transitioning upmarket or downmarket or if it’s stuck somewhere in the middle. The décor is more hostel than hotel.

‘You two go up in the elevator,’ says Dad. ‘Won’t fit all of us. I’ll take the stairs.’ Sounds strange to hear him say elevator.

Mum and I squeeze in with my cases and the doors slide shut.

‘Where is she? I have to see her, Mum.’

My mother wipes her eyes and sniffs. ‘I know, sweetie. We’ll talk to the policeman again. It’s complicated. Things work differently here.’

The doors open and we step out. Third floor. They have picked it for me. Safe enough at this elevation from street-level disturbances but not too high to be impossible to exit during a catastrophic fire.

‘What are the police telling you?’

Mum shakes her head and Dad arrives and he says, ‘This is home, for now.’ He unlocks the hotel room door with a brass key. ‘We’re just next door, Moll. We’re right here.’

‘What do the police say?’ I ask again.

Mum says, ‘We don’t know what’s happening for sure yet, sweetie.’

Dad turns to Mum and says, ‘For God’s sake. It wasn’t an accident, Elizabeth. We know it wasn’t self-inflicted, and it wasn’t some kind of freak illness.’

Mum sobs into her hands.

‘What happened to her?’

‘Police aren’t saying concrete anything yet, Moll,’ says Dad. ‘It’s hard to get any clear information out of them. But we think Katie was murdered.’





Chapter 5


Murdered?

Why would anyone want to murder KT?

She was a sweet person. When I look at most people I see secrets and guilt: lies, deceit and self-loathing. But everyone knew KT was thoroughly decent.

The room is about the size of a double bed. I sit on my single bed: a wooden bench with a thin mattress and space underneath for my suitcase. A wire runs at the end of the bed from one wall to the other and from it dangles a single hanger with a small white towel. The bedsheets look thin and clean. The pillow is fine, though it’s not a breathable baby pillow like the one back in London. There is no private bathroom. The lock on the door looks inadequate for the job. There is no air-conditioning but there is a fan. That’ll work fine this time of year. It’s a thirty-dollar room my parents have probably paid sixty dollars for.