Blood Sisters(66)

52


May 2017


Alison


My mother is disturbingly quiet when I tell her what happened. Not all of it, obviously. But enough.

‘I still can’t believe you didn’t recognize Crispin,’ she says.

I think of the scars. His bald head. The glasses. The extra weight. ‘People change after fifteen years,’ I say. ‘Look at us.’

It’s true. Neither of us looks the same. My hair is short. My nose is different. The unflattering ‘Roman’ shape is no more. Lines surround my eyes. I look older than a woman approaching her mid-thirties. That’s what stress can do for you, I suppose.

Mum, meanwhile, went wafer-thin after the crash. She’s one of those people who can’t eat when they’re upset. She still barely touches her food. Her hair went grey prematurely. (Recently, she finally gave in to my entreaties and dyed it.) ‘It seems wrong to bother about my appearance when Kitty is like this,’ she’s always saying. ‘Thank goodness I still have you.’

But not if Crispin’s lawyers have their way. I have to use his real name now: too many others are doing so around me. But it makes me feel sick. It unplugs all those memories of the summer house. The tree tapping. The smell of his skin on mine. My inability to move. That feeling of shame and self-loathing afterwards. The need to wash Crispin away in the sea.

‘Was my father English?’

She gives a little start. ‘Why do you think otherwise?’

I notice that she’s not denying it. Merely side-stepping the question like a lawyer might. ‘Mum, this man genuinely seemed to think I was his daughter.’

She makes a so what noise. ‘Just because you work with disturbed gangsters, darling, doesn’t mean you have to believe them.’

Then she puts her arms around me. Just as I had held her when I was little – when there were only the two of us – and she used to cry because she didn’t know what would happen to us. I had held her too, after the accident, but she’d also had David to comfort her. I was no longer needed.

‘This world that you took yourself into,’ she continues gently. ‘It’s not nice. You’ve been brave to work there. And I admire it. But I don’t want you going back. We’ll find another way of paying your sister’s bills.’

I want to tell her that it’s too late. That the damage has been done. That the police might call me back any day if they find my written confession. And when it all comes out, I won’t just have lost my sister as I once knew her. I will lose the sister I have been left with. And probably my mother too.

‘By the way,’ adds Mum. ‘Johnny’s parents have a friend who knows an American specialist in brain injuries. Apparently there’s been an exciting development in what they call brain–computer interface research. There’s a new machine that can help people share the thoughts in their head – even if they don’t know they are having them – called an assistive communication device. Wouldn’t it be incredible if it worked for Kitty?’

It’s getting worse and worse.

That night, I toss and turn as I go over everything again and again. I don’t even bother cutting myself. The desire has completely left me since Stefan’s death: if it hadn’t been for my spare sliver which I’d had on me, he wouldn’t have died. Something else to add to my guilt box.

I must have drifted off because when I wake – in the early hours of the morning – I have an idea which seems so obvious that I can’t think why it didn’t occur to me before.

‘Alison!’ says the college receptionist when I call in on my way back. ‘You don’t have a class today, do you?’

‘No. Just popping in to collect some of my students’ paintings. I promised to mount them before the next class.’

‘You’re so conscientious!’

I wince. ‘Just one other thing,’ I say casually. ‘Remember that job advert about the prison last September?’

‘Yes! You took the details, didn’t you?’

‘That’s right. I just wondered if it was emailed to you or posted. I know that sounds a silly question …’

‘No.’ She cuts in. ‘I nearly mentioned it to you at the time. This man dropped it off. At first I thought he was one of those homeless people. Looked a bit rough, if you know what I mean. But that arty lot can, can’t they? Sorry – not you, of course.’ Her face tightens with anxiety. ‘Was it a scam?’

‘No,’ I falter. ‘It was real. I was just curious, that was all. Do you know where he came from?’

‘He didn’t say anything, sorry.’

This doesn’t prove anything, I tell myself. Maybe the arts trust that employed me got one of their people to drop off a poster.

Now for the next step.

It doesn’t take long on the Tube. Robin’s offices – near Chalk Farm – are smarter than I’d thought. Finding a good lawyer is essential. I know that from my old students in prison. Many claim that theirs was ‘rubbish’. There’s only one lawyer I know personally. Mum always kept me up to date with his progress. And it was easy to find him through the Law Society website. I haven’t seen him since I was eighteen but something tells me that if I have any chance of getting through this, I need someone who understands me. Not a complete stranger.