The Good Sister(40)

‘Helped him . . . what?’

My voice is the barest whisper. ‘Helped him stay under the longest. I held him down.’

Wally’s face remains still. Too still. ‘No,’ he says. ‘No, you didn’t.’

I feel the first tears hit my cheeks. ‘I thought . . . I thought he would pop up and grin at me and say how happy he was that he’d beaten my time! But he didn’t. When I let him go, it was too late.’

Wally is staring at me in horror. ‘But . . . you must have known that if you held someone under the water for long enough, they would drown?’

‘I did know that!’ I wring my hands and then press my eyes into them. ‘I did know that. An adult can drown in sixty seconds, that’s what all the literature says. I held him under for forty. It was timed! I don’t know how it happened. I would never, never . . .’

‘What happened when you realised what you’d done?’ he asks.

‘Rose . . . told me I couldn’t . . . tell anyone. She was worried I’d go to jail. She said we had to say that Billy got tangled in the reeds and drowned, or I’d get into big trouble.’

‘This is why you’re always worried about what you might do?’ Wally takes a deep breath, then drops his head into his hands. ‘It’s . . . awful,’ he says. ‘Unimaginably awful.’

I nod. My face is wet with tears. ‘I told you I can’t be trusted, Wally. I’m dangerous.’

He looks up, shakes his head. ‘It was a terrible accident. But . . . it was clearly an accident, Fern. You would never intentionally hurt anyone.’ Wally slides closer to me and pulls me against his chest. ‘You’d never hurt anyone,’ he repeats, and for some reason, maybe because it comes from Wally, I almost believe it.


To my great surprise, Wally doesn’t cut me out of his life. I wait for it to happen, either immediately or perhaps in a phasing out-type arrangement, but day after day, week after week, he shows up – at the library or my doorstep, with suggestions of dinner or an evening walk. It is unfathomable. It’s the kind of loyalty you might expect of a lifelong friend or family member. It doesn’t make sense that Wally has elevated me to such a rank when we’ve only known each other a few weeks. And yet, he has.

And so, over the next month or so, I amend my routine to create space for Wally. Early evenings are spent together, apart from the evenings I spend at Rose’s place. At the end of the night, Wally returns to his van and I go to sleep alone. We both prefer it this way, as it keeps our morning routines intact. And I make up for the late nights by taking naps in the secret cupboard at work every time I get the chance.

For a few weeks, I am lucky enough to sometimes get to see Wally during the day, too, when he pops into the library here and there. Unfortunately, it’s not long before he moves into a coworking space in the city and can no longer visit me at work. I miss him when he’s gone. It’s a curious feeling, missing someone in this way. I feel it in my chest – a curious sensation that feels like a blend of butterflies and indigestion.

I start to loathe dinners with Rose. And it’s not just my recent preference for Wally’s company. Since returning from London, she’s become unbearably interested in every mundane facet of my life – from what I had for lunch, to who I sat with, to what I dreamed about. So when Rose phones and cancels dinner one night – terrible food poisoning, apparently – I feel only minimal guilt at my elation.

Wally is in my doorway when Rose calls, and he appears equally delighted. ‘That’s the best news I’ve heard all day. And I’ve had a pretty good day.’

‘Why have you had a good day?’

‘The video I made for FollowUp has gone viral.’

He leans against the doorjamb. Wally and I spend a lot of time in my doorway. There’s something about the no-man’s-land of it that I like; if he doesn’t cross the threshold, it doesn’t count as a ‘visit’ and as such isn’t a disruption to my routine.

‘Gone viral . . .’ I repeat.

‘“Viral” means lots of people have seen it,’ Wally explains. ‘The connotation is that it has spread, like a virus would.’

‘Clever.’ It’s so rare that new-fangled slang makes sense to me, but this is the kind of slang I could easily get on board with. Having decoded this part of the conversation, I take another moment to process it in reference to his previous comment. ‘And . . . the fact that Rose has cancelled is better than that?’

He smiles, but it is almost as though there is a frown behind it. I have recently learned that this face means I have failed to understand something that he finds perfectly obvious (I know this because I asked him what the face meant, and he confirmed my interpretation). ‘Seeing you is always the best part of my day, Fern.’

I smile.

‘Let’s skip dinner,’ Wally says, crossing the threshold. And, like always, we are entirely on the same wavelength.


In the morning, Wally is gone but the side of the bed that he sleeps on has been disturbed in that way that says he’s been there recently. Watching his side of the bed for a few moments before I start my day has become a part of my routine too. Then I move on to the usual routine: breakfast, coffee, yoga. I have just settled myself in lotus position when I notice the date on the calendar on my wall and a thought comes to me, so clear and fast it is as though it’s been tucked just out of sight, just waiting to be retrieved.