The Sister(57)

When that didn’t happen, there was always another plausible excuse. She’d heard them all. As time passed, her parents had stumbled and faltered. They lost the blind faith that had previously hauled them through.

She grew up in the shadow of someone she was too young to remember, someone she knew only from photographs. Sometimes, she’d examine the face in the portrait they'd had blown up to hang over the mantelpiece in the middle of the lounge. It was their favourite picture of her, smiling for the camera outside in the sunshine, in her crisp new uniform, in front of the holly bush in the back garden.

Twenty-three years ago now, and the colours had faded. It was getting harder to make out her features. She’d been absent from their lives, longer than she’d been in them.

Could you learn to miss someone you had never known?

She missed her for her parent’s sake, but not the way they did. How could she?

She knew, or at least she thought she knew, what it must have been like for them, but to have waited that long and then given up… It made no sense.

She pursed her lips, deep in contemplation.

They might just have hung on for her to be old enough to fend for herself, but that made no sense either. If they'd loved her enough to do that – then surely they'd loved her enough to carry on. Maybe they just didn’t love her as much as they missed her sister.

She found herself wondering what would have happened if Kathy had walked through the door the next day, the way they'd always believed she would. What would happen then? What would I tell her?

None of it made any sense.

She almost didn’t go through with it, but she was thinking of herself, she wanted closure.

And what if she did come walking through that door, as a direct result of the appeal? She was as surprised as anyone was when she’d been told her parents died in an apparent suicide pact.

Her mother was a vet; they'd injected themselves with enough horse tranquillisers to stop an elephant.

She wasn’t convinced her dad would have gone along with it entirely of his own free will.

The letter had arrived two days after they died. She didn’t open it. There could be no explanation or justification.

She informed the police.





‘You haven’t opened it?’ The policewoman said.

‘No. There’s nothing inside for me,’ she said without emotion. The officer dipped down to look up into her downcast eyes. ‘Would you like me to call someone?’

‘No, I’m okay. I’ll be fine. Go ahead and open it, or take it for evidence, or whatever.’

The officer opened it; the contents confirmed what they already knew; it was suicide, but there was an explanation.

The policewoman offered the letter to her. She declined.

‘Leave it there.’ She pointed to the mantelpiece.

‘Would you like me to read it to you?’ The policewoman asked gently.

‘No, I know what they did,’ her voice had risen, filled with bitterness. ‘I know you’re trying to help, but no. Thank you. Leave it there.’





They left me behind. That’s what they did.

She stared at the pills in her hand, at the glass of vodka in the other.

‘Probably shouldn’t do this,’ she said to herself, then cupped her hand to her mouth and swallowed. She took a swig out of the glass and shuddered, the neat alcohol contorting her face.

If those paracetamol don’t shift this headache, it’ll be because you mixed them with vodka. Hell, yeah!

She poured herself another, took a deep breath and slid her fingers into the envelope to pull out the letter. Drawing it almost all the way out, she stopped and crumpled the whole thing into a ball. She walked to the pedal bin and threw it away.





Chapter 43



Tanner rubbed his eyes wearily. It wasn’t that late, but the accumulation of working long hours had started to get to him. He hadn’t seen the programme, but still volunteered to take any interesting calls that might come in because of it.

Although the appeal generated a handful of telephone calls straight after the programme, only one of them had any promise.

A taxi driver recalled passing a couple who could be a match. She was very drunk, dressed in a nurse uniform – he assumed she’d come from a fancy dress party that he’d already picked up two lots of people from. A man was trying to get her into a silver Ford Cortina. He remembered it well because after he’d driven past, a fight broke out at the party, and his windscreen got broken by a flying champagne bottle.

‘Can you tell me anything else about what you saw, could you describe the man?’ Tanner knew it was a long shot. After all these years, it seemed stupid to ask.

‘No mate, not after all this time. I’m sure it was her though, dressed in her uniform. It’s got to be, right?’

A silver Ford Cortina – It couldn’t have been a rare kit car they could have easily traced, could it.





The lines had gone quiet; nothing had come in for over an hour. Checking his watch, he decided give it another thirty minutes before going home.

With just a few more minutes of his self-imposed deadline to go, his telephone rang again.

‘Tanner,’ he said wearily.

‘Switchboard – I have a caller from Dublin regarding the Crimewatch case; he thinks he might be able to help.’