Rosamund Lupton - Sister

I told him you were missing and he hugged the bouquet to his chest, crushing the flowers inside. His Eton-educated voice was quiet. “How long?”

“Last Thursday.”

I thought his face went white. “I was with her on Thursday.”

“Where?”

“Hyde Park. We were together till around four.”

That was two hours after you were seen in the post office. He must have been the last person to see you.

“She’d phoned me that morning, asked to meet me,” continued Simon. “She suggested the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens. We’d meet there for a coffee, see how things went.”

His accent had changed to North London. I wondered which accent was genuine.

“Afterward I asked her if I could walk her home,” continued Simon. “But she turned me down.” His voice was filled with self-pity. “Since then I haven’t phoned her, haven’t been to see her. And yes, that’s not supportive of me, but I wanted her to know what the cold-shoulder treatment felt like.”

His ego must be monstrous to believe his hurt feelings could matter to you after your baby had died, or to me now that you were missing.

“Whereabouts did you leave her?” I asked.

“She left me, okay? I walked with her across Hyde Park. Then she left. I didn’t leave her anywhere.”

I was sure he was lying. The North London accent was the fake.

“Where?”

He didn’t reply.

I yelled my question at him again. “Where?!”

“By the Lido.”

I’d never yelled at someone before.

I phoned DS Finborough and left an urgent message for him. Simon was in your bathroom, warming his numb white hands under the hot tap. Later your bathroom would smell of his aftershave and I would be angry with him for masking the smell of your soap and shampoo.

“What did the police say?” he asked when he came in.

“They said they will check it out.”

“How American of them.”

Only you are allowed to tease me like that. What the policeman had actually said was “I’ll look into it straightaway.”

“So they’re going to search Hyde Park?” Simon asked.

But I was trying not to think about what the policeman had meant by “I’ll look into it.” I’d replaced his English euphemism with an American euphemism, padding the sharp reality of what his words contained.

“And they’ll ring us?” he asked.

I am your sister. DS Finborough would ring me.

“DS Finborough will let me know if there’s anything, yes,” I replied.

Simon sprawled on your sofa, his snow-caked boots marking your Indian throw. But I needed to ask him some questions, so I hid my annoyance.

“The police think she has postpartum depression. How did she seem to you?”

He didn’t answer for a few moments and I wondered if he was trying to remember or constructing a lie. “She was desperate,” he said. “She had to take these special pills, to stop her breast milk. She told me that was one of the worst things, still making all this food for her baby and not being able to give it to him.”

The death of your baby started to penetrate, a little way. I’m sorry that it was taking so long. My only defense is that there wasn’t space for your baby in my worry for you.

Something was niggling me about Simon. I pinned it down, “You said was. ”

He looked taken aback.

“You said she was desperate?”

For a moment I thought he looked cornered, then he recovered his composure. His voice was back to fake North London. “I meant when I saw her on Thursday afternoon, she was desperate. How am I meant to know how she’s doing now?”

His face no longer looked childish to me but cruel, the piercings not marks of an adolescent rebellion but of an enjoyed masochism. I had another question to ask him.

“Tess told me the baby had been cured?”

“Yeah, it wasn’t anything to do with the cystic fibrosis.”

“Was it because he was three weeks early?”

“No. She told me it was something that would have killed him even if he’d been born at the right time. Something to do with his kidneys.”

I steeled myself. “Do you know why she didn’t tell me when her baby died?”

“I thought she had.” There was something triumphant in his look. “Did you know I was going to be godfather?”

He left with bad grace after my polite hints had turned uncharacteristically into an outright demand.

I waited two and a half hours for DS Finborough to phone me back, and then I phoned the police station. A policewoman told me DS Finborough was unavailable. I decided to go to Hyde Park. I was hoping that DS Finborough would be nowhere to be seen; I was hoping that he was unavailable because he was now investigating a more urgent case, yours having been relegated to a missing person who’d turn up in her own good time. I was hoping that I was wrong and he was right, that you had just taken off somewhere after the death of your baby. I locked the door and put your key under the flowerpot with the pink cyclamen in case you came home while I was out.

As I neared Hyde Park, a police car, siren wailing, went past me. The sound panicked me. I drove faster. When I got to the Lancaster Gate entrance the police car was joining others already parked, their sirens electronic howls.

I went into the park, soft snow falling around me. I wish I’d waited a little longer and had an hour or so more of my life first. To most people that would sound selfish, but you’ve lived with grief, or more accurately, a part of you has died with grief, so you, I know, will understand.

A distance into the park I could see police, a dozen of them or more. Police vehicles were going toward them, driving into the park itself. Onlookers were starting to go toward the site of the activity—reality TV unboxed.

S o many footprints and tire tracks in the snow.

I walked slowly toward them. My mind was oddly calm, noticing at a remove that my heart was beating irregularly against my ribs, that I was short of breath, that I was shivering violently. Somehow my mind kept its distance, not yet a part of my body’s reaction.

I passed a park ranger, in his brown uniform, talking to a man with a Labrador. “We were asked about the Lido and the lake, and I thought that they were going to dredge them but the chief officer fellow decided to search our closed buildings first. Since the cuts, we’ve got a lot of those.” Other dog walkers and joggers were joining his audience. “The building over there used to be the gents’ toilets years ago, but it was cheaper to put in new ones than renovate.”

I passed him and his audience, walking on toward the police. They were setting up a cordon around a small, derelict Victorian building half hidden by bushes.

A little way from the cordon was PC Vernon. Her normally rosy cheeks were pale, her eyes puffy from crying; she was shaking. A policeman had his arm around her. They didn’t see me. PC Vernon’s voice was quick and uneven. “Yes, I have, but only in hospital, and never someone so young. Or so alone.”

Later, I would love her for her physical compassion. At the time, her words burned into my consciousness, forcing my mind to engage with what was happening.

I reached the police cordon. DS Finborough saw me. For a moment he was bewildered by what I was doing there and then his expression became one of sympathy. He walked toward me.

“Beatrice, I’m so sorry—”

I interrupted him. If I could stop him saying the words, then it wouldn’t be true. “You’re wrong.”

I wanted to run away from him. He took hold of my hand. I thought he was restraining me. Now I think he was offering a gentle gesture of kindness.

“It’s Tess we’ve found.”

I tried to pull my hand away from his. “You can’t know that for sure.”