E.V. Seymour - Her Sister’s Secret

“Let me tell Zach,” I murmured.

“No, I —’

“I want to, Dad.” I needed to be alone, to think and work out whether I was condemned to a lifetime of guilt. I shuddered to think that Scarlet was so upset by our row that she’d not paid attention on the road. Had I argued with her when she was already at a low ebb? Jesus Christ.

His sad eyes met mine. “Are you sure? You’ve had one hell of a shock.”

“Honestly, I want to help.” And do something of practical use. “It won’t be a problem. Promise.”

He clutched my arm. “Are you okay to drive?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?” His grip on me tightened.

“I am.”

Anxiously, his eyes darted to the en-suite. “I’ll take care of Mum. You go to Zach.”

My brother lived a simple life in the arse-end of nowhere. It took me forty-five minutes to get there and then another fifteen through winding roads, flanked by high hedges hissing with heat, to reach the commune where Zach had lived for a decade. Thoughts fastened solely on my sister, my eyes clouded at the thought of never hearing her voice, never seeing her smile again. By the time I reached the potholed drive that led to Zach’s home, I was shackled by grief.

Parking up on a patch of scrub, the ground rutted and dry from two months of hot weather without rain, a kaleidoscope of images clattered through my mind. Scarlet pale and clammy with shock. Scarlet bleeding. Scarlet dying.

Eventually, I forced myself to get out of the van towards what was effectively a scattering of ramshackle dwellings surrounded by vegetable patches, washing lines and pens with livestock.

Gareth, a skinny silent man from the Rhondda, was adjusting a halter on one of his horses. He supplemented his meagre living with woodcarvings and strange sculptures made from scrap metal. Nearby, two small children grubbed around in a makeshift sandpit. Think gypsy encampment meets Glastonbury on an unusually dry day and you get the picture. In front of the largest hovel, a raised piece of decking on which sat benches and old easy chairs with sagging bottoms, two semi-naked women sunbathed in the obliterating heat while Zach lay stretched out in a deckchair, legs apart, narrow feet bare. Clean for years and embracing abstinence with the same zeal with which he’d smoked crack cocaine, he looked reasonably healthy. If you didn’t know it, you’d never cotton on that he’d once been a hair’s breadth away from death.

He wore baggy shorts and a tie-dyed vest that exposed muscles rope-hard from manual labour. His weathered olive-skin looked as if it had been dipped in creosote. Like me, he had a wide brow, although his eyes were blue, like Scarlet’s. A hybrid variety, he had Mum’s pert nose and Dad’s full mouth. Beneath his dreads, his eyes were shut tight against the sun; they popped open at my approach, a loose smile spreading across his face that vanished the second he caught my mangled expression.

“Sis,” he said, climbing out of the chair. “Something wrong?”

“Is Tanya around?” Tanya was Zach’s long-suffering girlfriend. I thought it best if she were there too. As much as anyone had a steadying influence on my brother, she did.

“Craft market in Ludlow,” he said. “Selling cards and shit.”

“Right,” I said uncertainly.

“So, what is it? You look like someone tramped over your grave.” The smile attempted on his face, packed up and retreated.

“It’s Scarlet,” I said bleakly.

At the mention of her name, he started. “What’s she done? Look, if she’s said something—”

“Done?”

He blinked. “You’re making me nervous. I meant what’s happened?”

Whether it was the compressed heat or emotional overload, I caught that uniquely chilling vibe only a sibling can identify. Zach’s was no ordinary slip of the tongue. I thought back to before the argument, sitting in the garden at Mum and Dad’s, Scarlet preoccupied. Did Zach know something I didn’t?

“Moll,” he said. “For Chrissakes, tell me.”

When I did, he made a sound, half groan and half exhalation. Brain fried a long time ago; his emotional responses were complex at the best of times.

A woman, with a flat nose and cracked lips, stirred. “Man,” she said. “That’s bad.”

“Real bad,” the other drawled, raising her head, turning over, in preparation to flash-fry her back.

Expecting a shedload of questions, I waited for Zach to fill in the gathering silence. But Zach wasn’t like other people. Hands cupping his elbows, he stood mute, blinking rapidly from the sun or distress, or both.

Unsolicited, I gave him a précis of what Dad told me. “I want you to come home,” I said.

“Nah,” he said. “I’m all right.”

“ You’re all right?” I was accustomed to my brother wittering on about his guilt, bad vibes and not wishing to further upset ‘the folks’, but what had started out as distance and separation, over the years had taken on the shape of a feud, the reason for its existence long forgotten by both parties. In the present tragic circumstances, it was pointless, ridiculous and a waste of energy, which is what I told him.

“I didn’t mean it the way you twisted it,” Zach said petulantly.

“They need you, Zach. Hell, I need you.” Why couldn’t he see it the way I saw it?

“Aw Molly, don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what? Jesus, Zach, this isn’t about you.”

“I never said it was.”

“Fuck’s sake, don’t you care?”

“Of course, I fucking care. She was my sister too. And it’s horrible what’s happened.”

“Well, then.”

“Transport’s a problem. I’m not exactly on the doorstep.”

“I can take and drop you back. It wouldn’t need to be for long.” I was pleading with him.

“I have to be here.” He tilted his chin in the direction of the nearest hedge, bullish, as if he had urgent business on the other side of the privet.

“For what exactly?”

“Don’t you get it? They won’t want me around. Especially now.” His hands flew to his head, like he’d been caught in an explosion and was trying to protect himself.

I knew my brother and he was hiding something, all right. And Zach’s initial question, about what Scarlet had done, had given them both away. A victim in a tragic accident, Scarlet was dead. Nothing could change that fact. But my brother and sister had shared a secret. And I had to find out what it was.

“When did you last see Scarlet?” We sat in the shade with homemade lemonade. The citrus tang hit the back of my throat like a blade.

Zach scratched his belly. “Last year, maybe.”

“That long ago?”

“Christmas,” he said emphatically.

“Not around her birthday?” Four months previously.

Zach tweaked his moustache, shook his head, dreads swinging. “She was going to come over at Easter but there was a change to her rota.”

“Speak to her much on the phone?” I sounded like a Grand Inquisitor, but Zach had always been an impressive liar – rather came with the drug-ridden territory. Directness reduced his wriggle room.

“Now and then. Seemed okay.”

“She didn’t mention a disagreement?” I tried to sound casual. The root cause of my row with Scarlet was not about money, although to an outsider it might look that way, but about favouritism and the way she, according to me, sucked up to our parents. If Scarlet had confided in Zach, he’d probably pass it off as a scrap between sisters. Cash, or the lack of it, had never featured heavily in Zach’s life, because he was so adept at sponging off others.

Zach’s brow furrowed. “Who with?”