Claire Kendal - The Second Sister

‘I know officially you know nothing, but I also know how all of you talk to each other.’ He almost lets himself smirk but manages to hold it in. ‘I thought maybe Mike said something.’

‘No.’

‘He did. I know you, Ted. I can read your expressions.’

‘You can’t ever let us have a moment, can you?’

‘Yes I can.’

‘You might think you can read my expressions but you can’t read yourself.’

‘I don’t have a moment. Not for this. I need to know yesterday. I won’t have peace until I do. Luke won’t either.’

He shakes his head so vigorously I think of a puppy emerging from the sea. ‘I wish I hadn’t brought Mike to that party.’

‘But you did.’ My hand is on the bare skin of his wrist and I’m not even sure how it got there. The hairs are soft and feathery and dark gold.

‘I saw you talking to him. I knew it would come back to bite me. You should work in Interrogation.’

‘Despite your tone, I will take that as a compliment.’

‘I was nervous going to that party, seeing you after so long. That’s why I brought Mike.’ His face flushes but I don’t take my hand away. ‘You can’t let us be peaceful. You can’t let things calm down enough for us to have a chance.’

My fingers slide up his arm, wrap around hard muscle. ‘What is it they say? You had me at hello – that’s it, isn’t it? The minute you walked into Dad’s party you had me. But the best way to create that kind of chance for us – for Luke – would be to find out what happened to her, to put all this behind us, finally.’

‘That’s more likely to destroy us than help.’

‘Not knowing hasn’t exactly done us wonders, has it?’

‘I can’t go through all of this with you again. I had enough of these arguments – I thought you’d finished with all that.’

‘I never led you to believe that.’

‘Luke is ten years old, Ella. He is a child. He has no understanding.’

‘You know him better than that. How can you look me in the eye if you’re withholding something crucial? That would always be between us.’

‘Mike shouldn’t have opened his mouth. It’ll be a disciplinary for sure. He’d be lucky to escape with just a formal verbal warning.’

‘I won’t let anything come back to Mike.’ My hand makes a broken circle around his bicep, with a very big gap between the end of my thumb and the tips of my other fingers.

‘Don’t.’ He peels my fingers from his arm as if they were leeches. ‘You don’t give a damn about the havoc you leave behind.’ He has never broken physical contact with me before. It’s normally me who breaks it first.

You always warned me about my temper. My bad EKGs, you called them, as if you could see the spikes in my emotions plotted on a graph. Yours are the same, though more frequent.

My EKG must be off the scale right now, fired by the adrenaline that makes me counter-attack. ‘So where were you actually, then, on Saturday night?’

Ted glares at me, refusing to answer, and I have to stop myself from visibly doubling over as an old headline unexpectedly jabs me in the stomach.

Master Joiner Thorne Detained Indefinitely in High-Security Psychiatric Hospital.

I hit Ted from another direction. ‘Since you’re already angry at me, it’s a perfect time to tell you that I am going to try to see Jason Thorne. I wrote to him. Now it’s wait-and-see as to whether he accepts my request to visit, puts me on his list.’

Local Carpenter in Bodies-in-Basement Horror.

‘Have fun with that.’

I cross my arms. ‘He’s a patient, not a prisoner.’

Thorne in Our Side. Families’ Outrage as Suspect Deemed Unfit to Stand Trial.

Ted mirrors me and crosses his arms too. ‘So they say of all the scumbags in that place. You’re not up to seeing Thorne. You never will be.’

I think of the worst of the headlines from eight years ago, when Thorne was first captured.

Evil Sadist Thorne’s Grisly Decorations: Flowers and Vines Carved onto Victims’ Bodies.

That headline made me hyperventilate. It took hours for Dad to calm me down. Mum had to hurry Luke out of the house so he wouldn’t witness my hysteria.

‘There’s no connection between her and Thorne, Ella,’ Dad said. ‘The police would tell us if there was. This story about the carvings is tabloid sensationalism – I’m not sure it’s even physically possible to do that. And they’ve only just arrested him – no real details of what he did have been released by the investigators.’

‘Are you listening to me, Ella?’ Ted is saying. ‘Try to remember what all of this did to you when they first got Thorne. You nearly had a breakdown.’

‘That was eight years ago,’ I say. ‘I’m stronger now.’

Whatever happened to you, I will not turn from it. Whatever you faced, I will face. I brace myself for the pictures. For the sound of your screams. For tangled hair and frightened eyes. But the pictures do not come. I have now gone forty-eight hours without any.

‘You were falling apart more recently than eight years ago.’

‘I won’t let fear and horror stop me, Ted. I owe her more than that.’

‘Thorne has been compliant as a teddy bear since his arrest. He is a model of good behaviour but you will still be the object of his fantasies. You wouldn’t want to imagine what they are.’

‘I can live with that.’

‘He has refused all visitor requests so far, but I am betting he will accept you.’

‘I hope you’re right.’

‘I hope I’m wrong. You will be entertainment. He will consider you a toy.’

‘I don’t care how he considers me.’

‘There’s no point in letting yourself be Thorne’s wet dream. There was a huge amount of evidence tying Thorne to those three women. There’s nothing physical to connect him to your sister.’

‘Really? Nothing? Those news stories last week saying there’d been phone calls between them are nothing? Those journalists were pretty specific. Phone calls are evidence.’

‘Since when do you believe that tabloid shit?’

‘There were reports that they were looking at Thorne for Miranda when he was first arrested. You know it. We asked the police back then but they wouldn’t admit anything. Now the idea is surfacing again, and with much more detail.’

‘It’s a slow news month.’

‘They’re saying—’

‘Journalists are saying, Ella. The police aren’t saying.’

‘Too right the police aren’t saying. The police never say anything. We learn more from tabloid newspapers than we do from them.’

‘There’s a big difference in those sources. You know that.’

‘The police have probably known all along that she talked to Thorne – we asked them eight years ago and they wouldn’t comment.’