Claire Kendal - The Second Sister

‘You were a basket case eight years ago. Maybe they did confirm it and your dad didn’t tell you. Your parents were trying to protect you then. So was I.’

‘No way. My dad would never lie to me.’

He considers this. ‘Probably true. Your mum would, not your dad.’

‘Anyway, Dad asked them again a few days ago and again he got silence from them. They won’t ever be straight with us.’

‘You’re not being fair.’

‘Do you think I want it to be true?’

‘Of course I don’t.’

‘The tabloids are saying she phoned Thorne from her landline a month before she vanished. That’s more precise than eight years ago. Eight years ago there were just general rumours. If she talked to Thorne, would the police know for sure?’ He doesn’t answer. ‘They have the phone records, don’t they?’ Again nothing. ‘Do you know if she spoke to him?’

‘How many times do I have to tell you? I have no information. I can tell you though that whatever those journalists are saying, the police aren’t behaving as if they think it’s a new breakthrough. They wouldn’t have returned your sister’s things if they thought the case was about to crack open. If there actually is evidence that she talked to Thorne, my guess is they’ve always known and decided it was irrelevant.’

‘Then why wouldn’t they admit it to us, if they knew? What would be the harm in telling us? Why is this new information coming out now?’ I tug his wrist in exasperation. ‘Ted! Can you please answer my questions?’

‘Not if I don’t know the answers.’

‘Do you think a journalist got hold of the phone records?’

‘Not possible.’

‘Well someone told a journalist something. Who else if not the police?’

‘Why now, Ella? Why this moment for this new story?’

‘Shouldn’t you and your buddies be figuring that out?’

‘Not me.’

‘So you keep saying. Whatever the reason, it made me remember something else. A little while before she disappeared she told me she was looking for a carpenter to build bookshelves for her living room. It makes sense that she called Thorne.’ My voice is calmer than my pulse.

‘Then why wasn’t her body in his basement with the others?’

‘Even if Thorne didn’t take her, he may know something. Somebody may have bragged to him. These kinds of people do that.’

‘In movies, maybe. He’s clever. He doesn’t reveal anything he doesn’t want to.’

‘Not that clever. They still found the women.’

‘Okay. Let’s say for argument’s sake that she did talk to Thorne. That doesn’t mean he’s responsible for taking her. You accept that, don’t you? Never assume. If you really want to think about what happened to her, you need to be open-minded.’

‘You’re right. I need to remember that more. I might sleep better if I do.’

‘Good.’ He pulls me into his arms. ‘Don’t go. Don’t visit Thorne.’

‘I still need to try to talk to him, Ted.’

‘I don’t want you near him.’ I can feel him gulp into the top of my head. ‘I want to protect you. Why won’t you let me?’

My anger has blown away. I disentangle myself from Ted as gently as I can. I touch his cheek lightly. ‘I need to be able to protect myself. You know that.’ Despite my speaking with what I thought was tenderness, he looks as if I have struck him.

‘It’s all I have ever wanted to do, protect you. Since the first time I saw you.’

His words take me back twenty-six years, to the day we met.

We were four years old and it was our first day of school. I fell in love with Ted during playtime for punching a boy who’d been teasing me about the birthmark on the underside of my chin.

I stood beneath the climbing frame beside my brand-new friend Sadie, but she was slowly moving away to watch the excitement from a safe distance. I was covering my face with my hand, blinking back tears as the boy jeered at me, laughing with some of the others. ‘Look at the baby crying. Bet she still wears nappies.’

‘Leave her alone,’ Ted said. That was the first time I ever heard his voice. Even then it was calm but forceful, the policeman’s tone already there.

But the bully boy didn’t leave me alone. ‘She’s a witch,’ the boy said. ‘It’s a witch’s mark.’ Looking back now, it was rather poetic for a child’s taunt. I later learned his father was some sort of writer, so maybe they talked like that all the time at home. But I didn’t think it was very poetic then. ‘Let’s see it again.’ The boy made a lunge towards me and I jumped back. ‘Take your hand away, witch.’

The boy moved again, reaching towards me. That was a mistake. His fingers only managed to brush my wrist before Ted grabbed the boy’s arm and hit at his face. I don’t know if Ted’s childlike blows really sent the boy to the ground, or if the boy threw himself there to try to get Ted in trouble. But there was no mistaking the blood and tears and snot smeared over the boy’s nose and mouth.

Ted ignored the boy’s screams and sobs, coming from somewhere near our feet. He touched my hand and said, ‘Don’t cover it up.’

It was only a few seconds before a teacher was at Ted’s side to scrape the mean boy up and drag him and Ted off to the headmaster. Ted looked over his shoulder as he moved, and I only vaguely noticed that Sadie had returned to my side to put her arm around me. All I could think about was Ted, and how glad I was that he could see me take my hand away from my chin.

That night, when you asked about my first day of school, I told you about Ted and the boy and my birthmark. ‘Your magic is in it,’ you said, kissing it.

The birthmark has faded now. It is almost invisible. A mottled pink shadow the size and shape of a small strawberry.

When it first started to diminish, not long after Ted’s fight with the boy, I worried that my magic would dwindle away too.

‘The magic goes more deeply inside you,’ you said. ‘It grows more powerful because it’s hidden so nobody knows it’s there. It’s your secret weapon.’

Remembering this, it strikes me that Ted has now been in my life for longer than you. So has Sadie.

I try to reassure him. ‘There are guards everywhere in that hospital, Ted. Nurses. Syringes full of tranquillisers. Thorne must be drugged up to his eyeballs anyway as part of his daily routine, to keep him sluggish and slow and harmless.’

‘Nothing can make Jason Thorne harmless. You know better.’

‘They wouldn’t let him have a visitor if they didn’t think it was safe. They are constantly assessing him.’

‘There’s a gulf between what counts as safe behaviour for Thorne and safe behaviour for ordinary people.’

‘He will need a long record of good behaviour before they let anyone near him. Not a few hours or days. I’m talking years of observing and treating him – they’ll be confident that he’s capable of civilised interaction. They know what they are doing.’