Claire Kendal - The Second Sister

I will say this, though, Miranda, in my one concession to police speak. What follows comes from my personal knowledge of what I saw, heard and felt. I, Ella Allegra Brooke, believe that the facts in this witness statement are true. This is your story, but it is mine too, and I am our best witness. Maybe I do have eyes like yours, after all.

There is one more important thing I must tell you before I begin and it is this. It is that you mustn’t worry. Because I haven’t forgotten the confidentiality clause and I never will. You have taught me too well. What goes in this statement stays in this statement. It is for you alone. I am the sister of the sister and you are part of me. Wherever you are, I always will be. All my love, Melanie.

There is no visible sign that anything is out of place. But there is something wrong in the air, a mist of scent so faint I may be imagining it.

‘I was wondering,’ Luke says.

‘Wondering what?’ I am scanning every inch of our little clearing in the woods.

‘Why are so many fairy tales about sisters saving their brothers? All the ones you told me last week were.’

He is right. ‘Hansel and Gretel’. ‘The Seven Ravens’. ‘The Twelve Brothers’. Our mother seemed to know hundreds of them.

‘We should write a different story,’ I say.

‘I want one with a sister who saves her sister.’

I touch his cheek. ‘So do I.’

He marches straight into the centre of our clearing, dispersing any scent that might have lingered here.

This is where you and I used to make our own private house, playing together inside of walls made of tree trunks. We would eat the picnic lunches that Mum would bring out to us. We would plait each other’s hair and tickle each other’s backs.

When I think of your back, I see the milky skin beneath the tips of my fingers, my touch as light as a butterfly kiss. But this snapshot from our childhood disappears. Instead, I imagine your shoulder blade, and a flower drawn in blood. I hear you screaming. You are in a room below ground and I cannot get to you.

I blink several times in this weak autumn sun and remind myself of where I am and who I am with and that I cannot know that this is what happened.

I hear your voice. Even after ten years your words are with me. Find a different picture , you say. Remember the things that are real. This is what you used to tell me when I was scared that there was a monster underneath my bed.

I look around our clearing. This, I tell myself, is real. This is where Ted and I used to lie on a carpet of grass on summer days when we were children, holding hands and looking up through the gaps in the treetop roof. There would be snippets of blue sky and white cloud, and a pink snow of cherry blossom.

Your son is the most real thing of all. He bends down to scoop up a handful of papery leaves. ‘Hold your hands out,’ he says. When I do, he showers my palms with deep red. ‘Fire leaves,’ he says.

I shut out the flower made of blood. I manage to smile.

He cups a light orange pile. ‘Sun leaves,’ he says, throwing them high into the air and letting them rain upon us.

He finds green leaves, too. ‘Spring leaves,’ he says.

I lean over to choose some yellow leaves from our cherry tree, then offer them to Luke. ‘What do you call these?’

‘Summer leaves.’ This is when he blurts it out. ‘I want to live with you, Auntie Ella.’

I stare into Luke’s clear blue eyes, which are exactly like yours. When I zero in on them I can almost fool myself that you are here. And it hits me again. I imagine your eyes, wide open in pain and fear, your lashes wet with tears.

For the last few years, my waking nightmares about you have mostly been dormant. It took me so long to be able to control them. But a spate of fresh headlines last week shattered the defences I’d built.

Unsolved Case – New Link Discovered Between Evil Jason Thorne and Missing Miranda.

Eight years ago, when Thorne was arrested for torturing and killing three women, there was speculation that you were one of his victims. We begged the police for information. They would neither confirm nor deny the rumours, just as they refused to comment on the stories about what he did to the women. Perhaps we were too eager to interpret this as a signal that the stories were empty tabloid air. We were desperate to know what happened, but we didn’t want it to be Jason Thorne.

Dad spoke to the police again a few days ago, prompted by the fresh headlines. Once more they would neither confirm nor deny. Once more, Mum and Dad grabbed at anything which would let them believe that there was never any connection between you and Thorne. But I think they are only pretending to believe this to keep me calm, and their strategy isn’t working.

The possibility that Thorne took you seems much more real this time round. Journalists are now claiming that there is telephone evidence of contact between the two of you. They are also saying that Thorne communicated with his victims before stalking and snatching them. If these things are true, the police must have known all along, but they have never admitted any of it.

‘Don’t you want me?’ Luke says.

Thoughts of Jason Thorne have no business anywhere near your son.

‘Luke,’ I start to say.

He hears that something is wrong, though I reassure myself that he cannot guess what it really is. He walks in circles, kicking more leaves. They have dried in the lull we have had since yesterday’s lunchtime rain. ‘You don’t,’ he says.

Luke , you say. Focus on Luke .

I swallow hard. ‘Of course I do. I have always wanted you.’

Don’t think about my eyes , you say .

But everything is a trigger. I study Luke’s dark hair, so like ours, and imagine yours in Thorne’s hands, a tangle of black silk twining around his fingers.

How many times do I need to tell you to change the picture?

I try again to change the picture, but there is little in Luke that doesn’t visually evoke you. I search his face, and I am struck by the honey tint of his skin. Luke can actually tan, while you and Mum and Dad and I burn crimson and then peel.

He must have got this from The Mystery Man. I once teased you by referring to Luke’s father in this way, hoping it would provoke you into slipping out something about him. But all it provoked was a glare that I thought would vaporise me on the spot.

‘Granny and Grandpa and I have always been happy that we share you,’ I say. ‘It’s what your mummy wanted. You know that. She even made a will to make sure you’d be safe with us. She thought of that while you were still in her tummy.’

Luke wrinkles his nose to exaggerate his disdain. ‘In her tummy? I’m ten, not two, Auntie Ella.’

‘Sorry. When she was pregnant.’

But why? It is not the first time this question has nagged me. What made you make that will then? Were you simply being responsible? Do lots of people finally make a will when they are expecting a child? Or was it something more? Did you have a fear of dying while giving birth, however low pregnancy-related mortality may be in this country? If you did, you would have told me. I think you must have had other reasons for an increased sense of vulnerability. Jason Thorne is not the only possible solution to the puzzle of what happened to you.