Laura Elliot - The Lost Sister

A button on the control panel signals an emergency call.

‘Cathy, someone is trying to get through. It’s one of our busiest nights. Hold the line a moment.’

Without waiting for her sister to reply, she clicks into the incoming call. Every year Halloween brings them out of the woodwork, the crazies and the cruel, and the sanctuary crew are working round the clock to rescue injured animals. A stray pony has been spotted on wasteland near Naas, burns on its belly, a torn ear, one eye completely closed. The caller–she sounds young, probably a teenager whose night has turned sour–begins to cry. Rebecca asks for details of the location and radios her emergency team with the information. The shock of Cathy’s call is beginning to subside, yet it seems unreal, this mature voice with its taut inflections ringing out of the blue.

‘Rebecca…?’

Cathy’s hesitancy snaps her back to the present. ‘I’m listening. You want me to go to your wedding.’

‘I’m hoping you will. We need closure, Rebecca.’

‘And how do you suggest we achieve closure?’ Rebecca clicks her fingers, an audible snap carried across continents. ‘Draw a line through the past and pretend it never happened?’

‘We can’t wipe out the past but we can make peace with it.’

‘You really believe it’s that easy?’

‘Of course I don’t think it’s easy. But we have to begin somewhere. It’s taken me a long time to reach this point. How could I look for forgiveness from anyone else until I had the courage to absolve myself?’

‘Is that what you want from me, Cathy? Absolution?’ She imagines Cathy squirming away from her questions, as she did so often in the past, settling her face into a hard white mask of defiance.

‘Not absolution, Rebecca. I want you to come to Havenswalk to meet my son.’

Can silence echo, Rebecca wonders. Can it crash so heavily that all she hears is the echo…son…son…son…reverberating?

‘Your son?’

‘Yes. His name is Conor.’

‘Conor?’

‘Conor Lambert.’

‘What age is he?’

Cathy hesitates, the briefest of pauses, but long enough for Rebecca to know the answer. ‘He’ll be fifteen in December.’

‘Fifteen?’ Why on earth does she keep repeating her sister’s words?

‘You lied to us!’

‘At the time I believed…it seemed better that way. You wouldn’t worry so much—’

‘Worry? What do you know about our worries…our fears?’ Memories of their last encounter press like a claustrophobic band against Rebecca’s forehead. She winces and tightens her grip on the receiver. ‘Why did you never mention him in your cards?’

‘Would you have wanted to know?’

‘He’s my nephew, Cathy. Of course I would have wanted to know of his existence. You deliberately deceived us.’

‘I was so confused—’

‘Your son?’ Rebecca harshly interrupts her. ‘Who does he look like?’

‘His personality reminds me of Julie.’ Cathy swallows, an audible gulp, as if her throat has contracted with nerves, then forces a laugh. ‘A bit wild, like all lads his age, and into his music in a big way. He wants to be a vet when he’s older so you’re there too, Rebecca. I guess he resembles all of you in little ways. Most of all, Conor is uniquely himself. He’s anxious to meet his aunts. Please come and visit us. I’ll put you up in the chalets so it’ll only cost you the plane fare.’

‘No…I can’t. It’s nothing to do with the cost. It’s just…did you really expect it to be that easy?’

‘I didn’t expect anything. I just hoped—’

‘I’m sorry…sorry…it’s too soon. I’m not able to handle this at the moment. I’m sure the others…Do you have Julie’s number? Lauren’s in Spain; I can give you her mobile.’

‘I have their numbers. I wanted to speak to you first. Oh, Becks—’

Headlights beam through the darkness: the sanctuary crew, arriving with the latest victims of the night’s excesses.

‘I have to go, Cathy. Yes, give me your number. I’ll ring…of course I’ll ring. Goodbye…goodbye.’

Rebecca hurries to help Lulu May, the sanctuary manager, to calm an injured horse whose hoofs flail dangerously when they lead him down the ramp. Her life has moved on a long way from bobbing apples and dipping for pennies.

The sanctuary is quiet when she finishes her shift; the new arrivals sedated and out of pain. Leaves squelch under her feet as she walks across the field towards her cottage. The dank earth releases the smell of the dying year. She is facing into a grey Irish winter but spring is underway in New Zealand. A time of renewal, Cathy said. A time for closure.

She opens her cottage door. Her legs are leaden, her eyes gritty from tiredness. She switches on her computer. Amazing to think the information she needed about her youngest sister’s whereabouts had been only a finger-tap away. All that was missing was the key word–Havenswalk.

Havenswalk does indeed look like a walk in heaven. A cluster of wooden Alpine-style chalets encircle a central two-storey building where guests gather to eat, meditate and practise yoga. Outside, they soak in hot tubs under star-lit skies, relax under umbrellas, loll by a swimming pool that appears to have been hollowed from a rock. Accompanied by the haunting strains of panpipes, Havenswalk promises Serenity, Tranquillity, Spiritual Harmony, Empowerment, Healing Energy, Emotional Balance.

Cathy’s photograph smiles from the Home Page. Her eyes are bluer than Rebecca remembers, as blue as a painted icon. No longer wasted behind thick black eyeliner but staring outwards in an open, welcoming gaze. Her crimped Kate Bush hair has been tamed and replaced by a sleek black plait. From Goth to guru in little more than fifteen years. How has such a transformation occurred?

Teabag slithers from underneath an armchair and rubs against her ankles, demanding attention. Rebecca lifts the cat, cradles him against her neck. She stands by the window and watches the sun lift above the fields. Time is a thief, she thinks, gilding sorrow, stealing the intensity of loss and allowing people to move on with their lives. But all it takes is a trigger: a song, a smell, a juggernaut flashing past–or a forgotten voice echoing from another time–and memory becomes a flailing thing, capable of shattering rock.

The rain has ceased. Only tears remain on the sodden branches, glistening like pearls in the milky morning light.

Name–Mary Green

Occupation Social worker

Intention–To break up our family

Obstacle to achieving her goal–Me!

Duration of visit–2 hrs

Mary Green doesn’t like it when I make notes but I’m not supposed to object when she does the same. Was she trained to ask questions then wait silently, however long it takes, for me to stumble into her trap? Or did she pick up the trick when she started dealing with ‘dysfunctional’ families? She makes ‘orphans’ sound like a disease and ‘Care’ sound like the Promised Land.

Cathy has nits in her hair…so what? Everyone in her class has them. It’s called an infestation. Julie bunks off school. Her and half of the student population, but when she does it, it’s seen like a crisis for the State. Lauren…well, there’s the rub…I don’t have any easy answers but she’s not going anywhere and if they try to take her away they’ll do so over my dead body. Mary Green says I’m overwrought, hysterical, too young and inexperienced. She forgets to include ‘grieving’.

We’re drowning in tears. It’s awful. Julie is the loudest. She’s loudest at everything and her grief is terrible to hear. Crying with her face in the cushions or against Paul’s chest, crying over the slightest thing, and I want to scream at her to stop…stop…stop!! but I can’t because it only makes her cry louder and call me a heartless cow.