The Half Sister Read online

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, ‘I am so sorry.’ The river forgives her and the river believes her, it says so; this moment is one note and its song is a rhyme it sings from the source to the sea, made up of its stones and its strings.

  A small glass of wine or two moves the grandfather clock through another thirty minutes until it’s nearly time to go. From the hall she calls Michael, he’ll have to come with her to the doctor’s, maybe they’ll make him better as well. No reply. From the landing, she calls again. Steeling herself, she climbs the steep, narrow staircase. She rarely comes this far nowadays, it’s as though there’s a dragon at the top and the nursery is his lair, and she has to remind herself that he’s only a child, probably as frightened as she is, and when she reaches the top and peers into the room she notices how small, how thin, how quiet, how sad he looks, crawling round the room scratching at the edge where the wall meets the carpet, not a beast, more a baby rabbit in a trap. He is so engrossed in whatever it is he is doing that he doesn’t notice her at first. The nursery looks different: the circus animals are all gone. Apart from an old box, a pad of paper and some felt-tips, Sellotape, miscellaneous things like that, there is nothing left. With a great welling up of hope she steps into the room. Like me, she thinks, he has realised he is not well and he is moving out of his prison.

  ‘Have you lost something, Michael?’ she asks.

  Electrocuted, he springs to his feet.

  ‘Mikey,’ she says and smiles. ‘Mikey, it’s only me. I thought I could help. We need to go to my doctor’s appointment now, but afterwards I could help you find whatever it is you’ve lost.’

  Mikey runs towards her. She holds her arms wide as if to invite him in and he rushes into her embrace. She wraps her arms around him and he sort of falls against her and they stumble backwards into the nursery and fall to the floor. For a brief moment, they lie like that, him kneeling on top of her and when he climbs off, she sprawls on the carpet, catching her breath and laughing, and he is smiling too and then he slams the door and the last thing she hears is the turn of the key.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Mikey legs it. He stumbles, trips down the narrow stairs, falls onto the landing. Exhilaration powers him to his feet, eyes dart between the chessboard of a hall beneath him, the stairway up to the nursery above him and to his left, the wall where there was once a way through to the tower. His teeth bite his lip. He’s as stiff and as still as if he was playing musical statues. He listens like a hare listens.

  ‘Michael! Mikey? Can you hear me? I’m trapped and I need rescuing! Are you coming to get me?’

  It’s a silly sing-song voice like she’s two years old. If he could sing back, he would. No. You’re on your owny-oh. He’s locked her in, he can’t believe it, he’s locked her in. He didn’t plan to, it was just that she was in there and he was out here and it suddenly came to him that all he had to do to win was slam the door. So he did. Bang. Crash. Gone.

  ‘Michael! It’s a good joke, but you need to let me out now. It’s not funny. I’ll miss my appointment at the doctor’s.’

  But it is funny. It’s very funny. In his bedroom, he jumps up and down on the bed, waving his plastic sword over his head in triumph, and he proclaims his great victory to the circus animals who now understand why they had to move house. Actually, that isn’t quite true because when he did it he didn’t even know this was going to happen, but looking back, it all makes sense. He’s a fortune teller, or what was it Edmund called the sampler girl because she knew about the earthquake two hundred years before it happened? A prophet. He doesn’t know what the difference is and he doesn’t care, he’s probably both. When they got back from the wildlife park he moved the circus animals and got loads of biscuits and stuff from the kitchen, not because he was going to lock her up, but because he was going to lock himself in. He was planning to hide in his room and barricade the door with the chest of drawers like he did once before. At least until Edmund got back. That way he’d be safe, because he wasn’t safe with her; there was something cruel about her recently that he sensed. The only problem was he’d dropped Gorilla somewhere and that was why he was searching the nursery. Gorilla is very important, he is his bodyguard, and he needs one of those.

  When Edmund went away, to start with she was almost nice and he was almost sorry for her, because she cried when Edmund left just like he did, but then she did the worse thing she could ever have done and he is never ever going to forgive her for that, and if she’s the sort of person that tells lies just to get Solomon locked up then she must be the sort of person who could do anything. And lie about anything. He already knows what a liar she is, she’s made everyone think it was him to blame for what happened. People like that stop at nothing, that’s what his mum said except she wasn’t talking about Diana. Although he spent a lot of time thinking of punishments for her, mostly based on Lockdown, he hadn’t really come up with one that would work in the real world and now it’s just sort of happened without him even thinking. She’s in there locked up and he’s out here, in charge of everything.

  It was the trip to the wildlife park that did it. First of all, there was the nice woman who parked her car next to theirs; his aunt kept him away from people usually, but she couldn’t do that, not somewhere like the wildlife park, and that woman was very kind, helping her little girl get her arm through the sleeve of her yellow anorak, and for one moment he thought he had found a way to escape and because it was so close and so possible, he realised how much he wanted to get out. He could say to the woman, this is my aunt who is horrible to me, can I come home with you? But he no longer had any idea if he could still speak. Sometimes he stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom, opened his mouth into a little O to see if anything came out, but someone always stopped it, calling up the stairs, or saying it was teatime. They stole his words. Even if the words came back, would anyone believe them? Diana hasn’t actually done a crime against him. When they got back to the car, Diana was weird and the other family had left and he’d missed his chance.

  The animals at the park understood him. The orang-utan squatting on the dead branch on the other side of the netting, playing with a piece of fruit in his long fingers, his eyes like the pool under the bridge, reflecting everything back at him. If you were an animal, which animal would you be? They did that at school. He said he would be a monkey, not a zoo monkey, but a king of the jungle monkey, hanging by one elastic-band arm from the tallest trees and hooting to scare the snakes away. That was in another school in another town a long time ago and he hadn’t turned out to be that sort of monkey at all. They caught him and locked him up before he had a chance. In the reptile house, he didn’t know why, all the way through the black tunnel, she held his hand, past the alligators pretending to be logs and the chameleons pretending to be leaves and the lizards as false as plastic toys; everyone was pretending, his aunt was pretending to be nice, he was pretending to have fun. Past great tanks of shifting weed they went and the luminous fish said O to him from the other side of the glass, and then from one world to the next, they were out in the light and dropped hands. There was a lake on one side where she stood studying the swans and a cage on the other where he stood studying the wolves, the she-wolf in particular, imagining the fleas feeding on her skin beneath the lank grey hair. Her eyes were green and mean, it didn’t even really look like they were seeing you, but only the flesh beneath your T-shirt. Beyond the high fence, the other wolves were lying in the sun on the rocks and thin brown grass, but this wolf was on her own, prowling the length of the wire, teeth bared and biding her time. ‘This she-wolf has been temporarily separated from the pack because she attacked her cubs. She will be reintroduced when the cubs are a little older. Do not feed.’

  Since Edmund left, there was no fence left between him and his aunt.

  One last chance he had, when she was ill and he was making swans with the man outside the first aid room, who went on and on talking to him even though he never talked back. Mostly he’d h
oped she was so ill she would die and then Edmund would have to come back and look after him, or even if she was just very ill, someone else would be called, he thought they’d ring Grace. When the man called Donald came out with her, he was so sure that was what was going to happen, everyone must see that a woman like that couldn’t look after children, and then Donald said that he wasn’t to worry, his aunty was fine and they were going to buy some circus animals in the shop as a treat because he’d been so good. He burst into tears and everyone thought it was because he was happy. What if he’d said something then? Or even written something down? He didn’t have his whiteboard, but there were felt-tips and paper in the activity box they’d found for him. I don’t want to go home with her. That’s all he’d have to write. Tell an adult, that’s what they always said at school. But then they’d ask why and they wouldn’t believe him and she’d be even more angry and when they got back to Wynhope it would be even worse than ever before.

  In the shop it was like someone had turned the sound up, and for the first time for a long time Mikey was aware of everyone talking to each other. It looked so easy, like when you can’t ride a bike yet and someone else can and off they go, pedalling, not even wobbling. He was jealous and he was frightened, all mixed up.

  In the back of the car on the way home, she thought he was sleeping, but he wasn’t. His heart was beating very fast. You don’t get more than three get-outs on Lockdown and he’d lost of all them. They’d be home soon, she’d shut the front door, nobody would come to see them, she’d probably torture him and murder him because he’s seen on the news that’s what some people do to children, and then he’ll be dead and no one will know and his mum will be sad and Edmund will come home and she’ll probably have hidden his body so Edmund will think he’s run away and he won’t even come looking for him. On and on his mind careered into panic, gathering catastrophes as it went, and they clung to his fear so that the snowball grew until it was as cold and big as the whole world and bigger.

  ‘Michael, come back. I know you’re outside the door.’

  But here he is all in one piece. The winner. She’s shouting now. With his heart pounding, he wriggles out onto the landing like a commando then sits, leaning against the banisters, his knees pulled tight to his chest. She rattles the door handle then stops. Rattles and stops. In between, the house is very quiet, there are sounds, the ticking and tocking of the grandfather clock, the click of Monty’s nails on the hall floor, the thud of blood pumping round his skull, but the silence is louder than all of them. He waits. He jumps. A short attack on the lock, rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat. Monty pushes his hands away from his face and noses his cheeks, and Mikey feels the warm and stinky breath of another living thing. The dog lies down beside him, head on one side, also alert to the invisible performance being played out upstairs.

  ‘Michael!’

  Breaking free from the boy’s hand on his collar, Monty barks once, and getting no answer, turns a few circles and settles down again.

  ‘I know you’re out there with the dog. I can hear you.’

  Monty’s always been on his side.

  ‘Michael, I know things have been awful, but I’ve been ill. That’s what happened at the wildlife park. I’ve got an urgent appointment at the doctor’s.’ Her voice is coming down the stairs. ‘I’m so sorry, I’m sorry.’ A pause. ‘I need to go to the doctor.’

  Even Monty is worried, but it doesn’t last long and he isn’t taken in by it either, he rolls over onto his back as an invitation for Mikey to tickle him and as they rag and play she’s up there banging her head against the wall like he does sometimes, so they play a little harder and she bangs a little harder until she starts up again as if she’s pulled herself together.

  ‘I know you’re cross with me, but this isn’t the way to sort things out. You can’t just lock people up, you know. I’m not well, you can’t.’

  But you did. And I can. I have. Mikey is jiggling up and down, not just because he is triumphant, but because he really needs a pee and dares not leave the landing until he knows for sure that she can’t escape.

  ‘Let me out, Michael. I don’t want to call the police. You’d be in a lot of trouble and I don’t want that.’

  Her phone. On Lockdown that would be a fatal error. It’s on the hall table. Three messages. He’s learned her password by watching her fingers, that’s how people get your cash machine number and steal your money. The first message is something about winter fashion, the second is from the health club, reminding her to pay, and the last is from Spotless Angels. ‘Hope it’s OK, we will be at Wynhope at 10am on Friday, not 11. Hospital appointment.’ That’s tomorrow, which is ages away. He doesn’t know what will have happened by tomorrow, but he knows he doesn’t want them here, they come all the time and never notice anything. He texts back: ‘Please don’t come Friday. Thank you.’ Dancing on the spot, he waves the phone in the air like a scalped head. She will be really, really, really unhappy not to have her phone, and he’s really, really, really happy to have it because he can use it whenever he wants. As he puts it down, he spots the card with the word ‘Police’ on the top. Carefully he reads what it’s all about then feeds it into the shredder in Edmund’s study; they’re no good either, arresting the wrong person. He’s reached the next level. He can do anything in the world he wants to now she’s in there and he’s out here: his fishing rod is in the passage, he can go to the river for as long as he likes; the air gun is in the cupboard, he can just take that and kill things if he wants to. If he feels like it. Like this. He finds a packet of chocolate digestives and stuffs two of them in his mouth at the same time, gives one to the dog, stuffs another two into his jeans pocket. What else? Anything. Everything. Once he’s certain she can’t break out. Outside, he takes the long way round via the stables flat so he ends up hiding behind the swing tree. From there he can spy on the nursery. One front window is open, her head is poking out, her hands around the metal struts, and he remembers Gorilla, poor Gorilla. There are no bars on the windows on the other side, perhaps Gorilla could parachute his way to freedom. Picking at the bark of the tree, he waits and he watches. She must be thinking about calling out, but they both know nobody will hear her from there and nobody will come up the drive and rescue her, because nobody visits Wynhope any more, she’s driven them all away. That’s what he heard Edmund say once: ‘You’ve driven everyone away.’

  The best Greek myth in the book Edmund bought for him is the one about Cyclops. He can be like Odysseus and call himself ‘Nobody’, then when all the people ask Diana who locked you up in the attic, she will say ‘Nobody’ and they’ll all say you’ve only got yourself to blame. This is boring. On television when police do surveillance, they have partners who sit in the car with them and smoke cigarettes, then one of them usually nips off for a burger just when the murderer turns up, but here it’s just him on the job, except for Monty who appears at the back door, sniffs, then charges over the lawn wagging his tail and giving away his hiding place.

  ‘Michael, I can see you there. Come up here now. The game’s over now. It’s not funny . . . please,’ she screams.

  In reply, he dances on the lawn in front of her like he’s just won something huge and everyone is cheering and taking photographs of him and wanting interviews, then he runs for cover into the kitchen, laughing so hard he finds he cannot stop and he’s not so far from crying. Having collapsed on the sofa, he turns on the television and what’s on is a programme about what you can find in your attic. One woman is talking about jigsaws, how people don’t realise that some of them are valuable and she shows an Elvis jigsaw, just like theirs. You have to have all the pieces for it to be worth anything. Their jigsaw was worth something. If Sarah had brought it back to him then he could have finished it, from the sparkly suit all the way down to the guitar in the bottom left-hand corner. People thought Elvis was dead but he probably isn’t. Tears stream down his face. He suddenly feels so lonely that he finds himself to be like a jigsaw, sliding slow
ly to the floor and cracking into pieces – legs, arms, heart, head, brain, voice, falling apart. How he will never sit with her again to put the pieces together. How there will never be anyone to sit with him again. Not like that. Not like this. Not like anything. He’s on his own.

  The ring of Diana’s mobile phone stirs him. Rubbing his eyes, wiping his snotty nose on the bottom of his T-shirt, it takes a few seconds to orientate himself in the sitting room, now lit only by random flickers from the television. He remembers what he’s done. The curtains are open, but it’s dark outside and the room is full of indoor shadows. Monty will know if she’s out there, but the dog lazily puts a paw up on his knee and growls in a way that means it’s past supper time. He loves this dog. The text message on her mobile is only from the cleaners.

  ‘No problem. Thx for letting us know. We will come again next week.’

  Having pulled the curtains so the night can’t get in, Mikey puts on the lamp, turns on the chandelier in the hall, goes to each and every room, even to the drawing room, and lights up the house like Christmas, so the burglars and the crows will see someone’s home, and then he creeps up the stairs and holds his breath. She’s still in there. He’ll have to let her out soon, at least before bedtime, but maybe not yet. The truth is he doesn’t know quite what will happen if he lets her out.

  Supper is everything he likes, except none of it tastes quite as good as he hoped. Afterwards, Mikey is brave enough to open the back door just a fraction to let the dog out. He leaps into the evening, barking at the place where the badger crosses the lawn. Monty’s never scared of anything except for thunder, it must remind him of the earthquake. What if there’s another earthquake? What if the house falls down? What if he is crushed and nobody finds him? The what ifs are running down the hill in his brain faster and faster, their arms waving, their legs buckling unable to stop.