The Half Sister Read online

  ‘Hello, zebra, hello, horses, hello, cars, you’re all free to come out now.’

  How happy they must be to hear him talking to them. He arranges his circus animals in a beautiful spiral, starting with a small circle of the monkeys and the clowns and working outwards with the lions and the tigers and the tanks. Soon Gorilla will be back in the middle of the circle. Even some of the broken people are allowed to join in. He plays for a long time. The circus animals carry out raids and acts of great daring and come home safe at night to a hero’s welcome, until they’re tired out and he lays them on their sides to sleep and he curls up beside them on the floor.

  ‘Goodnight, Monty, goodnight, circus animals.’ He leaves the light on, but closes his eyes. It has been a long, long, long day. ‘Goodnight, Monty. Goodnight, Mummy. Goodnight, Mikey.’

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  It is a windy, back-to-school sort of morning when you wear long trousers and a sweatshirt and winter shoes which are too big and too heavy and it feels like a new start. Mikey lies on the floor and cries and cries. He hurls his circus animals at the wall and sucks his duvet and his stomach heaves until, exhausted, he sleeps again. Later, his head is heavy, and he knows the jeans he has slept in are damp and cold. He doesn’t know what time it is. Sitting up in bed, he writes a timetable because the circus animals are getting bored and badly behaved.

  Get up

  Eat breakfast

  10 o’clock Maths

  11 o’clock Break

  11.20 English

  And so on. It doesn’t tell him what time it is, but it does tell him to start the day. He reads it out loud just to check he can, but he doesn’t stick to it because the grandfather clock tells him it’s already later than when it was meant to begin. Instead, downstairs, he sits at the piano in the lonely room and presses middle C once and sings a bit, but the notes are too lonely and the black notes sadder still, so he closes the lid and moves to the study and logs on to the computer instead, but even Lockdown fails to hold his attention. Aimlessly he tries Facebook. He wasn’t allowed an account and when he tries to log on as his mum, he finds she’s disappeared. Everything that was on her page, her photos with him and Solomon and everything she ever was, gone. He would have liked to have sent her a message, to have said I miss you and maybe asked her what to do now he was in a muddle, but she’s gone, even from Facebook, gone.

  Ali is still on there – even though it’s illegal, his brother signed up for him – but they chose a stupid picture of him with his bike and it’s obvious he’s not thirteen. Mikey touches the picture. Ali is still on Facebook, so Ali is out there somewhere. He posts a message.

  Hello. It’s me Mikey.

  He waits in a sort of stupor. Eventually, he notices a reply has been posted.

  Hello Mikey. Are you coming back to school?

  Four people have liked it.

  Someone whose name he does not recognise has added another message.

  I thought Mikey S was dead.

  Four people have liked that as well. Maybe the same four people.

  Help

  Mikey looks at the word. Just one word. Just one click. It would all be over. Help what? What could he possibly say? No one believes what they read on the internet. Even if they did believe it, who knows what might happen next? There are horrible people online who read your messages and they would know he was on his own and come to Wynhope. Burglars or murderers or Paul could track him down and get him locked up, and now his mum’s dead there’s no one to visit him in prison.

  Here might be a horrible place to be, but at least he knows it well.

  The backspace key deletes the four letters. X closes the page. It’s probably time for play, even if he hasn’t done the work.

  There’s a dry, cold wind bending the poplar trees and it slams the door behind him. Some green leaves have been tugged from the trees, there are twigs, even little branches on the lawn. Hercules is playing footie with a ball which has been blown across the garden and landed on the pond. It’s Monty who finds the next note, hooked on the thorns of the last yellow rose. Monty must be able to smell her. Right there and then he reads it, shivering from the cold and the not understanding it, not just the tricky words or the scribbly handwriting or the long sentences, but what it all means. The account is a waterfall, it takes away his breath. He has no sense of which way he is facing or what it is that is pulling him down, he can no longer even see light at the surface.

  Dear Michael,

  It is dark and probably the middle of the night, but I have a very clear mind, it’s important you know that. There is no point in writing an account of the whole thing – there’s only one bit that needs explaining. I did want to tell people what happened, but the longer I left it, the harder it was and no one’s ever believed what I say anyway. But this is the whole thing.

  It’s very long, this note. It doesn’t need to be, all she needs to write is ‘I did it’. She knows he’s found the key, so his voice was working after all and she was listening. There’s a lot of stuff about her being a liar, but he knows that already. He skips the weird bits which don’t make sense about Chinese whispers and candyfloss and goes instinctively to the bit that really matters and that’s usually at the end. He skims for the important words like he’s been taught to at school. I. Kill. Mother.

  This is the truth.

  I didn’t mean to kill your mother, I just wanted her to know what it felt like when your last chance of rescue is gone. To scream and for nobody to listen. It was an opportunity, that’s all, and I took it. One moment. I had the key. I can’t describe it properly, it was like I mattered. It was almost worth it but nothing is ever over and done with.

  Diana

  The words themselves are tricky, but on some deeply instinctive level Mikey understands Diana completely. It isn’t so different as to how he felt: the slam of the door, the turn of the key, the tumbling down the nursery stairs, that feeling in his body when he locked her in. He relives it now for a reason he does not comprehend, deep down, stirring inside, the pulse, the push, the scream of pleasure, the fall on your back and a laughing-crying-spinning sort of excited that makes you grow bigger and bigger until you think you’ll burst. She’s telling the truth. You could do anything for a feeling like that.

  It doesn’t last, though. She’s a grown-up, she should have known it would all end in tears. It has all ended in tears.

  How different it might have felt if there was someone else to show this to. It’s like unwrapping a parcel, layers and layers of paper which won’t tear and string tied up in tight knots and your fingernails are bitten down to the skin, then reaching the middle and it’s something much heavier than you thought at first, you can’t even really make out what it is, don’t even know whether to be pleased or disappointed. If there was someone else to say it works like this and here are the instructions and this is where you put the battery, it might be different.

  Up until now he’s been the only one who knows for sure that it wasn’t him who killed his mum, and Diana blamed him just to get out of it herself. Up until now, he didn’t know why she did it, but he’s not sure how important that is any longer. What matters is that he has her letter and the key and proof and people will have to believe him.

  This account is his prize, but he doesn’t feel like a winner or a loser; he feels a sort of nothing, or at least something which he doesn’t have the word for. It’s not satisfaction, not triumph, not sadness, not guilt.

  The adrenaline ebbs away. He is empty. On the wet grass, surrounded by nothingness, motionless, a tiny amount of energy maintains his sitting position and keeps his head on top of his neck, but otherwise the muscles in his face slowly sag, his eyes are open but blank. He’s disappearing back into the earth, becoming nothing. Exhausted, in the beautiful garden in the autumn morning, he lets go.

  The dog is worrying his body, licking his face. He’s so stiff and cold. Bewildered, as he wakes up clutching the thing he’s been waiting for all this time, M
ikey wonders what he has won and what it means for what’s next. Does her note actually change anything? He’s still alone. His mum’s still dead. He cannot name a single person who has stayed around, except maybe Edmund, and when he finds out he’ll probably take her side. When people find out, they won’t bother about what she’s done, all they’ll think about is what he’s done. Social services will take him away from Edmund, even if Edmund doesn’t send him away. He’s spoiled everything for everyone. Paul was right: he’s nothing but trouble. Diana’s right: he’s a monster. Grace and John pretended, but even they’ve given up on him. It’s all his fault. What will his mum think of the terrible things he’s done? If she didn’t want him to do terrible things, she shouldn’t have died. This is all her fault.

  There is no other choice but to go. There will be room for him to take just a few of the circus animals in his rucksack, although he doesn’t know how he’ll choose and he knows that the most important one is still locked in the nursery with her. Poor Gorilla, he never did anything to deserve this. Since Solomon tried to find him, he’ll try to find Solomon, even if that means going to Solomon’s country which is in Africa. He read a book once about a boy who escaped from a prison and walked all the way across Europe to find his mum and when he reached her house, she opened the front door and recognised him straight away, even though she hadn’t seen him for years and years and they probably didn’t have photos in the war. She loved him straight away. All the boy said was his name.

  I am Mikey.

  The dog places its head on his knee. He can’t take Monty because Edmund loves Monty even more than he does. Mikey sobs noisily into the dog’s warm, familiar fur until finally Monty makes him get up and go into the house and get warm by the Aga. There’s nothing else for him in the kitchen, food is no longer of interest; in the sitting room the television is always on because he leaves it that way for the company, but the words and pictures blare over him. He wanders aimlessly into the morning room and spins the globe until he finds England, then all the places Edmund has showed him: Mongolia, Africa, Antigua, all the way round there and back to here again. On the wall is an old map which has Wynhope at the centre of everything. Back to the globe, Mikey sets it spinning violently on its axis and leaves it blurring the world as he moves on into the study. He opens a Word document to write something to someone, but ends up with his finger pressed down on the X; on and on it runs over the lines and back again, a black river of love.

  There is one thing he can write. Edmund mustn’t come in with his suitcase and fishing rod and just find Diana, who might be dangerous by then or worse, and get all upset on his own with no one to help him, so Mikey types out another of his giant notes.

  STOP!

  DO NOT GO ANY FURTHER WITHOUT READING

  THIS NOTE.

  CALL AN AMBULANCE.

  His mum wrote exactly that once and put it on the bathroom door, but Paul took it down and everyone just thought she’d slipped in the shower, even though Mikey knew that wasn’t the truth. Perhaps if you say you want to die, you do eventually. He could try that, say ‘I want to die’ out loud and close his eyes and wait. Print. Shut down.

  Maybe it would be better to take her phone and when he’s far enough way he can tell the police and they’ll come and then Edmund won’t have to be the one.

  The house is completely quiet.

  The only person left now to tell is Diana.

  Having changed out of his smelly clothes, Mikey brushes his hair and cleans his teeth. He puts Diana’s final letter in the circus animals’ box with the others; he’ll take them with him when he goes as proof. The key to the nursery must go with the note for Edmund, he’ll leave it on the stairs and that will be the last thing he ever does at Wynhope. In the hall, he stands with one foot on a black square, one foot on a white square, listening to his friend the clock ticking out the time. He doesn’t want to leave, this foreign palace has become his home. Wynhope is a lovely house, it isn’t to blame for what happened, it’s been quite kind to him and might even be sad to see him go, but it’ll probably get on better when he’s gone. Will the bronze boy miss him or notice he’s left? Nobody even mentions the tower any longer.

  Today the tears do not seem to stop. Everything he does, thinks, sees, feels, smells brings a welling up and spilling over of grief from somewhere very far down, even the thought of saying goodbye to Diana is twisting him inside out. He loves Wynhope, he loves Monty, he loves Edmund. Step by step he creeps up the stairs and stands outside the nursery door for the last time. She must know he’s there, she’s developed some sort of sixth sense, but there’s no banging or shouting. He clears the leftover crying from his throat.

  ‘Hello,’ he begins. ‘It’s me, Mikey. Michael.’ It doesn’t even sound like his voice, it’s coming from the wrong part of him. Perhaps she’s asleep. ‘I’ve got a message for you. Can you hear me?’

  Now she’s being annoying, probably regretting writing her account and wondering how she can get it back off him. He hammers loudly on the door. ‘I know you’re in there, so you have to listen to me. I got what you wrote and I read it.’ His mum used to say how you feel better if you say sorry. ‘Maybe you’ll feel better now you’ve said what you did.’ But she didn’t say she was sorry, did she? Not once in her writing did she say she was sorry and he’s not going to say sorry either. Never let the sun go down on a quarrel, Mum said, but that’s what has happened ever since coming here, the sun getting up and going down, up and down, up and down, day after day, and no one ever saying sorry, so everything has gone wrong and his mum is dead and he has nowhere left to go.

  ‘You’re a witch. The police will put you in prison when they know. I’m going to call them. They’ll lock you up. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.’

  Spinning, round and round in circles, dizzier and dizzier, he can’t stop even if he wants to and if he giggles he’ll never stop giggling and if he cries he’ll never stop crying and the only way to stop it is to fling yourself on the ground and batter the unmoving earth until it remembers you’re still there and that is what he does, banging his head against the wall and banging against the wall and banging the wall, until the pain makes the wall go away and he is free.

  There’s still no reaction from the nursery.

  ‘I’m going now. I’m not coming back. I’m never ever coming back to your horrible house because I hate you. I’ve left a note.’

  Nothing.

  ‘I hate you.’

  Nothing.

  ‘Hate, hate, hate, hate’ in time to his thumping on the door, as if it’s he who is locked away, not her. It’s like teasing someone who doesn’t rise to the bait, all you can do is say more and more horrible things until they crack.

  ‘You’re not even my aunty. You’re only half an aunt.’

  And if that doesn’t work, you say lies if you have to.

  ‘Oh, and by the way, Edmund left a message on your phone. He’s not coming back either. He’s going to live in Mongolia for ever with the swan goose and the horses and go fishing, and he’s invited me so I don’t know what will happen to you, locked up here all on your owny-o. I expect you’ll die.’ He kicks the door and screams. ‘Everybody dies.’

  Now the silence is beyond understanding. Mikey begins to wonder what has happened behind the door. He can just run away anyway, but never to know? Monty whining on the landing gives him an idea; he’ll see what the dog thinks has happened.

  ‘Come on, come here.’

  The dog bounds up the stairs, barks, goes straight back down again, back up the stairs and back down again.

  ‘Don’t be so stupid, Monty.’ He does what the police do on the telly. ‘Who’s there? Who’s in there?’ he asks, pointing to the crack beneath the door.

  But Monty isn’t interested in the nursery. He doesn’t scratch at the door or snuffle underneath it or anything like a proper sniffer dog would do, he wriggles against the boy’s grasp and finally frees himself by slipping his collar and then he’s back down on the
landing, barking. When Mikey goes down to the landing, the dog runs down to the hall, when he gets to the hall, the dog runs out into the garden. Enough. Picking up Edmund’s cricket bat from the stand in the hall, he returns to the nursery.

  ‘I’m going to see if you’re all right,’ he declares to the emptiness. ‘But if you attack me, I’ll lock it again and I’m armed. Are you ready? Shall I count down from three?’

  Nothing.

  ‘Three . . . two . . . one.’

  How loud it is, that slight sticking, click of the key. When you get through to the next level on Lockdown, they’re always hiding behind the door and you go in with your gun in two hands, sweeping the room, watching your back. The door swings away from him, far wider than he intended, and he steps into the nursery. There’s something awful about doing that, as if the room has nothing on. He whirls the bat against the unseen demons of the place, but finds only air.

  She’s not there.

  One orange felt-tip, a pad of paper, a roll of Sellotape and a set of instructions on the floor, but she’s not there.

  It smells of her, but she’s not there.

  The nursery is empty.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Fitted television showing CNN, fitted fridge with minibar, fitted cupboard, fitted hangers in the wardrobe. The blinds filter the neon lights of Ulaanbaatar, flickering an unintelligible code onto the king-size bed. Edmund is finding it difficult to sleep. After days of feeling light like water, concerned with nothing more nor less than the drift of the fly and the tug on the line, after nights of sleeping as deep as the pools he waded, this overnight stopover before his last four days out in the wilderness is deeply depressing for him. His reluctance to return to the UK stirs like sickness in his stomach. Compared to the calm monasteries in the hills and the fast-flowing waters of the Eg-Uur valley, the printout of his life from the esteemed City of London is stained with the spilled wine and greasy fingers of a thousand deals; there’s no such thing as a free lunch, the cost lies hidden behind the number of zeros on the end of the bill and cannot be offset against tax, only against some final accounting procedure, the rules of which are unclear even to priests. He is certain he will be judged and found wanting. Guilt. For a few days after his father’s suicide, people – the press, society, the police – wondered if he killed himself out of guilt because guilt seemed to be the most obvious reason to make his lordship take a shotgun to his head in the bottom of a tower in the east wing of his country house. His finances, dealings with his staff, his private sexual behaviour were all examined and found to be beyond reproach; his father lived an exemplary life, except perhaps in the manner of his leaving it. It was not out of guilt, but out of love that his father killed himself: he loved his wife too much. In comparison, in all manner of ways, Edmund reflects that he has been an incompetent lover, not once, but three times over, if he includes Diana.