The Half Sister Read online

  ‘You’ll fuse the house. Then what will we do?’

  Then what will we do.

  On and off, on and off clicks the switch.

  ‘You’ll only make things worse.’

  She has nothing to offer him, no bribe big enough, no threat now that will count.

  Finally, he gives up, and she can just make out his shape curled like an unlucky black cat in the other armchair. He is very small.

  ‘Do you want something?’ she asks.

  He doesn’t reply.

  There must be something. Her hands are so cold as she fumbles around the kitchen, feels the contents of the cupboards one by one: bleach, a mousetrap, a packet of something, maybe ant killer, it’s too dark to read the small print. No buzz of the fridge. No radio on in the bathroom. The boy kicks his foot against the edge of the armchair. Sucks his thumb. He passes close to her as he makes for the door and even the air around her changes.

  ‘You must wait here. There’s nothing to do but wait.’ Her right hand reaches out towards him to hold him, but falls back to her side, paralysed by its history.

  The door opens and a hint of daylight and the sour smell of smouldering rubble filters into the room. John and Grace bring with them a refugee survival kit: coat and boots for Diana; for Mikey, a terrible old anorak one of the grandchildren left at the lodge; blankets, an emergency camping light, some biscuits and a flask of tea; and the dog, unharmed. Monty brings not only some sense of hope and energy into the unlit, sterile flat, but the instinctive ability to sense distress. He goes straight to the boy, places his paw on his knee and waits patiently for a response.

  The couple are full of updates. They’re not sure how long the emergency services will be, it took a while to get through, there were three missed calls from Sir Edmund but they had to leave a message when they rang back, oh, and they had a quick listen to the local radio in the car, there’s minor damage in Twycombe, a few casualties taken to the Royal Infirmary, but nothing too awful. Except here. Suddenly, Grace bursts into tears and John is saying not to worry, he’s sure the family are all right and it’s just the shock making her get everything out of proportion. The camping light flares and their faces leer out of the half-light like skulls in the paintings Edmund took Diana to see in Amsterdam. She is familiar with the trials and tribulations of the housekeeper’s family, the daughter Naomi, the grandchildren, Liam and Louisa; she used to be treated to a regular update like a soap opera and shown endless pictures of them on family holidays, usually somewhere very hot. She doesn’t have any photos like that, never will. She doesn’t need a photo of Liam in his skimpy trunks; she knows him well enough.

  A mobile beeps a message alert.

  ‘They’re safe,’ says Grace. ‘Oh no, they’re still waiting to hear from Liam. He was out clubbing and hasn’t come home. What if something’s happened to him?’

  What if, Diana wonders, that would be something. Her hand goes to play with her necklace, but she’s forgotten that she might as well be naked, so she twists her wedding ring instead and asks to borrow John’s phone to try Edmund again.

  ‘All his numbers are in there in case of emergencies at Wynhope,’ says John, ‘and I think you can call this an emergency.’ He waits. ‘No luck? He’s probably driving.’

  Diana hands the phone back to her housekeeper.

  Grace’s fingers are fumbling as she replies to her daughter’s texts. ‘It makes you realise,’ she says, ‘in the end family’s all there is.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Everything is unreal, from the earthquake itself to this nighttime dash down the deserted dual carriageway. The whole thing is like a book or a film, and Edmund permits himself the same range of arm’s length emotions as he might feel in the cinema – suspense, fear, impending catastrophe – but not really buying into the story at all. Around him, lights form patterns, elegantly lining the banks of the Thames, swarming in clusters around the edges of the parks, and beside him now, the harsh spotlights of the prison. Funny to think that Valerie’s boyfriend is locked up behind walls as tall as these. What did Diana tell him, that the man was banged up for assaulting a policeman or something like that? He’s inside and I’m out here free as a bird. Truth be told, he is a bundle of nerves. The prison disappears from view; Edmund has known his fair share of white-collar criminals, none of them convicted of anything.

  On his journey, there is no evidence of a disaster. The uniform rows of unlit houses, the brake lights on the motorway, the snouts of the woods nibbling at the suburbs, all is as it should be, and Edmund wonders if he’s overreacted, if in fact everyone’s overreacted. The environment agency and the media are always making mountains out of molehills, red weather alerts for a bit of drizzle, flood alerts for the odd puddle or two. In one of the villages about eight miles from home, a policeman flags him to slow down and he overtakes a fire engine, notices the fluorescent yellow jackets and the acrid smell of smoke seeping into the car, but statistically there could be a fire any night of the year; it doesn’t mean anything. Nevertheless, Edmund takes risks on the narrow country road, holding the bends tight and fast, and he makes it to the village in under an hour and a half from the flat, arrives at the lodge, through the gates, up the drive and he is home. As he gets out of the car, he hears the tentative dawn chorus lifting the garden.

  Through the flat grey light, which distorts perspective and which you only ever get just before sunrise, Diana is coming down the drive towards him, disordered, lumbering like a crazy woman in a Barbour over a nightdress and someone else’s wellington boots and then she is close up and with him, tying him in a tight knot. The only reason he is not overwhelmed with tears of relief at still having Diana is because he has not allowed himself to feel the fear of losing her. It is when he spots Monty bounding towards him that his eyes smart, he releases his wife and falls to his knees.

  ‘There you are, you old scoundrel, what would I have done without you?’ His smile acknowledges what is written on Diana’s face. ‘And you, Di. I was so worried about you too.’

  As they round the corner from the garages, he sees Wynhope as it exists in his mind, as it was for his father and the generations before him; the immaculate lawn mown once already this year in perfect concentric circles around the lily pond, and his friend, the bronze boy, two rabbits running from the flowerbed which lines the orchard wall, the front door open, welcoming him home. Then he registers the house as it is. He brings the two together, holding up separate postcards of the same place, before and after the war, or something like that.

  ‘I thought they said on the news it was just a tremor. What’s happened? How did it happen?’ But then his questions are overtaken with laughter, a sort of inarticulate hysteria. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t stop,’ and they come again, unstoppable soundless cramps from deep within him. ‘I can’t believe the tower’s finally gone. This is what’s meant by an act of God.’ He wipes his eyes, red from dust and crying. ‘God just comes along and does what I never dared do.’

  Diana doesn’t understand, he can see that, but it is too hard to explain. He tries to pull himself together. ‘All these years, my father and that bloody tower. God knows how much I’ve hated it and, oh, I don’t know, all the talk and plans about pulling it down which never materialised because I never quite had the guts, and now – look at it – just sky. Nothing but sky.’ Somewhere in that heap is his sampler, which he has been able to recite off by heart since he was a boy. ‘Rase it, rase it,’ he quotes to Diana, ‘even to the foundation thereof. Little Edith was a prophet after all.’

  Too late he realises how insensitive he is being; of course Diana is going to be devastated by the collapse of the tower, not to mention the fact that this has pretty much buried the pool, literally and metaphorically. He is sorry, she must be so disappointed, having spent all that time and effort decorating the place, putting her very own mark on Wynhope, that’s what she said, but he’ll find her another little project, he promises, and if he’s honest, he could never really
have fallen in love with the tower, however spectacular the curtains. It was always going to take something more fundamental than a new coat of paint to put it right. The sun is rising directly behind the ruin, rays of light colour the drifting dust, and he is struck by its beauty, a Turner watercolour, Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey, a place where the past is no longer a series of impenetrable walls and locked doors, but a softer world, a portal to a different sort of future.

  He feels a little shaky himself. ‘It’s quite ethereal in its own way, isn’t it?’

  Diana is no longer listening, she is stumbling away from him towards the coach house.

  ‘We went to my mother’s funeral,’ she hisses as she shakes herself free from him, ‘or have you forgotten?’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten, everything got so topsy-turvy. I just forgot they were staying, that’s all. I’m sorry. Where are they?’

  ‘They aren’t anywhere. The boy is in the flat. And Valerie, my half-sister in case you’ve forgotten, was sleeping in there.’ Diana flicks her head towards what is left of the tower.

  An eye for an eye. He might have known the tower would not give up that easily, and the house standing there smirking with its hands on hips. How angry he is with Diana, that she wanted a pool, because it must be something to do with the pool, that she has been here and allowed this to happen, and above all, that there is a boy, another boy with a body in the tower and a future to be faced all alone. John comes out from the flat to meet him. Edmund feels keenly his white-collared impotence as his handyman talks about tractors and ropes and heavy lifting gear. In the end, though, it is clear that any rescue attempt would not only be futile, but dangerous, and nothing can really be done until the emergency services arrive. As Edmund steels himself to go into the coach house, he acknowledges to himself that he’d rather be tearing at stones than talking to orphans and that both were probably equally ineffective.

  Now he hates me. Diana feels it like the moment the wind gets up from the beach and smashes the glasses on the terrace and the summer holiday is over. Maybe he’ll always hate me for this moment. He married me because what I brought was order, agreement, no history, no future. And now it’s all about the dead, again. Off he goes, running after the boy. That’s what it will be like, everyone worried about the child as if childhood itself is a reason. The boy will talk, no one will understand her part, no one will worry about the fact that she has lost a mother and a sister in the space of a week, but then perhaps she can tell them everything and she means everything. She can say let me start at the beginning, let me tell you the whole story. Studying the scene from the doorway, Diana makes out a still life in a dim light of a darker sort than those museum paintings: Mr and Mrs H peering out of the window waiting for the emergency services, where are they, what’s taking so long, Michael and the dog both hiding under the table, and great big scribbles in blue biro all along the bottom of the white sofa where the boy is continuing to graffiti his unintelligible message, scarring himself and his story into the fixtures and fittings, even as Edmund, perched on the armchair, is talking to him. He’s apologising, as usual. Sorry, so sorry, so bloody upper-class. Down on his hands and knees now, we’ll do everything we can for Mummy, promises promises. He isn’t getting much response, reaching into the child’s hiding place as one might coax a cat from a drain.

  Having little success, he gets to his feet and joins her.

  ‘It was pretty bad for me too, Ed,’ she says.

  ‘I don’t know what to say to him.’

  ‘What did people say to you?’ she whispers. They never talk about his childhood, either.

  ‘Sorry, that’s what people said. That they were sorry.’

  This is it, then. I am not holding him, he is not comforting me, and if Mrs H doesn’t shut up blathering on about making up the four-poster bed in the tower and who would have thought it, then I will slap her.

  There is no need. They are all silenced soon enough. It comes again. This time they recognise it knocking at the door. At first it is almost imperceptible, the slightest vibration everywhere and nowhere, changing everything and nothing. Hypersensitive, their brains process the immediate, recently gained experience to confirm that the tremor is beyond their control, that they just have to hold their breath as it clatters the cutlery in the kitchen and jiggles the cabinet where the glasses are kept in strict, glittering lines. The tremor is neither strong nor long, barely a few seconds, probably the sort of thing that happens unnoticed several times a year, but that’s irrelevant; all that counts is the deep-seated realisation that now, because the ground can move, nothing can ever be relied upon again. Each of them gasps, but the boy screams, he screams the inaudible scream of the iconic picture hanging on walls with a dreadful casualness, in flats and bedsits the world over.

  Irrationally, the aftershock even undermines their faith in the coach house and they need to get out. Out is bland daylight, any magic of the dawn gone, just the dripping of the gutters and the dustbins ready for collection and everything as normal, except for the severed limb hanging limp and brutalised on the side of the house and John and Edmund shouting Valerie’s name across the picture-perfect gardens and the scream of sirens growing closer on the main road.

  For Diana, no one illustrated it like this before, but somewhere inside herself she recognises that this is hell and hell is where she belongs.

  Chapter Fourteen

  There are old photograph albums in his study that have sepia pictures like this: three in a line at Wynhope, the lord of the manor, his wife, the heir to the estate and the family dog, with the staff standing loyally to one side. A fire engine, an ambulance and what looks like two army vehicles with winching gear drive straight through the portrait that Edmund is remembering and skid to a halt in front of them. Monty leaps to meet them, wagging his tail. Reverting to his army training, John steps forwards and briefs the officers, Diana hangs back, Edmund hovers somewhere in between them.

  ‘Please God they’ve come in time,’ he says.

  ‘I don’t think it’s possible,’ Diana whispers. ‘Not the way it came down.’

  ‘Poor you’ – Edmund pulls her close – ‘I can’t imagine how awful it must have been.’

  ‘It was horrible, Ed, horrible. We’d gone to bed, I don’t know, Valerie didn’t even want to sleep in the tower, I had to practically drag her there and now look what’s happened.’

  ‘It’s not your fault, Di. If anyone’s to blame it’s me, I should have had a better survey for the pool, shouldn’t have cut corners. I should have come to the funeral, then I would have been here.’

  ‘Might be better if the lad went inside if it’s safe to do that,’ suggests the man who introduces himself as the lead officer, while his crew and three soldiers are slamming doors and shouting to each other.

  The fireman’s radio crackles; he confirms their location. Everyone is expecting her to do something with the boy, why her, why should she be any better at this than Edmund?

  ‘Come along, Michael.’ Diana relents under the pressure and holds out both hands. ‘We don’t say no to a soldier, do we? One, two. One, two.’

  His weight is that of an inanimate object which has no momentum. Diana pulls more forcefully, catches hold of the sleeve of his borrowed coat, feels the strength of her grasp, tensing the muscles up her arm, even into her jawline and her neck, but he wriggles out of the over-large anorak so she falls with a fistful of air and he stays standing.

  ‘Let me help you, Michael,’ she pleads as she struggles to her feet.

  ‘No.’ Mikey starts to run to his uncle. ‘No.’

  ‘Leave him be,’ cries Grace.

  But Diana catches up with the child and grabs him again by the arm. His head turns sideways, his mouth is open, and his teeth fasten on her flesh.

  ‘Call your dog off, sir!’ shouts one of the soldiers. ‘We’re going to use our search and rescue dog.’

  ‘Get away from me. I hate you, I hate you.’

  ‘Edmund, please . .
. he bit me.’

  The world is a cacophony of sounds, the words and requests hit Edmund like stones on the back of his head; he does not know which way to turn.

  ‘I’m sure he didn’t mean to hurt you, Di,’ he calls. ‘Mikey, stand by me here. Monty, come.’ He gathers in the child and the dog, keeps them close; they are both quivering. Monty listens to him, head up and eager for the fetch command as if they are at a shoot, waiting for the carcasses to fall from the sky. Over at the ruin, a Germen Shepherd noses between the masonry. It is a long, slow process, unreal to all of them except the emergency crews. This is their third call-out, the ambulance driver explains; one to a chimney crashed into a sitting room where an old lady slept on the sofa to be close to the fire for warmth, another to an explosion where a gas pipe had ruptured.

  ‘And were they all right?’ Edmund hardly dares to ask.

  The man nods. ‘We haven’t seen anything quite like this,’ he says.

  Which is probably why someone is filming it, thinks Edmund. He doesn’t ask who they are; nowadays you sort of accept that a filming is part of the happening, and, anyway, John seems to be sorting them out.