JP

The Guards told me it was natural that I would try to find meaning in Charlie’s death. To look for answers where there were none. They didn’t understand. I knew there had to be more to it.

In the first instance, how the hell did Harry McNamara (I looked him up and found out his name the day she was buried) know of Charlie’s existence, let alone know her well enough to turn up at her funeral? I’d serviced office equipment at his bank. We’d never exchanged a word.

My mind went into overdrive.

Charlie was private when it came to her love life. I figured she didn’t bring boyfriends around for fear of me scaring them off, intentionally and unintentionally. I was prickly and protective, the worst type of big brother.

But now I wondered if she’d had one boyfriend in particular and if she’d been keeping him secret because she knew I’d disapprove. She worried so much what people thought, and Harry McNamara was a married man. The only reason he’d be interested in somebody like Charlie would be for sex. She was smart enough to know that’s what people would think and what I, for one, would probably point out.

What else had I not known? If she’d been keeping that big a secret, then perhaps there were more.

The driver who’d killed her still hadn’t come forward, and the police considered that strange. The Guard who’d broken the news told me a week after Charlie’s funeral that they would be appealing to the public for information.

‘Normally, in a situation where the crash was an accident, the driver hands himself in quite soon after,’ she said. ‘It takes them a few days to deal with their own shock but when they finally realize what they’ve done they come clean. Very few people can live with the guilt. It’s unusual for it to go this long.’

‘Unusual why?’ I asked.

She shrugged, as if she had no answer.

‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘Do you think Charlie could have been knocked down on purpose? Are you even sure that she was knocked down? What if somebody hurt her and then just … just dumped her body?’

The Guard shook her head adamantly.

‘That’s what the post mortem was for,’ she explained. ‘The injuries Charlie sustained were compatible with being hit by a fast-moving vehicle.’

‘But … could somebody have hit her on purpose?’

She shook her head again, but there was slightly less vehemence in this one.

‘The stretch of road where she was hit – it’s badly lit. There are no paths. It’s more likely somebody was driving home and came upon her without even realizing. Maybe she stepped out on to the road to thumb a lift.’

‘So why did you say it’s unusual nobody has come forward?’

‘Don’t you worry, John Paul. There wasn’t anybody in Charlie’s life who wanted to hurt her. We’ve looked. She was a well-liked girl. And you don’t think anybody was out to get at you, who then might have targeted your sister. So it had to have been an accident. We’ll find whoever did it. It’s very rare for somebody to get away with a hit-and-run. It’s hard to hide the evidence when it involves a great big bloody car.’

As terrible as it sounds, the notion that Charlie had been killed deliberately was almost easier to grasp than what they said was the truth – that she’d died as the result of an accident – an arbitrary, random tragedy that could have happened to anybody. There had to be more to it.

But if somebody had driven into her on purpose, they would have had to know that she was on that road at that time, and alone.

Charlie’s phone had smashed when her bag landed on the road, but the SIM card was retrievable. I put it in my phone to find her friends’ numbers. Those jotted down, I scrolled through the contacts list to see if she had a ‘Harry’ there, or somebody I didn’t recognize. There were lots of blokes’ names, but none that began with H. It didn’t mean anything. She might have had data saved on the actual phone and not the SIM card.

I went into the messages box and read through the few she’d saved. It took me a while to get past the first name in the folder, my own. Instead of John Paul, she’d saved me as J Pee-Pee Head – a term of affection, believe it or not, from when we were kids. The messages she’d sent me the night she died were there, asking me was I still angry and then for a lift. The crushing feeling I’d had in my chest ever since tightened as I re-read them.

If only, if only, if only.

I hadn’t been back to work since and knew I couldn’t go in there again. I couldn’t see Sandra again. She’d tried to talk to me at the funeral, but the second she uttered the words ‘You couldn’t have known’, I had to walk away. The poor girl didn’t deserve it, but I knew that if she stayed in my life, every time I looked at her I would be reminded. I’d chosen to be with Sandra rather than answer my sister’s call. I was all Charlie had in the world and I’d ignored her.

I shut my eyes to block out the sight of her last messages and then opened them again. I wanted to feel guilty. It was better than feeling despairing and hopeless.

There were other messages – very few, considering how often she was on her phone. Their content was what you’d expect. Organizing lunch dates, discussing outfits for parties, complaining about night shifts at the hospital.

Ten messages in total on a phone with a storage capacity for many more.

Had she been deleting texts?

I went into the trash folder on a whim and found an exchange buried there.

It was to her friend, Hazel.

C – You’re right, I should put my foot down and stop letting him call the shots.

H – I sort of meant you should put your foot down & tell him to feck off. You’re worth more.

C – I know hon. I wouldn’t bother if I didn’t love him & I know he loves me.

H – Ah, sorry. No lectures from me babe. Look at the fecking trail of destruction behind me last month. 3x1-night stands and pretty sure I have an STD.

C – Dirty bitch!!!

H – I’m messing. Delete that in case somebody sees it.

That was it.

My sister had been in love. I hadn’t even known.

I searched her photos folder, but it was even more fruitless. There were a couple of the two of us that I hadn’t seen before. They were the only ones she was in, really. She wasn’t a bit vain. No selfies, like you’d find on most girls’ phones.

In fact, I had very few photos of her. When you spend more or less every day of your life with somebody, you don’t really need to take pictures.

I used this as a reason to ring Hazel. I rang and asked her would she drop over any photos she had of Charlie, so I could get copies.

She came over that night. She’d gone around my sister’s friends and collected a bulky envelope of photographs.

‘Thanks for doing this,’ I said, welcoming her in. It was pissing rain outside and she was dripping wet, her dark hair stuck to her face. ‘Shit. You should have called. I didn’t realize it was so bad out – I’d have come to you.’

She shook her head and pulled the envelope from her bag.

‘Don’t be silly. It’s our job to rally round you, not the other way around. Thank God they’re dry. I was worried. This bag is new; I didn’t know if it would keep the rain out. I must have looked like a right nut-job pelting down the road from the bus, trying to protect my bag and not my head.’

‘I’ll make you tea,’ I said. ‘If you don’t mind staying for a while?’

‘God, of course I don’t. I meant to say to you before, John Paul, any time you want me to pop round, or if you need anything at all – you just have to ask.’

I got her a towel and hung her wet coat on the back of the chair while she sat on the sofa.

‘Shit, we’ve no milk.’

‘Black is fine,’ she said, blowing her nose noisily into a Kleenex. ‘Or green, if you have it.’

I was about to say I didn’t drink green tea when I remembered that Charlie had bought a packet recently. I’d taken the piss out of her, telling her it would be quinoa and birdseeds next.

‘You do that Neanderthal act really well,’ she’d retorted, dipping the tea bag in and out. ‘When you die, I’m going to have JP “meat and two veg” Andrews inscribed on your tombstone.’ She managed to swallow the tea without gagging, just to prove a point, even though I could see she wanted to spit it out.

‘It’s Carney now, Charlie,’ I sighed. I’d legally changed it the year before but Charlie still refused to acknowledge I’d dropped Seamie’s name in favour of our mother’s. She didn’t like us having separate surnames.

The box was still there. I wanted to keep them – the teabags. If I used them all up, I’d be getting rid of the stuff that she had brought into our home.

How bloody ridiculous was that? They were shagging tea bags. In any case, her room was exactly as she had left it and would remain that way. Full of her clothes and perfumes, the books she loved, the glow-in-the-dark stars she’d stuck to the ceiling when she was still a teenager, the Take That posters she’d never got round to taking down.

‘I don’t think I’ll ever stop feeling guilty about that night,’ Hazel said, and I froze at the counter. I kept my back turned to her and tried to keep my tone neutral.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Why?’

‘If I hadn’t left her there,’ she said, her voice thick with regret. ‘But she told me to go. There was a bloke – he was nobody. Not important enough for … well, considering what happened. But I fancied him and it turned out he was a friend of the fella who owned the house, the one who was throwing the party. Charlie saw me making moon eyes at him and told me to go for it. I asked her how she’d get home and she—’

‘She said she’d ring me,’ I completed the sentence.

Hazel stared at the floor. Her hair was drying into frizzy ringlets.

She took the cup, still not able to look up.

‘It was an accident,’ I said. That was for her benefit. I knew my guilt was warranted. Hazel was a young girl who’d gone off with a fella. She shouldn’t have to carry the weight of it. After all, Charlie didn’t even drink. She knew how to mind herself and, in any event, her brother was always looking out for her.

‘Tell me about that night.’

Hazel sat back, her hands warming on the mug of tea, and began to talk.

‘She was knackered,’ Hazel said. ‘Most of us had finished working in the hospital so we could cram for the finals, but Charlie let them give her a few more shifts. I told her she had to get better at saying no, but you know what she was like. Anyway, the night out had been planned a while and she’d said she’d be there, so she came. None of us would have minded if she’d cried off.’

‘Who was at the party?’ I asked.

But Hazel had been drinking and only had vague recollections. She threw out some names but then just shrugged.

‘Everybody, really.’

‘Did Charlie have a boyfriend?’ I asked, cutting to the quick.

Hazel stopped mid-sup, her mouth still open. Slowly, she closed it and started yanking down one of the ringlets in her hair, a nervous habit.

‘No,’ she said, glancing in the direction of Charlie’s room.

It was like she thought the ghost of my sister was in there, watching her and warning, Don’t you fucking dare tell my brother I was seeing somebody!

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘She must have been seeing somebody. I know it doesn’t matter any more, but I’m just interested in her life. She didn’t tell me much. I … I know she thought I was possessive sometimes, but it was just because I loved her to bits. She was all I had.’

‘I know that,’ Hazel said, her face earnest. ‘John Paul, your sister worshipped the ground you walked on. She had boyfriends, but she never thought any of them were good enough to meet you.’

‘But there was one in particular,’ I said, persisting, and trying to ignore Hazel’s sympathy. If I let it in, I’d start to cry and that wasn’t what her visit was about. ‘Lately. Wasn’t there? She was in love.’

Hazel sat back and sighed, relenting.

‘You’re right. I suppose it doesn’t matter any more. Yeah. She was seeing somebody. It was rocky, but she seemed to have fallen hard for him. I never thought it would work out.’

‘Was he there, the night of the party?’ I asked.

She frowned.

‘No. I don’t remember everyone who was there, but he wouldn’t have been at a student party.’

‘Why?’

‘He just – he was too old to be at something like that. He would have stood out like a sore thumb.’

‘Why would that matter?’ I asked.

She stared into the green tea.

‘He was married, John Paul. That’s what I mean when I say it wouldn’t have worked. She thought it would, for a while, but I think she’d changed her mind. She was certainly cool about him the last time we spoke about it all.’

‘Oh. Right.’ My heart was pounding in my chest. A married man and my sister fixated on him. Had she been causing him hassle? Had she gone from being some plaything to a problem he had to dispose of ?

‘What’s his name?’

She shrugged.

‘Hazel, I’m not going to march around to his house to beat him up, if that’s what you’re worried about. Charlie is gone. What would be the point? I just want to know what her life was like these last few months. If she was happy.’

‘It was somebody she shouldn’t have been seeing. It’s better to just let it go.’

It didn’t matter. I knew who it was. I’d get it out of Hazel, but I didn’t need her to tell me that Charlie had somehow ended up with Harry McNamara. It was the only plausible explanation as to why he’d been at her funeral.

Whether he did or didn’t have a role in her death, he was somebody I wanted to speak to.

My sister was nobody’s dirty little secret.