Tuesday 23:55
The house is in complete darkness when I pull into the drive and I’m glad; the last thing I need after a day like today is to have to face an interrogation when I get home. I open the front door as quietly as I can, careful not to wake anyone, but it soon becomes apparent that I needn’t have bothered. The lights might be off, but the TV is on, and when I walk into the living room I find Zoe watching my ex-wife on the news. I drove past the woods on the way home, and the media had all packed up and left for the night, so I know it isn’t live. It’s just a rerun of her earlier package, but it still feels strange seeing Anna in my home.
“What the fuck is happening?” Zoe asks, without looking up.
She’s been texting and calling all day, but I didn’t have the time or inclination to get back to her.
“If you’ve been watching that, then I expect you already know,” I say, unable to stop myself from sighing.
“One of my best friends gets murdered, and you didn’t think to tell me about it?”
“You haven’t been friends with Rachel Hopkins since you left school. It must be twenty years since you even spoke to her.” Zoe’s face twists into a rather ugly pattern of fury and hurt, but I’m not in the mood for one of her tantrums tonight. “Not everything is about you, Zoe. I’ve had a really long day, and you know I can’t talk about my job, so please don’t ask.”
I’ve never wanted to pollute her world with my problems.
“You’re wrong about that. Rachel and I spoke quite recently,” she says, turning off the TV. Then she looks me up and down, as though making a formal assessment and reaching a negative conclusion. “Why is your ex-wife here, reporting on the murder of your latest girlfriend?”
I’m too shocked to find a suitable response, because I had no idea that she knew I was sleeping with Rachel. I thought nobody knew. I consider the possibility that she might not know for sure.
“I don’t know what you mean—”
“Cut the crap, Jack. I know you’ve been banging her for the last couple of months, though god knows why, of all the people! Were you with her last night?”
I don’t answer.
“Well, were you?”
“You’re not my wife, Zoe. And you’re not my mother.”
“No, I’m your sister, and I’m asking you if you were with Rachel last night?”
“Are you asking me if I had something to do with this?”
She shakes her head and starts to rearrange the fake fur cushions on the sofa, something she always does when she is most upset. She makes them herself—the cushion covers—and sells them online. It’s a far cry from the fashion design job she dreamed of when we were young.
I notice that she’s dyed her hair bright red again, probably one those DIY box kits she likes so much. She’s missed a bit of blond hair at the back; last month’s chosen shade. Her pink pajamas would look more appropriate on my two-year-old niece upstairs than her thirty-six-year-old mother, but I keep my opinions to myself.
“When I said you could move in with us for a while after the divorce, I meant for a couple of weeks, not a couple of years…” she says, without looking up.
“And then how would you have paid the mortgage?”
I moved in with my sister when I moved out of the London apartment I shared with Anna. This used to be our parents’ house before they died, and I feel like I have as much right to be here as Zoe. Firstly, she didn’t have a clue about inheritance tax, which meant re-mortgaging the house in order to keep it. Secondly, our parents died rather unexpectedly. To my dismay, and Zoe’s surprise, there was no will. Although our parents were highly organized in life, their death was not planned for at all. At least not by them.
The only reason I went along with my sister treating the house as though it were hers was because she had a daughter. They needed a place to call home more than I did, and besides, I never had any real desire to come back to this town then. Like my ex, I would rather leave the past where it belongs.
Zoe barges by me and storms out of the room. She doesn’t look, or smell, like she washed or dressed today. Again. My sister doesn’t have a real job. She says she can’t find one, but that might be because she hasn’t bothered looking for ten years. She relies on cushion covers, benefits, and selling our dead parents’ belongings on eBay—which she thinks I don’t know about—and insists that being a parent is a full-time job, even though she acts like a part-time mother.
I follow her into the kitchen. Then I watch while she takes longer than could ever be necessary to wash up a single cup in the sink. I notice that everything is spotlessly clean—something Zoe rarely does whether she is upset or not—and put away in its proper place, except for one knife from the stainless-steel block on the counter. I noticed it was missing this morning too.
“How did you know about Rachel?” I ask.
Zoe still has her back to me, rinsing her wineglass now, as though her life depended on it. I take a clean one from the cupboard, and pour myself a drink from the open bottle of red on the counter. Sadly, my sister has the same taste in wine as she does in men; too cheap, too young, and headache-inducing.
“How did I know that she was dead? Or how did I know that you were sleeping with her?” she asks, finally turning to face me.
I can’t look her in the eye, but I manage to nod as I take a sip.
“I’m your sister. I know you. You kept saying you were working late, but Blackdown isn’t exactly crime central. Or at least, it wasn’t. Then I saw her in the supermarket one day last week, and she started a conversation. Like you said, she hasn’t said hello to me for almost twenty years so…”
“So, you automatically thought she must be screwing your brother?”
She raises a penciled-in eyebrow. Zoe always wears full makeup, regardless of whether she gets washed or dressed or leaves the house.
“Not at first, but she wore a very distinctive perfume, and you came home smelling of it that night, after ‘working late,’ so…”
She makes air quotes with her hands, something she has been doing since we were children. It has only grown more irritating over time.
“Why didn’t you say something?” I ask.
“Because it was none of my business. I don’t tell you who I’m sleeping with.”
She doesn’t need to; this house has thin walls.
“You’re sleeping with someone?” I say, but she ignores me.
The question was meant to be ironic. Zoe is always sleeping with someone, and has a rather casual attitude to sex. She’s never told me who her daughter’s father is, I suspect because she doesn’t know.
“I thought you’d probably tell me yourself when you were ready. Besides, I wasn’t sure until last night,” she says.
“Why last night?”
“Because she called here.”
The wineglass almost slips through my fingers.
“What did you just say?”
“Rachel Hopkins called here last night.”
It suddenly gets very loud inside my head, even louder than before. I didn’t know that Rachel even had this number, but then I guess it has never changed. It’s the same one she used to call my sister on when they were school friends. I’m terrified of the answer, but I have to ask the question.
“Did you speak to her?”
“No. I didn’t even hear the phone. She left a message around midnight; I only listened to it this morning when I saw the machine flashing.”
She walks to the other side of the kitchen, to the ancient answering machine that used to belong to our mum and dad. So many of their things are still here—the things that Zoe hasn’t sold, yet—that I honestly sometimes forget that they’re dead. Then I remember, and the grief hits me all over again. I wonder if that is normal.
Time became a bit nonlinear inside my head after they died. Bad things just kept on happening. Not just the death of my daughter and the divorce; it was as though any future I had once imagined for myself had decided to unravel. Now it’s happening again.
Zoe seems to move in slow motion. I want to tell her to stop, to not press Play on the machine. I don’t know if I want to hear Rachel’s voice again anymore. Maybe it would be better to remember her the way she was rather than …
Zoe presses Play.
“Jack, it’s me. Sorry to call the landline, but you’re not answering your mobile. Are you on your way? It’s getting late and I’m so tired. I know I should be able to change a tire myself; I don’t know how it happened, it’s almost as though someone slashed it. Hang on, I think I see your headlights coming into the parking lot now. My knight in shining armor!”
Rachel laughs and hangs up.
I stare at the machine as though it were a ghost.
My sister stares at me as if I were a stranger.
“What’s that scratch?” she asks.
I feel for the little red scar on my cheek without meaning to. I saw Priya looking at it several times today but, unlike my sister, she was too polite to mention it.
“I cut myself shaving.”
Zoe frowns, and I remember the mask of stubble currently hiding my face.
“Was it you?” she asks eventually, in a voice so quiet, I barely hear the question.
I wish I hadn’t.
An unexpected montage of us as children silently plays inside my head. From me as a toddler pushing my baby sister on a swing, to birthday parties with our friends, to all the shared Christmases with our family. Only last week I was pushing her daughter, my niece, on the same swing hanging from the weeping willow in the back garden. There used to be a lot of love in this house. I’m not sure when or where it went.
“How can you ask me that?”
I stare at her, but Zoe’s eyes refuse to meet mine. I feel my heart thudding inside my chest; irregular palpitations caused by hurt, not anger. I always thought my sister would stand by me through anything. The idea that I was wrong about that isn’t like a slap in the face, it’s more like being repeatedly run over by a truck.
“I have a child sleeping upstairs, I had to ask,” she whispers.
“No, you didn’t.”
We stare at each other for a long time, having the kind of silent conversation that only close siblings can have. I know I need to say something out loud, but it takes a while to arrange the words in the right order.
“I did see Rachel last night.”
“In the woods?”
“Yes.” Zoe pulls a face I choose to ignore. “But then I left. I didn’t know there was anything wrong until I saw the missed calls on my phone when I got home. I drove back to help, but her car was gone and so was she. I called her mobile, but she didn’t answer, so I just presumed she’d managed to fix it.”
“Does anyone else know that you were there?”
“No.”
“You didn’t tell your police colleagues.”
I shake my head. “No.”
She stares at me for a long time, before asking her next question.
“Why didn’t you tell them?”
“Because they would look at me the way you are now.”
“I’m sorry,” she says eventually. “I had to ask, but I do believe you.”
“Okay,” I say, even though it isn’t and I’m not.
“I know we don’t ever say it, but I do love you.”
“I love you too,” I reply.
When she leaves the room, I cry for the first time since my daughter died.
Losing someone you truly love always feels like losing a part of yourself. Not Rachel—that was lust—I mean my sister. We might not have always been close—she never approved of my choice of wife, and I never approved of her choice of, well, anything—but I always thought she’d be the one to unplug the fan if the shit ever hit. I guess I was wrong, because it feels like something got broken between Zoe and me tonight. Something that can’t be fixed.
I sit alone in the semi-dark for a while, finishing the wine she probably left here deliberately, knowing that I would need it. When the bottle is empty and the house is silent again, I walk back over to the answering machine. Then I delete the message.
Sometimes it feels like I don’t know who I am anymore.