Sister: A Novel Part 19

She accompanied me out of the flat. As we walked down the concrete steps in the graffiti-decorated stairwell she guessed what I would say if we were fluent in each other's languages and replied, 'He is father. Nothing change that now.'

'I'm staying in Tess's flat. Will you come round?'

I was surprised by how much I hoped she would.

Mitch yelled from the top of the stairwell. 'You forgot this.' He threw the suitcase of clothes down the stairwell. As the case hit the concrete landing it opened; tiny cardigans, a hat and baby blanket lay strewn across the damp concrete. Kasia helped me to pick them up.

'Don't come to the funeral, Kasia. Please.'

Yes, because of Xavier. It would have been too hard for her.

I walked home, the sharp wind cutting across my face. With my coat collar pulled up and a scarf around my head, trying to protect myself from the cold, I didn't hear my mobile and it went through to message. It was Mum saying Dad wanted to talk to me and giving me his number. But I knew I wouldn't call him. Instead I became the insecure adolescent who felt her growing body was the wrong shape to fit into his completely formed new life. I felt again the smothering rejection as he blanked me out. Oh, I knew he'd remembered our birthdays, sending us extravagant presents that were too old for us, as if trying to accelerate us into adulthood and away from his responsibility. And the two weeks with him in the summer holidays, when we tarnished the Provence suns.h.i.+ne with our reproachful English faces, bringing our micro climate of sadness. And when we left it was as if we'd never been. I once saw the trunks where 'our' bedroom things were kept - stowed away in the attic for the rest of the year. Even you, in your optimism for life and capacity to see the best in people, felt that too.

As I think about Dad, I suddenly understand why you didn't ask Emilio to take any responsibility for Xavier. Your baby was too precious, too loved, for anyone to turn him into a blemish on their life. He should never feel unvalued or unwanted. You weren't protecting Emilio but your child.

I haven't told Mr Wright about my non-phone call with Dad, just the money that you and Kasia received for being on the trial.

'The payments weren't large,' I continue. 'But I thought they could have been an inducement to Tess and to Kasia to take part.'

'Tess hadn't told you about the payment?'

'No. She always saw the best in people but she knew I was more sceptical. She probably wanted to avoid the lecture.'

You'd have guessed my b.u.mper sticker warnings: 'There's no such thing as a free lunch'; 'Corporate altruism is a contradiction in terms.'

'Did you think it was the money that persuaded her?' asks Mr Wright.

'No. She believed the trial was her baby's only chance of a cure. She'd have paid them to be on the trial. But I thought that maybe whoever had given her money didn't know that. Like Kasia, Tess looked in need of cash.' I pause while Mr Wright makes a note, then continue. 'I'd researched the medical side of the trial thoroughly when Tess first told me about it, but I'd never looked at the finances. So I started doing that. On the net, I discovered that people are legitimately paid in drugs trials. There are even dedicated websites who advertise for volunteers, promising the money will "pay for your next holiday".'

'And the volunteers on the Gene-Med trial?'

'There was absolutely nothing about them being paid. Gene-Med's own website, which had a lot of detail on the trial, had nothing about any payments. I knew that the development of the genetic cure would have cost a fortune, and three hundred pounds was a tiny amount of money in comparison, but it still seemed strange. Gene-Med's website had email addresses for every member of the company - presumably to look open and approachable - so I emailed Professor Rosen. I was pretty sure it would go to a minion, but thought it was worth a try.'

Mr Wright has a copy of my email in front of him.

From: Beatrice Hemming's iPhone To: [email protected] Dear Professor Rosen, Could you tell me why the mothers on your cystic fibrosis trial are being paid 300 to partic.i.p.ate? Or perhaps you would prefer me to couch it in the correct language, 'compensated for their time'. Beatrice Hemming As I'd predicted, I didn't hear back from Professor Rosen. But I carried on searching on the net, still wearing my coat from when I'd got in from visiting Kasia, my bag just dumped at my feet. I hadn't switched the light on and now it was dark. I hardly noticed Todd coming in. I didn't even wonder, let alone ask, where he'd been all day, barely glancing up from the screen.

'Tess was paid to take part in the CF trial, so was Kasia, but there's no record of that anywhere.'

'Beatrice . . .'

He'd stopped using the word 'darling'.

'But that's not the important thing, though,' I continued. 'I hadn't thought to look at the financial aspect of the trial before, but several reputable sites, the FT, the New York Times, are saying that Gene-Med are going to float on the stock market in just a few weeks' time.'

It would have been in the papers, but since you'd died I had stopped reading them. Gene-Med's floatation was a crucial bit of news to me, but Todd didn't react at all.

'The directors of Gene-Med stand to make a fortune,' I continued. 'The sites have different estimates, but the amount of money is enormous. And the employees are all share-holders so they're going to get their share of the bonanza.'

'The company will have invested millions if not billions in their research,' Todd said, his voice impatient. 'And now they're having a ma.s.sively successful trial, which is payback time for their investment. Of course they're going to float on the stock market. It's a completely logical business decision.'

'But the payments to the women-'

'Stop. For G.o.d's sake, stop,' he shouted. For a moment both of us were taken aback. We'd spent four years being polite towards each other. Shouting was embarra.s.singly intimate. He struggled to sound more measured. 'First it was her married tutor, then an obsessed weirdo student and now you've added this trial to your list - which everyone, including the world's press and scientific community, have wholeheartedly endorsed.'

'Yes. I am suspicious of different people, even a trial. Because I don't know yet who killed her. Or why. Just that someone did. And I have to look at every possibility.'

'No. You don't. That's the police's job, and they've done it. There's nothing left for you to do.'

'My sister was murdered.'

'Please, darling, you have to face the truth at some point that-'

I interrupted him. 'She would never have killed herself.'

At this point in our argument, both of us awkward and a little embarra.s.sed, I felt that we were going through the motions, actors struggling with a clunky script.

'Just because it's what you believe,' he said. 'What you want to believe, that doesn't make it true.'

'How can you possibly know what the truth is?' I snapped back. 'You had only met her a few times, and even then you barely bothered to talk to her. She wasn't the kind of person you wanted to get to know.'

I was rowing with apparent conviction, my voice raised and my words sharpened to hurt, but in truth I was still on our relations.h.i.+p ring road and inside I was uninvolved and unscathed. I continued my performance, marvelling slightly at how easy it was to get into my stride. I'd never had a row before.

'What did you call her? "Kooky"?' I asked, not waiting for a reply. 'I don't think you even bothered to listen to anything she said to you on the two occasions we actually all had a meal together. You judged her without even having a proper conversation with her.'

'You're right. I didn't know her well. And I admit that I didn't like her all that much either. She irritated me as a matter of fact. But this isn't about how well-'

I interrupted him. 'You dismissed her because she was an art student, because of the way she lived and the clothes she wore.'

'For G.o.d's sake.'

'You didn't see the person that she was at all.'

'You're going way off the point here. Look, I do understand that you want to blame someone for her death. I know you don't want to feel responsible for it.' The composure in his voice sounded forced and I was reminded of myself talking to the police. 'You're afraid of having to live with that guilt,' he continued. 'And I do understand that. But what I want you to try to understand is that once you accept what really happened then you'll realise that you weren't to blame at all. We all know that you weren't. She took her own life, for reasons that the police, the Coroner, your mother and her doctors are satisfied with, and no one else is to blame, including you. If you could just believe that then you can start to move forwards.' He awkwardly put his hand on my shoulder and left it there, like me he finds being tactile difficult. 'I've got tickets home for both of us. Our flight leaves the evening after her funeral.'

I was silent. How could I possibly leave?

'I know that you're worried your mother needs you here for support,' continued Todd. 'But she agrees that the sooner you get back home, back to your normal life, the better.' His hand slammed onto the table. I noticed the disturbance on my screen before his uncharacteristic physicality. 'I don't recognise you any more. And now, I'm laying my guts out here and you can't even be bothered to look up from the f.u.c.king internet.'

I turned to him, and only then saw his white face and his body huddled into itself in misery.

'I'm sorry. But I can't leave. Not till I know what happened to her.'

'We know what happened to her. And you need to accept that. Because life has to go on, Beatrice. Our life.'

'Todd . . .'

'I do know how hard it must be for you without her. I do understand that. But you do have me.' His eyes were blurred with tears. 'We're getting married in three months.'

I tried to work out what to say and in the silence he walked away from me into the kitchen. How could I explain to him that I couldn't get married any more, because marriage is a commitment to the future and a future without you was impossible to contemplate? And that it was for this reason, rather than my lack of pa.s.sion for him, which meant I couldn't marry him.

I went into the kitchen. His back was towards me and I saw what he would look like as an old man.

'Todd, I'm sorry but-'

He turned and yelled at me, 'For f.u.c.k's sake I love you.' Shouting at a foreigner in your own language as if volume will make them understand; make me love him back.

'You don't really know me. You wouldn't love me if you did.'

It was true, he didn't know me. I'd never let him. If I had a song, I'd never tried singing it to him; never stayed in bed with him on a Sunday morning. It was always my idea to get up and go out. Maybe he had looked into my eyes but if he had I hadn't been looking back.

'You deserve more,' I said and tried to take his hand. But he pulled it away. 'I'm so sorry.'

He flinched from me. But I was sorry. I still am. Sorry that I had neglected to notice that it was only me on the safe ring road while he was inside the relations.h.i.+p, alone and exposed. Once again I had been selfish and cruel towards someone I was meant to care for.

Before you died, I'd thought our relations.h.i.+p was grown-up and sensible. But on my part it was cowardly; a pa.s.sive option motivated by my insecurity rather than what Todd deserved - an active choice inspired by love.

A few minutes later he left. He didn't tell me where he was going.

Mr Wright had decided on a working lunch and has now got sandwiches from the deli. He leads me through empty corridors to a meeting room, which has a table. For some reason, the large office s.p.a.ce, deserted apart from us two, feels intimate.

I haven't told Mr Wright that during my research I broke off my engagement, and that with no friends in London Todd must have walked through the snow to a hotel that night. I just tell him about Gene-Med floating on the stock market.

'And you phoned DS Finborough at eleven thirty p.m.?' he asks, looking down at the police call log.

'Yes. I left a message for him asking him to phone me back. By nine thirty the next morning he still hadn't, so I went to St Anne's.'

'You'd already organised to go back there?'

'Yes. The senior midwife had said she should have found Tess's notes by then and had made an appointment for me to see her.'

I arrived at St Anne's, the skin around my skull tight with nerves because I thought I would soon have to meet the person who was with you when you had Xavier. I knew I had to do this, but wasn't sure exactly why. Maybe as a penance; my guilt faced full on. I arrived fifteen minutes early and went to the hospital cafe. As I sat down with my coffee I saw I had a new email.

To: Beatrice Hemming's iPhone From: Professor Rosen's office, Gene-Med Dear Ms Hemming, I a.s.sure you that we offer no financial inducement whatsoever to the partic.i.p.ants in our trial. Each partic.i.p.ant volunteers without coercion or inducement. If you would like to check with the partic.i.p.ating hospitals' ethics committees you will see that the highest ethical principles are strictly enforced.

Kind regards Sarah Stonaker, media PA to Professor Rosen I emailed straight back.

From: Beatrice Hemming's iPhone To: [email protected] One 'partic.i.p.ant' was my sister. She was paid 300 to take part in the trial. Her name was Tess Hemming, (second name Annabel after her grandmother). She was 21. She was murdered after giving birth to her stillborn baby. Her funeral and that of her son is on Thursday. I miss her more than you can possibly imagine.

It felt a reasonable place to be writing such an email. Illness and death may be shut away in the wards above but I imagined the fallout blowing invisibly into the atrium and landing in the hospital cafe's cappuccinos and herbal teas. I wouldn't have been the first to write an emotional email at this table. I wondered if the 'media PA' would pa.s.s it on to Professor Rosen. I doubted it.

I resolved to ask the hospital staff if they knew anything about the money.

Five minutes before my appointment time I took the lift up to the fourth floor, as instructed, and walked to the maternity wing.

The Senior Midwife seemed fraught when she saw me, although maybe her escaping frizzy red hair made her seem that way all the time. 'I'm afraid we still haven't found Tess's notes. And without them I haven't been able to find out who was with her when she gave birth.'

I felt relief but thought it cowardly to give in to.

'Doesn't anyone remember?'

'I'm afraid not. For the last three months we've been very short-staffed, so we've had a high percentage of agency midwives and loc.u.m doctors. I think it must have been one of them.'

A young punky nurse standing at the nurses' station, her nose pierced, joined in, 'We have the basic info on a central computer, like the time and date of admission and discharge, and sadly in your sister's case, that her baby died. But nothing more detailed. Nothing about their medical history or the medical staff looking after them. I did check with the psych department yesterday. Dr Nichols said her notes hadn't ever got to him. Told me our department should "pull our socks up", which is pretty angry coming from him.'

I remembered Dr Nichols commenting that he didn't have your 'psychiatric history'. I hadn't known it was because your notes had got lost.

'But aren't her notes also on computer somewhere? I mean the detailed information, as well as the basics?' I asked.

The Senior Midwife shook her head. 'We use paper notes for maternity patients, so the woman can carry them with her in case she goes into labour when she's not near her home hospital. We then attach the handwritten notes of the delivery and it's all meant to be safely stored.'

The phone rang but the Senior Midwife ignored it, focusing on me. 'I really am sorry. We do understand how important it must be to you.'

As she answered the phone, my initial relief that your notes were lost became weighted by suspicion. Did your medical notes hold some clue about your murder? Was that why they were 'lost'? I waited for the Senior Midwife to finish her phone call.

'Isn't it odd that a patient's notes just go missing?' I asked.

The Senior Midwife grimaced. 'Unfortunately it's not odd at all.'

A portly consultant in a chalk-striped suit was pa.s.sing, he stopped and chipped in, 'An entire trolley of notes went missing from my diabetic clinic on Tuesday. The whole lot vanished into some administrative black hole.'

I noticed that Dr Saunders had arrived at the nurses' station and was checking a patient's notes. He didn't seem to notice me.

'Really?' I said, uninterested, to Chalk-striped Consultant. But he carried on warming to his theme. 'When they built St John's hospital last year no one remembered to build a morgue and when their first patient died there was nowhere to take him.'

The Senior Midwife was clearly embarra.s.sed by him and I wondered why he was being so open with me about hospital errors.

'There's been relocation of teenage cancer patients and no one remembered to transport their frozen eggs,' continued Chalk-striped Consultant. 'And now their chances of a baby when they've recovered is zero.'

Dr Saunders noticed me and smiled rea.s.suringly. 'But we're not totally incompetent all of the time, I promise.'

'Did you know that women were being paid to take part in the cystic fibrosis trial?' I asked.

Chalk-striped Consultant looked a little peeved by my abrupt change of subject. 'No I didn't know that.'

'Nor me,' said Dr Saunders. 'Do you know how much?'

'Three hundred pounds.'

'It could well have been a doctor or nurse being kind,' Dr Saunders said, his tone considerate. And again he reminded me of you, this time for thinking the best of people. 'There was that nurse in oncology last year, wasn't there?' he asked.

Chalk-striped Consultant nodded. 'Spent the department's entire transport fund on new clothes for an old man she felt sorry for.'

The young punky nurse joined in, 'And midwives sometimes try to help hard-up mums by giving them nappies and formula when they leave. Occasionally a steriliser or a baby bath finds its way out too.'

Chalk-striped Consultant grinned. 'You mean we've reverted to the days when nurses were caring?'

The punky nurse glowered at him and Chalk-striped Consultant laughed.