Sister Sister: A truly gripping psychological thriller

‘Disposition?’ he says.

‘Her mood. Was she happy? Sad? Preoccupied? Anxious?’

‘Yes, I know what disposition means,’ cuts in Luke. This time the irritation in his voice is clear and I imagine him frowning at the detective as if to say what sort of idiot do you think I am?

I dredge through my mind to recall just how I have been feeling recently. Sad, angry and frightened all wash up on the shore of my consciousness but I can’t pinpoint why.

Luke doesn’t answer the detective straight away. He is probably mulling this question over. He will no doubt want to give the right response. If the small ripples of my memory are to be relied upon, a response that I feel I will probably have to counter later.

It’s coming back to me now, not exact memories but sensations and not in drips, but in waves. I can feel the anger resurfacing. I wonder if Luke is thinking of how angry I have been; how stubborn I’ve become? What was it he’d called me during our last argument? Oh yeah, that’s it, fucking nuts. Will he tell the detective that? And if he does, will he tell the detective what has driven me ‘fucking nuts’?

‘Clare, she’s been under a lot of pressure lately,’ he says at last. ‘She’s had a lot on her plate.’

‘In what way?’ probes the detective.

‘She’s had a difficult time adjusting to some changes in her personal life.’ Or, as I guess Luke is thinking, none of your fucking business.

My mind is racing. What does Luke mean by ‘changes in my personal life’? What the hell has happened that has caused me to end up in hospital?

The answer doesn’t come immediately, but in those few moments a feeling of foreboding seeps into the room, creeps towards me and wraps itself around my body. I feel cold and goose bumps prick the skin on my arms. I know something bad has happened. I have done something so terrible my mind is trying to block it out. Something that goes against everything I am.

I, Clare Tennison, am a good woman. I am a successful career woman; a partner in Carr, Tennison & Eggar Solicitors. I am a caring daughter to my mother, Marion. I am a devoted mother to Chloe and Hannah. I am a loving and supportive wife to Luke. I am a school governor, for God’s sake. Clare Tennison doesn’t do bad things.

So why this fear, coated with guilt? What have I done?

I don’t want the next second to come. I try to fight it off, to suspend time, to be ignorant of this knowledge. Living in dread, however awful, is preferable to the alternative – living with the knowledge of what I have done.

Bang!

It’s back. I know, with the clarity of looking through highly polished glass, exactly what I have done.

I can see my hands on the wheel, steering the car, as I navigate the lanes back to the house. The pointer on the speedometer darting up and down, the rev-counter needle rising and falling as I change gear and manipulate the vehicle around the narrow lanes. Hedges blur in my peripheral vision and trees whoosh by in a haze, reminding me of a smudged watercolour painting.

It takes a moment before I register her there. Right in front of my path, as over a tonne of metal bears down on her. How have I not seen her? It’s broad daylight. It’s a clear day. There is no sun ahead to blind me, no rain to fuzz my vision. I have a totally clear view. She appears from nowhere. Stepping right out in front of me. I scream. I hit the brakes. I can hear the squeal of the rubber on tarmac as the tyres bite into the ground. I yank the steering wheel to the left, trying to miss her. It is all too late.

The clear and undeniable memory of the thud makes me feel sick. I think I’m going to vomit. Instead, I let out a sound from deep within me. It comes up from the pit of my stomach, wrenching my heart out along the way. By the time it escapes my throat, it is a roar of undiluted pain. Too vicious for tears. My body involuntarily curls into the foetal position. The plaster cast prevents me from moving my left arm but my other hand covers my bandaged head, as if I am bracing for an emergency landing on a doomed flight. I feel a line tug at my arm and something rip from my hand.

The next thing I am aware of is the scurrying of people around me. Nurses. The first with soothing, but firm, words telling me to calm down; everything will be all right. A second one with sterner words telling me not to struggle. That I am pulling out the drip. That I will hurt myself. And there is Luke’s voice too. Strong yet gentle.

‘Hey, hey, Babe,’ he is saying, using the pet name I haven’t heard him say recently. His tone is like the one he uses with the girls when they are upset, when Chloe has fallen over and cut her knee or like the time when Hannah discovered the tooth fairy wasn’t real. ‘It’s okay. You’re okay. Everything is going to be okay. I promise you.’

I want to believe him. I really do, but how can I when I am responsible for such a terrible crime? My body heaves and another sob erupts.

The last thing I remember is the cool sensation of liquid oozing into the back of my hand, smarting as it travels up my arm. I feel my body relax and then everything around me fades away as my mind drifts back to where this nightmare began.

Chapter 2 (#u0b8ef2f9-076c-5909-8e48-d806dbd0743f)

Six weeks earlier …

For a moment I think I don’t have to get up for work. It feels as if it should be a lazy, summery Sunday. The late September sun is still clinging onto warmer days and a small refreshing breeze billows the gauze curtain every now and then. I always like sleeping with the window open; it gives me a sense of being free.

But as I rouse further into the conscious world, the heavy weight of reality wraps itself around me. I’m anything but free. Particularly this time of year, as we move closer each day to my sister’s birthday.

I roll over and cuddle up against a still-sleeping Luke, seeking comfort from just the touch of another human. I check my watch and groan as I realise it’s a Monday. I stretch my arm back and switch off the alarm. I don’t know why I bothered setting it. I haven’t needed it these past few days as sleep has not been a good friend to me.

I think of Mum and how, now we are in the month of September, she looks a little longer at the calendar each day, silently marking time, anxiety levels rising as we stumble towards the twenty-eighth, just another forty-eight hours away. I should be used to this pattern by now. Twenty years on, it’s been practically a lifetime for me and yet I never quite anticipate the level of emotion this date evokes. It’s almost that, as I’ve grown older, the absence of my sister has grown bigger, more profound, hurting harder, cutting deeper. I feel my mother’s pain and my own.

So many times over the years I’ve wished Alice was here, and not just because of my mother’s own heartbreak but, selfishly, because I have always yearned for the black cloud hanging above us to disappear. As a child, I didn’t want to be known as the sister of the girl whose dad took her off to America and never came back or the daughter of the heartbroken mother. I wanted to be Clare Kennedy. I just wanted us to be normal.

I still do.

There’s half an hour before I have to begin the military operation of getting the girls moving for school and nursery. I snuggle a little closer to Luke. Sometimes, it’s as if he can absorb my sadness and anxiety, soaking it up so my feelings can move freely; no longer repressed.

I feel Luke stir and I tighten my arm across him, hugging him gently. After eight years of marriage and two children, we have never grown bored of each other. Luke rolls over and kisses me.

‘Morning, Babe,’ he says, without opening his eyes, then rolls back over. ‘Night, Babe.’

‘Hey, fella, you’re not getting away with that,’ I whisper in his ear as I run my hand down his body and pull him back towards me.

Luke opens one eye and looks at the clock. ‘Jesus, Clare, it’s only five-fucking-thirty.’

‘Never mind all that …’ I kiss away his protests.

I feel his mouth curve into a smile and he opens his other eye. ‘Now, that is cheating.’

He rolls over and swamps me in his arms and for a while I allow myself to forget the challenges of real life.

‘And how are we all this morning?’ says Mum coming into the kitchen as Luke and I are hurtling around getting breakfast ready and taking it in turns to direct the girls on what needs doing next. Okay, Hannah is rather more capable at seven years old and only needs encouraging, Chloe, however, at just three, needs the more hands-on approach.

We live with my mother, Marion, in the house I grew up in. Initially, we had moved in with her when Luke was a struggling artist and I had just taken my first appointment in chambers straight out of uni. Some would say that Luke still carries the struggling artist hashtag. By that, I actually mean my mother. Although, in her defence, she is very tolerant.

Since then the girls have come along and we have expanded to five of us in one house. Just as well The Old Vicarage, in which we live, is large enough to give Mum a separate living room to us and Luke his own studio in the annexe of the house.

‘Seems silly me rattling around in this big house on my own and the house prices around Brighton are ridiculous,’ Mum had said. ‘Besides, I’d like the company. I’ll be close to the girls as they grow up and you two would have a built-in baby sitter.’

And she was right. All these points made perfect sense and were very pragmatic, but we both knew the real reason why I could never move.

Not after what happened.

And, in truth, I wasn’t sure I could, even if my heart wanted to go along with Luke’s preferred choice of buying a place of our own, to make memories of our own, my conscience wouldn’t allow me. I couldn’t leave Mum all alone.

‘You can’t keep yourself hostage to something that happened in your childhood,’ Luke had said one night as we lay in bed, his last-bid attempt to change my mind.

The truth was, though, I could, and I had always known it would be like this. The only way it would change would be if Alice came home.

‘Come on, Chloe,’ I say, picking her up from the play mat. ‘Let’s get you to the table. Morning, Mum.’ I sit Chloe on the booster seat and push her closer to the table. I take the bowl of Weetabix Luke hands me. He is whistling as he makes a pot of tea.

‘Someone’s happy this morning,’ says Mum, helping herself to a slice of toast. The smile might be there, but the flat tone of her voice is a betrayal.