Rosamund Lupton - Sister

Table of Contents

Rosamund Lupton has worked for many years as a scriptwriter. She lives with her husband and two sons in London. This is her first novel.

Sister

ROSAMUND LUPTON

Hachette Digital

www.littlebrown.co.uk

To my parents, Kit and Jane Orde-Powlett, for their life-long gift of encouragement.

And to Martin, my husband, with my love.

Where shall we see a better daughter or a kinder sister or a truer friend?

Jane Austen, Emma

But flowers distilld, though they with winter meet Leese but their show, their substance still lives sweet.

Shakespeare, Sonnet 5

Dearest Tess,

Id do anything to be with you, right now, right this moment, so I could hold your hand, look at your face, listen to your voice. How can touching and seeing and hearing - all those sensory receptors and optic nerves and vibrating eardrums - be substituted by a letter? But weve managed to use words as go-betweens before, havent we? When I went off to boarding school and we had to replace games and laughter and low-voiced confidences for letters to each other. I cant remember what I said in my first letter, just that I used a jigsaw, broken up, to avoid the prying eyes of my house-mistress. (I guessed correctly that her jigsaw-making inner child had left years ago.) But I remember word for word your seven-year-old reply to my fragmented home-sickness and that your writing was invisible until I shone a torch onto the paper. Ever since kindness has smelled of lemons. The journalists would like that little story, marking me out as a kind of lemon-juice detective even as a child and showing how close we have always been as sisters. Theyre outside your flat now, actually, with their camera crews and sound technicians (faces sweaty, jackets grimy, cables trailing down the steps and getting tangled up in the railings). Yes, that was a little throwaway, but how else to tell you? Im not sure what youll make of becoming a celebrity, of sorts, but suspect youll find it a little funny. Ha-ha funny and weird funny. I can only find it weird funny, but then Ive never shared your sense of humour, have I?

Just thinking of your laughter gives me courage and I go to the window.

Outside, I recognise a reporter from a satellite news channel. I am used to seeing his face flattened into 2D on a plasma screen in the privacy of my New York apartment, but here he is large as life and in 3D flesh standing in Chepstow Road and looking straight back at me through your basement window. My finger itches for the off button on the remote; instead I pull the curtains.

But its worse now than when I could see them. Their lights glare through the curtains, their sounds pound against the windows and walls. Their presence feels like a weight that could bulldoze its way into your sitting room. No wonder the press are called the press, if this goes on much longer I could suffocate. Yes, OK, that was a little dramatic, youd probably be out there offering them coffee. But as you know, I am easily annoyed and too precious about my personal space. I shall go into the kitchen and try to get on top of the situation.

Its more peaceful in here, giving me the quiet to think. Its funny what surprises me now; often its the smallest things. For instance, yesterday a paper had a story on how close we have always been as sisters and didnt even mention the difference in our age. Maybe it doesnt matter any more now that were grown up but as children it seemed so glaring. Five years is a big gap... ? people would say who didnt know, a slight rise at the end of their sentence to frame it as a question. And wed both think of Leo and the gap he left, though maybe gaping void would be more accurate, but we didnt ever say, did we?

The other side of the back door I can just hear a journalist on her mobile. She must be dictating to someone down the phone, my own name jumps out at me, Arabella Beatrice Hemming. Mum said no one has ever called me by my first name so Ive always assumed that even as a baby they could tell I wasnt an Arabella, a name with loops and flourishes in black-inked calligraphy; a name that contains within it girls called Bella or Bells or Belle - so many beautiful possibilities. No, from the start I was clearly a Beatrice, sensible and unembellished in Times New Roman, with no one hiding inside. Dad chose the name Arabella before I was born. The reality must have been a disappointment.

The journalist comes within earshot again, on a new call I think, apologising for working late. It takes me a moment before I realise that I, Arabella Beatrice Hemming, am the reason for it. My impulse is to go out and say sorry, but then you know me, always the first to hurry to the kitchen the moment Mum started her tom-tom anger signal by clattering pans. The journalist moves away. I cant hear her words but I listen to her tone, appeasing, a little defensive, treading delicately. Her voice suddenly changes. She must be talking to her child. Her tone seeps through the door and windows, warming your flat.

Maybe I should be considerate and tell her to go home. Your case is subjudice so Im not allowed to tell them anything till after the trial. But she, like the others, already knows this. Theyre not trying to get facts about you but emotions. They want me to clench my hands together, giving them a close-up of white knuckles. They want to see a few tears escaping and gliding snail-like down my cheek leaving black mascara trails. So I stay inside.

The reporters and their entourage of technicians have all finally left, leaving a high tide mark of cigarette ash on the steps down to your flat, the butts stubbed out in your pots of daffodils. Tomorrow Ill put out ashtrays. Actually, I misjudged some of them. Three apologised for intruding and a cameraman even gave me some chrysanthemums from the corner shop. I know youve never liked them.

But these wilting examples are stems of unexpected thoughtfulness, a bunch of compassion as surprising as cowslips on the verge of a motorway.

The chrysanthemum cameraman told me that this evening the News at 10 is running a special on your story. I just phoned Mum to tell her. I think in a strange mum-like way shes actually proud of how much attention youre getting. And theres going to be more. According to one of the sound technicians therell be foreign media here tomorrow. Its funny, though - weird funny - that when I tried to tell people a few months ago, no one wanted to listen.

It seems that everyone wants to listen now - the press; the police; solicitors - pens scribble, heads crane forwards, tape recorders whirr. This afternoon I am giving my witness statement to a lawyer at the Criminal Prosecution Service in preparation for the trial in four months time. Ive been told that my statement is