Read Online Sister: A Novel by Rosamund Lupton - Free Book Online Page B

Ophelia, a Cordelia; pale and stiff with death; a wronged heroine; a passive victim. But you were never tragic or passive or a victim. You were joyful, passionate and independent.
    I saw that the thick sleeves of your coat were soaked through in blood, now dried, making the wool stiff. There were cuts to the insides of your arms, where your life had bled from you.

    I don’t remember what he said or if I replied. I can only remember his hand holding mine.

    As we left the building the sergeant asked if I wanted the police in France to tell Dad for us, and I thanked him.
    Mum was waiting for me outside. ‘I’m sorry. I just couldn’t bear to see her like that.’ I wondered if she thought I could bear it. ‘You shouldn’t have to do that sort of thing,’ she continued. ‘They should use DNA or something. It’s barbaric.’ I didn’t agree. However appalling, I had needed to see the brutal reality of your no-colour face to believe you were dead.
    ‘Were you all right on your own?’ Mum asked.
    ‘There was a policeman with me. He was very kind.’
    ‘They’ve all been very kind.’ She needed to find something good in this. ‘Not fair the way the press go on at them, is it? I mean, they really couldn’t have been nicer or . . .’ She trailed off; there was no good in this. ‘Was her face . . . ? I mean, was it . . . ?’
    ‘It was unmarked. Perfect.’
    ‘Such a pretty face.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘It always has been. But you couldn’t see it for all that hair. I kept telling her to put her hair up or have it properly cut. I meant so that everyone could see what a pretty face she had, not because I didn’t like her hair.’
    She broke down and I held her. As she clung to me, we had the physical closeness both of us had needed since I got off the plane. I hadn’t cried yet and I envied Mum, as if a little of the agony could be shed through tears.

    I drove Mum home and helped her to bed. I sat with her till she finally slept.

    In the middle of the night I drove back to London. On the M11 I opened the windows and screamed above the noise of the engine, above the roar of the motorway; screaming into the darkness until my throat hurt and my voice was hoarse. When I reached London the roads were quiet and empty and the silent pavements deserted. It was unimaginable that the dark, abandoned city would have light and people again in the morning. I hadn’t thought about who had killed you; your death had shattered thought. I just wanted to be back in your flat, as if I’d be nearer to you there.
    The car clock showed 3.40 a.m. when I arrived. I remember because it was no longer the day you were found, it was the day after. Already you were going into the past. People think it’s reassuring to say ‘life carries on’, don’t they understand that it’s the fact your life carries on, while the person you love’s does not, that is one of the acute anguishes of grief? There would be day after day that wasn’t the day you were found; that hope, and my life with my sister in it, had ended.
    In the darkness, I slipped on the steps down to your flat and grabbed hold of the icy railing. The jolt of adrenaline and cold forced the realisation of your death harder into me. I fumbled for the key under the pink cyclamen pot, scraping my knuckles on frozen concrete. The key wasn’t there. I saw that your front door was ajar. I went in.
    Someone was in your bedroom. Grief had suffocated all other emotions and I felt no fear as I opened the door. A man was inside rummaging through your things. Anger cut through the grief.
    ‘What the fuck are you doing?’
    In the new mindscape of deep-sea mourning, even my words were unrecognisable to me. The man turned.

    ‘Shall we end it there?’ asks Mr Wright. I glance at the clock; it’s nearly seven. I am grateful to him for letting me finish the day you were found.
    ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know how late it was.’
    ‘As you said, time stops making any sense when someone you