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.