Rosie draped the towel like a shawl round her shoulders. Barbara noted it was the same pattern as her bikini, with the colours reversed. Rosie used one end of it to dry her ostensibly wet cheeks and forehead after her rigorous swim. She said, “Everything I told you was true, Sergeant. If I can’t remember exactly when I had which argument with Teo, that means nothing. Sisters argue. Do you have a sister? No? Well, if you had one, you’d know what I mean.”
Barbara sought clarity. “Are you telling me that one of your lies is the actual truth or that all of them are?”
“I went to tell her I’m pregnant,” Rosie said. “I told her Ross is the father. Obviously she didn’t take it very well.”
“Is that what you were arguing about?” And when Rosie shrugged her acquiescence, Barbara went on with, “What about the thirty-first?”
“What about the thirty-first?”
“Teo texted Ross about coming to the flat. I’m thinking she had news for him. I’m also thinking you knew exactly what this news was.”
“She wasn’t pregnant, if that’s what you mean. She and Ross . . . It was completely over between them. He was . . . Please understand, Sergeant. Ross and I had become a couple. We still are a couple.”
“Got it,” Barbara said. “A couple. Uppercase, italics, bold typeface, whatever. But I’m reckoning the ship of this couplehood of yours might’ve been heading for a reef.”
“Why? They were finished with each other. Ross wanted out of the marriage, and so did Teo. He said as much. She said as much.”
“Well. Right. Indeed they do and they did and whatever. But the problem with that is that people tend to hear what they want to hear. DS Nkata tells me you never knew your sister was an FGM victim.”
Rosie got to her feet. She pulled the plug to deflate her chair. She said, “No one ever told me. She never said a thing about it. Neither did he.”
“Would that’ve made things different?”
“Different for who?”
“Different for you,” Barbara said. “For your plan to go after your sister’s husband.”
Rosie turned to look at Barbara squarely. She said in a voice that seemed under cool control, “I didn’t ‘go after’ anyone. I was someone for Ross to talk to. I was his friend. He’s been part of our family for years and I was his . . . I was important to him. What happened between us had nothing to do with Teo being cut. How could it have done when I didn’t know? No one told me, ever.”
“Like I said,” Barbara pointed out, “there’re times when people hear only what they want to hear. Did Teo tell you she’d been examined for surgery? Was that part of the argument?”
“I was to drive her to have a surgery. That’s all I knew. She asked me. I agreed. I wanted to know what sort it was. It worried me that something was wrong, like . . . like cancer or something. But she wouldn’t say. I still don’t know.”
“Reconstruction,” Barbara told her. “She was having herself repaired, putting her female parts back into order as much as possible. Ross Carver—and I assume you know this since you and he are such a couple, eh?—had spent years asking her to see someone who might help her. Fix her. Repair her. Whatever. He wanted her to see a plastic surgeon. She wasn’t on board with that idea at first, but eventually she changed her mind. She got herself evaluated and it was all systems go to put her feminine parts right.”
Rosie grabbed the chair up and squeezed it. The whoosh of air being released sounded like the wheezing of an asthmatic. “How could I have known any of that?” she demanded. “I’d never been told she’d been cut in the first place.”
“So when she asked you to be the driver she needed—”
“I asked her why. I sent her a message. She didn’t answer. What else could I do? Beat the information out of her?”
Barbara let that one hang there to give the young woman time to hear what she herself had said. Lips pressed together, Rosie began to fold the inflatable chair, reducing its size by half and then a quarter. When still she said nothing more, Barbara spoke.
“Wouldn’t a normal sister press on and ask questions about this whole surgery thing?”
Rosie wrapped the towel round her waist. She said, “Teo didn’t tell me things, Sergeant. She never told me things. Don’t ask me why because I don’t know other than to say we weren’t close the way some sisters are. We were too different and she was seven years older. Now, if there’s nothing else . . . ? My mum’s expecting me.”