Chapter Five ‘Had a sister?’
I nod and look away. Much to my embarrassment, my eyes fill with tears.
‘Oh God,’ Louise says at once, and puts her hand out across the table, brushing my arm. ‘You poor thing, you’re in pieces.’
‘No, it’s . . . it’s okay.’
I breathe in deeply through my nose, then out again. Count to five in my head. The wave of panic begins to recede. But slowly, very slowly.
‘I had a sister called Rachel,’ I repeat. ‘She died years ago, when we were kids. On a family holiday in the Swiss Alps.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Dominic knows that much. But there’s more.’ It’s hard, but I force myself to go on. ‘Far more.’
‘Go on.’
I take a tentative sip of coffee, my gaze on the blank, cream-coloured wall opposite. The coffee is still hot but no longer scalding. ‘I wasn’t with her that day, so I don’t know exactly how she . . . Anyway, Rachel died on that holiday and life was never the same again.’
‘I’m not surprised. It must have been traumatic.’
Blinking back tears, I shake my head. ‘No,’ I say with some difficulty. ‘You still don’t understand.’
Louise looks at me, frowning.
How on earth could she understand? Louise did not know Rachel, and has no idea what life has been like for our family; of the way that holiday in Switzerland split everything into ‘before’ and ‘after’ her death.
‘Rachel had a snow globe,’ I start again, not looking at her. ‘There was this pretty Swiss village inside, a goat, you know the sort of thing. All that twee tourist stuff. My dad bought it for her on a diplomatic trip to Switzerland a few years before she died. She loved that snow globe. She used to shake it really hard, and then watch the snow slowly settle.’ I swallow. My voice is hoarse and uneven, but I need to get this out. ‘After Rachel died, I never saw the snow globe again. I thought Dad must have thrown it away. Because he couldn’t bear to see it and remember, you know?’
Louise watches me with concern in her eyes. ‘You okay, Cat?’
‘Yeah, just about.’ I nod, then take another sip before pushing away my coffee cup. It tastes bitter. ‘Anyway, a few days ago, this parcel arrived for me at the food bank. Addressed to me by name. I thought it was just another donation. But when I opened the parcel, the snow globe was inside.’ I pause. ‘Rachel’s snow globe.’
‘Oh my God.’ Louise looks shocked. ‘You’re sure it was hers?’
‘Positive.’
‘So who sent it to you?’ She frowns. ‘Your parents?’
‘No, impossible. They would never have done something like that. There was no note with it either. But there was . . . there was something inside it.’
‘What?’
Feeling sickened, I pull the plastic bag from my pocket and throw it across the table towards Louise.
‘That was inside the snow globe.’ I watch as Louise picks up the bag and stares at the contents. ‘I had to drain the globe to . . . to get it out.’
‘Is that . . . an eyeball?’
‘Yes.’
‘Jesus Christ.’
‘That’s why I wanted to see you today. Because I need you to check if that’s a human eye or an animal’s. If it’s even a real eyeball at all.’
‘Looks real enough to me.’ She studies it closely, frowning. ‘Though I’d say it’s too large to be human.’
‘But could you find out for sure?’
‘I can do that, yes.’
‘Thank you, I really appreciate it.’ I pause, guessing from her expression that some further explanation is needed. ‘I could have asked Dominic to check for me, of course. But I don’t want him to know the truth about Rachel.’
‘But why?’ She looks puzzled. ‘I mean, it’s none of my business. But the two of you are getting married soon, for God’s sake. I’m sure Dominic would understand.’
‘I’m not sure he would. It’s rather complicated, you see.’
‘Families are always complicated.’
‘Not like this.’
She studies me. ‘It can’t be that bad, surely?’
‘Confidentially?’
‘Of course.’
‘Rachel was my older sister,’ I say. ‘Older by just over one year. But she was also an evil bitch and I wasn’t sorry when she died.’
I can’t believe I’m admitting the truth at last. I’ve never discussed Rachel’s condition with anyone outside the family except a therapist when I was younger, and even he avoided using her name. As if it was unlucky. But now that I’ve started, I can’t seem to stop. Not until Louise understands.
‘I know that sounds awful,’ I continue breathlessly, avoiding her shocked stare. ‘But Rachel made my life a living hell from the moment I was born. She made my parents’ lives hell too. She was . . . Rachel was like the devil.’ My hands harden into fists, nails digging into my flesh. ‘Total, stone-cold evil.’
Louise is staring at me in astonishment.
‘You probably think I’m exaggerating. That it was just typical sibling rivalry between us. Tit for tat, some childish feud. But you’d be wrong. Completely, horribly wrong.’ My voice starts to shake. ‘The sort of things Rachel did would turn your stomach. I can barely bring myself to talk about it. I mean, she was sick. She must have been. No normal person would have done things like that.’
Louise takes my hand and squeezes it. ‘Bloody hell, you poor thing. Please, you don’t need to go on.’
‘No, I do. There’s . . . there’s more.’
She waits.
‘A few months before she died, Rachel trapped a stray cat in the shed. A young cat. More of a kitten, really. I wanted to run and tell our mum, but Rachel wouldn’t let me. She made me stand there and watch. Watch while she tortured the poor little thing until it died.’
Louise is shaking her head in horror. As a mental health specialist, she must have heard some nasty stories in her time. But this is particularly gruesome.
‘After it was dead, Rachel pulled its eyes out. It was so horrible. She slipped one into my water glass at bedtime. So when I went to take a drink . . .’
Louise puts a hand to her mouth, unable to speak.
I understand precisely how she is feeling, that creeping sense of horror, and decide not to finish the story. It speaks for itself anyway. Instead, I gesture to the bag containing the eyeball. ‘That,’ I tell her, ‘is pure Rachel. Only it can’t be Rachel who sent it to me. Because my sister is long dead.’
I meet Louise’s eyes deliberately. No more hiding. No more lying to myself.
‘And nobody’s happier about that than me.’
Chapter Six
After work on Tuesday I head for the bus stop opposite the food bank to begin the laborious trek across London to my parents’ house in Kensington. It’s been another difficult day and I’m dog-tired, my feet aching.
I’m also upset.
I know some of the people who come to the food bank are in terrible circumstances, but it still shakes me to learn exactly how they’re living, often hand to mouth, in appalling housing conditions. There was a woman today who couldn’t stop crying while I fetched her food. We had to stop while she took a breather. She was recently widowed and living out of a suitcase, with four young kids and only two damp rooms in a North London high-rise. One of her kids was a toddler, a girl who trailed round after her mum with a lost look in her eyes, constantly sucking her thumb.
Sharon had to take over in the end because I didn’t know how to deal with my own distress. The worst stories have a tendency to reduce me to misty-eyed sympathy, and then I’m next to useless, forgetting even the basics of my training.
Sharon came to see me afterwards, saying, ‘Don’t worry, love. You’ll get used to it.’
She’s right, of course. I need to be more professional, not keep dissolving. The problem is, I’m not sure I want to ‘get used to it’. To become so hardened to such tales of suffering that I no longer feel like crying.