Second Life Read online

  ‘When?’ I say.

  ‘Last night.’

  There’s a mug of sweet tea in front of me and I watch it steam. It has nothing to do with me. I can’t work out why it’s there. All I can think of is my baby sister, lying in a Parisian alleyway, rain-soaked and alone.

  ‘Last night?’

  ‘That’s what they said.’

  He’s speaking softly. He knows I’ll remember only a fraction of what he tells me.

  ‘What was she doing there?’

  ‘They don’t know. Taking a short cut?’

  ‘A short cut?’

  I try to picture it. Kate, on her way home. Drunk, probably. Wanting to shave a few minutes off her journey.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘They think she’d just left a bar. She was attacked.’

  I remember. A mugging, the officer had said, though they don’t know yet if anything was taken. She’d looked away from me, then. She lowered both her gaze and her voice, and turned to Hugh. I heard her, though. ‘She doesn’t appear to have been raped.’

  Something within me collapses as I think of it. I fold inwards; I become tiny, diminished. I’m eleven years old, Kate’s four, and I have to tell her that our mother isn’t coming back from the hospital this time. Our father thinks I’m old enough to talk to her, he can’t face it, not this time, it’s my job. Kate is crying, even though I’m not sure she understands what I’ve told her, and I’m holding her. ‘We’ll be fine,’ I’m saying, even though part of me already knows what will happen. Our father won’t cope, his friends will be no help. We’re on our own. But I can’t say this, I must be strong for Kate. For my sister. ‘You and me,’ I tell her. ‘I promise. I’ll look after you. Always.’

  But I hadn’t, had I? I’d run away to Berlin. I’d taken her son. I’d left her to die.

  ‘What happened?’ I say again.

  Hugh is patient. ‘Darling, we don’t know. But they’re doing everything in their power to find out.’

  At first I’d thought it would be better for Connor to stay away from Kate’s funeral. He was too young, he wouldn’t cope. Hugh disagreed. He reminded me that our father hadn’t let me and Kate go to our mother’s and I’d resented him for the rest of his life.

  I had to concede he was right, but it was the counsellor who decided the matter. ‘He can’t be protected,’ she said. ‘He has to deal with his grief.’ She hesitated. We were sitting in her office, the two of us. She had her hands folded on the desk in front of her. I was looking at the marks on her hands, tiny abrasions. I wondered if she was a gardener. I pictured her, kneeling beside flower beds with pruning shears, deadheading roses. A life she can return to, when this is over. Unlike us.

  ‘Julia?’

  I looked up. I’d missed something.

  ‘Does he want to go?’

  When we got home we asked him. He thought about it for a while, then said he’d like to, yes.

  We bought him a suit, a black tie, a new shirt. He looks much older, wearing them, and walks between me and Hugh as we go into the crematorium. ‘Are you all right?’ I say, once we’ve sat down.

  He nods, but says nothing. The place feels drenched with pain, but most people are silent. In shock. Kate’s death was violent, senseless, incomprehensible. People have retreated within themselves, for protection.

  Yet I’m not crying, neither is Connor, and neither is his father. Only Hugh has looked at the coffin. I put my arm around our son. ‘It’s all right,’ I say.

  People continue to file in behind us and take their seats. There is shuffling, voices are hushed. I close my eyes. I’m thinking of Kate, of our childhood. Things were simple, then, though that is not to say they were easy. After our mother died our father began drinking heavily. His friends – mostly artists, painters, people from the theatre – started spending more and more time with us, and we watched our house become the venue for a kind of rolling party that sputtered and faltered but never quite stopped. Every few days new people would arrive just as others left; they would be carrying more bottles and more cigarettes, there would be more music, sometimes drugs. Now I can see that this was all part of our father’s grief, but back then it had felt like a celebration of freedom, a binge that lasted a decade. Kate and I felt like unwelcome reminders of his past, and though he kept the drugs away from us and told us he loved us, he was neither inclined nor able to be a parent and so it’d fallen to me to look after us both. I would prepare our meals, I’d put a squirt of paste on Kate’s toothbrush and leave it out at bedtime, I’d read to her when she woke up crying and made sure she did her homework and was ready for school every day. I held her and told her that Daddy loved us and everything would be all right. I discovered I adored my sister, and despite the years between us we became as close as twins, the connection between us almost psychic.

  Yet she’s there, in that box, and I’m here, in front of it, unable even to cry. It’s beyond belief and, somewhere, I know I let her down.

  There’s a tap on my shoulder. I turn round. It’s a stranger, a woman. ‘I just wanted to say hello,’ she says. She introduces herself as Anna. It takes me a moment to place her; Kate’s flatmate, we’d asked her to do a reading. ‘I wanted to tell you how sorry I am.’

  She’s crying, but there’s a kind of stoicism there. A resilience. ‘Thank you,’ I say, and a moment later she opens the bag on her lap. She hands me a sheet of paper. ‘The poem I picked . . . d’you think it’s okay?’

  I scan the poem, even though I’ve already read it in the order of service. ‘To the angry,’ it begins, ‘I was cheated, but to the happy I am at peace.’ I’d thought it an odd choice, when surely anger is the only response possible, but I say nothing. I hand the sheet back. ‘It’s great. Thank you.’

  ‘It’s one I thought Kate might like.’ I tell her I’m sure she’s right. Her hands are shaking and, even though the reading isn’t long, I wonder how she’s going to get through it.

  She does, in the end. Though upset, she draws on some inner reserve of strength and her words are clear and strong. Connor watches her, and I see him wipe a tear away with the back of his hand. Hugh’s crying, too, and I tell myself I’m being strong for them both, I have to keep myself together, I can’t let them see me fall apart. Yet I can’t help wondering whether I’m kidding myself and the truth is I can’t feel any pain at all.

  Afterwards I go over to Anna. ‘It was perfect,’ I say. We’re standing outside the chapel. Connor looks visibly relieved that it’s over.

  She smiles. I think of Kate’s phone calls over the last few weeks and wonder what Anna thinks of me, what my sister had told her.

  ‘Thank you,’ she says.

  ‘This is my husband, Hugh. And this is my very dear friend, Adrienne.’

  Anna turns to my son. ‘And you must be Connor?’ she says. He nods. He holds out his hand for her to shake it, and for a moment I’m struck again by how grown up he seems.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ he says. He seems totally lost, unsure how he’s supposed to behave. The carefree boy of just a few weeks ago, the child who would race into the house, pursued by three or four friends, to pick up his football or his bike, seems
suddenly to have gone. The boy who would spend hours with his sketch pad and some pencils has disappeared. I tell myself it’s temporary, my little boy will be back, but I wonder if that’s true.

  We carry on talking, for a while, but then Hugh must sense Connor’s distress and suggests they make their way over to the cars. Adrienne says she’ll go with them, and Hugh turns to Anna. ‘Thank you for everything,’ he says, and he shakes her hand again before putting his arm around Connor’s shoulders. ‘Come on, darling,’ he says, and the three of them turn away.

  ‘He seems a nice lad,’ says Anna, once they’re out of earshot. The wind has whipped up; there’ll be rain soon. She smooths her hair away from her mouth.

  ‘He is,’ I say.

  ‘How’s he coping?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s really sunk in yet.’ We turn and walk towards the flowers that have been arranged in the courtyard outside the chapel.

  ‘It must be hard for him.’

  I wonder how much she knows about Connor. She and my sister were old friends; Kate told me they’d known each other at school, though only vaguely, through other people. A few years ago they’d reconnected through Facebook and quickly realized they’d both moved to Paris. They met for drinks and a few months later Anna’s flatmate moved out of her apartment and Kate moved in. I’d been pleased; my sister hadn’t always found it easy to keep friends. They must have talked a great deal, yet Kate could be secretive, and I imagine the painful subject of Connor was something she might not find easy to raise.

  ‘He’s okay,’ I say. ‘I think.’

  We’ve reached the south-west wall of the crematorium, the wreaths, the white chrysanthemums and pink roses, the sprays of white lilies pinned with handwritten cards. I bend down to read them, still not quite understanding why it’s Kate’s name I see everywhere. Just then the sun breaks through the clouds and for the briefest of moments we’re lit by its brilliance.

  ‘I bet he’s quite a handful,’ says Anna, and I stand up. Connor’s a good lad, no trouble at all. We decided to tell him the truth about his background as soon as he was old enough to understand it.

  ‘He’s fine,’ I say. ‘So far . . .’

  ‘He gets on well with his dad?’

  ‘Very.’ I don’t tell her that it’s how well he gets on with me that I worry about. I try to be as good a mother as I can, yet sometimes it doesn’t come easily. Certainly not in the same way that fatherhood comes to Hugh.

  I remember I talked to Adrienne about it once. Hugh was busy with work, and Connor and I were on holiday with her twins. She had been amazing, all day, with all three children. They were much younger, there were tantrums, Connor was whining about everything and refusing to eat. I hadn’t been able to cope, and felt bad. ‘I worry it’s because he’s not mine,’ I said, once the children had gone to bed and she was sitting with a glass of wine, me with a soda. ‘You know?’ She told me I was being hard on myself. ‘He is yours. You’re his mum. And you’re a good one. You have to remember that everyone’s different, and your mother wasn’t around to set an example. No one finds it easy.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said. I couldn’t help wondering what Kate would have said.

  ‘That’s good,’ says Anna now, and I smile. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘We’re very lucky to have him.’ We carry on looking at the flowers. We make small talk, avoiding the subject of Kate. After a few minutes we walk back out, towards the car park. Adrienne is waving to me, and I tell Anna I’d better go over.

  ‘It’s been good to meet you,’ I say.

  She turns to me and takes my hands in hers. Her grief has broken through again, she’s begun to cry. ‘I miss her,’ she says simply.

  I hold her hands. I want to cry, too, but I don’t. The numbness pervades everything. It’s a defence, Hugh has said. I’m blocking everything. Adrienne agrees: ‘There’s no right way of grieving Kate,’ she says. I haven’t told any of my other friends how I feel in case they think I’m unconcerned about my sister’s murder. I feel bad.

  ‘I know,’ I say. ‘I miss her, too.’

  She looks up at me. She wants to say something. The words tumble out. ‘Can we stay in touch? I mean, I’d like that. If you would? You could come and visit me in Paris, or I could come and see you. I mean, only if you want to, I guess you’re very busy—’

  ‘Anna, please.’ I put my hand on her arm to silence her. Busy doing what? I think. I had a few jobs in my diary – a couple wanted pictures of them with their eight-week-old baby, the mother of a friend of Connor’s wanted the family and their Labrador – but I’ve cancelled those. Right now I’m doing nothing except existing, thinking of Kate, wondering whether it can really be coincidence that the day I went to look at the picture of Marcus is also the day that claimed her.

  I manage to smile. I don’t want to seem rude. ‘I’d like that very much.’

  Chapter Three

  Hugh is eating breakfast. Muesli. I watch as he pours milk into his coffee and adds half a spoonful of sugar.

  ‘Are you sure it’s not too soon?’

  But that’s precisely why I want to go, I think. Because it’s been two months and, according to my husband, I’m still in denial. I need to make it real.

  ‘I want to go there. I want to meet up with Anna. I want to talk to her.’

  As I say it I realize how much it means to me. Anna and I are getting on. She seems warm, funny. Understanding. She doesn’t seem to judge. And it was Anna who was closer to Kate than all of us – closer than me, closer than Hugh, or Adrienne – so it’s Anna who can help me, in a way that my other friends can’t. And perhaps I can help her, too.

  ‘I think it’ll do me good.’

  ‘But what are you hoping to achieve?’

  I pause. Perhaps part of me also wants to be sure she doesn’t think badly of me and Hugh, for taking Connor. ‘I don’t know. It just feels like something I want to do.’

  He’s silent. It’s been nine weeks, I think. Nine weeks, and I still haven’t cried. Not properly. Again I think of the postcard that’s still in my bag, where I put it the day Kate died. Marcus in the Mirror.

  ‘Kate died. I have to face it.’ Whatever it is.

  He finishes his drink. ‘I’m not convinced, but . . .’ His voice softens. ‘If you’re sure, then you should go.’

  I’m nervous as I step off the train, but Anna’s waiting for me at the end of the platform. She’s wearing a dress in pale lemon and standing in the sunlight that arcs in from the high windows. She looks younger than I remember, and she has a quiet, simple prettiness I hadn’t noticed at the funeral. Her face is one I’d have once wanted to photograph; it’s warm and open. She smiles when she sees me, and I wonder if she’s already shedding her grief, while mine is only just beginning to grip.

  She waves as I approach. ‘Julia!’ She runs forward to greet me. We kiss on both cheeks then hold each other for a few moments. ‘Thanks so much for coming! It’s so good to see you . . .’

  ‘You too,’ I say.

  ‘You must be exhausted! Let’s get a drink.’

  We go to a café, not far from the station. She orders us both a coffee. ‘Any news?’

  I sigh. What’s there to say?
She knows most of it already. The police have made little progress; Kate had been drinking in a bar on the night she was attacked, apparently alone. A few people remember seeing her; she seemed in good spirits, was chatting to the barman. Her phone records haven’t helped, and she was definitely by herself when she left. It’s irrational, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’m responsible for what happened.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘I’m sorry. How’re you doing?’

  ‘I just keep thinking of her. Of Kate. Sometimes it’s like nothing’s happened at all. I just think I could pick up the phone and call her and everything would be all right.’

  ‘You’re in denial. That’s normal. After all, it hasn’t been that long.’

  I sigh. I don’t want to tell her how Kate has been haunting me, that I’ve been dialling her number over and over again only to hear a pre-recorded voice, speaking in French, informing me that her number hasn’t been recognized. I don’t want her to know I bought Kate a card, that I wrote out a message and sealed the envelope, then hid it in the bureau underneath a pile of paperwork. I don’t want to admit that the worst thing, the hardest thing, is that some small part of me, a part of me I hate but can’t deny, is glad she’s gone, because at least now she’s not ringing me up in the middle of the night to demand I return her son.

  ‘Two months,’ I say. ‘Hugh says that’s hardly any time at all.’

  She smiles sadly, but says nothing. In a way I’m relieved; there’s nothing anyone can say that might help, everything is irrelevant. Sometimes silence is better and I admire her for braving it.

  ‘How about you?’ I say.

  ‘Oh, you know. I’m really busy with work, which helps.’ I remember that she’s a lawyer, working in compliance for a big pharmaceutical company, though she hasn’t told me which one. I wait for her to say more but she doesn’t.