Prologue
OUT OF THE DARKNESS an insipid winter sun appears, discharging splinters of yellow light between two blocks of flats overlooking a landfill site. Parked between the misshapen hillocks is the silhouette of a burnt-out, smoking car.
A middle-aged woman hangs out washing before heading out to work. Sodden jeans and a couple of T-shirts appear like ghostly apparitions in the miasmic haze. From way up high, she can see for miles on a good day.
But this is not a good day.
Her senses are triggered. Her eyes itch, her throat constricts; hairs on the back of her neck feel electrified and bristle against the collar of her nurse’s uniform. She turns and faces the wasteland twelve floors below, leans forward on the metal handrail and catches an unpleasant odour: burning rubber and … something else…
No one heard the small red car arrive in the early hours.
No one saw it catch alight and burst into flames.
But, later that day, everyone would be talking about the charred remains of the young woman strapped in the driver’s seat…
Chapter One
EMILY
“The whole world can become the enemy when you lose what
you love.” Kristina McMorrris.
I STOOD ALONE in the graveyard the day they buried my sister. There I was, Emily Parsons, the hapless figure lurking behind a gnarled oak tree—an unwelcome guest.
A savage January wind gnawed at my cheeks. It made my eyes sting; eyes already brimming with salty residue left over from a night spent sobbing into a pillow. Sapped of all strength, I leaned against the trunk, held it between my hands; gloved fingers tracing rough edges. I breathed in its wild, woody perfume; rotting branches, unclaimed timber—a steadfast pillar of support in a surreal tableau.
At our parents’ request, I didn’t show my face. Did they fear I’d cause a scene, throw myself onto the coffin?
Who knows?
Who cares?
With or without their blessing, I had to go. I had to be there to witness my little sister’s departure from this mortal coil and, if that meant enduring sniveling platitudes caught on the wind—so be it.
Our parents, family members and some of Rita’s friends circled the cavernous hole in the ground like ravens; a flock of silhouettes set against a snowy backdrop. My watery eyes lingered on the word Rita formed in purple violas on the wreath—a tiny name for someone with a big personality and an even bigger heart.
Having endured the lamentations of the priest marking the passing of a life ended much too soon, I absconded. I sprinted like a bandit between gravestones, my feet slipping on ankle deep snow that shrouded everything, creating a clean, sterile landscape. Nothing seemed out of place. Nothing except my sister’s charred body lying six foot under in a mahogany coffin fifty yards away.
I took refuge in my car and sat in silence, refusing to acknowledge the shifting congregation. Concealed behind windows veiled with condensation, I left unseen.
In those days leading up to Rita’s funeral, I cried nonstop. I would wake from dozing and the world would be as it was. I would smile through cracked lips, but then I would remember and my heart would ache and my body would shake and tears would cloud my eyes once more.
The myriad of memories we had made were my only lifeline: phone conversations, photographs and texts existing in a vacuum, authorless—a cruel kind of comfort. For the sake of my sanity, I tried to come to terms with her passing, I really did, but the realisation that the one person I loved more than any other had gone and left me behind did not make any sense to me.
We had made a pact when we were kids to never be separated.
Why had Rita broken it?
A fortnight before the funeral, a member of my international investment team tore into the boardroom in Heron Tower on Canary Wharf, to tell me I had an urgent phone call that I would want to take in my office. I took my time, assuming one of my parents had been rushed to hospital—a heart attack, a fall … too damn mean to die without involving me in their medical drama.
Rita did not even come up on my radar.
A second after picking up the phone a young nurse, preparing to deliver bad news, cleared her throat and said in a half whisper, “I’m so sorry…”
She only had simple details, the most shocking of which was that Rita was dead.
It was suicide.
I assumed I had misheard. I’d only spoken to Rita a couple of days before and detected no signs of depression or unhappiness. We even talked about booking a holiday. She was in her first teaching post and was enjoying her new school, for God’s sake.
“Are you sure you have the right person?” I questioned, disbelieving that Rita could even contemplate such a thing. “My sister is Rita Derbyshire, she’s at work, she’s…”
There was no mistake. She had left instructions that in the event of her death, I should be contacted first as her next of kin.
I swivelled around in my chair, casting an eye over the calendar—January tenth, eleven thirty. I made a mental note of the time, the very minute I became aware that her life had ended and mine had ceased to exist in the way it had before that moment.
I turned a few more degrees clockwise and from thirty floors up looked out over London. Life was going on as normal: an airplane was flying overhead, leaving a frayed white ribbon across a blue sky; traffic was moving like glistening chess pieces, people the size of millipedes were scuttling around on a white canvas. They had no knowledge of the catastrophe that had befallen my sister and, as a consequence—me.
How could they?
Why would they care that a bright-as-a-button, Oxford graduate had ended her life just when it seemed to be getting started? The most loving little sister I had raised was dead.
I pursed my lips, raised my chin and glowered. Why was the sun still shining? Shouldn’t the Almighty have frozen time, stopped traffic; marked the occasion with storm clouds, torn the heavens apart with forked lightening, roaring thunder…?
Rita was dead!
That devastating news hit me with the force of a sledgehammer: first to the head, and then to the heart. I knew instantly that I was irreparably damaged, the way you do after a fall from a great height; you hope there are no serious injuries but expect to be concussed and scarred, at the very least. My injuries were more permanent than that.
I was heartbroken.
I slid from my office chair, fell to my knees and wept uncontrollably.
That was over a month ago. Back then I saw no reason for Rita to take her precious life.
Now, I know why she did what she did.
And I know who was to blame.
December 1997
TRAUMATISED AFTER THE DEATH of their mother, two broken-hearted little girls joined twenty-two other homeless waifs and strays at the Summerville Children’s Residence. The place regularly featured in the local press, and even had its own website. It was impressive to look at— from a distance.
The Victorian architrave framing a striking entrance was more suited to nobility than a collection of ne'er-do-wells; a decorative balustrade offering a warm welcome impressed the occasional visitor but, behind the façade, the building bore the tell-tale marks of a century’s worth of mismanagement and neglect.