“It wasn’t the maths. It was the kids. Or that’s how I read it.” She tore her eyes from mine and glanced around the room. “You have a lovely house. Remember when we played charades right here by the fireplace?”
Of course I remembered, but I was in no mood for reminiscing. “Sure. But when you say she was struggling with the kids … what do you mean? They’re just kids!” I huffed, dismissively. “Didn’t she have an experienced member of staff to turn to?”
Maggie looked anxiously back in my direction. “I’m sorry. I don’t know. I work in a bloody bank.” She started to cry. “I should have been there for her, I…”
I reached for her hand. “You were. She chose to keep things from you. Not because she didn’t trust you, but because she knew you couldn’t help and were better off not knowing. If anyone should have been there for her, it should’ve been me.” I felt a pain in my chest as if I had been stabbed—the truth hurt.
In a reassuring gesture, I patted her hand when really I was only going through the motions. I wanted to thank her for coming and show her the door so I could scroll through texts and emails; sort through the events of Rita’s life like a detective looking for clues.
What had I missed?
Maggie reached into her bag for something. “I received this parcel two weeks ago. She must have posted it the day…” Words escaped her. “It, it came with a letter for me. It said to deliver the parcel to you today, the day of her funeral. You can read it if you want.” She handed it over.
For some inexplicable reason I was hesitant. I wanted to read my sister’s final words but knew they would wreck me. I opened the folded sheet of paper. It was a brief note, nothing untoward: recognition of their friendship, some instructions and a simple, ‘See you later.’ Who would have thought those three words would stir up so much emotion? I closed my eyes and waited for the surge to pass. When I was sufficiently composed, I handed it back. “Thank you. It’s a sweet note.”
I thanked God it was not a suicide note.
Maggie placed the small parcel wrapped in brown paper by my feet and held out her left hand, palm turned down. “This was in it.” On her middle finger was a silver ring with a turquoise stone in it. I recognised it straight away; pale blue with a kind of spider’s web across it. “She bought it when we visited Lake Tahoe in Nevada. I remember the guy in the shop said he’d knock off two dollars if she gave him a kiss…”
I raised an eyebrow. “And did she?”
Maggie tried to smile. “No. You know what she’s like.” Her smile faded, realising her mistake. “I’m sorry…”
“Really, Maggie, there’s no need to apologise. I keep talking about her as if she’s still here too.” I patted her hand again. “These things take time. Try and hold onto her memory but don’t let it hold you back.” I cleared my throat. “She wouldn’t want that.” I sounded like Paul, but it seemed to work.
She nodded resignedly. “She wouldn’t. I’ve done what she asked me to do and delivered this parcel to you.” She tapped it with her right foot, “I couldn’t see you there but—”
“I was there,” I assured her rather too defensively. “I mean, I wasn’t with the group but I was there for the service and the burial.”
She nodded as if she understood. “I knew you’d be there. Reet told me that you’d fallen out with them … the family who adopted you both, years ago.”
I wanted to correct her and explain how they had fallen out with me; how I had been driven out of the family and banished, but that was not the time to put her straight or contaminate an already difficult discussion with bitterness. I forced a smile. “I had to be there.”
“I understand.” She folded her hands into a neat pile across her thighs. “I thought it was a nice service, not that I’ve been to many. We were all too upset to sing. I don’t suppose you have a copy of this...” She handed me a copy of the funeral programme.
“No I haven’t. Thank you.” I held it between my right forefinger and thumb as if it was so delicate a firmer touch might damage it. “I really appreciate you coming to see me, Maggie. She loved you like a sister.”
Her eyes became puddle-like, tears over-spilled onto her cheeks. “I loved her too. And I know for sure that she adored you. She told me about all the things you did for her after your mum died…”
I caught sight of Rita’s smiling face on the front of the programme and immediately flipped it over before I lost every shred of self-control. “Time’s the best healer,” I heard myself saying, sounding like a third-rate bereavement counsellor.
“It is,” she agreed, finding it in her heart to let the cliché go when we both knew how futile it was. It would take a lifetime to get over what had happened. “We’re meeting up a week on Friday, as usual and you’re welcome to come. I mean, if you want to…”
I nodded appreciatively. “Thanks. I’ll think about it.”
We kissed each other’s damp cheeks, took solace from a tight hug and parted. She left and I waved, watched her blow her nose, slip her hands into a pair of gloves and disappear like a spectre in a haze of snowflakes.
As I lingered on the doorstep, the snow flurry took me back to the funeral service. The drifts stacked up against nameless gravestones, the blanket of open spaces where the dead lay beneath the frozen earth and the black hole that became the final resting place of my sister.
It was all too much.
I closed the front door and, with my back against it, slid down onto the hall carpet. Would I ever be able to survive another winter without being buried under remorse, suffocating like a skier caught in an avalanche?
After what I’d learned from Maggie, I realised that I hadn’t known my sister as well as I should have. Had I been so career minded and too blinkered to see that I’d left her long before she had left me?
February 1998
WINTER LINGERED AND BROUGHT with it the harshest of conditions. So harsh, that school, of all places, became the best place to be: the place where the girls could thaw after being chilled to the bone during the night. They could warm their hands on piping hot radiators and heat up their bodies from the inside with hearty food. No one missed a day of school.
Emily made sure Rita was warmly dressed during the day and had taken to sleeping with her under a mound of blankets and coats at night in an attempt to conserve body heat. That helped, but she still woke up in the night with cold feet and, when Rita woke and rubbed noses, she worried that one day they would snap right off.
After school, frostbitten bodies piled into the only room with a coal fire to feel its warmth on their freezing bones. The playroom was colonised by shivering bundles wrapped in blankets, rotating like Emperor penguins with their chicks.
If it had been possible to pee in a bucket in the playroom, they would have, so chilling was the thought of venturing out into the frigid world that existed behind the door. Out on the corridors cast iron radiators gurgled as tepid water trickled through ancient pipes; breath left tiny mouths in plumes and vaporised, leaving shapeless spectres in the glacial air.