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RACHEL
My sister Nicky was waiting for me in the foyer at Kenneth Steele House. She was panda-eyed with
strain. I fell into her arms. Her clothing smelled of damp cottage and wood smoke and washing
powder.
She looks a lot like me. You could tell we’re sisters if you saw us together. She’s got the same
green eyes and more or less the same face, and a similar figure, though she’s heavier. She’s not quite
as tall as me either and her hair is cut short and always carefully highlighted, so instead of being curly
it settles in brushed golden waves around her face, which makes her look more sensible than me.
Nicky told me she’d driven straight from Aunt Esther’s cottage. She held me tightly.
The hug felt awkward. We probably hadn’t been in each other’s arms since I was a child. I wasn’t
used to the padded curves of her body, the cotton wool softness of the skin on her cheek. It made me
acutely aware of my own frame, its angularity, as if I were constructed from a more brittle material
than her.
‘Let’s get you home,’ she said, and she brushed a strand of my hair back behind my ear.
Arriving home was my first taste of how it feels to live life in a goldfish bowl.
Journalists had gathered outside my little two-up, two-down cottage. Ben and I lived on a pretty
narrow street of small Victorian terraces in Bishopston, an area that has yellow Neighbourhood
Watch stickers in many house windows and loves recycling and having street parties in the summer.
Our neighbours were a mix of elderly people, young families and some students. Ours was a quiet
street. The biggest drama we’d collectively experienced since I’d lived there was waking up to find
drunk students had put traffic cones on top of the car roofs during the night.
The journalists were impossible to avoid. There was a group of them, big enough to spill off the
pavement. They called my name, thrust microphones towards us, photographed us as we entered the
house, pushed and shoved and tripped up as they ran around each other trying to get in front of us.
Their voices were cajoling, and urgent, and to me they had the menace of a mob.
When we got inside, black dots danced at the edges of my vision, the after-effects of the bright
white of their flashbulbs, and I could still hear them calling from behind the door. My heart rate didn’t
slow until I moved into the kitchen at the back of the house, and there it was silent, and I was able to
sit, and breathe, and focus on the placid ticking of my kitchen clock.
Zhang stayed with us for a short while. The scenes of crime officers had visited the house while I
was being interviewed. She wanted to check that they’d left everything in order upstairs, in Ben’s
room.
She pulled the curtains in the sitting room tightly shut, so that the journalists couldn’t see in. She
advised us not to answer the door without checking who was there, and not to speak directly to the
press.
‘It’s good that they’re here though,’ she said. ‘It’s all good publicity because it means that as many
people as possible will be aware of Ben and will be looking out for him.’
She made sure we had her card with her number on it and then she left us alone. Part of me didn’t
really want her to leave. She was more approachable than Clemo by miles. I felt nervous of him, of
the authority he exuded, of his matter-of-factness and of the power he suddenly held in our lives. But
Zhang was different, more of a kindly guide who might be able to help me navigate this horrendous
new reality, and I felt grateful for her.