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My sister spoke as if she’d rehearsed these words for years. Her speech gathered pace, as if she
were confessing something.
‘You messed about for years, you never bothered with schoolwork although they said you could
have done brilliantly if you’d tried. You never cared about anything, and then all of a sudden you got
John. God knows how, because you were pissing your life away, partying all the time, and suddenly
everything was so perfect and what had you done to deserve it? Nothing.’
‘We fell in love,’ I said, but she took no notice. She couldn’t seem to stop herself now.
‘I knew you’d have a boy the minute you told me you were pregnant. And when he was born and I
went to see him and I held him, I saw Charlie in him. It was as if he was Charlie, reborn. He was so
precious, and I wasn’t sure you’d be able to look after him.’
‘So you called John Finch,’ said Clemo.
‘Just to check that she was coping, that she was doing the right thing.’
‘Mr Finch says that you were rather insistent with your phone calls.’
‘Well he wouldn’t give me any information!’
I interrupted them. ‘John never said anything to me.’
They ignored me, their eyes were locked, Nicky’s gaze furious, his eyes hard like ice; their terrible
dialogue unpicking yet more of the stitches that had held my life together. I was relegated to the role
of spectator.
‘Nicky,’ he said, ‘did you want to have Ben for yourself? So you could look after him properly?’
‘That’s the thing,’ she said, ‘I didn’t. I didn’t want her to have him, but I didn’t want him either. He
would just have reminded me every day what I’d lost, and that’s why you’re wrong.’
‘Wrong about what?’
‘For pity’s sake!’ She laughed. It was a shrill, upsetting sound. ‘Stop playing games with me! What
would I do with him? Where do you think I would keep him?’
‘I think you might like to have him. I think you’ve always wanted him.’
The baldness of this, the slow, calm way he said it, made my sister pause and collect herself before
she spoke again, as if she realised she couldn’t combat his accusations with emotion alone.
‘Well, you’re not sure, are you? If you’d got any actual evidence you’d have arrested me, so this is
a pathetic attempt to get me to confess to something I haven’t done.’
Now she leaned across the table towards him.
‘You made me tell my sister about our family. That was low. You’re not getting anything else. I’ve
told you that I’ve got nothing to do with Ben’s disappearance and that’s all you need to know. The rest
is private. Why don’t you get out there and start looking for him before it’s too late?’
She got up and went into the garden, slamming the kitchen door behind her. Zhang went after her.
I was left sitting at the table with Clemo.
He cleared his throat. ‘I’m sorry to land this on you like this. I hope you understand that we have to
follow everything up.’
I just stared at him, wondering why anybody would ever do a job like his and believing for the first
time that he would do anything it took to find Ben.