Free Sister: A Novel by Rosamund Lupton Page B

else. So I knew that rationally Dad had his reasons. But he had children and so I thought there were no reasons. (Yes, had , because two of his children were dead and the third was no longer a child.)
    You believed him when he said he’d be back. I was five years older but no wiser and for years I had a fantasy of a happy-ever-after ending. The first night I spent at university my fantasy ended, because I thought a happy-ever-after was pointless. Because with my father I didn’t want to hope for a happy ending but to have had a happy beginning. I wanted to have been looked after by Daddy in childhood, not finding resolution with my father as an adult. But I’m not so sure of that now.
    Outside your window, I see the reporters have all gone. Pudding bends her purring body around my ankles, blackmailing me into giving her more food. When I’ve fed her, I fill a watering can and go out of the kitchen door.

    ‘This is your backyard?’ I asked on my first visit to your flat, astonished that you hadn’t meant ‘backyard’ in the American sense of a garden, but in the literal one of a few feet of rubble-strewn earth and a couple of wheelie bins. You smiled. ‘It’ll be beautiful, Bee, just wait.’

    You must have worked like a Trojan. All the stones cleared, the earth dug through and planted. You’ve always been passionate about gardening, haven’t you? I remember when you were tiny you’d trail Mum around the garden with your child-sized, brightly painted trowel and your special gardening apron. But I never liked it. It wasn’t the long wait between seed and resulting plant that I minded about (you did, hotly impatient), it was that when a plant finally flowered it was over too quickly. Plants were too ephemeral and transient. I preferred collecting china ornaments, solid and dependable inanimate objects that wouldn’t change or die the following day.
    But since staying in your flat I have really tried, I promise, to look after this little patch of garden outside the back door. (Fortunately, Amias is in charge of your flowerpot garden of Babylon down the steps to your flat at the front.) I’ve watered the plants out here every day, even adding flower food. No, I’m not absolutely sure why - maybe because I think it matters to you; maybe because I want to nurture your garden because I didn’t nurture you? Well, whatever the motivation, I’m afraid I have failed abysmally. All the plants out here are dead. Their stalks are brown and the few remaining leaves desiccated and crumbling. Nothing is growing out of the bare patches of earth. I empty the last drops from the watering can. Why do I carry on this pointless task of watering dead plants and bare earth?
    ‘It’ll be beautiful, Bee, just wait.’
    I’ll refill the watering can and wait a while longer.

5
    Wednesday

    I arrive at the Criminal Prosecution Service offices and notice Miss Crush Secretary staring at me. Actually, scrutinising seems more accurate. I sense that she is assessing me as a rival. Mr Wright hurries in, briefcase in one hand, newspaper in the other. He smiles at me openly and warmly; he hasn’t yet made the switch from home life to office. Now I know that Miss Crush Secretary is definitely assessing me as a rival because when Mr Wright smiles at me her look becomes openly hostile. Mr Wright is oblivious. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting. Come through.’ Mentally he’s still knotting his tie. I follow him into his office and he closes the door. I feel his secretary’s eyes the other side, still watching him.
    ‘Were you all right last night?’ he asks. ‘I know this must be harrowing.’
    Before you died the adjectives about my life were second league: ‘stressful’; ‘upsetting’; ‘distressing’; at the worst ‘deeply sad’. Now I have the big gun words - ‘harrowing’, ‘traumatic’, ‘devastating’ - as part of my thesaurus of self.
    ‘We’d got to you finding someone in Tess’s bedroom?’
    ‘Yes.’
    His mental