His Wife's Sister, page 2
The police station was a grim-looking red brick building off the ring road. Damian had barely pulled up outside and yanked on the handbrake before Lucia had flung open the door and rushed towards the entrance. He caught up with her as she bounded breathlessly into a reception area.
'My name's Lucia Sitwell. You've found my sister, Mara,' she said, reverting inexplicably to her maiden name.
The receptionist smiled, made them fill in their details in a book on the counter and gave them visitor passes to hang around their necks.
Two minutes later, they were being ushered along a corridor and into a simple office where a middle-aged officer in uniform and a younger woman in civilian clothes and with long, jet black hair were waiting.
'Please, sit down, Mrs Caslocke,' the officer said.
'Can I see her?'
He glanced at the other woman, who was sitting with a welcoming smile plastered across her face. She looked like she was used to dealing with difficult situations and putting people at their ease.
'Yes, shortly,' said the officer. He introduced himself as Superintendent David Drake and told them he was leading the reopened inquiry into Mara's disappearance. ‘This is Helen Barratt. She’s a psychologist who's helping Mara come to terms with everything. She'll also be able to guide you through what to expect when you see your sister again.'
'Obviously, we'll have to take things slowly to start with,’ Barratt added, her tone warm and treacly.
'I'd like to see her.'
'Of course,' Drake said 'but first, we’d like you to make a formal identification, to make certain this is your sister.’
A frisson of excitement bubbled in Damian's stomach. A few hours ago he'd had no doubt Mara was dead, but now everything had changed, and it was all happening so quickly. It didn't seem real. After nineteen lost years, it would be extraordinary to witness the sisters being reunited. And of course, the kids would be wild with excitement to find out they had an aunt they never knew existed. Lucia had always thought they were too young to understand, so had never mentioned she had a sister.
'Where was she found?' Damian asked.
Drake looked at him as if noticing him for the first time. 'In woodland near the house where we believe she'd been held all this time.'
'And how is she?'
‘Undernourished and she has some superficial injuries, but on the whole, she's doing remarkably well.'
Damian sensed Lucia getting impatient, as her knee jogged up and down on the spot.
'All right, let's get the formalities sorted,' Drake said, reaching for a cardboard file on the desk. ‘Would you please take a look at this photo.'
Barratt leaned forwards and looked Lucia square in the eye. 'You might be a little shocked by her appearance. We understand this woman, if it is Mara, has been incarcerated for a considerable length of time. She's had limited access to the outdoors, and her food has been restricted. She's thin and pale, but don't be alarmed. It's nothing a few months of rest and recovery can't fix.'
A few months? Damian didn't know what he was expecting, but he hadn't even considered Mara might need a long period of rehabilitation.
'Let me see.' Lucia took the file and opened it on her lap.
'And remember, it might not even be her,' Barratt added.
Over Lucia's shoulder, Damian saw a photograph of a woman looking straight at the camera, her hair shorn close to her scalp and her eyes sunken into their sockets. Lucia stroked the picture with her finger, but from the angle he was sitting he couldn't read her expression.
After a few moments, she closed the file and handed it back to Drake.
'Mrs Caslock, to the best of your knowledge, is that your sister, Mara Sitwell?'
Lucia crossed her legs and pursed her lips. She'd stopped jiggling her leg and was strangely calm.
'Lucia,' Damian prompted, reaching for her hand.
'No,' she said. 'I’m sorry, it's not her.'
3
'Are you absolutely sure?' Damian asked, taking the file from Drake. ‘Have another look.'
An awkward silence filled the room.
'It's not her,' Lucia said.
Damian opened the file. The woman in the photograph was curled up on a chair wearing a green surgical gown, her feet tucked under her body. Her face was gaunt and painted with sadness, and there was something about her sallow cheeks, prominent skull bones and milky skin, tinged green, which made him recoil. If this was someone faking it, they'd gone to extraordinary lengths.
'Please,' Damian pleaded. ‘You need to be one hundred per cent sure.'
Lucia continued to stare ahead, beyond the police officer, her gaze fixed on nothing in particular.
'Look at her eyes.' Damian slid the photo under Lucia's nose. 'And the way she's holding her head. I've seen you do that exact same thing a million times when you're not sure about something. Can't you see it?'
The sisters were far from identical, but it was apparent they were closely related. Although Lucia's hair was the colour of copper, and Mara was blonde, they shared the same eyes, button nose and mouth.
Lucia glanced at the photo.
'I think it is her,' Damian said, aware his opinion counted for nothing as far as the police were concerned. ‘Try to see past how she looks now.'
'Take your time, Mrs Caslocke.' Barrett was on the edge of her seat.
'Has she said much about what happened to her?' Damian asked, buying Lucia some time to think.
‘We’ve deliberately not pushed her until we can assess her state of mind,' Drake said, his hands in his pockets. 'All we know for sure is that she was held captive in a room under the house.'
‘A cellar?'
'Not exactly.' Drake shifted his weight, looking a little uncomfortable. ‘More like a cell dug out under the floor.'
Damian whistled. 'Jesus.'
'And she says she was kept chained up, at least for some of the time.'
‘What about the guy who abducted her? Have you arrested him?'
Drake cleared his throat and folded his arms across his chest. 'Unfortunately, his whereabouts are currently unknown.'
'But you know who he is? You'll catch him, right?'
Drake chewed his lip. 'Our prime suspect is a man named James Finch, a self-employed handyman who'd lived in the house since his mother died. We've issued a nationwide alert for him. He won't get far.'
'You mean he’s still out there?' Lucia's voice trembled.
‘We’ll catch him, Mrs Caslocke. Don't worry about that.'
Lucia took the photograph and held it close to her face. 'I want to meet her.'
Barrett and Drake exchanged a look.
'Have you changed your mind?' Barrett asked. 'Are you saying you believe this might be your sister, Mara?'
'Possibly.'
Damian held his breath.
'All right, but let’s keep the first meeting short. We don't know how she's going to react. It's going to be a big deal for her.’ Barratt crossed her legs and took a deep breath. ‘And there are a few things I should explain first. As you now know, we think she's been confined in a tiny underground cell with little freedom over anything she did for the best part of twenty years. She was probably told when she could eat and drink, when to sleep and when to get up. It's possible her abductor even controlled when she had electricity and light.'
Lucia gasped.
'She’s been deprived of having to make any decisions about her life for so long, this new freedom might throw up some issues. We anticipate she may experience some level of sensory overload. Everything is going to be overwhelming for her, not least seeing you again.
'Obviously, we're monitoring her closely, but don't be surprised if you find her memory is impaired, or that she can't concentrate. She might seem confused or scared. She's still in shock and maybe feeling anxious, guilty, depressed or even angry. She’s open to the idea of meeting you, in fact, she's been asking for you since we picked her up. Even so, she might not want to interact with you when she actually sees you. You shouldn't take it personally.'
'I won't,' Lucia said.
'Finally, please don't bombard her with questions. I know you'll have lots you want to ask, but be patient and let her open up to you in her own time. That's really important. This is going to be a long process.'
Damian coughed. 'Will I be able to go in with Lucia?' After all the years he’d supported his wife, he wasn't going to miss out on the moment they were finally reunited.
'I think that should be all right if Lucia has no objections,' Barrett said.
Damian squeezed Lucia’s hand. 'Of course she doesn't have any objections.'
‘It’s fine,' she said.
'In which case, let's do it,' Drake said. 'If you want to follow me, she’s waiting for you downstairs.'
4
September 2004
Lucia sipped from a can of Coke as she watched a herd of cattle grazing in a field on the opposite bank of the canal on one of the last warm days of September.
'It's not going to be forever,' she said, resting her head in Damian’s lap.
He’d initially been sanguine at the thought they’d be studying at universities miles apart. They'd agreed to see each other every weekend, and there were the long breaks to look forward to. But as the start of term drew closer, he’d become increasingly anxious about the future, and the impact being apart would have on their relationship.
'You're missing the point,' he said. 'I'm going to miss you.'
'I'll miss you too.’ She wrapped her fingers around the back of his neck and pulled his head down to kiss him. 'But we'll see each other every week.'
'It won't be the same.'
'Just don't go finding someone new,' she joked, poking him in the ribs.
He didn't see the funny side. He imagined Lucia with new, interesting friends, revelling in the infamy of having a sister who’d been abducted. They'd lap that up for sure, especially when she revealed Mara’s body had never been found. He didn't like the thought of it one bit.
'Hey, if a fly lost its wings, would that make it a walk?' she said, smirking.
He wasn't in the mood.
'What was Captain Hook's name before he lost his hand?'
'Lucia, stop,' he snapped. 'We're not kids anymore.'
'What's got into you?'
'Nothing.'
'Doesn't sound like nothing.'
'Forget it,' he said, plucking the petals from a daisy. He was losing her, and there was nothing he could do about it.
'I love you,' she said. It was the first time she’d uttered the words. She laid her palm against his cheek, like the first time she'd kissed him. 'I mean it.'
He didn't know what to say. 'I've got to go.' He stood up, rolling her head off his lap. 'I told Mum I'd be back by five.'
He didn't even walk her home. He just strode off with his hands in his pockets, letting the anger boil inside him.
Lucia hadn’t been particularly academic or sporty, pretty or outgoing, like some of the girls in his year. She'd been an average student at best, someone who kept her head down and steered well clear of trouble. In fact, he’d never given her a moment’s notice until Mara’s disappearance. Until then, he’d found her bland. Uninteresting. But a couple of weeks after she'd returned to school in the autumn term, and when the search for Mara was still in its infancy, he’d plucked up the courage to approach her, inexplicably drawn to her vulnerability and sorrow.
'I'm sorry about your sister,' he'd said, as he'd joined her at one of the wooden picnic benches outside the sixth form centre. She’d been picking at her fingernails, hiding behind her fringe.
He'd offered her a sandwich from his Tupperware box, but she'd shaken her head, squinting at him through her hair suspiciously.
'I can't imagine what it must be like.'
It was true. How could he possibly have understood what kind of hell she was going through? Nonetheless, her torment had consumed him. He'd tried to imagine her suffering, wondering what it would be like to taste the bitterness of her pain, to know what it was like to feel such raw emotion that came from losing someone close.
'It's like having an arm chopped off,' she'd said, which he thought was pretty funny at the time. But she hadn't smiled.
Mara's abduction had captivated the nation over the long, hot summer, and Damian had found it intoxicating. He'd followed every twist and turn as it played out in the newspapers and on the TV day after day, less shocked and more excited that something so dramatic had happened close to home.
The police concluded early on in their investigation that Mara had most likely been abducted. There was some speculation she'd been kidnapped by child sex traffickers. Others suggested she must have woken disorientated in the middle of the night, wandered off and fallen into the river not far from the house. The truth was, no one knew for sure.
There had been no shortage of witnesses claiming to have seen Mara over the first twenty-four hours after she went missing, but none of the sightings had proved reliable. Cranks and frauds surfaced alleging all sorts of insights into her disappearance, but none of them panned out. And with every theory shot down, the mystery only deepened.
Damian had been surprised that Lucia's parents had sent her back to school on the first day of term. She didn't seem ready to be thrust back into the school environment. And while all the other kids had flocked around her like she was a celebrity, cooing tearful sympathies or quizzing her on the details of Mara's disappearance, he’d watched her from afar.
He’d only made his move when Lucia had started to cut a lonely figure, abandoned by her so-called friends who struggled with her difficult mood swings. She’d become quiet and withdrawn, moping sulkily around the corridors between lessons with her head down and her shoulders hunched, avoiding eye contact with anyone.
Damian resisted quizzing her straight off about her sister or the trauma he suspected was eating her up. Instead, he’d won her trust by chatting about trivial things that made her smile.
'How come vampires have such neat hair if they can't see their reflections in a mirror?' he'd say.
'Did you know that if you live until you're seventy, ten years of your life would have been spent on Mondays,' she would retort.
They'd taken pride in seeing who could come up with the wackiest, quasi-philosophical observations. It had become their thing, and in time, she'd opened up. That’s when he began to understand she was being tortured by guilt. She blamed herself for allowing Mara to be snatched from their tent while she slept a few feet away, and there was nothing Damian could say or do to make her feel better. As the weeks and months went on, and with the police no closer to finding her, Lucia's misplaced conviction that she was somehow responsible had only deepened.
'Why did he take her?' she would ask. 'Why not me?'
Damian had no answer. All he could do was reassure her that she wasn’t to blame.
He'd never considered her as anything other than a close friend until they'd turned seventeen. The exact moment their relationship changed was fixed indelibly in Damian's memory. He would always remember how the sunlight had caught her hair and created a fiery halo around her head as they’d been working on a geography assignment together in his bedroom.
'What is it?' she'd asked, screwing up her nose as she'd noticed him staring. She'd smiled coyly, the creases deepening around her eyes, and his stomach had lurched.
'I don't know, I just... ' He hadn't been able to finish his sentence. His throat had been dry, and his chest tight. He didn't know where he found the courage, but he'd leaned across the bed, took her face in his hands and kissed her.
'Hey, what are you doing?' She'd pulled away with a grimace.
'I'm sorry,' he’d mumbled. 'Didn't you like it?'
'I didn't say that. It just came as a bit of a surprise.'
She'd adjusted her t-shirt and tried to hide a smile. 'You should give someone a warning if you're going to kiss them,' she'd said.
Then with a glint in her eye, she'd placed a tender hand on his cheek and kissed him back. Her lips had been so soft and moist, he'd thought he was going to melt.
He'd kissed a few girls before, mostly when he'd had too much to drink at parties. A quick fumble on the dance floor, too much enthusiasm and not enough experience. Lucia's kiss had been something else. It was sweet and tender and took their connection to a new level.
In their remaining year at school, Damian had spent less and less time with his friends, devoting his full attention to Lucia as she continued to fascinate and intrigue him. He hated it when they were apart, even when she'd insisted on needing space for her studies, keen to excel in her A-Levels and to make something of her life.
'I want to do well, not for me but for Mara,' she would tell him every time he tried to drag her away from her books.
She saw her education as her ticket out of town, the place that would be forever tainted with regrets and bad memories. Not only had she lost her sister, but the stress of it all had driven a wedge between her parents, who’d subsequently separated and divorced.
Richard and Linda had been crushed when Mara was abducted. The pressure on their marriage hadn't been helped by persistent rumours they were somehow involved, or at least culpably negligent in allowing their young daughters to sleep out in the garden without supervision.
In the first few days after Mara’s disappearance, they'd given countless interviews to the media in the hope of encouraging someone to come forward with new information. But over time, and with the press camped out on their doorstep, they reported feeling hounded. The journalists, who'd initially been supportive and understanding, became increasingly aggressive as they looked for new angles to the story. Richard and Linda became virtual recluses, and the emotional and psychological pressure on them almost inevitably led to the breakdown of their marriage.
And yet, despite all these things, Lucia had surpassed expectations in her studies, gaining top marks in her A-Levels and securing a place at Warwick University to read economics. The only problem was that Damian was going to be a hundred miles away in Southampton. It was only a short train ride, but they might as well have been on opposites sides of the world. They were going to be apart for the first time in four years, and it tore at Damian's soul.
