The Sister's Secret

by Penny Kline

Genres: Thrillers

Synopsis

Can you really trust her? Erin is devastated when her pregnant sister Claudia is left brain dead from a tragic accident. When Claudia?s boyfriend Ollie wants to switch off her life support, a desperate Erin finds herself fighting to give the baby a chance. As she starts to uncover things Claudia never shared with her, Erin turns to the people closest to her sister. But why is everyone refusing to talk about her? And just where has Ollie run off? Yearning for her sister, Erin grows close to Claudia?s friend Jon. She refuses to get involved with another married man but this is the least of her worries. The more people Erin meets, the less she can trust. And now, her life is in danger too ?

Release date: April 26, 2018

Publisher: Accent Press

Print pages: 272

Sample

Chapter 1



The date on Claudia’s death certificate was not the same as the day she died. It was not even the same year. Before her sister’s death, Erin had thought it so simple. Now she knew better.

In the twenty-third week of her pregnancy Claudia had suffered an intracranial haemorrhage, the pathological accumulation of blood within the cranial vault. Neurosurgery drained the haematoma, but during the operation she deteriorated and there was nothing the doctors could do. A corpse is cold, pale, and it is not pregnant. In Claudia’s case none of this was true. But her brain was dead.

Throughout their vigil, Ollie barely spoke. Like Erin, he was dry-eyed, too shocked to cry, and gave no indication he was listening when the consultant, a sandy-haired man with a bow tie and a Scottish accent, introduced himself as Dr Macaulay. An ultrasound examination had been carried out, he said, and the baby appeared unharmed, but was too undeveloped to be delivered. A choice needed to be made – either Claudia’s life support system would be disconnected, or they would try to maintain maternal homeostasis until greater foetal maturity had been achieved. Or meaning, until the baby had a chance of survival.

‘What are the odds?’ Erin asked. Odds – what an inappropriate word – but she was trying to be practical, take responsibility – for Ollie’s sake, she told herself. Her first time in intensive care units, and when she spoke her breath came in shallow gasps. ‘What I meant, how likely is it the baby could be born, and be all right?’

The consultant spoke slowly, gently. ‘Had the pregnancy been less than twenty weeks I would have been unwilling to prolong maternal life. Twenty-three weeks is a different matter. I can make no promises but if gestation is allowed to continue for another month, or a little longer, and no serious problems arise . . . The baby would need special care but if everything went according to plan . . .’ He broke off, turning to Ollie, who had lowered his eyes and was murmuring something that sounded like “die”.

Erin squeezed his hand. ‘What did you say?’

His lips were slightly parted and the pale, almost girl-like face, that Claudia had fallen for, was contorted with pain.

‘Try to think what Claudia would have wanted,’ she urged.

The curtained-off cubicle felt like a tent in a war zone. Above the bed a display of monitors flickered with constantly changing numbers – ninety-five, ninety-six, ninety-eight – and coloured lines with waves or spikes, and a flat line – not the heart rate. Another piece of equipment had a number that could be Claudia’s body temperature, or was it the baby’s? Hospital smells mingled with the sharp scent of floor polish and outside, in the main area, sounds of activity could be heard; footsteps, a trolley with squeaking wheels, the clink of glass, someone coughing. Apart from the tubes and wires and the dressing on the side of her head, Claudia could have been sleeping peacefully.

‘If the baby could be saved . . .’ Erin looked at Ollie then back at Dr Macaulay, willing him to come down on her side. But when he spoke it was to tell Ollie he realised it was a difficult decision and he would need a little time to think about it.

The following day Ollie refused all invitations to talk, or to share her unappetizing meals but, just when she was giving up hope, he tapped on the door of her flat – in the loft of Claudia’s house – and told her he was going to the university.

‘Now?’

‘There’s something I h-have to d-d-do.’ The stutter he normally managed to control had come back. ‘I d-don’t know what t-time I’ll be back.’

‘I’m not going out.’ If he was going to talk to another postgraduate student, that was good. Hearing the facts, anyone would think the baby should be saved. She was not the best person to discuss it with him – she was too involved – but surely his university friends would agree with her. Was he in touch with his family? She knew so little about him but Claudia was the talker. Ollie was quiet. He looked and sounded exhausted and, if anything even more agitated. Was he coming round to her way of thinking? Like her, he would have slept only fitfully, or not at all, but in the cold light of day he must have realised the baby had a right to live.

‘Do you have any family, Ollie?’

‘My father d-died a year ago.’

‘What about your mother?’ His mother would want her grandchild to survive.

‘She’s not well. Her nerves.’

‘I’m sorry.’ What could she say? He was alone in the world, or saw himself that way. Claudia had been his closest friend, his soulmate. Without her, he was lost.

‘I thought the baby would be dead.’

‘I know.’ She had expected the same, but was not going to say so. As soon as she knew there was a chance, she had been determined to do everything in her power to save it.

‘I’ll see you later then.’ She attempted a brief hug, but his body was rigid, and a moment later she heard him running down both sets of stairs, and the front door closed, not with the loud familiar noise of Claudia leaving the house, but a quiet, almost imperceptible click.

Claudia. Two days ago they had been discussing the birth of her first child. Now she was being kept alive artificially, but her baby was still growing inside her. How could she be dead? She was only twenty-seven, born when Erin was just a year old. Had she made a will? Since she and Ollie had been together such a short time, it was unlikely she had got round to those kind of decisions. While Ollie was out, she could look through her papers. It was far too soon to think about such things but being practical might help a little. It had when their parents died.

Soft, padding steps approached. The cat from down the road that made use of Claudia’s cat flap. Erin’s door was half open but it let out loud mews to announce its arrival, squeezing through the gap and spending a few moments sniffing her trainers before curling up on the bed. Claudia must have fed it. Which house did it live in? Not the people next door – they had gone abroad for several months – and not Claudia’s friends, Jennie and Ben. Resting her cheek on its head, Erin breathed in someone else’s perfume. Whose, she wondered, the owner of the house where it had made its last visit?

Unlike her sister, she had no particular liking for cats, and this was an ugly creature with colouring that made its mouth appear to turn down at the corners. But she was starved of company and it added a touch of homeliness to the place. She had a bed – low to the ground and with an uncomfortably thin mattress – a built-in cupboard with three shelves and space for a dozen or so hangers, and a small table and two chairs. A couple of Indian rugs covered part of the bare boards, and Claudia had hung one of Ollie’s grainy black and white photographs on the wall.

The coast was not far, but far enough that Erin had not explored it. Ollie’s photo was somewhere with a long stretch of empty beach, the tide out so that grey sand gave way to a dark, distant sea. Not a cheerful scene, but typical of Ollie, who was a kind, sensitive person but with layers underneath the kindness that he was careful not to reveal, and a strong streak of obstinacy.

What was he doing now? Telling his friends what had happened and asking their advice, feeling a little comforted by their support, or alone, staring at his computer, trying to lose himself in rows of tables and figures? For her own part, work was out of the question. All she could do was pace up and down, picking up drawings and putting them down again, and making endless cups of coffee that made her head ache. She ate a ginger biscuit but it tasted of sawdust. She needed some fresh air but was reluctant to leave the house in case Ollie returned.

The loft felt alien. A plan chest was the only piece of furniture she had brought with her and, at first, getting it up the stairs and through the door had looked impossible. But the man with a van had helped her lift and turn it, then rest it on a step and try again, until eventually they were able to place it triumphantly in the position she had selected under the window.

At first the sparseness of the flat had pleased her, much as a nun must feel good about the simplicity of her surroundings. Not that there was anything nun-like about her existence, apart from the celibacy. Before it happened, she had eaten reasonably well – mostly pasta –and as long as she had a bottle of wine she got by. Things would change – they always did –that was what she told herself. But not this way, not an empty, echoing house, and Claudia . . . dead.

As she stroked the cat, a paw shot out and scratched her hand and, sucking away the pin pricks of blood, she gazed around the room, painfully aware of how inadequate it was compared to her studio in London. The flat in South Wimbledon had been too expensive, but it was only temporary. In a few months’ time Declan’s divorce would have come through and the two of them would have found a new place to live.

Would Declan’s presence have made Claudia’s death easier to bear? How would he have reacted? By helping her persuade Ollie that Claudia must be kept on life support until the baby could be born, or – and this was far more likely – by telling her the baby was not her responsibility and she should let Ollie get on with it? Before the accident she had envied Claudia so much, partly for her new found happiness with Ollie, but mainly because she was going to have a child. You can be a glorified godmother, Erin. After all, it won’t have any other relatives.

If they had not chosen that particular day to go down to the shops and buy the baby shoes . . . If, as Claudia suggested, they had visited the coffee place and sampled the new chocolate pastries . . . If she had believed Declan’s lies and stayed in London. So many ifs.

The cat jumped off the bed and started looking round for somewhere to sharpen its claws. She needed shelves where she could keep her Indian inks and brushes, masking tape and a hundred other things, but how long would she be in the house and after that where would she go? When she felt up to it, she would try to discover if Claudia had a solicitor and whether there were any unpaid bills or outstanding mortgage repayments – or savings, although the latter was unlikely. Claudia had never been good with money. Neither had she been much interested in housework, although the baby was to have a newly decorated room.

How could it have happened? Tears sprang to her eyes, but she brushed them away. Don’t think about it. Let the police make their investigations. What investigations? The building had been teeming with protesters, and it was dark, and any one of them could have meddled with the scaffolding poles.

Later, when she was on the point of going to bed, the front door opened and closed and she heard Ollie’s footsteps on the loft stairs and hurried to let him in.

‘I’ve decided.’ He stood in the doorway. His face was blank and she saw he had not bothered to shave, his fair hair needed washing and had lost its usual sheen.

‘Come and sit down.’ Pointlessly, she plumped up an Indian cushion. ‘How are you? Have you had anything to eat? Would you like a drink?’

He rubbed his eyes. ‘I want them both to be allowed to die.’

With a supreme effort, she kept quiet.

‘It’s for the best.’ The stutter seemed to have disappeared. ‘It’s what she would have wanted.’

‘When you called in at the university did you see any of your friends?’

‘It’s the holidays.’ He kept blinking, rubbing his eyes.

‘But the other research students must be there. Did you tell them? Did any of them know Claudia? They must be so shocked.’ She was talking too much because the tension in the room was making it difficult to breathe.

Ollie had his head turned away and she thought how painfully thin his neck was. It made her want to protect him. Or would have wanted to if circumstances had been different. She tried again. ‘I do understand what a difficult decision it is.’

‘My decision.’

‘Yes.’ But he and Claudia had not been married so surely she was her next of kin. What was the law? She could look it up, should have thought of it before? She glanced at her tablet, fingers itching to check online.

‘I’m going to let the doctor know tomorrow’ He waved aside her offer of a glass of wine, clutching the top of his crumpled T-shirt and winding it into a knot. ‘Can you c-come with me?’

‘Yes, of course, but it’s your baby, Ollie, a person. I do understand how you feel but Claudia was my sister and I’m certain she would have wanted her baby to be born.’

‘So you’ll come.’

‘I’ll come.’ Instinctively, Erin folded her arms in a gesture of self-protection. ‘But I’m not going to let you kill the baby.’

Chapter 2



When they returned to the hospital a different doctor was on duty; tall, with a flat, round face and receding hair. This threw Erin a little, but Ollie hardly seemed to notice. She had checked the legalities of the situation, but they were not clear. A decision regarding the patient’s treatment was taken in consensus with their family. If the patient was not married, the biological father plays a major role. This was bad news. On the other hand, one of the determining factors was whether the mother had expressed a wish to be an organ donor and Erin remembered how Claudia had registered her wish online, as well as carrying a card in her purse. The website said that could be interpreted to mean the unborn baby had a right to benefit from what it described as “the mother’s organic function”.

She had discussed none of this with Ollie.

The cubicle was hot. The whole hospital felt too hot. Claudia lay on her back, with her hair spread out on the pillow. Someone had brushed it with care – it was long and blonde, unlike Erin’s which was light brown and curled in the rain – and it made her look like Sleeping Beauty, except Sleeping Beauty was not attached to an array of monitors. And no prince was going to wake Claudia with a kiss. Their mother had always told Erin how pretty she was, with her small features and hazel eyes, but Claudia was the beauty, taller, more curvaceous, sexier.

One small blessing was that their parents would never know what had happened. They had died on holiday in India when their bus fell down a crevasse – she and Claudia had never discovered the exact details – and later Erin had traced their journey on a map and allowed herself to grieve while at the same time, being thankful they had both gone together. Neither of them would have been happy on their own.

The doctor cleared his throat and Erin opened her mouth to ask how Claudia was – she meant the baby, of course – then decided she ought to let Ollie speak first, although when the doctor started talking he addressed his remarks to her.

‘We estimate the weight of the foetus as around nine hundred grams.’

Was that all? A quick calculation told her it was roughly two pounds. A baby that small might survive but, from everything she had read, the chances of it being handicapped in some way were quite high.

‘Should gestation be allowed to progress,’ the doctor continued, ‘your sister would be fed intravenously and given drugs and hormones and antibiotics for infections, if necessary.’

‘How long would it be?’ Erin asked, ‘I mean before it could be born.’

‘Hard to say. It would depend on several factors.’

‘But it stands a chance?’

‘Yes.’

And after it was born, she thought, the life support system would be disconnected and Claudia’s part in the survival of her child would come to an end. She turned to Ollie – so did the doctor – but his shoulders were hunched and his gaze fixed on the window, with its frosted glass. He had washed his hair – a good sign, Erin told herself – and smelled faintly of lemon shampoo. His hands were clenched into fists.

‘Ollie?’

He turned to look at them, his eyelids drooping from lack of sleep.

‘I think you should tell the doctor how you feel.’

‘It makes no d-difference.’

‘On the contrary,’ the doctor began, but Ollie interrupted angrily.

‘If I don’t agree I’ll be accused of killing my own child.’

‘No, Ollie, it won’t be like that.’ What a liar she was. What a hypocrite. ‘We need to discuss it, talk about what Claudia would have wanted.’

‘Claudia’s dead.’

‘But we still have to think about the baby. Your baby.’ Emotional blackmail – but what else was left?

The doctor was looking unperturbed, as though it was a situation he dealt with daily. ‘She carried a donor card,’ Erin said.

‘I see.’

Did he see? Had he taken the trouble to look up the legalities?

‘Ollie? If she wanted to donate her organs that means . . .’ But he was not prepared to hear the rest. Pushing past her, he stumbled out of the cubicle, and a moment later the swing doors of the unit creaked open and shut. She considered running after him, catching up with him in the corridor and trying to persuade him to return to Claudia’s bedside. But what good would it do? They were never going to agree.

And the following day it became clear he had made the only decision he believed left to him. He had disappeared.

* * *

In the night her mind created the scene over and over again. Since she had been walking on ahead, with Claudia lagging behind, she had not actually seen the scaffolding pole fall, so much of what she pictured was in her imagination, but no less real. She was tormented by thoughts of what might have been. If only they had reached the shops earlier, or later. If only they had stayed longer in the baby goods shop. If only Claudia had not insisted on buying a jam doughnut to eat on the way home.

When she thought about Claudia – her lively, go-getting sister – the memories she allowed herself were always good ones. Games in the garden when they were small. Dolls’ tea parties under the walnut tree, riding their bikes up and down the lane, dressing up and acting in improvised plays. But there had been fights too, savage ones that had escalated alarmingly. They were too close in age, their mother claimed, and Claudia’s birth had been “a shock for poor Erin”. Was it her fault if she was jealous of her baby sister? In any case, by the time she was five, Claudia had been bigger than she was, taller and broader, and with an expression on her face that challenged the world to thwart her in any way.

Later, after the two of them left home, they had tried to establish a different kind of relationship, where the tensions were skated over with plenty of laughter and plenty of alcohol. The premature death of their parents should have strengthened the bond between them, but seemed to have the opposite effect. True to character, Claudia had concentrated on their wills, which left everything to each other or, in the event of them both dying together, advised that their estate should be divided equally between their two daughters.

When the family home was sold and the money finally came through, Erin had stayed in London to complete her course at Art college, but Claudia had chosen a different route, giving up her job as a trainee buyer in a department store and moving to Bristol, where she could take out a relatively small mortgage on a house where prices were not quite so high.

Thinking about it, reminded Erin how she ought to contact Claudia’s bank. To tell them what? That her sister was going to die, but not until her baby had been born. That the baby’s father had disappeared. They would advise a solicitor and they would be right. Did Ollie know the name of Claudia’s solicitor? It might be better to find one of her own, but not yet, not when everything was in limbo, although perhaps it was precisely because of the present situation that she needed professional help. Where was Claudia’s phone? Had Ollie got it, and if so why?

A weak sun crept in through the dormer window. She needed to finish her sketches – she had a deadline to meet – but drawing felt impossible, so today she would concentrate on research. During the time she had worked as an illustrator, it was young children’s picture books she enjoyed the most. In the story she was currently illustrating called The Littlest Guinea Pig, several chipmunks lived together in a cage and made chirping noises that got on the guinea pigs’ nerves. Ignorant of what chipmunks looked like, she. . .