A Little Longer

Ben rang the bell, although he had been to Tamsin’s house often enough to know she never locked the door in the afternoon.

Kit came in first. Her coat was open and she held a paper bag very carefully. She had brought a biscuit for me. It had broken in the car, and she wanted me to know that it had been whole when they bought it.

“Broken ones taste the same,” I said.

“That’s what Dad said.”

Louise knelt to help her take off her coat. Ben watched them. His hair was wet around the collar, as though he had stood outside in the rain before coming in.

“Why is everybody here?” he asked.

“No one wanted you to arrive at an empty house,” Tamsin said.

He looked at her sharply, then at me.

“Can we talk?”

“We are talking.”

“Without an audience.”

Louise took Kit into the kitchen to make hot chocolate. Tamsin stayed in the doorway. Ben didn’t ask her again.

He sat on the sofa and clasped his hands between his knees. The position was familiar. He had sat like that at the hospital when Mother was dying, patient with the staff, patient with me. I had been grateful that one of us knew how to behave.

“What did you give them?” he asked.

“Everything I found.”

“Which was what?”

“You’ll need to speak to them about that.”

“Anna, I’m your brother.”

“Yes.”

He took his hands apart.

“I’ve spent my life trying to take care of this family. You went away. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have, but you did. I was the one who took Dad to appointments. I was the one who sat with Mum. When her boiler went, who paid for it? When you needed money to get the business started—”

“I paid you back.”

“That isn’t the point.”

“What is?”

“That you know me.”

I looked at him. I knew how he made Kit’s toast: butter right to the edges, cut diagonally, crusts left on because he said she needed something to hold. I knew that he whistled tunelessly when he was concentrating. I knew he cried at the end of a film about a dog and denied it although both his cheeks were wet.

I knew him. That was part of the problem.

“Mum said Dad made the arrangements,” I said.

“He did.”

“She said you did what you were told.”

“Yes.”

“But you were there that evening. You told me you saw Evie come back.”

“I came and went.”

“When?”

“I don’t remember exactly.”

“You remembered quite well yesterday.”

He stood up, then sat down again. In the kitchen, Kit asked whether she could stir her drink herself.

“This isn’t a game,” he said.

“No.”

“What happened was an accident. Whatever Dad did afterwards, it was an accident.”

“Did you see it?”

His eyes moved towards the kitchen.

“I need you to listen to me.”

“I am.”

“No. Properly. You read Mum’s letter. She knew. She understood.”

“What did she understand, Ben?”

He rubbed his palms on his trousers.

“I was young. I was stupid with money. Things had got out of hand.”

“The loan.”

“She said I could use her details.”

“Her signature was copied.”

“She knew I needed help.”

“Those aren’t the same thing.”

He looked angry now. Not at me precisely. At the conversation, for failing to arrive where he kept trying to send it.

“She was going to tell everyone. Mum. My boss. She’d made an appointment to speak to someone about it on the Monday. I only needed a little longer.”

Tamsin moved away from the doorway, just enough to leave a clear path to the hall.

“A little longer for what?” I asked.

“To get it sorted.”

“Four thousand eight hundred pounds.”

“I could have done it.”

“You hadn’t made the repayments.”

“Because things hadn’t come through.”

He spoke with the indignation of his twenty-three-year-old self. For a moment the intervening years seemed no more substantial than the better clothes he was wearing.

“Did she fall?” I said.

His head lifted.

I hadn’t meant to ask it so directly. But there it was.

“She wouldn’t stop,” he said.

“What wouldn’t she stop doing?”

“Saying things.”

The kitchen had gone quiet. Louise was listening.

“What things?”

“That I was pathetic. That everything I touched turned into somebody else’s problem. She had the letter and she kept waving it. I tried to take it from her.”

“And then?”

He pressed a hand over his mouth. When he lowered it, the words came more quietly.

“I pushed her away. She hit the edge of the sink. The stone one, in the washhouse. I didn’t mean to. Anna, I didn’t mean it.”

There were details I had expected to feel dramatic when they were finally spoken. They did not. They felt practical and appalling. A sink. A hard edge. A person reaching for something that belonged to her.

“Did you call an ambulance?”

He shook his head.

“Why not?”

“She was talking. At first. Mum said wait until Dad got home. She didn’t want another scene. Dad said we’d all end up in trouble if we started ringing people before we knew what had happened.”

“Before you knew what had happened?”

“You know how he was.”

“Yes.”

“He said she needed to sleep.”

“And you listened.”

“I’d listened to him all my life.”

“So had she.”

He began to cry then, without moving his face much. I recognised that too. Our father had disliked noise.

“I went back in,” he said. “Later. She wasn’t—”

He stopped.

“Dad said he’d deal with it. He said if we rang then they’d blame all of us. Mum was shaking. I couldn’t think. You weren’t there.”

The last four words reached me exactly as he intended.

For a moment I was seventeen, arriving home late, having left other people to cope with the trouble I had escaped. I could feel the old arrangement offering to take me back. All I had to do was accept my share of a thing I had not done, and he would no longer be alone with his.

“I wasn’t there,” I said.

“No.”

“And you were.”

He stared at me.

In the kitchen, Louise said softly to Kit, “Let’s go and see the garden.”

Ben turned towards her voice.

“Don’t take her away.”

“We’re going outside,” Louise said. “She can see you later.”

He looked back at me, frightened now in a way that was not performed.

“You’ll explain to them. About Dad. About the pressure.”

“I’ll tell them what I know.”

“What good does it do, Anna?”

I heard Mother’s letter in his voice. Her words had found their last address.

“Evie wasn’t something that happened to you,” I said.

The doorbell rang.