Sister полностью

“Yes. But it was a sense of someone watching me, and a sound, I think, because something alerted me, but I didn’t actually see anyone.”

He suggests we get a sandwich and go into the park for a working picnic. I think it’s because I’m becoming groggy and inarticulate, and he hopes that a spell outside will wake me up. He picks up the tape recorder. It never occurred to me that it might be portable.

We get to St. James’s Park, which looks like that scene from Mary Poppins, all blossom and buds and blue sky with white meringue clouds. Office workers are splayed over the grass, turning the park into a beach without a sea. We walk side by side, closely, along a path looking for somewhere less crowded. His kind face is looking at mine, and I wonder if he can feel my warmth as I feel his.

A woman with a double stroller comes toward us and we have to go single file. On my own for a few moments I feel a sudden sense of loss, as if the warmth has gone from the left-hand side of my body now that he isn’t there. It makes me think of lying on a cold concrete floor, on my left side, feeling the chill of it go into me, hearing my heart beat too fast, unable to move. I’m panicking, fast-forwarding the story, but then he’s beside me again and we get back in step and I’ll return to the correct sequence.

We find a quiet spot and Mr. Wright spreads out a rug for us to sit on. I am touched that when he saw blue sky this morning, he thought ahead to a picnic in the park with me.

He switches on the tape recorder. I pause a moment while a group of teenagers walks past, then I begin.

“Kasia woke up when I got in, or maybe she’d been waiting up for me. I asked her if she could remember the doctor who’d given her the injection.”

She pulled your dressing gown around herself.

“I don’t know name,” she said. “Is there problem?”

“Was he wearing a mask; is that why you don’t know?”

“Yes, a mask. Something bad? Beata?”

Her hand moved unconsciously to her bump. I just couldn’t frighten her.

“Everything’s fine. Really.”

But she’s too astute to be fobbed off so easily. “You said Tess baby not ill. Not have CF. When you came to flat. When you ask Mitch to get tested.”

I hadn’t realized that she’d really understood. She’d probably been brooding about it ever since but hadn’t questioned me, presumably trusting me to tell her if there was something she needed to know.

“Yes, that’s true. And I’m trying to find out more. But it’s nothing to do with you. You and your baby are going to be fine, right as rain.”

She smiled at “right as rain,” an expression that she’d recently learned, a smile that seemed forced, on cue for me.

I gave her a hug. “You really will be all right. Both of you. I promise.”

I couldn’t help you and Xavier, but I would help her. No one was going to hurt her or her baby.

A little way away the teenagers are playing a game of softball, and I wonder for a moment what the person who listens to these tapes will make of the background noises of the park, the laughter and chatter around us.

“And the next day you got an e-mail from Professor Rosen?” Mr. Wright asks.

“Yes. On Saturday morning at around ten-fifteen.” I was on my way to work a shift for “weekend brunch,” a new idea of Bettina’s. “I noticed it was sent from his personal e-mail,” I continue, “rather than the Chrom-Med one he’d used before.” Mr. Wright looks down at a copy of the e-mail.From: alfredrosen@mac.com To: Beatrice Hemming’s iPhone

I have just come back from my American lecture tour to your message. As is my custom on these trips, I do not take my mobile with me. (My close family members have the number of the hotel should I need to be contacted urgently.) It is ludicrous to say that my trial is in any way dangerous to the babies. The whole point of my trial is that it’s a safe way of getting the healthy gene into the body. It is to effect a cure in the safest possible way.

Alfred Rosen.From: Beatrice Hemming’s iPhone To: alfredrosen@mac.com

Can you explain why the doctor at St. Anne’s wore a mask, both when he delivered the babies and when he gave the injections of the gene?From: alfredrosen@mac.com To: Beatrice Hemming’s iPhone

Clearly medical staff wear appropriate protection when they deliver babies, but it is not my area of expertise so if you are concerned I suggest you ask someone in obstetrics. In terms of the injections, whoever it was must have completely missed the point of my chromosome. Unlike a virus, it carries no infection risk whatsoever. There is no need for such precautions. Perhaps they are just in the habit of being cautious? However, at your sister’s funeral I said I would answer your questions, so I will look into it. I very much doubt there will be anything to find.

I didn’t know whether to trust him or not. I certainly didn’t know why he was helping me.

Bettina’s brunch initiative was a success and by twelve the Coyote was packed. I saw William pushing his way through, trying to get my attention. He smiled at my evident astonishment.