The Second Sister: The exciting new psychological thriller from Sunday Times bestselling author Claire Kendal

There is the ping of a text on Brian’s phone. Sadie looks on as he reads. ‘A kiss?’ she says. ‘That bitch. I want to kill her.’

Every once in a while Sadie loses control and has a social media meltdown. She is shrewd enough to cover it up quickly or delete madly, but she is perpetually in agony about who might have glimpsed or even filed away a screenshot of one of her public outbursts.

She turns to me, scowling. ‘Did you put kisses on letters to Ted when he was still married?’

‘We didn’t have any contact while he was married.’

Brian plays with Sadie’s honey-coloured hair, but he is looking at me.

‘Right,’ says Sadie, clearly meaning the opposite.

This insinuation that I am a marriage wrecker makes me recall one of the tabloid headlines from soon after your disappearance. It enraged our father, a man who is not given to rages.

Missing Nurse Spotted on Caribbean Yacht with Married Drug Lord Lover.

It seems a good idea to say, ‘I would never go near a married man, or a man who has a girlfriend.’

Sadie tells Brian, ‘Ella and Ted had a big fight because Ted was frustrated just being Ella’s friend. So he started seeing this other woman, some police photographer. Then he married her. Ella cried for months.’ She tears her attention from Brian and shoots it at me. ‘But spare me the little fairy tale that you had nothing to do with him while he was with his wife.’

Ted and I saw each other or spoke every day from the time we were four years old until we were twenty-seven. Then nothing until we were thirty.

‘There were three full years of absolute radio silence,’ I say.

‘Sadie tells me you’re talking to him again now,’ Brian says.

‘Only recently. Ted came to my dad’s seventieth birthday party this summer.’

‘What made that happen?’ Is it natural that this man should be so curious? Perhaps Sadie has reason to distrust him.

‘My nephew invited him. I didn’t know Ted was coming until he walked through the door.’

Ted and his wife were apart by then, but Ted never stopped checking up on Luke, even during his marriage. Luke has always idolised him.

Sadie cannot decide where to aim her surveillance. Her eyes dart to Brian’s phone, then to me, then to Brian, then back to the phone, which seems to be pulsing with the contraband text. ‘Who is she?’ Sadie asks him.

‘Someone I work with. A nurse. It’s nothing, Sadie.’ He kisses the tip of her nose. ‘X is a letter of the alphabet. It doesn’t mean anything.’

Sadie’s hands are in fists. ‘That’s really unprofessional. To put a kiss on a message to anyone other than your true love is a betrayal.’

This makes me fantasise about emailing Brian with a string of kisses. xxxxxxxxx. It’s the kind of thing you would do. But of course I won’t.

‘You are not going to answer her,’ Sadie says. ‘That is the only message she deserves.’ Sadie puts out a hand. ‘No secrets,’ Sadie says.

Brian hesitates, then silently hands over his phone. The first thing Sadie does is to check his contacts and his call log. ‘You’re not there,’ she says to me.

‘Of course I’m not.’

Brian shakes his head. ‘Sadie. Can you stop.’

Sadie holds his phone out and makes a show of deleting the text. Her passion-induced craziness evokes another of the many headlines you inspired.

‘She was in love with love.’ Missing Miranda’s Romantic Obsessions.

‘I need some water,’ I say.

‘What are you doing, Ella? Seriously. What is with you?’

‘Nothing.’ I sound clipped and cool.

‘Literally digging out your sister’s dress?’

‘Really, Sadie. I am just thirsty.’ I sound dangerous.

‘The crap you are. Are you opening up that stuff with Miranda again? After all this time? Why would you do that?’

‘It doesn’t affect you.’ I sound like you practising icy dismissal. And like Mum.

‘Is it the attention? Are you missing it? Is that what this is about, now that the fuss about her has properly died down? Is that why you gave that stupid interview about the charity, and let them run your photograph?’

‘That doesn’t deserve a response.’ The sofa squelches embarrassingly when I stand up. Luke would make a joke about this.

‘Don’t you dare leave.’ Sadie catches my wrist. ‘You’re always doing that when you don’t like my questions.’

‘She needs a drink.’ Brian peels her fingers from my skin. ‘Let her go.’

The Three Suitors

I head straight for the front door. I get as far as the entry hall when a man approaches me, standing too close. The alcohol fumes are coming off his skin so thickly I can practically see them, mixing with his sweat.

I step back and he steps forward. I step back again and stick my arm out, visibly warding him off.

His hair is silver, to the middle of his neck, and slick. ‘Let me get you a drink,’ he says.

I cannot believe this surreal nightmare of a party is actually getting worse. ‘No thank you.’

‘You sure, sweetheart?’ Indiana Jones would get away with calling me sweetheart. This man cannot. His shirt is silk and purple and has way too many buttons undone.

‘Completely certain.’

He doesn’t even try to disguise the fact that his eyes are moving up and down my body, from the top of my head to the tips of my toes, lingering at my breasts. ‘I’ll go get us some mineral water. We need to keep hydrated. Trust me. I’m a doctor.’

I am all too aware of the verbal manoeuvre – this attempt to encroach upon me by speaking as if he and I are a team, followed by his bad joke. I begin to walk away but the man puts a hand on my waist.

‘Take your hand off me now.’ Anyone who knows me would hear the dead seriousness of my voice.

But this man does not know me. When he tightens his grip on my waist and starts to move the front of his body towards mine I unbalance him with exactly enough force to leave him two choices. Let go of me, or fall over. He takes option one.

‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’ The man shakes his head and squeezes his eyes and moves his mouth from side to side. Then he lurches upstairs.

I brush off my hands. Once. Twice. Firmly and completely done.

But there are two consequences of these mild physical exertions. The first is that a lock of hair has escaped the low knot at the nape of my neck. The second is that your stupid dress flew open without my noticing because when I look down I see that my skimpy black underwear is showing and I remember why I hate this wrap style that you love.

This is when I realise that another man has come into the hall. He has been watching the entire show, so unmoving in the shadow cast by the stairway I haven’t noticed him. He must have seen the spectacle of the gaping dress before I readjusted it.

The man’s black eyes are creased at the corners, I think in amusement. Beyond that, his expression is neutral. My guess is that he is ten years older than I am. The age you would be. Maybe, just maybe, the age you are. Though his face is young, his hair is grey. It’s peppered a little with black. He is one of those model-beautiful grey-haired men.

‘I’d like to offer you a drink,’ he says, ‘but I can see that might be dangerous.’

‘Well you would be correct,’ I say. I double-check that there isn’t even the slightest visible tremble in my fingers. There is not.

‘I’m Adam,’ he says.

I manage to incline my head slightly in response. It is not that I am trying to be rude to him, even though that is probably what he will think. It is that I need a few more seconds to collect myself before I can speak properly.

‘And you, clearly, are the woman with no name. I’ll call you the Kickboxer.’

‘That wasn’t remotely like kickboxing. That was gentle dissuasion.’

He actually smiles. ‘And you’ve gently avoided telling me your name.’

‘Ella.’

He repeats the word as if it were a question, as if he has decided he likes it.

I squint at him. ‘Have I seen you somewhere before?’

‘If I’d seen you before, I’d remember,’ he says.

‘Good one.’ I start to walk away, only to be stopped by Brian, who has somehow extricated himself from Sadie to come in search of me.

‘I wanted to check you’re okay,’ he says.

‘Fine. Thank you.’

Brian looks uncertain, but he nods. ‘Glad to see you’ve met Adam.’ His frown is at odds with his words. ‘I’ll leave you two to talk.’ He looks over his shoulder, then disappears upstairs, taking them two at a time.

‘Brian seems …’ Adam falters.

‘Throwing a party can be stressful,’ I say.

‘You’re right. And I owe you an apology.’

‘For what?’

‘That line about how I’d remember you if I’d seen you before. It was cheesy.’ He waits a beat. ‘But true.’

For so long, I haven’t properly grasped why you adored male attention. Your need for it bordered on mental illness. But this man’s admiration makes me warm, which isn’t something that happens to me very often.

‘Let me guess,’ I say. ‘You’re a doctor?’

He smiles again. ‘You have the gift of mind reading.’

‘My sister used to say that.’ There really is something familiar about him. All at once, I see what it is. It is that he is a type. He is your type. The tall, dark and handsome type. This man is commanding, but he is restraining his power, a tension you always found irresistible. I am discovering that I like it too.

‘I need to be somewhere,’ I say. Somewhere as in, not this new love nest of Sadie and Brian’s. Somewhere as in home, where there are no doctors to interrogate me. And where there is no supposed-friend to shoot barbs at me.

‘Somewhere interesting, I hope,’ he says.

Is he like this with patients, too? Does he make anybody he talks to feel as if they are the most fascinating person he has ever met? A lot of men couldn’t do this without being sleazy, but this man is gentlemanly, urbane-seeming. The type of man Ted would hate and you would adore. But Ted, as I am all too aware, is not here.

‘Lovely to meet you,’ I say.

‘Can I see you again? I have a fondness for the martial arts.’

‘I am not in the habit of seeing strange men. Especially not strange men who tease me.’

‘I’m not strange. But yes, I couldn’t stop myself from teasing you. I’m sorry about that.’

‘That was not a sincere apology.’

‘Perhaps not.’ He takes out a business card and offers it to me. I don’t take the card and he lets his arm fall back to his side. ‘We can meet at my place of work. Between clinics, so you wouldn’t have to put up with me for too long if I bore you.’ He raises his arm to offer the card again. ‘It’s not often that I invite women there.’

‘How often is not often?’

‘Not often as in never before. You’ll see why if you look.’

Fuck you, Ted, I think. Fuck your games and fuck your remoteness and fuck your impatience.

I squint at Adam for a few seconds. To my surprise, my own arm rises and somehow the card is in my hand. I glance at it. Dr Adam Holderness, Consultant Psychiatrist. He is based in the secure mental hospital outside of town, where Jason Thorne is indefinitely confined. He probably thinks I ought to be an inmate. I suppose it’s inevitable that in a house stuffed with doctors, at least one of them would work there.

‘It’s a great place to meet for coffee,’ he says.

I am making silent fun of myself in a bad bleak way. I decided in the woods this morning that I would write a letter to one of the most horrifying serial killers in recent decades, asking if I can visit him. What normal woman thinks it is good news that she may have improved her chances of getting access to such a man?

I don’t need Adam Holderness for that access, but having him behind me might help. It occurs to me that he probably knows who I am, but is being too polite to say. It is all too likely that Brian or Sadie told him. If so, he must guess that I will be drawn to his hospital by a more powerful force than a love of caffeine or a wish to date him.

I say, ‘Do you find that your acquaintance with Jason Thorne is much of an inducement?’

‘Only to an extremely select crowd. I tend to keep that one quiet.’

I fantasise a picture of Luke, proud of me, and happy, finding you at last, running into your arms, smiling at me over your shoulder. But I cannot stop a vision of what his response will be if the truth I discover is a dark one. And I cannot help but consider that if by some miracle we do find you alive, you will take Luke away from me.

The unexpected thing, though, since I made my promise to Luke this morning, is that the terrible visions of what Thorne might have done to you have stopped. Before that promise, nothing I tried would block them – last week’s headlines brought them on with a relentlessness that I couldn’t figure out how to fight.

‘You know what I do,’ Adam says. ‘How about you? Or is your job classified?’

‘Hardly mysterious. I’m a personal safety advisor and trainer. Mostly I work with victims, but also sometimes with family members of victims.’

‘Oh yes,’ he says. ‘I remember Brian mentioning that. For a private charity your family founded?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sounds like important work. And difficult.’

‘I get a lot of support from my mother. She does most of the admin, usually the helpline messages.’

‘She must be very organised.’

‘She has on occasion been described that way.’ You would say, If organised means control freak bossy, then yes. But I have already confided more to this man than I do to most. ‘Please excuse me. I need to go, Dr Holderness.’ I use his title and surname to impose formality and distance, but it comes out like a flirtatious tease.

‘What about that coffee?’

‘I like coffee,’ I say. This seems flirtatious too. It is a register I didn’t know I had. It is not the register I was trying for. Again I sound like you.

‘So do I. Goodbye for now, Ella.’ With these words he steps away and disappears into the kitchen so I don’t have to do any more work at extracting myself. It occurs to me that Adam Holderness has an instinct for doing many of the things that I like men to do. Most of them involve not invading my space bubble.

The Fight

Sadie makes her presence felt in the hallway, though I have been aware of her hovering at the edge of the kitchen, arms crossed and glaring at me, during the last minute of my talk with Adam Holderness.

I say, ‘Why are you so angry? I’m trying to be understanding, but you’re pushing it.’

‘It is no longer possible to trust anything you say.’ She swallows hard. ‘You’re so impulsive.’

‘Sadie—’

She cuts me off. ‘I never know what you’re going to do next. When you’re around I’m constantly on edge. Do you think it’s normal to beat up my guests?’

‘He deserved it.’

‘My boyfriend’s brother deserved for you to knock him over?’

‘I didn’t knock him over. I adjusted things to get him to take his hand off my ass. I didn’t know who he was but it wouldn’t have made a difference if I had.’

‘It was embarrassing. So was watching you crawl all over Adam Holderness. At least he got you to leave Brian alone.’

In a flash, Sadie has moved from ambivalent affection to naked hatred. I have seen her do this to other people. At last, after a period of grace that has lasted longer than I ever expected it to, Brian’s wandering eye has triggered her rage at me.

‘How much have you drunk tonight?’ I say.

‘Two glasses of wine. I don’t need alcohol to see you clearly for what you are.’

‘Are you ill?’

‘Brian belongs to me. I should know by now how little such things mean to you. You never stopped running after Ted while he was married.’

‘That was cruel. You know it’s not true.’

‘How dare you flirt with my boyfriend under my nose? How dare you meet up with him behind my back?’ She steps towards me.

I step away, trying to keep space between us, repeating the manoeuvre I used a few minutes earlier with her would-be brother-in-law. ‘You can’t seriously believe that.’

‘If it’s not about your sister it’s about making sure every man in the room is watching you. You’ll do anything for attention.’

I am starting to shake, but with anger more than hurt. ‘Get out of my way so I can leave.’

‘Are you actually ashamed of the things you do? Do you know how sick you are? You’re sick. Sick sick sick.’

‘I told you to get out of my way,’ I say. ‘Don’t make me make you.’

‘Going to practise your self-defence on me? Or do you only beat up boys?’ She shoves me so hard I crash backwards into the door. I look up to see her towering over me. ‘Get out of my face, you sick fraud.’

A tiny, disinterested part of me is fascinated by the question of whether I only beat up boys, because it is something I have never considered before. I have no doubt that I could send Sadie flying, despite her big advantage over me in height and weight. But could I push back at a woman? Everything about me centres on protecting women, but if my life depended on it, yes. Certainly if Luke’s did.

Sadie does not deserve to know any of this. I choose not to shove back, but I close over, giving her nothing more than the silence she is now earning.

‘You’re so fake,’ she says. ‘Even what you have people call you is fake. You’re not Ella. You’re Melanie. Melanie, Melanie, Melanie.’

‘You have no right to use that name.’ I stand up smoothly. Our mother taught us to rise from the floor the way she used to when she was in the corps de ballet, before she got pregnant with you and gave up her dream of being principal ballerina. I face up to Sadie, taking command of the stage.

You have your mother’s strength and single-mindedness. Dad has always said this to both of us. That’s why your love is so powerful. It’s also why your arguments are so fierce.

Sadie steps back. She actually looks afraid. Her voice trembles, despite her words. ‘I know things about you. I know everything about you. Stay the fuck away from my boyfriend. Get the hell out of our house.’

And that is what I do. I get the hell out, not letting myself look back. I can hear the door slam behind me, followed by a kick and a scream of rage so loud they echo through the thick wood. But already I see the truth of Sadie. Not a new Sadie but the one who has been there all along, hiding from me in plain sight.

Another of your Sadie pronouncements is hurtling around in my head. She’s pathological in her concern for what people think of her. She must lie awake at night worrying about who knows the truth of what she’s really like.

Within ten seconds she will turn around and smile sweetly and remark on how violent and noisy the wind and rain are. And if any of her guests suspect the true source of the fury and noise, they will be too well mannered to say.

Monday, 31 October

The Scented Garden

The park keeper is waiting for us at the black iron gates of the scented garden. Already a Closed to the Public sign is dangling from them. I hang a second sign beside it – Self-Defence Class Taking Place – because I don’t want passers-by to be alarmed by the noises we make. He ushers us in. All the while, I am looking over my shoulder, wondering where Ted is and triple-checking my phone in case I have missed a text from him.

Maybe he isn’t going to turn up. Maybe he is busy with the new woman Sadie thinks he is seeing, though I have been wondering since Saturday if Sadie was lying.

Wishful thinking, you say.

While I clear away beer cans and cigarette butts and decide that this place ought to be renamed the Alcopop Garden, the women mill about in the late autumn sunshine, which has burnt away most of the wetness from the grass since Saturday night’s rain. One woman crouches at the edge of the pond, watching the water lilies and goldfish as if they are the most fascinating things she has ever seen. Another has her nose buried in the climbing roses, her eyes closed as she inhales. The other two sit and whisper together on a wooden bench beneath a wisteria-covered bower.

As I slip my phone into my bag, it buzzes with a text from Ted, who tells me he is waiting at the gate.

Your voice is in my ear. You are too forgiving. Too desperate. Don’t make the same mistakes as me.

‘Do you want to gather over there on the grass?’ I say to the women, gesturing towards the circle of towels I have set up at the far edge of the garden, off to the side and out of the sightline of anyone standing at the gate. ‘I’m going to go and meet Ted so he and I can talk through what we’ll be doing. We’ll start in ten minutes.’

Ted is dressed like a football player this morning and it suits him, with his navy T-shirt untucked over the elastic waistband of his black shorts. I like the way this looks, like a little boy. He is not hiding or covering up, though – his stomach is as flat as it was when we were teenagers.

I say, ‘I missed you Saturday night.’

He blows out air. ‘Sadie’s party. That can’t have been fun.’

‘She broke up with me.’

‘More fun than I would have thought, then. Can’t say I’m sorry. Or surprised.’

‘She said you’re seeing someone. She said that that’s why you didn’t come.’

He exaggerates a backwards stagger, as if I have thrown too much at him. ‘Sadie’s jumping to the wrong conclusions as usual and wanting to fuck things up for us.’ He almost smiles. ‘But did you dislike the idea?’

‘Yes.’ I say this softly. He gives me that melting look of his, so I feel a qualm at breaking the mood. My promise to Luke has taken me over and I am not going to have Ted alone for long – I need to ask him quickly, while I have a chance. ‘You know your friend Mike, who you brought to Dad’s birthday party?’

The melting look goes in an instant. He is as guarded as he would be talking to a drug dealer on the street. He has guessed what is coming. ‘Obviously I know him. Since I brought him.’

‘He was telling me how sorry he was for our family. You know how people get nervous about what to say. He seemed genuinely nice, though, Ted.’

‘He’s a good guy.’

‘I think he really cared, that he was sad for us, sad that we still don’t have answers. Maybe it’s especially uncomfortable for a police officer when he’s off duty and trying to be social.’

‘Christ. That’s why he’s best kept in a room with machines and not let loose on actual human beings.’

‘You’re the one who took him out.’

‘And I am kicking myself for that.’

‘I asked him how he knew about her. He said he was in High Tech Crime when she disappeared. He still is.’

Ted crosses his arms. ‘Making polite conversation, were you?’

‘It got me thinking. He would have worked on her laptop. The police finally returned some of Miranda’s things. My mother swears she hasn’t opened the box yet.’ Ted makes a harrumph of scepticism at this. ‘I know,’ I say. ‘She got Dad to put the box in the attic. He says from the weight and feel of it he doesn’t think the laptop is inside. I wonder if you had any thoughts about why they might have kept it.’

‘None. I’m Serious Crime, Ella, not High Tech, as you well know. Jesus – Luke had to teach me to work my smart phone. You know I’ve never had anything to do with Miranda’s case because of my personal involvement with your family.’

‘I know officially you know nothing, but I also know how all of you talk to each other.’ He almost lets himself smirk but manages to hold it in. ‘I thought maybe Mike said something.’

‘No.’

‘He did. I know you, Ted. I can read your expressions.’

‘You can’t ever let us have a moment, can you?’

‘Yes I can.’

‘You might think you can read my expressions but you can’t read yourself.’