Sisters - Michelle Frances Page 0,24

grief that had been hurtling through her at an unstoppable speed was suddenly halted. Ellie was speared by confusion and a need to understand.

She tried to think back all those years, tried to remember scenarios, moments, meetings with doctors, anything to ground what Abby had said, to make sense of it, realize it for herself, but all she could recall was her mother’s tenderness.

‘What did she do?’ she started tentatively. ‘When you saw her that time. What did Mum do?’

Abby glanced across. ‘She was pouring liquid paracetamol into your food.’

‘Oh my God.’ Ellie was silent for a moment. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘How old was I?’

‘Six.’ said Abby.

Ellie calculated. ‘And you were nine.’ Still quite young. Maybe Abby made a mistake.

‘Can you tell me exactly what happened?’

‘It was a school day. You were in the living room, lying on the sofa, unwell. You hadn’t been to school that day. Mum was in the kitchen, making dinner. She thought I was outside, playing in the street, but I’d come in for a snack. I was starving. You remember the blue fruit bowl that she used to keep on the counter by the kitchen door?’

Ellie nodded. It had had white flowers painted around the outside.

‘I was getting an apple and I saw her with the medicine bottle. She had her back to me and was measuring it out into the small plastic spoon, then tipping it into a plate of casserole. Then she stirred it in. I remember being puzzled because whenever I’d had medicine, she’d just given it to me straight from the spoon. I must have made a noise because she swung around and I’ll never forget the look on her face. She was panicked, then she became angry, really angry. I asked her what she was doing and she just looked at me with the apple in my hand and told me to put it back – it was dinner time and I shouldn’t just help myself without asking.’

Ellie took all this in. ‘Did she still give me the food?’

‘Yes. Well, I assumed so. Later, when she said goodnight to me in my room, she told me it was a special medicine. Just for you. I said I thought it was the normal one, you know, the one I’d have too if I got a temperature or something, but she said I’d been mistaken. It was something the doctor had prescribed just for you and you wouldn’t like the taste so she put it in your food. And I wasn’t to tell you or you wouldn’t eat your dinner and then you wouldn’t get better.’

‘Did you believe her?’

‘I had to. What else could I have thought? I was a child myself.’

‘But this was years ago. Maybe you didn’t understand – you were young. Maybe it was something the doctors prescribed,’ said Ellie.

Abby shook her head, took a deep breath. ‘I heard something on the radio back in the spring. About mothers harming their children. It reminded me of what I’d seen all that time ago. And I started to think about it. I called Mum, confronted her. She tried to deny it of course. Said you were sick and needed the paracetamol. It was pretty clear she was lying – she got so flustered, and it just didn’t add up. And there was your constant sickness, the diarrhoea, your confusion, your yellowed skin. I kept on at her and so then she tried to play it down. Said it hadn’t happened that often. Sometimes she would give you enough medicine to keep you off school, but she was careful not to make it too much. She said she didn’t want you to have any long-term damage.’

It was almost too much to hear. ‘What?’ Ellie asked, anguished.

‘She was worried about liver damage,’ said Abby. ‘I know, I know, it seems nuts. So Mum would make you ill, then she’d reduce the dose a few days before you saw the doctors so they couldn’t trace it. I checked it out online. Seems if any overdose is staggered over a long period, paracetamol tests are impossible to interpret and they can be normal.’ Abby sighed. ‘Mum insisted I never say anything to you. I thought you had a right to know and she should tell you herself. She rang me a few days before your trip out here, pleaded with me again not to say anything.’

Ellie was silent as she took it all in. A lump was stuck in her throat and it was