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Harry frowned as he searched the face of his youngest brother. Nothing was wrong with him, according to the doctors, and Harry supposed that they knew best, but it felt like something was missing — something he didn’t have a name for.
There wouldn’t be a name for it, not a proper one, not in his lifetime, but he wasn’t to know that at twelve. All he knew, as he stared into fresh, blue eyes for the third time in his life, was that there was a spark lacking in them. It unnerved him.
Albie, unhelpfully as ever, prodded the squirming mass of blankets, reducing Harry’s efforts at soothing him to sleep to nothing. On the bed, Helen fussed and tried to clamber onto their mother’s lap, pouting and threatening to wail when she was gently lifted off. She had been slow to walk and still preferred to be carried around, regardless of the inconvenience of the situation. Harry wondered how he would break it to her that she was no longer the baby of the family.
Their father returned from his short walk to the hospital café and made a beeline for his new son, taking him into his arms. Having been freed of the responsibility of one small child, Harry crossed the length of the small room to his sister, lifting her up and out of their mother’s way. She had been born early, not so much that there was any concern about her wellbeing, but enough for her to be the tiniest thing he’d ever seen. Two years and two months on, she was tall for her age and getting harder to manage every day. She scowled at him and he gave her a pointed look in return.
When his parents had announced they were having another child, dread had curled in his stomach like poison, but now that George, as he was apparently called, was here, Harry felt a tinge of hope that he might take some of the attention off him and the other two, at least for a little while.
The shelter was no colder than the house, which seemed to let in more draughts than it kept out in the winter months, but Harry shivered all the same, warmed only by the glares from his neighbours as they all silently asked the same question. They’d seen the decorations, if they could be called that, on the door the previous week as he celebrated his eighteenth birthday. He didn’t much feel like telling them all that a bout of measles in his childhood had left him deaf in one ear, and therefore medically unfit to serve, so he squinted at the worn pages of his book and tried to distract himself from the destruction overhead. Next to him, Helen whimpered as Albie tried to soothe her, holding her hand and humming a tune Harry didn’t recognise, but one that was enthralling to his sister.
It wasn’t the first time he noticed it — he had always been too observant for his own good — but it was the first time he saw his father notice it. All three of the elder Sinclair siblings, the spoiled fruits of the crop, if the obvious favouritism of George was anything to go by, kept out of their father’s way as much as they could. Harry helped in the kitchen when Helen wouldn’t, feigning interest in becoming a chef and making excuses about his sister’s clumsiness. These were believable enough; he’d patched her up enough times after she’d fallen chasing George around outside, or run shoulder-first into a door. His father had grunted that clumsiness was “unladylike”, but allowed it regardless. Helen seemed surgically attached to Albie, enchanted by his stories and songs, and completely disinterested in anyone else. Neither of them spent enough time with their mother to see what Harry did — sunken eyes and grey skin and an exhaustion that clung to her bones.
Harry tried his best to get Helen to see sense, but she just saw him as an extension of their father. The way she turned away from him broke his heart, but he held his head up anyway. Better, he thought, for him to be the villain than for her to meet a real one.
"Helen,” Harry started, his voice cracking before he’d even begun. He faltered, not knowing how to go on. His sister, wide-eyed and eleven, was staring at him impatiently, cheek still red from where it had been slapped the night before.
“Well?” she questioned. “You promised you’d explain. Where’s Albie gone? Why are all his things gone from your room?”
Harry had given up hoping that Helen would ever develop the perceptiveness he was sure she would need in life. She had been punished enough for asking the wrong questions at the wrong time, and he had flinched when their mother’s bony hand had struck her face. They were questions he had wanted the answers to as well, but he knew better than to voice what was on his mind. “He’s left,” he said simply, trying to steady his voice. “He’s left and he won’t be coming back.”
Tears started to form in her bright eyes, as if on cue, and her breathing became shaky. “He wouldn’t leave me,” she said, as though stating a fact, though her face gave her uncertainty away. “He promised he’d never leave me here.” She didn’t have to say with you for Harry to know she was thinking it. His heart soured with guilt but he pushed on.
“He didn’t have a choice,” he explained. “Father found out something that Albie had been hiding from him. Threatened to call the police if he didn’t leave immediately.”
“He’s a criminal?” she asked, eyes demanding an answer that Harry didn’t know how to give. He’d seen it in Albie before he ever saw it in himself, and all the effort he’d put in to making himself invisible just made his little brother twice as memorable. Albie had an unignorable loudness to him and none of the sense necessary to exist in the world as someone different.
Now, he saw it, the thing that he could never bring himself to name, in Helen too. She was young enough to be saved, if he made the right choices. He was already used to being the villain in her life. Whilst he hated what had led them here, she hadn’t paid him this much attention since she’d argued with both Albie and George at the same time and had no one else to talk to. He could have echoed their father’s views. It might have saved her. It might have saved him too.
He thought about Abraham and Isaac. He thought about the line of moles on his throat that taunted a label of cut here. He thought about the fairytales he used to read to Albie, back when it was just the two of them, and how the witch always took the firstborn child.
“Yes and no,” he answered after a while. “He was in a relationship with another man. Technically, it’s against the law, but I don’t think the law’s right. He’s not a criminal to me.”
“Me either,” she said pensively, eyes fixed on her wringing hands. “Is it illegal for women to—”
“No, but that doesn’t make it a good idea,” he replied quickly. “As far as Father’s concerned, Albie brought shame on our family, and now we’re to forget he ever existed.” He paused for a moment, trying to adjust his tone to one of an understanding nature. “I don’t want the same thing to happen to you.”
Helen’s eyes shot up to meet his, surprised at having been found out. She nodded and wordlessly left the room. He doubted, even then, that she would keep the promise she’d silently made, but he hoped all the same that she had enough fear to last her.
It had been three years and three months since Albie left, and Harry only knew this because Helen kept reminding him. Naively, perhaps, he had thought that the loss of Albie might bring them closer together. Instead, Helen still held a candle for him and pretended she was the only one who ever had. Harry, now working at an accountancy firm that was so dull he was sure some of his colleagues lived their entire lives in greyscale, was still holed up in the bedroom he used to share with his lost little brother.
Helen’s grief, in those first few months, had bled through the entire house. The wallpaper wept with her missing of him and she couldn’t go in the garden without crying. Harry missed him too, of course, but he was the eldest and the house wouldn’t withstand him breaking apart as well. He let Helen find her feet, watching from a distance and keeping their father from knowing how she truly felt. In time, Helen began to act like herself again, but he never stopped watching her. It was as though something compelled him to.
Three years and three months to the day, and Helen brought a girl home with her for the first time. She had never been popular at school, always more intrigued by books than what her classmates had to say, so when she arrived back on Harry’s day off, arm linked with that of a short brunette who looked about her age, he tensed at the sight. He couldn’t deny there was a lightness to Helen that he hadn’t seen in years, but he knew what this happiness could cost her, just as they both knew what Albie’s had cost him. Under the fear lay jealousy, eating away at his heart piece by piece. He knew he would never be brave enough to take that risk.
The evening was pleasant enough, even as Harry’s eyes started to ache from darting around the dinner table, trying to spot any suspicion so he could quash it later on. Jean was polite enough and seemed to know much more about the world than Helen, catching his eye once and meeting his frown with a look of reassurance, but he couldn’t help but worry regardless. Helen woke like she had lost her favourite brother anew every day, to the point where Harry wasn’t sure how much she remembered of the day he left. She’d never had the best memory and would forget or misremember things Harry remembered so clearly he could still feel them. He'd thought it was just her age at first — the decade between them was cavernous in so many ways — but it hadn’t improved as she’d got older. He wasn’t sure if she still remembered all the words their father used to describe Albie in those hours after he left, or the way that Albie had turned to her, and no one else, when he stepped out of the house they’d all grown up in for the final time. Harry had felt like a ghost even then, transparent and unseen. He knew it was good that even Albie didn’t know about him, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he barely deserved to relate to him when he’d buried it all so well.
After goodbyes had been said, and Helen’s cheeks were flushed with something more than the cold, Harry grabbed her by the arm and she flinched with the shock of it. “Be careful!” he hissed. She rolled her eyes in response. “Helen, I’m serious!”
“Are you going to spend your whole life policing me?” she whispered back. “I can do what I want!” She pulled her arm loose and stormed upstairs, the house shaking with every step.
The next day, Harry began looking for a flat.
Something had changed in Helen since she’d been at university.
The fact that she’d gone at all had been an insult enough to their father, but the fact that she’d gone somewhere too far away for her to live at home, where he could keep tabs on her, had soured his mood for months. Harry had long since moved out, but still, ever the diligent son, went to church and had Sunday dinner with what was left of his family every week. Helen wasn’t long back from her final term of the year and, unlike the previous holidays, where he could barely breathe for her talking about languages he hadn’t known had even existed, she was silent.
He tried all the tricks he knew, probing her with questions and the like, but the walls she’d built in her first year of adulthood were stronger than he’d expected. She carried herself differently, shrinking as far into her own spine as she could manage. Whilst her intensity as a child had bothered him to no end, it was as though some new woman had taken his sister’s place, identical in looks but not in mind, and that bothered him far more.
She’d refused to go to church and that was where the arguments had started, at least on that particular day. Harry had been secretly thrilled to see glimpses of the sister he knew and, despite everything, loved more than anything in the world, but now she’d locked herself in her bedroom. He’d whispered an apology as he’d sloped off behind his parents and George, who was turning more into their father by the day. He’d wanted to stay and comfort her then, but he didn’t know how to disobey. Everything even slightly rebellious in him had been stamped out before it had had the chance to become anything.
Now, he knocked gently on her door. “Helen?”
“What do you want?” was the muffled reply.
“To talk,” he said simply. He wasn’t expecting it to work, but when the lock clicked and he saw her salt-stained face, something he didn’t know still existed shattered in him. She collapsed into his arms, light as a feather, and he wondered if she’d been eating. The light in her, the light that had always been there, even when she was at her most petulant, had all but gone from her eyes. The mask of politeness that she’d finally learned to wear had slipped and he saw her for what she was — broken.
“I can’t tell you,” she said shakily. He tried not to let it wound him. “Really, I…I can’t.”
“You don’t need to say anything,” he said, sensing there was more than she knew what to do with but not wanting to push her any further. “I’ve got you.”
When Helen was small, before Albie had learned to be gentle, she had night terrors. Their mother had been too tired, what with George being a demanding baby, and their father simply hadn’t cared. Every night, when he heard her screaming, he’d tiptoe to her room and hold her until she settled.
She hadn’t thanked him then and she didn’t thank him now.
He didn’t know how he’d wound up being the one to knock on his sister’s door, but she kept not showing up for Sunday lunch, crying off due to work commitments or traffic or bus strikes. It had been a month and it was time she knew the truth.
“Hello,” she said slowly as she opened the door. She had moved relatively recently and Harry was grateful to have got her address right.
“Can I come in?” he asked out of politeness, not giving her the chance to refuse as he pushed past her and into the atrocity that she called her home. Music, far too loud and far too popular for his liking, was blaring from a gramophone in the centre of the lounge, if a stiff-looking sofa and a radio on a coffee table could be called that. Every surface was strewn with papers or books and it looked like she hadn’t hoovered in weeks. He shuddered a little, but tried to drag his attention away from what wasn’t important. He was only putting off the inevitable.
“Sit down,” she said, gesturing to the one chair at the kitchen table that didn’t have clothes piled on it. When he refused, she frowned.
“What’s wrong? You never refuse a seat. I remember we could never go on walks with you because you were apparently allergic to walking more than a mile at a time, and that was with rest breaks.” Her smile, false as it was, faded as she stopped talking.
“I think you ought to sit down for this,” Harry said stoically, putting his hands on her shoulders and guiding her to the chair. He felt her pulse quicken.
“Harry, what is it? You’re scaring me.”
“It’s Albie,” he said, and it scarred them both. The years fell away and she was eleven again, her heart cracking up like it had the day he left. “The police found out about him — I don’t know how — and he’s been arrested. He’s in prison, Helen.”
This time, she was silent, but it didn’t make it any less painful for Harry. The mask didn’t slip, but everything behind it did. Finally, she managed a sentence.
“Where is he? Which prison? Do you know?” He ached for her. She had always been the type to try to save people.
“Father told us over Sunday lunch, like it was as newsworthy as George’s new girlfriend,” he said bitterly. “I don’t think you were even supposed to know, but I thought you deserved to.”
“Thank you,” she said, eyes still fixed on the table in front of her. He knew what was going through her head because it was going through his too. He was the first to admit that she bore the brunt of their father’s remarks about settling down and giving him grandchildren, but he felt the weight of it too.
“Helen,” he said as he was leaving. She still looked numb, but met his gaze all the same. “Promise me you won’t go looking. You have to be smart about this now.” He’d have done anything to see her scowl like she used to, but she simply nodded.
Harry wasn’t sure how much more of it he could take.
Helen hadn’t been one to frequent the family dinner table as she’d grown older, but the lack of her presence was thicker than it had ever been and it caught in his throat.
The rest of them pretended that it was no different to how it had always been, adapting to being a family of four as easily as they had adapted to being a family of five.
The newspapers with Helen’s photo on the front curled in on themselves in the fireplace.
Albie had been the second son. It had been easy, when he had left all those years ago, to pretend he had gone travelling, or to a boarding school in a foreign country. There had never been any record of what he’d done. Helen had been the only daughter and her face was plastered all over every newspaper worth buying. It had been impossible to cover up.
George had been engaged, apparently. He hadn’t told anyone, but the girl’s father had called it off after the news broke. Harry knew he had to do what he’d always done and play the role he was born for.
Kathleen was kind enough, and nice-looking, he supposed. The wedding was a quiet one, in the church he’d spent so long in it felt like a second home. He still felt the ghosts of his little siblings there, grinning as they did before the world had caught up with them.
Robert was born within a year. He had done his duty.
Helen couldn’t sleep. She hadn’t been able to since they’d left the colony planet with the barcode name, plagued still by what she’d seen. She tossed and turned, kicking the unfamiliar lump that was Liv halfway out of bed each night. She was grateful they’d sorted things out, after so many years of dancing around each other, but it didn’t bring the peace she’d always hoped it would.
One night, after checking her girlfriend — it still felt bizarre to call her that, but it thrilled her — was properly asleep, she made her way down the long corridors to the console room. This wasn’t the first time she’d done this, and the TARDIS, ever fond of her, projected images of a thousand different night skies onto the ceiling to try and relax her. This time, though, she wasn’t alone. The Doctor was tinkering with something on the console. She tried to turn around and leave him to it, but he’d already spotted her.
“You’re up late,” he remarked cautiously.
“In a time machine, is one ever up late?” she replied wearily. When the look of concern didn’t leave her best friend’s face, she sighed. “I couldn’t sleep. No matter what I do, nothing seems to work.”
“I’m sure I have some alien remedy that could help,” offered the Doctor, “but something tells me this is more than your typical insomnia.”
“I don’t like to make requests,” she started slowly, not sure how to continue.
“After all this time and all the scrapes you’ve got us out of, I think I can grant you just the one.”
The knock on his front door woke Harry with a start; he wasn’t expecting visitors. In fact, it was meant to be the first Saturday in almost a month that neither he nor his young son had any plans. His eyesight was worsening in his middle age, but he could still see the calendar on the wall well enough to know the day. He didn’t like to count the days, but it was something she’d instilled in him so early on that it was second nature to him now.
Ten years to the day since his little sister disappeared.
No one had heard hide nor hair from her since then. George had his theories, but was sensible enough to keep them quiet. All Harry hoped was that she was still alive. He had long since given up on Albie, and the failure ran through him like blood, but as long as he could still hope to see her again, he could survive.
Pulling on his coat, he made his way to the door. After his wife’s death six years earlier, he had taken to housework in a way that would have raised eyebrows in the home he grew up in. All those things he had done for Helen and Albie, futile though now they seemed to be, had paid off in that respect, at least.
When he opened the door, he thought he was dreaming. He’d imagined it so many times in the last decade, in so many different ways, that to see his sister standing before him was enough to make his knees give way, and she only just managed to catch him before he hit the floor. Finding his feet again, he took her all in. The lines on her face made her look distinguished and so, so different from their mother, and her smile was as real as her eyes were wet. More than that, on her arm, like she was fourteen years old again, was a short brunette.