We Were Sisters: An absolutely gripping psychological thriller

by Wendy Clarke

  ‘You wanted to talk to me.’ It’s a statement, not a question. Resting her hands on her plump knees, my mother waits for me to speak.

  I fold my arms across my body, then unfold them again quickly as the action brings back memories of Freya. Even though she’s the reason I’ve come here today, the image in my head of the frail child who I’d once longed to be my sister, is not going to help me with what I have to say.

  I clear my throat, scared that the words I’ve been practising in the car will seem trite and heartless.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about this for a while and there’s something I need to tell you about Freya. About the night she…’ I stop, unable to say the words.

  ‘I see.’ My mum looks away. It’s impossible to know what she’s thinking.

  ‘What I wanted to say was that I wasn’t honest about what happened that night.’ I force my eyes to meet hers. ‘I saw it all. I knew where she’d gone, and I followed her—’

  ‘But you did say.’

  I shake my head in frustration. ‘Just hear me out, please. I thought if I could just get there in time, I could stop her.’

  Freya’s body hangs limp before my eyes. Her face mottled.

  My mother’s fingers tighten around the handle of her cup. ‘But you didn’t.’

  ‘No. I didn’t tell you at the time because I was too scared of what I’d seen. I was ill. Frightened. I didn’t know what you’d do if I told you the truth.’

  I hear again the raised voices, Freya screaming. See her empty bedroom.

  My mother’s face is impassive. ‘You’re not telling me anything new and I really don’t see why you feel the need to bring this up now.’

  I carry on as if I haven’t heard her. ‘She’d taunted me with it enough times. She was obsessed. To begin with, I thought she was crying wolf, but that night, I was in no doubt she’d do it. I think she wanted me to find her. To shock me. Later, I went back to bed and told myself that when I woke up, it would all have been a dream. But of course, it wasn’t.’

  My mother puts down her cup, some of the tea spilling into the saucer. Her hand hovers near her heart. ‘Despite everything, I still miss her. If only things could have stayed as they were.’ She looks away. ‘The girl was troubled. I’m sorry you had to find her like that… with that boy.’

  I close my eyes in frustration. ‘I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about what she did later. It was all my fault. Freya wanted to punish me.’

  My mother’s eyes snap back to mine. ‘Punish you? For what?’

  I hesitate, wondering how much to tell her. ‘When Freya was ten and I was eight, she told me a secret… about her sister. She made me promise I’d never tell anyone, but she thought I’d told you. It was why she did it.’

  My mother shakes her head. ‘It was no secret, Kelly. What happened to Freya’s sister was common knowledge at the time.’

  I can’t believe what I’m hearing. ‘You mean all the time she was living with us, you knew?’

  ‘Of course I knew. We had several meetings about it, and it was in her notes. I would never have been allowed to foster her if I hadn’t been fully informed. They chose us because they knew we were used to providing a home to the more difficult cases. That nothing could shock us.’

  ‘You have to tell me, Mum. What did Freya do to her sister?’

  With effort, my mother heaves herself out of her chair. She goes over to the photographs and picks up the one of Freya. I realise too late that she’s heard the desperation in my voice.

  ‘Will you bring the girls to see me?’

  I don’t want to bring them here. Don’t want to subject them to my mother’s twisted idea of love.

  ‘Why would I do that after your pathetic attempts to scare me? Don’t think I haven’t worked it out.’

  She traces Freya’s image with her finger. ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

  Outside, the wind has picked up. It forces itself against the sash windows, making them rattle. It’s like it’s tired of pushing down the grasses in the meadow and wants to get in. It makes me shiver.

  ‘You know what, Mum, don’t tell me. I don’t care any more. I’ll take Noah home and you’ll never see any of us again.’

  My mother puts down the photograph and shrugs. ‘Please yourself.’

  I put on my coat and pick up Noah’s car seat, but there’s one last thing I need to tell her before I go. Something that’s been on my conscience. ‘You know, my only regret is that if I hadn’t run away from that place, gone home and pretended to be asleep, I might have been able to save her.’

  Even as I’m saying this, I know it’s ridiculous. What could I have done to help her? What would I have used to cut her down?

  I don’t know what I’m expecting from my mother. Forgiveness? Absolution? I get none of these things. Instead, she’s looking at me as though I’m mad.

  ‘Why are you talking about Freya as if she’s dead?’

  I stare blankly at her, clutching Noah’s car seat to my chest. She’s still speaking, but her voice is phasing in and out like a radio that’s not tuned in properly. I can’t take in what she’s saying. I try to answer, but numbers are filling my head and floating away again to leave the number twenty. Twenty. Twenty. Twenty.

  At last, I find my voice. ‘Because she is.’

  She stares at me, her eyes unblinking. ‘Whatever makes you think that, Kelly? Freya’s very much alive.’

  48

  Kelly Now

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ I’m finding it hard to process what my mother has just told me. Freya is alive? How could she be? What sort of sick joke is this?

  ‘Are you all right?’ My mum starts towards me, then thinks better of it and sits down. Instead, she begins to talk again, and although I want to scream at her to stop, I don’t. A little voice in my head is telling me it’s important to hear what she’s got to say.

  ‘For many years, Freya was dead to me as well, but that’s hardly surprising after what she did.’

  As I put the car seat down, Noah opens his eyes, but I haven’t the strength to pick him up. I can’t take anything in. I feel numb. Stupid. Freya’s alive and I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. ‘What did she do?’

  ‘She wanted to have your father to herself, of course. Wanted him to love her more than he did me. I didn’t know they would connect as well as they did, and I couldn’t let that happen.’

  ‘But you said that’s what you wanted. You were going to adopt her.’

  She looks at me, wild-eyed. ‘Can’t you see? When you told me you’d seen her at the rifle range with the teacher, I knew she had it in her power to take him away from me. She was someone who could break up families.’

  I feel a flood of guilt for the lie I told. ‘I’m sorry.’

  My mother looks at me sadly. ‘You don’t need to be. I phoned social services and said I wanted her removed immediately. That I’d made a mistake and the placement wasn’t working – though it nearly broke my heart to do it. Even when the truth came out, I knew in my heart what she was capable of. I’d wanted to believe she was a good girl… but they all turn out rotten.’

  Noah is twisting in his seat, fighting the restraints, and I unclip the harness and place him on my lap, my heart thumping against his back. Freya’s… alive. How could that be? I’m finding it hard to breathe.

  My mother has got up – she’s pacing the room, picking things up and putting them down again. ‘When she knew she was leaving, she shouted and screamed, showed her true colours, but then she laughed in my face. Said I was a sad old cow and it was no wonder Andrew didn’t love me. When she’d been cleaning, she’d snooped in his office and seen things she shouldn’t have – knew about his indiscretions. I’d thought Freya would be the glue that bound your father to me, but I was wrong. In the end, she drove a wedge between us. The irony was, Freya turned out to be the child your father loved like his own after all and he never forgave me for making her leave. I lost him as wel
l.’

  I won’t feel sorry for her. I can’t. Because all the time I’d been living in that house too, wanting what little love they had to offer. ‘And that’s why she wasn’t there in the morning. You said nothing. How could you not tell me you’d sent her away? Why was everything in our lives such a great secret?’

  ‘I thought it would be easier for everyone.’

  A pulse is leaping at the base of my throat. ‘But I thought she was dead, for Christ’s sake! How could anything be worse than that? And you wouldn’t speak to me. Made me change schools.’ Noah has started to cry. Lifting him from my lap, I carry him to the window.

  ‘If you’d stayed in that school, you’d have been crucified for the lie you told. I had no choice.’ She’s joined me at the window, though there’s nothing much to see – just the rain running down the glass and the leaden grey sky that sits heavily above the distant curve of the downs.

  ‘I wondered if maybe I’d been wrong all these years putting my efforts into creating the perfect family. That if I just spent some quality time with your father, it might make a difference.’ A tear trickles down the side of her nose and she wipes it away with the back of her hand. ‘Of course it didn’t and when he finally left me, it broke my heart.’

  I hear the desperation in her voice. She wants me to understand and I realise, with a start, that we are not so very different. In our own ways we’d both been reaching out for a love that this man could never give us.

  ‘She came back, you know,’ she says, drawing her finger down the windowpane. ‘I came home one day and found her sitting in the living room. It was a shock after all these years. She hadn’t changed much – a little thinner maybe. I told her to leave. That she shouldn’t be here.’

  ‘What did she want?’

  Noah is still grizzling. My mother reaches out her arms to take him and I don’t stop her. She meets my gaze over his downy head. ‘She wanted to see you.’

  ‘Me?’ A nub of fear lodges in my throat.

  ‘Of course I told her you hadn’t lived here for years. That I never saw you and had no idea where you were living now.’

  My eyes dart around the room as though Freya might still be hiding in some corner. Where did she sit? Was it where I had been sitting?

  My mother has asked me something and is waiting for my reply, but I haven’t been listening. I’m counting in multiples of twenty. Over and over. It’s okay, I tell myself. You’re safe. Nothing will happen. I’ve reached my target and breathe deeply before asking her to repeat the question.

  She’s frowning. ‘I was asking why you thought Freya was dead. You never told me.’

  Her words hang between us and I don’t know how to answer. I close my eyes, trying to remember that night. The rain that plastered my hair to my face. The lightning that turned the bare branches of the trees to negatives. The sleeping pill I took. The darkness that robbed me of one sense but heightened another, leaving my imagination to fill in the missing details. To create a story that could never have happened.

  Another gust of wind rattles the window and whines down the chimney.

  I bury my head in my hands remembering my anger. My jealousy. It had given me the courage to lie to my mother. Then, later, it overrode my ability to think rationally. My thoughts were wild. Skewed. My emotions overblown. I thought I knew where Freya had gone that night. That she was punishing me… but it was all in my head. I was never that important.

  I remember how I’d gone in search of her – calling her name as I struggled up the slope towards the line of trees on the ridge. Clothes soaked. Breathing ragged. As the woodland had closed in around me, I’d stumbled along the path. The light from my torch picking out leaves and branches. Twigs catching at my hair. Unable to rid myself of the terror of being alone in the wood.

  When the lightning had lit up the clearing, turning the swollen trunks of the Gemini tree white, I’d closed my eyes, then turned and vomited into the undergrowth.

  I know now that there had been no body swinging from the rope that hung from its branch. In that flash of light, I’d imprinted what I wanted to see. It was just my imagination. My guilt.

  ‘It wasn’t real.’ I lower my hands and look at my mother but of course she doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

  It wasn’t real. These are the same words I say to Isabella when she makes up a story or to Sophie when she’s woken from a nightmare. I want to believe that I’ve woken from a nightmare too, but I haven’t. For I know that somewhere out there, Freya is alive.

  She’s been trying to get my attention.

  She’s seen my girls.

  I see the imprint of her hands on Noah’s buggy.

  And it’s like someone’s walked over my grave.

  49

  Kelly Now

  I don’t go straight home. Instead, I sit in my car and try to get my heart rate back to normal. Glad that Mitch has said he’ll pick up the girls today in case I’m late back. Behind me, I can hear the jingle of Noah’s giraffe rattle as he shakes it, then the sound of it hitting the floor as he loses his grip. In a minute, he’ll start crying and I’m strung so tightly I don’t think I can take it if he does.

  Freya is alive. She’s been back here, to this place where it all happened. Except it never did happen and that’s what I’m trying to get my head around. Fifteen wasted years, living with the guilt of having not told anyone what I saw. Fifteen years spent hating myself for the lie that caused her death.

  Was it Freya who put the locket in Noah’s pram? It would explain a lot, but my mother swore she hadn’t told her where we were living, and I believe her. I’d seen a look in her eyes when she spoke about Freya that I recognised. Fear. She knows as well as I do how unpredictable she was back then. What if she still is?

  Switching on the engine, I pull away from the house. Through the rear-view mirror, I watch the thatched roof of my childhood home disappear around the bend in the road and relief washes over me. But it doesn’t last long. Freya is out there somewhere, and she holds a grudge.

  I drive on autopilot, my mind jerking from thought to thought. My knuckles white against my skin where I’m gripping the steering wheel too hard. Noah is quiet now and it doesn’t seem any time at all before we’ve reached the outskirts of Brighton. While I’ve been driving, it’s been getting dark, the street lights have come on and the roads are getting busier. I decide that the quickest way to get home is to leave the main road and drop down through the residential streets until I reach the seafront. It should only take a few minutes, but this evening the traffic is slow and, as I follow the line of traffic along the street, I realise why. I’d forgotten it was Halloween and families are out in force.

  When I reach a pelican crossing, I stop to let a group of parents cross. One has a pushchair – a toddler dressed in a pumpkin outfit fighting his restraints. Another ushers a gaggle of witches and ghosts across the road, giving me a wave of thanks as the last one crosses. They’re heading for the house on the other side where lanterns adorn the porch and a pumpkin grimaces from the window.

  I carry on, relieved that I made the decision not to let the girls go trick-or-treating this evening. On a night like this, I want to know they’re safely home with me.

  At the seafront I turn left, but as I do, I realise my mistake. The cars are hardly moving. Not only that, the atmosphere has changed. The parents and young children I saw earlier have been replaced by teenagers. Some are walking purposefully along the promenade in the direction of the Palace Pier, but others have formed into large groups that spill onto the road. Instead of the devils and witches’ costumes of the younger children, their outfits take on a more sinister note. One youth is dressed as Freddy Krueger. Another wears a bloodied apron, an imitation chainsaw in his hands. They barge against each other, jostling for position on the pavement, and from the sound of their loud voices and the bottles in their hands, it’s clear they’re in for a long evening of drinking.

  As I get closer to the pier, the crowds thi
cken, and the traffic comes to a standstill. Someone wearing a clown outfit, his mouth a bloodied gash, jumps in front of the car and shouts an obscenity through the windscreen, shrieking with laughter at my shocked expression. His friend grabs him by his arm and pulls him away, but it leaves me shaken. I feel as though I’m in a house of horrors… only this one has no walls. It’s unnerving and I don’t want to be here.

  And all the time, I’m searching for a face in the crowd. One that scares me more than any ghost or corpse bride.

  I’m searching for a girl who’s risen from the dead.

  Searching for Freya.

  50

  Kelly Now

  When I eventually get home, I’m surprised to find the house in darkness. Opening my bag, I rummage inside it but can’t find my keys. I groan as I picture them in the dish on the hall table and ring the doorbell. There’s no answer and I realise I’ll have to get the spare front door key from the garden shed. Leaving Noah’s car seat on the doorstep, I run round to get it, deciding, as I do, that there’s no need to mention my forgetfulness to Mitch.

  The house is silent when I let myself in. Putting Noah’s car seat on the hall floor, I switch on the light.

  ‘Mitch? Girls?’

  When there’s no answer, I go into the kitchen and try the back door. It’s locked as it always is when we are all out. Where are they? It’s as I’m going back to get Noah out of his car seat that I see the note on the kitchen worktop, my name scrawled in Mitch’s untidy hand. I pick it up and read.

  Taken the girls out trick-or-treating. I know you didn’t want me to, but it didn’t seem right when everyone in their class was going. We won’t be late, and we’ll bring you back some sweets if you’re good.