The Stolen Sisters: from the bestselling author of The Date and The Sister comes one of the most thrilling, terrifying and shocking psychological thrillers of 2020

by Louise Jensen

  ‘I’ll make some tea.’ Marie fills the kettle as though this is just another social visit. My eyes meet Carly’s and she raises her eyebrows.

  ‘I’ve brought my own cup.’ I pull a mug wrapped in plastic from my bag and pass it to her. I’m poised to defend myself but she doesn’t ask what’s triggered my contamination OCD this time (although it’s probably obvious), or how long it’s been going on, and I’m glad. I’m not here to be judged.

  A phone rings, the sound coming from the top of the fridge.

  ‘Do you want me to get it?’ I’m nearest.

  ‘No!’ Marie reaches for her phone and switches it off.

  ‘You didn’t have to do that. It might have been a job offer?’

  ‘It wasn’t. There’s some biscuits somewhere, Leah. If you can find them.’

  I rummage around on the worktops, looking for snacks I will not eat.

  Marie’s flat is as chaotic and cluttered as her life. Washing-up piled in the sink. Every surface messy. Tubes of half-used make-up litter the small table in the kitchen where she eats her meals for one, a box of L’Oréal hair dye pokes out of the overflowing bin; it’s the complete opposite of my minimalism. Once my twin and I shared everything but now we don’t even look the same, I think, taking in her newly bleached hair, cropped close to her head. I still keep mine long. Although I’m only twenty-eight, threads of grey are weaving into my natural red but I’m determined not to start colouring it. Every few minutes Marie runs her hand over the back of her neck as though reassuring herself that her pigtails are gone. That no one can grab them again. It’s as though she wants to be somebody else – somebody different – and I understand that, I’ve felt it too. But we can’t run away from ourselves, can we? The things we’ve done. Years of therapy have taught me that.

  ‘Is Archie okay?’ Carly’s face shines as she mentions her nephew. It’s such a shame she’s never allowed anyone to get close to her. She’s never had a family of her own. It’s too much responsibility, she had said once when I’d asked her if she wanted children.

  It took her a long time for her to be able to look after Archie. ‘I can’t,’ she had said when we had first discussed the possibility of me going back to work. I had taken her hands in mine.

  ‘I trust you.’

  She had shaken her head. ‘You shouldn’t.’

  ‘Well, I do. George and I both do and… Carly, I couldn’t trust anyone else.’ There was no way I could leave Archie with a stranger.

  ‘What if…’ She had squeezed her eyes tightly closed.

  ‘We can’t live our lives by what-ifs.’

  She had looked at me then with such a disbelieving expression on her face.

  ‘Okay,’ I had conceded. ‘I see the irony in that but I am trying. Try with me. You adore Archie.’ From the second she had first held him at the hospital and he had wrapped his tiny fingers around her thumb she was lost to emotions she just couldn’t fight.

  ‘It’s because I love him I can’t do it.’

  ‘It’s because you love him that you can.’

  Now, Carly picks Archie up when I’m working at the insurance firm in town, processing policies for the fears that keep people awake at night – theft, death, illness, but I know these things aren’t the worst that can happen. Not by a long way.

  ‘Archie’s fine,’ I say over the sound of the kettle boiling. ‘I was mortified earlier though because all the other kids were already sitting in a circle when we got there. Sorry we’re late, he shouted. Mummy couldn’t get in the bloody bathroom because Daddy was doing a big poo. That child.’ I shake my head as though I’m despairing but we all know I’m not. Archie is the light of my life. ‘You must come and see him, Marie.’ I try not to sound critical that we see her so infrequently.

  ‘Yes. Sorry, I’ve been busy.’

  ‘Doing what?’ Carly asks. Marie was sacked from her last role for turning up drunk five minutes before she was supposed to go on stage. That was six months ago and she hasn’t worked since. She said it was the kick she needed to give up drinking and focus on the future.

  ‘This and that,’ she says vaguely. Her mouth gapes a yawn. There are dark shadows under her eyes. She’s not sleeping well either.

  ‘Something keeping you up at night. Or someone?’ Carly asks.

  Marie doesn’t answer but her neck flushes red. She’s keeping something from us.

  ‘Marie, are you seeing someone?’

  She doesn’t deny it, instead she busies herself splashing milk into mugs and fishing out teabags with a spoon. I don’t repeat my question. If Marie doesn’t want to tell us something, she won’t. She leads us through to the lounge, sweeping piles of magazines from the sofa onto the threadbare carpet. A stick of incense on a stand on the windowsill billows smoke. The scent is cloying. Momentarily it crosses my mind that she might be masking the smell of booze. I steal a glance around the room, searching for empty bottles stuffed into corners, lipstick-stained tumblers, but there’s nothing. My eyes meet Carly’s and she shrugs. I know she’s thinking the same as me. I set the chipped plate stacked with Tesco basic digestives on the table.

  ‘So—’ Marie beams a smile that doesn’t reach the rest of her face. Her lipstick has stained a patch of her nicotine-yellow teeth crimson.

  ‘I can’t do it this year,’ Carly cuts in. ‘I just can’t.’

  The atmosphere, already heavy, thickens. I take a sip of my tea, trying to recall whether Marie had rested the teaspoon on the draining board before she fished out my teabag.

  ‘I know it’s difficult this year—’ Marie’s knee jiggles. She tugs her jumper down over her hands.

  ‘It’s difficult every bloody year.’ Carly pushes her hair away from her face. Her sleeve rides up, displaying the comma she has tattooed on her wrist.

  She’s right.

  Each year around the anniversary of our abduction Marie’s always desperate to rake it over. Unwilling to let the dying embers of our trauma crumble to ashes.

  It wasn’t as bad as we thought, was it?

  It’s made us into the people we are today.

  It’s as though she wants to make it into something else, something different.

  She can’t.

  I don’t know why, perhaps it’s the only way she can handle it. We all cope the best we can, Carly not allowing herself to love anyone new, me with my routines.

  ‘But…’ Marie continues as though Carly hadn’t spoken. ‘It’s twenty years and I’ve been approached by a journalist—’

  ‘We’ve all been approached by journalists these past few months.’ That was a given; THE SINCLAIR SISTERS – WHERE ARE THEY NOW? I don’t like the direction the conversation is going in.

  ‘She wants us to go on TV to mark twenty years. It’d be live, of course, that only gives us a few days to prep—’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ Carly says firmly.

  ‘I know you don’t enjoy being in the spotlight, but I’ll take the lead. You don’t have to say much as long as you’re there,’ Marie says matter-of-factly. This would be her starring role, us her supporting cast. ‘Leah?’

  ‘There’s nothing worse I can think of than going through it all again.’

  I can just say no.

  ‘You said yes last time,’ Marie says.

  I shift uncomfortably in my seat. We were offered a book deal around the tenth anniversary. Carly and I weren’t interested but Marie had begged, said the exposure might kick-start her career and we so wanted her to succeed. My therapist at the time thought it might do us good to share our story. Take away the stigma and the shame that we feel; that I feel, at least. She thought if we spoke about it exclusively to one source it would stop the vultures picking over the rest of our lives. We could finally move on. The publisher introduced us to a ghost writer. All we had to do was meet him a few times while he recorded our stories on a dictaphone and that was it. Six figures each. We weren’t expected to write a single word ourselves.

  ‘The book deal was years ago
,’ I say to Marie. ‘Things are different now. I’ve Archie to think about.’

  Archie starts primary school next September and I don’t want to be playground gossip any more than I already will be. The headteacher is the same one Marie and I had when we were abducted. Some of the other parents will be kids I shared classrooms with, but the advantages of having him go to the same school that I went to is knowing the layout, the routines. If I needed to get to Archie quickly, I could.

  ‘I don’t want to stir up bad feeling,’ Carly says. ‘I don’t want the community to think we’re blaming them for not being vigilant.’

  ‘I agree with Carly.’ The locals look after their own. I don’t like the thought of them watching me on TV. I won’t make my life a media circus again. I’ve no reason to. ‘Besides, going over what happened again—’

  ‘It’s not just that,’ Marie pushes on. ‘The network wants to know what long-term effects it’s had on us.’

  ‘Nothing. We’re fine. Now.’ Carly lightly runs her finger over her tattoo as her voice cracks with emotion. I sit there, palms damp in my gloves.

  ‘I’m not fine,’ Marie says quietly. ‘My career is… well, I’m resting at the moment and honestly, I could do with the cash. Couldn’t you?’

  It’s true my bank account could do with a boost. I hadn’t touched a penny of our advance until I met George. I paid for our house, although he insisted the deeds were in my name. He hadn’t wanted anyone to think he was after me for my money. I remortgaged the first time to start him up in his own architectural firm and then again because his income isn’t what he’d hoped for – no one is building with the economy in the state it’s in.

  ‘I make a living,’ Carly says. With the publishing advance she could have afforded a small house in our area but she bought a flat instead. It doesn’t have a garden. With the remaining cash she trawled the charity shops looking for bargains that she later sold on eBay. This is how she gets by, that and the small wage I pay her for childminding.

  ‘Well, good for you. I ploughed everything into funding that tour of the supernatural play.’ Marie had had high hopes but nobody had understood the plot. ‘The TV people have offered us a ridiculous amount of money if we can tell them something that’s not in the book.’

  ‘We can’t tell them anything they don’t already know.’

  ‘Yes, we can.’ Marie swallows hard. ‘We can tell them the truth.’

  Chapter Five

  Carly

  Then

  Tell me who you are, Carly screamed inside her head, but the man carrying her over his shoulder couldn’t hear her. He strode on, strong and purposeful. She tried to identify her environment from the sound his footsteps were making.

  Crunching.

  Snapping.

  Carly was certain they were walking across dried grass. Twigs. The woods? She could hear the whisper of leaves. The creaking of branches. But not enough for a forest. They were somewhere overgrown, at the very least. The breeze was welcome against her sticky skin but she wished she didn’t have tape around her mouth so she could breathe a little deeper. She couldn’t hear the second man following them and her dread at being separated from the twins, combined with the bumping sensation – each tiny movement causing her head, hanging upside down, to knock against the man’s back – sloshed nausea around her stomach. Carly swallowed hard. She hoped she wouldn’t be sick, she had no way of spitting it out. Fear that she might choke became her overriding emotion. Her skin once again clammy as her heart raced so faced the world spun. If the man abruptly put her down, she would fall.

  Calm.

  Carly thought of Leah and Marie. She had to keep her wits about her. The first opportunity she got, she needed to be able to run. To locate a house, flag down a car, find an adult who would help them. It was the thought of a grown-up taking charge that made Carly’s eyes burn with tears. She was only a child. Thirteen. She didn’t know what she could do. How she could possibly overpower a grown man, but she must. Right now, she was all the twins had.

  She inhaled slower. Deeper. The smell of nicotine infused the man’s coat – and something else? Something earthy.

  They still must be in bright sunlight because behind Carly’s blindfold her eyes flooded with red – the colour of staring at the sun too long.

  The colour of blood.

  The man slowed. Stopped. The hand holding Carly’s calves withdrew but she could still feel the weight of his fingers and it took her a second to realize she could move her legs. She bent her knees, drawing her heels back up to her bottom before driving her feet forward, her toes slamming into his chest. She braced herself to fall. Prepared to spring to her feet, stumble forward. To run whether or not she could see where she was going.

  The man barely moved as she repeatedly kicked him.

  He didn’t scream with pain, but inside Carly there were enough screams for the both of them fighting to be released.

  A jangle.

  A click.

  A creak.

  The hand returned to her calves and they were moving forwards again but this time it felt different. Instead of a crunch there was a clump-clump-clump. The sound of boots on a hard surface. The breeze kissing her skin wafted away.

  They were inside. It smelled old. Musty. Unused and unloved.

  Carly’s fear increased. She couldn’t pinpoint exactly what she was afraid of but she knew that without the possibility of someone stumbling across them – the potential of someone helping – the man could do whatever he liked.

  The air inside felt thick and heavy. Somehow she knew they were alone in this building.

  However much noise she made, there was no one to hear her.

  Again, the man hesitated. Terror gripped Carly tightly as she imagined the next step forward would take them on a descent into a cellar. She’d had an unnatural dread of underground spaces since she’d watched Psycho with her dad last year, pretending to agree as she laughed along with him at how dated it was.

  But Carly’s heart had hammered against her chest. She knew fear was amplified in the grey spaces between the black and the white.

  The man’s fingers clutched at the back of Carly’s jumper. She was pulled away from his shoulder, which suddenly, inexplicably, now felt warm and safe and somewhere she wanted to stay. Her legs dangled helplessly until she was set down upon a soft surface. Not a staircase.

  A mattress?

  Vomit rose once more.

  She swallowed, once, twice, unable to dislodge the painful lump in her throat, instead clenching her jaw so tightly that her temples began to pulse.

  Don’t touch me-don’t touch me-don’t touch me.

  She had seen the news. She knew what sometimes happened to girls.

  Her body began to shake and she told herself it was just that. A body. A shell. Not the essence of her real self, which was buried somewhere unreachable. If someone had to be hurt it was better to be her rather than Leah or Marie. They were only eight. Babies really. Still at primary. She was older. She could cope.

  Although she knew she couldn’t. Already something inside of her was cracking and breaking apart.

  Don’t touch me.

  He didn’t.

  It took a beat for Carly to distinguish his retreating footsteps from the thump of her heart.

  She lay rigid, scarcely breathing, ears straining.

  Nothing.

  There hadn’t been a sound of the door closing and yet Carly sensed that he was gone.

  She threw her weight onto her side. The mattress stank of urine but she rubbed her cheek against it until she found the corner. Again and again – a cat batting its head, desperate for affection – Carly chafed her face against the hard seam until her skin was sore. With painstaking slowness, her blindfold began to slip.

  Eventually the scrap of material had fallen from her eyes, across her nose. Carly’s nostrils were now covered, her mouth still taped shut. She couldn’t breathe. She shook her head in desperation until the blindfold fell another
half an inch.

  She could see.

  Her eyes scanned the concrete floor coated with dust and rubble, the walls sheathed with graffiti. Something creaked behind her. She yanked her head around so fast her neck cricked, half-expecting to see Norman Bates’ mum in her rocking chair, but it was a tree outside the barred window dipping against the wind. The room wasn’t empty but Carly scarcely noticed her surroundings. Piles of rubbish, a cardboard box. She didn’t check to see if there was anything there she could use to escape with.

  She didn’t have to.

  The door was wide open.

  She shuffled her body much the way she had in the back of the van – a snake shedding its skin – until she reached the wall. Carly drew herself onto her knees, then onto the balls of her feet, until she was standing. Her legs felt like the lemon jelly the twins loved so much. It was the thought of her family gathered around the table, eating dessert, that gave her strength. She almost believed she could smell citrus rather than the stench of damp and neglect. Carly began to jump – a sack race without a sack. Steadily, determinedly, momentarily pausing after each movement to regain her balance. She fell into a rhythm.

  Jump.

  Thud.

  Jump.

  Thud.

  Into a corridor with multiple rooms to her left and right, doors hanging woefully from rusted hinges. At the bottom, a staircase with a makeshift ramp propped against the stairs. A battered skateboard on its side, missing a wheel. Cool air hit the back of her neck. Carly turned. The front door was swinging open.

  Open!

  Frantically she made her way towards it, as fast as she could.

  Perspiration slicked her skin. She thought she could perhaps wriggle her wrists free of her binds if she tried but not until she was outside.

  Not far now.

  Her muscles trembled with effort. She moved more slowly, not covering the same distance as she had moments before.

  Come on, Carly.

  The twins cheering her name during sports day. The finishing ribbon in sight.

  Jump.

  It was so hard to breathe. She longed to tear off the tape, open her mouth wide and draw in air. Soon. Soon she would be free. At home. Snuggled on the sofa with Bruno and Leah and Marie.