The Grip Lit Collection

by Claire Douglas

  ‘Yes …’ I say quietly. I close my eyes at the sound of his voice.

  ‘Thank God, I’ve been so worried. So has Beatrice. She said she thought you were having some kind of breakdown. Where are you?’

  Some kind of breakdown. Suddenly I know what he’s going to say, what excuse he will use. It’s so easy to explain everything away by blaming me, huh, Ben? Everything is always my fault, my imagination, my crazy, fucked-up, paranoid mind. Not this time, Ben. You can’t use that excuse on me ever again.

  ‘Abi? Abi? Are you still there?’

  I put the phone down.

  Chapter Thirty

  I spend two days holed up in Nia’s flat. Ben doesn’t give up trying to call me, even though I never answer. At first his voicemail messages are cajoling, pleading, begging, eventually becoming urgent, angry, asking why I refuse to speak to him, why I’ve left him, how can I do this to him?

  How could you do this to me, Ben?

  At first I’m afraid that he will ring my parents to hassle them, cause them even more worry, so I call them to explain where I am, but it’s not until I replace the receiver that I remember that Ben has never met my parents, he doesn’t even know where they live. He hardly knows anything about me, and it turns out I know even less about him. We lived in a cocoon – me and him in that trust-funded Georgian house with his twin sister and her weird friends. We weren’t living in the real world at all.

  On Friday lunchtime the intercom to the flat buzzes. I’m folding up the sofa bed and I wonder idly if Nia has come home for lunch and forgotten her keys. I move to the window and push aside the dingy curtain to make sure. The buzzer sounds again, more urgent this time. From the little window up in the eaves I can just make out the corner of somebody’s muscular shoulder on the pathway below, sandy hair that brushes the collar of a tanned leather jacket, and I know it’s definitely not Nia.

  My mouth goes dry. Is it Ben? Has he managed to find Nia’s address and track me down? Then I remember that Ben hasn’t got a leather jacket. I hover, unsure of what to do. When the buzzer is pressed again I go to the hallway and push the button to answer. ‘Hello,’ I say with trepidation.

  ‘Abi?’ says a voice I recognize. A voice from the past.

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘It’s Luke.’ The magnolia woodchip walls creep in on me. How does he know I’m here?

  ‘What … what do you want?’ I can’t believe I’m speaking to him, that he’s outside Nia’s flat. I haven’t seen him since the court case; the blame flashing in his stormy blue eyes has haunted me ever since.

  ‘Please, we need to talk.’ This could be a trick, I think as my hand hovers over the intercom. If I let him in, we would be alone in this little flat, me and him with his grief and his accusations.

  Luke would never hurt you.

  I hear Lucy’s voice, so soft, so clear, ringing out in the cramped hallway. But it could also be my own.

  I let him up and open the door and wait, hearing the tread of his feet on the stairs, my heart racing. I see him before he sees me; the familiar floppy dirty blond hair, the worn leather jacket, but gone is his once happy-go-lucky demeanour, now he stoops as though he has the weight of her death on his shoulders. Do I look that way too? Now he is standing before me and his face pales. He’s seeing a ghost.

  ‘Lucy.’ It’s barely a whisper, carried on the end of a sigh. Tears sting my eyes and I blink them away.

  ‘Hi, Luke.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, and rushes over to me, pulling me into an embrace. I’m so shocked I can’t move for a couple of seconds, it’s not the reaction I was expecting. Then I rest my head on his shoulder and close my eyes, taking in the familiar smell of his leather jacket, the comfort of his strong arms around me. He’s as tall as Callum. As Ben. When he pulls away, he has a shy smile on his lips and his eyes are red. He clears his throat self-consciously. ‘Can I come in?’

  I lead him into the kitchen and switch the kettle on. The colour is starting to come back into his cheeks but he stands and stares at me as if he can’t quite believe I’m here, although I know he’s not seeing me. He’s seeing Lucy.

  ‘It’s a shock, I know,’ I say as I reach up to the cupboards for two chipped mugs. ‘I experience it every time I look in the mirror.’

  ‘You’re the spitting image of her.’

  ‘We were identical twins, Luke.’ I laugh and it breaks the tension between us.

  ‘I still miss her so much.’ His voice wobbles and for one moment I’m concerned he’s going to break down, but he visibly composes himself and slides on to one of the stools at the breakfast bar.

  ‘Me too.’ I hand him a coffee, black with no sugar.

  ‘You still remember how I have my coffee,’ he says as he takes the mug from me, and I notice that his hands are trembling.

  ‘Of course, I spent years making it for you.’ Something about the way he sits there, with his rangy figure encased in that familiar jacket, the way his fair hair flops over his forehead, reminds me of someone. And it hits me. He reminds me of Ben. Why didn’t I ever think it before? Luke doesn’t have the freckles, his skin has more of a golden hue, but the shape of the chin and the high cheekbones are similar. Have I been subconsciously attracted to a man like Ben because I know Lucy would have been? ‘How did you know I was here?’

  ‘Nia.’ He glances at me. ‘Don’t be cross with her, I’ve been badgering her for ages. Since you met up with Callum. He rang me after he saw you. He said you think I hate you.’ He looks sad as he reaches across the breakfast bar to take my hand. ‘I couldn’t let you think that,’ he says softly.

  ‘I deserve it. Those things I said to Lucy. The way I treated her. It was my fault.’ A tear trickles down my nose and plops on to the breakfast bar. I’m embarrassed, crying in front of Luke after all this time. I scrunch up my eyes, trying to block out the memory of the shock and disappointment that I witnessed on my sister’s face as I screamed at her that night, accusing her of fancying my boyfriend. And when I stormed off she ran after me, desperately trying to get me to hear her side of the story, promising that she would never do anything to hurt me, ever. Yet I didn’t want to listen, I never gave her a chance to explain. And now it’s too late. I will never get to hear her voice again. ‘I would do anything to have five minutes with her. To tell her how sorry I am. She died thinking that I hated her,’ I say, tears seeping from my closed eyelids. ‘And it breaks my heart.’

  ‘Abi,’ he says softly and he squeezes my hand gently, reassuringly. ‘She knew you didn’t hate her, you have to believe that. It was obvious to anyone how much the two of you loved each other. She thought the world of you, Abi. And she knew you felt the same.’

  I open my eyes and drag my sleeve across my wet face. He pulls a tissue from his pocket and hands it to me. ‘It’s clean, I promise.’ I laugh through my tears.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Abi,’ he says, suddenly serious again. ‘I feel terrible that I blamed you for the accident. I was angry and I was devastated at losing her. I wanted to lash out at someone and you were the easy target. But I should’ve been there for you.’ His voice catches. ‘Lucy would have been so disappointed in me.’

  I shake my head. ‘No … Luke, she wouldn’t, it’s me she would have been disappointed in. I killed her.’

  ‘Stop it, I don’t want you to say that.’ He grips my hand more firmly to emphasize his point. ‘I said some awful things … I’m so sorry. I was just so …’

  ‘I know,’ I sniff.

  ‘But it wasn’t your fault. It was an accident, I know that now. Deep down I always have.’

  I smile. His words have made me feel lighter inside. I’ve missed him. He was with Lucy for years, he was like a brother to me. ‘I couldn’t bear the thought of you hating me,’ I say eventually.

  ‘I could never hate you,’ he takes his hand from mine. ‘I’ve been selfish, I should have been there for you. Lucy would have wanted me to look after you.’

  ‘She would have wanted me to
look after you too,’ I say through the lump in my throat. ‘She loved you so much.’ How could I have ever been jealous? How could I have thought that night that she wanted to kiss Callum when she loved Luke as much as she did?

  ‘Seeing you … your face. It’s as though I’m seeing Lucy again. I was worried it would hurt too much. ’ He flashes me a wobbly smile. ‘But now I know it’s a gift. Through you I get to see her. Is that weird?’

  I shake my head tearfully. ‘No, it’s not weird, Luke.’ I understand exactly what he’s trying to say. I remember the words Mum said to me in the hospital after my failed suicide attempt, when I asked her how she could bear to carry on living without her other daughter. And through her tears she said, ‘Because Lucy lives on through you, Abi. When I look at you, I also see her. When I hear your voice, I also hear hers. So she can never be truly gone, don’t you see? If you die, my sweetheart, then there is nothing left of her in this world.’

  ‘Can we sit on the sofa? My arse is killing me on this stool,’ he says and I laugh in agreement, relieved that we’ve cleared the air after all this time.

  Lucy would be proud of us.

  We jump down from the stools. ‘Come here, you,’ says Luke, his voice thick with emotion and he wraps me in a big brotherly hug. ‘Promise me we won’t lose touch again?’ He kisses the top of my head and I imagine, I hope, that wherever Lucy is, she knows how much we love her. Will always love her.

  ‘I promise,’ I say as we pull apart.

  We take our coffees and sit on Nia’s squidgy sofa with the faded arms and catch up on the last two years. Luke tells me he’s been promoted at the media company where he’s worked for a year.

  ‘I’ve thrown myself into my job since she died,’ he says. ‘It kept me sane.’ He carried on sharing the flat with Callum for a while, but now he lives on his own in Islington. ‘Callum’s been very worried about you. He says you’re living in Bath now, near your parents.’

  ‘Yes …’ I hesitate. How much should I tell him? I’m finding it hard to admit that my life has taken another wrong turn. That nothing has gone right since Lucy died. Then I remember something that Beatrice told me when I first moved in, about being at Exeter University.

  ‘Actually, I live with a girl who used to go to your university. I don’t know if you were both there together, but you’re about the same age.’

  His eyes light up. He hasn’t changed that much, he still likes any excuse to relive his student days.

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Beatrice Price. She’s got a twin brother. Ben. Although I think he went to a university in Edinburgh. Do you know her?’

  He shakes his head and frowns. ‘The name doesn’t ring a bell. But it was a long time ago. What year was she there?’

  ‘About 2000 or 2001 I think.’

  ‘What course?’

  I try to remember. ‘Not sure, to be honest. She’s a jewellery designer now. Oh, wait. I have a photo, she’s very attractive, maybe it will jog your memory.’ He smiles sadly and I inwardly berate myself for having said something so insensitive. ‘Let me go and get my phone.’ My mobile is charging in Nia’s bedroom. As I unplug it my heart sinks when I see another missed call from Ben.

  ‘Here,’ I say when I return to the sofa. I sit next to Luke, holding the phone up so we both have a view of the screen. ‘We took some selfies on the day I moved in with her.’ I find the photo straight away, it’s one of the last ones I took. Beatrice is pouting and I’m sticking my tongue out, our arms thrown around each other’s shoulders. We look as though we are great friends, I think. Like sisters. It’s a shame how it all turned out.

  ‘Oh my God,’ he says, taking the phone from me to get a better look. I think he’s going to make some joke about how silly I look, but he doesn’t. Instead he says, ‘I went out with her at university.’

  I freeze. ‘What? But you don’t remember her name?’ He scrolls through a few more photographs that I took that day, of Beatrice and me in various daft poses outside her house.

  ‘She’s not called Beatrice, that’s why. Well, she wasn’t when I knew her. She was called Daisy. Daisy McDow.’

  The room swims. I recall Jodie telling me about Ben calling Beatrice by the name Daisy. Luke hands the phone back to me and I continue to stare at her photograph, at her beautiful heart-shaped face, at her almond-shaped eyes the colour of Acacia honey. Who are you?

  ‘She never mentioned having a brother, let alone a twin,’ he continues, his eyebrows pinched together, remembering. ‘And I went out with her for a few months. It was quite serious for a while.’

  I can’t believe she wouldn’t have mentioned her brother, her twin. They’re so close. ‘Are you sure she didn’t tell you about Ben?’

  He nods. ‘Definitely, I would have remembered if she’d had a twin brother. I met her mum once as well and no mention of a twin.’

  Blood pounds in my ears. ‘You met her mum? But she died when Beatrice was a baby.’

  He frowns. ‘No, she didn’t.’ He shifts his weight from one leg to the other and his leather jacket creaks.

  ‘Can you describe the woman?’

  He pulls a face. ‘Blimey, Abi, I can hardly remember. It was nearly fourteen years ago.’

  ‘Please, this is important.’ I lean closer to him. ‘Was she short? A bit frumpy?’

  ‘No, she definitely wasn’t short. She was very tall and slim and quite glamorous. Posh, I would say.’

  ‘Posh?’

  ‘She had money, I could tell by the way she carried herself, the way she spoke, the clothes she wore. Put it this way, she didn’t look the way most of the other mums did, that’s for sure.’

  My mind is racing. What does all this mean?

  ‘You know,’ he continues. ‘I was crazy about her for a while. But she was a bit odd.’

  ‘In what way?’

  He shrugs. ‘Quite intense, I suppose.’

  I ask him if he’s sure it’s the same girl, urge him to look at the photos again, but he nods, telling me that he’s not mistaken, it is definitely her, definitely Daisy McDow. ‘She’s not someone I’d forget in a hurry,’ he says, his expression darkening.

  ‘What happened between you?’

  He fidgets and I can tell talking about his past, before Lucy, is making him uncomfortable. He swallows. ‘I finished with her. It was getting too serious. I was only nineteen. I didn’t want that sort of relationship.’

  I remember the evening in Beatrice’s drawing room when she confided in me about a boyfriend at university breaking her heart, causing her to leave and go travelling, how devastated she felt on her return to learn he had met someone else. Was that someone else Lucy?

  ‘Did she leave university after you broke up with her?’ I say, although I dread his answer.

  He frowns, remembering. ‘She must have, because I never saw her again.’

  ‘Oh, Luke, she told me about you, said she was devastated after you finished it. I don’t think she’s ever gotten over you.’

  He turns to look at me, guilt etched all over his handsome face. ‘She seemed pretty upset when it ended but …’ He frowns. ‘We were only together a few months.’

  ‘And then you met Lucy?’

  ‘Not until a couple of years later, but yes, then I fell in love with Lucy.’

  I look at the photograph of me with Bea. Our fair heads close together, the same shape faces, the same wide mouths. Bea closely resembles Lucy, I’ve always thought so. But I’ve never thought too deeply about how much we look alike, which is ridiculous, considering Lucy and I were identical twins.

  ‘Don’t you think Beatrice – Daisy – looks like Lucy?’ I say, my eyes still on the photograph.

  He shrugs. ‘I suppose I’ve got a type. Some men do. What has this got to do with anything, Abi?’ asks Luke.

  I remember Beatrice’s pained expression that night on her sofa when she recounted her lost love. ‘I’m not sure,’ I say. ‘But she’s been lying to me for months. They both have. I just d
on’t understand why.’

  I’m busy stuffing the rest of my clothes in my holdall when Nia gets back. She wafts into the bedroom, bringing with her the scent of rain.

  ‘Oh, you’re angry with me,’ she says, her face crumpling as she notices my packed bag on her bed. ‘I thought it would be good for you to see Luke again.’

  ‘It’s not that, Nia,’ I say as I roll up my jumper and cram it into the bag, pulling the cord tight. ‘It was great to see Luke. But I need to go home and face Ben.’ In a gabbled rush I tell her everything Luke told me about Beatrice. ‘I want to find out why they’ve both been lying to me. And then I’m going to move out of there.’

  ‘Luke went out with Beatrice at uni? What a small world.’

  ‘Why has she changed her name, Nia? Why did she never mention to Luke about having a twin brother? Why are they lying about their parents?’

  ‘I don’t know, but what I do know,’ she says, barely able to contain her excitement as she rummages around in her bag, ‘is this—’

  She pulls out a yellow Post-it note with the enthusiasm of a little girl showing her mum what she made at school. She thrusts it at me. I take the Post-it note and on it, scribbled in Nia’s familiar scrawl, is an address in Streatham, South London.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s the address for a Morag Jones.’

  My head pounds and I slump on to the bed, my shoulders sagging. ‘How do you know it’s the right address? Ben’s surname is Price.’

  ‘I’ve done some digging, called in a few favours. It’s the only Morag registered in London with a Ben living at the same address. You did say she lived in Streatham, right?’

  ‘Yes, but it could be a coincidence.’