by S. B. Hayes
I followed Genevieve as she climbed, all the time gazing upwards and hearing our footsteps echoing in the cavernous space. Her bedroom wasn’t huge, but it had views over the countryside. Today everywhere looked perfect – white frosted roofs, a snow-topped church spire, trees and shrubs with their snowy branches extended. She handed me some jeans and a sweater from her wardrobe and I stripped off, without embarrassment, not missing the irony that Genevieve felt like an extension of me now. Her clothes and even her trainers fitted like a glove.
She offered me a brush and when I glanced in the mirror I realized that my hair was still in a severe French pleat, which looked out of place with the casual clothes. I carefully took out the clips and pulled.
‘Were you a tomboy?’ Genevieve asked curiously. ‘When you were small.’
‘I nodded. ‘Yeah … forever trying to play with Luke and his gang.’
She made a face. ‘So was I, but I had to wear bubblegumcoloured dresses decorated with hearts and ribbons, and frilly blouses.’
A memory resurfaced just then – something I’d read in a magazine. ‘Some twins have their own language and don’t talk for years … but then … we’re not identical so …’
‘That doesn’t matter,’ she interrupted fiercely. ‘Twins always share everything. It’s right we should be together, don’t you think?’
There was something about the intensity of her gaze that made me squirm. ‘It’s incredible that we are here … together.’
‘I can’t leave you now, Katy. You do know that?’
I nodded, feeling a familiar dread flooding through me even though she was being almost normal for once. ‘You’re not leaving … so … we’ll see plenty of each other,’ I mumbled.
‘I don’t want to just see you,’ she responded scornfully. ‘We were in the womb together for a whole nine months – that’s how it is with twins. They belong to each other, and you belong to me, Katy.’
Her words suddenly came back to me. ‘It should be as if you were never born.’ I still didn’t know what she meant, but it made my skin crawl.
She surveyed the ruins of the fishtail dress. ‘Did you sleep?’
‘No … not for a second.’
‘Me neither,’ she admitted. ‘Let’s go and have breakfast.’
The kitchen was a design dream; as well as the red glossy doors there were black granite worktops and a stainless-steel range and splashback. It was obvious that the people who owned the barn lived well. They had an American style fridge and Italian coffee maker – with a choice of five different beans – as well as a juicer and other gadgets I couldn’t even identify. Genevieve cooked us both scrambled eggs, just the way I like, soft but not runny, with wholemeal bagels, muesli and fresh orange juice. She seemed so at home here and I wondered how she could leave all this for a life of uncertainty.
‘Do … the people you’re staying with … know anything about us?’ I asked, my stomach grateful for the first food of the day.
She shook her head. ‘They’re supportive and nice enough, but I don’t let people in … don’t confide in them. Not any more.’
She didn’t have to explain. I’d spent all my life trying not to get close to people. I always thought they kept their distance from me, but now realized it was probably my standoffish vibes acting as a barrier.
‘It’s better not to rely on anyone else,’ she added. ‘Then they can’t hurt you.’
It was incredible that we’d had such different lives but stayed so similar. I didn’t have to tell her that I had trouble making friends – she’d cruelly pointed it out to me when we first met. I pretended not to watch as Genevieve ground pepper on to her eggs but no salt, and ate her cereal crunchy with only a few tablespoons of milk. I did exactly the same – a complete mirror image. And now for the million-dollar question. It felt like the right time to ask. I put down my knife and fork and drained my coffee cup.
‘When did you know?’
She ran one finger across her lips, deep in thought. ‘Forever, I suppose. Can’t remember a time when I didn’t know about you, but I thought it was my fault you weren’t there.’
‘Why?’
‘My adoptive parents told me I was thoroughly bad,’ she replied almost cheerfully, ‘so I must be responsible for our separation.’
‘And how did you find me, Genevieve?’
Her green eyes stared deep into mine and they were moist, like lily pads on water. ‘It was coincidence … destiny … whatever you want to call it.’
I took a deep breath. ‘Really?’
‘Really,’ she emphasized. ‘I’ve moved around the country so much, so what are the odds of coming to the same town as you? That day on the bus did it … you must have felt something too?’
So it was through sheer chance that we’d met. I wasn’t sure if this was harder to believe than the idea of her somehow finding out where I was and tracking me down. She thought it was providence, and it was hard to disagree.
‘I did feel something,’ I had to confess, ‘but I didn’t know what it was. I just felt these waves of … your emotion. I thought it was hate.’
Genevieve cocked her head to one side like a hopeful dog. ‘I did hate you. You looked so happy I wanted to wipe that smile off your face, or maybe I wanted to shock you out of your complacent little world.’
‘You blamed me for what happened?’
‘Yes,’ she stated with complete certainty. I waited for her to qualify her answer but she didn’t, she just mesmerized me with her stare. No one had ever looked at me this way before, and she could read my innermost thoughts which made it doubly intrusive.
‘Is that why you did all those horrible things to me?’
Genevieve shrugged casually. ‘You never had any of the pain … didn’t even know I existed. Do you know how it felt when I first saw you that day … laughing without a care in the world?’
‘But that wasn’t my fault—’
‘I’d tried to reach you,’ she insisted, tapping the side of her head. ‘You should have been able to feel that. You should have been responsive. I loved you so much, but … as the years passed I grew to despise and resent you.’
‘I did nothing wrong,’ I repeated. ‘You shouldn’t have blamed me.’
She held out her hands, palms upward, talking almost to herself. ‘At first I wanted you to suffer … and then I wanted you to disappear … but then I realized … this is a second chance for us. Now everything will be right again.’
I made an explosive noise of disbelief. ‘Just like that. You expect me to forgive and forget.’
She seemed puzzled that I was resisting her. The situation was obviously black and white for Genevieve.
‘You must see how it was for me, Katy. I had nothing; you had everything. But it was pointless to hate you or to drive you away … now I realize we can never escape from each other and we won’t be separated again.’
This wasn’t going well, and her words were really creeping me out. Nothing she had done or said so far made me believe she was capable of change. She had swapped from wanting to erase me to a suffocating possessiveness that unnerved me just as much. And there was the problem of Mum and how was she going to survive this.
‘Mum was only twenty-one,’ I tried to explain. ‘She didn’t know what she was doing. No one else knew about the pregnancy, and she was probably depressed …’
‘Why are you still defending her?’
‘It’s weird,’ I mumbled. ‘The person you know and trust the most in the whole world turns out to be someone else … a person who could do something so unimaginable.’
‘Is anyone what they seem, Katy? We all have these faces we put on for other people because we think if they saw the real person inside they wouldn’t like us.’
I braced myself for the question I had to ask. ‘Your adoptive parents … you didn’t really … harm them?’
I wasn’t sure if she was smiling or it was a trick of the light. ‘They were the most awful people … smug and s
elf-righteous with no love or joy – just suffering, obedience and punishment. They left me at my home-made altar to pray to be a better child … beside two flickering candles. I opened the window and the curtain caught fire … it spread so quickly.’
I closed my eyes and said a silent prayer of thanks that it wasn’t deliberate, but that still left the other fire, at the vicarage. ‘And you’ve never been back there since?’
‘Never.’
I desperately wanted to believe her because the alternative was just too awful to contemplate. ‘I think this was meant to be,’ I began slowly, in spite of all my fears. ‘We were meant to find each other and our mum in order to be given a second chance.’
‘We do have the same mother,’ she agreed, but her voice sounded odd, as if she’d rehearsed it. ‘No one can dispute that.’
‘So … what do we do now?’
‘I think it’s time we visited her, Katy … together.’
CHAPTER
THIRTY-EIGHT
Genevieve and I sat in the back of the car, side by side. Occasionally her head would droop with tiredness to rest on my shoulder. I didn’t push it away. I watched Mum’s face in the rear-view mirror, her eyes huge and haunted, but she never looked back at me. I felt that the moment that everything was becoming clearer, it slipped away from me again, like a toy boat bobbing further out to sea. We had gone to my house and I expected some sort of showdown, but it never happened. Mum didn’t seem to be filled with love or remorse for the child she gave away, or launch into an explanation of why she could only keep one of her babies; she simply looked scared and apprehensive. Hushed words were exchanged between her and Genevieve, which spurred Mum into action, and within minutes she’d packed a bag with food, drink, warm blankets and a torch because of the weather conditions. I was told to put on my heaviest jacket with thick socks and boots and get into the car, without knowing why.
Mum pulled away from our house like a Grand Prix driver, despite the warnings on the TV and radio telling people not to undertake non-essential journeys. Normally she was overly cautious, yet I could see from the signs that we were headed for the motorway, although we could barely see a few metres ahead. Whatever had to be done, it couldn’t wait. I must have dozed with exhaustion; mile after mile of fast-moving white flurries gradually hypnotized me and it was a relief to shut down, my mind finally giving up the fight. My eyes felt leaden and drooped, until they closed in a heavy dreamless sleep.
When I came back, it was bit by bit, with no concept of how much time had passed. My brain was telling me to wake properly but my body refused to cooperate. It felt peaceful hovering in my own twilight world. There were low voices and I couldn’t distinguish between them. I wasn’t even sure if they were real or in my head.
‘Is this definitely the place?’
‘Definitely.’
‘Are you sure? It must have changed.’
‘I’ve been back before … many times to visit her.’
‘Katy still doesn’t know?’
‘Not a clue. I can’t imagine what she thinks.’
‘How will we tell her?’
‘We won’t have to. It’ll be clear when we’re there.’
My eyes flickered and the voices stopped. I straightened up with a loud yawn, my lids still reluctant to open. My watch told me I’d been out for almost two hours.
‘Where are we?’
‘We’ve just stopped for a rest,’ Mum answered, and I saw her exchange a glance with Genevieve in the mirror.
I rubbed the steamy window with one hand and peered outside. The snow was denser here and the sky completely ivory without a hint of blue breaking through. It was early afternoon and the light was already fading. We were parked in front of a tallish, once grand building, with steps leading up to it and a massive black front door with seven or eight bells at the side. No one spoke.
‘This is where you lived, isn’t it?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ Mum replied, with no explanation as to why we should drive for hours just to sit outside.
‘Can we go in?’
Mum shook her head. ‘They’re private flats now, Katy, intercoms and everything. We wouldn’t be allowed inside.’
‘There’s nothing to see anyway,’ Genevieve added.
‘No, nothing to see,’ Mum agreed.
‘And there’s somewhere we have to be.’ Genevieve spoke purposefully, and this seemed to be the signal Mum was waiting for. She took the car keys from the ignition and put on her gloves before opening the car door. Genevieve got out of the passenger side, fastening her coat and pulling a bobble hat over her ears. I knew they were waiting for me. They were both on a journey and I was blindly following.
Despite the snow, Genevieve seemed to have wings on her feet and I soon realized that she was in charge and Mum had surrendered to this. I looked around. The place where I was born held no fascination and didn’t awaken any feelings of déjà vu. Everywhere here seemed to consist of small dark streets with rows of back-to-back terraces, not even the snow able to render them attractive. The street lights had already come on, tinting the pure white landscape luminously yellow. We barely saw another person as we trudged in a crocodile, our eyes blurring as flakes swirled in front of us. They stuck to my eyelashes and I furiously blinked them away. It felt like being in an upturned snow globe.
‘This is a short cut,’ Genevieve instructed, as she led the way through a series of narrow alleyways. I had to make sure to walk in the middle to stop my feet slipping into the drainage channels that ran close to a high wall which was covered in graffiti. I caught glimpses of names, slogans and declarations of love, and thought about all the people who’d been here before us.
I wondered if Mum had taken this short cut when she was only a few years older than I was now, full of life and hope. My father might have stopped and kissed her here and promised to love her forever before he disappeared from her life. I gave Mum a secret glance but she stared straight ahead with no visible sign of recognition or even interest. There was an opening and we came into another road filled with Victorian town houses, Christmas trees prominent in the windows of the square bays. I almost expected to see girls and boys in old-fashioned clothes playing with wooden sledges and chasing hoops. Genevieve stopped outside the gates of an old church: St Jude’s.
She gave a bitter laugh. ‘The patron saint of lost causes.’
I looked to Mum for a reaction, but she appeared distant and hurt at the same time. I stayed silent. Genevieve pushed open the heavy wooden gate and followed the path towards the church. I wondered if this might be some kind of test. Was Mum going to be put on trial for what she did, in a church that meant something to Genevieve? Such dramatic stuff was just her style, and the crack about St Jude would make sense. It was the perfect place for a confession. But she didn’t enter the church. Rather she veered off to the right to where there was a stone angel standing taller than the other headstones.
It didn’t seem especially weird to be in a cemetery in the freezing snow miles from home, at least no weirder than everything else that had happened recently. I carefully picked my way among the graves, trying to follow Genevieve’s footsteps. Starlings were swooping, their wings beating together in preparation for nightfall. They looked like tiny black crosses.
Genevieve came to a standstill and I looked down. Even covered by snow, this grave looked neglected, with weeds pushing through. Genevieve bent down, brushed the snow from a posy of artificial flowers and then carefully rearranged them, her face animated but obscure. Usually her feelings were so sharp that I could read her like a book. Mum’s lips were moving silently, as if in prayer, and I realized she must have known this person. I was still the only one here who didn’t have a part to play. I read the name on the headstone, looking for clues –
JESSICA MYERS.
‘Who’s this?’ I asked gently.
Genevieve’s eyes were focused on something far away. ‘Jessica Myers never had a chance in life. No parents to tuck her in at
night and stick her lame drawings on the wall. She was in and out of care, shunted about like a stray dog that nobody wanted until she found herself pregnant, still just a teenager, living in a squalid flat …’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘She might have had a hope of turning her life around. She finally had someone to love and be loved by in return … but it wasn’t enough to save her.’
‘Who was she, Genevieve?’
‘She was just a lonely person, shunned when she was alive and made out to be a monster after her death. Now she was of interest to everyone … that one fateful day …’
Silent tears ran down Mum’s cheeks and glistened like ice.
‘What day?’ I questioned.
‘The day she died and her baby disappeared. You see, there was no break-in. The pram was inside her flat, and the only person who could have got in was someone who knew their way around. But this possibility was never pursued because everyone assumed the worst. They said she’d taken her own life to cover up her neglect.’
I turned to Mum for an answer but she was frozen like one of the statues. Genevieve’s voice continued as if she was reading from a script.
‘She was never allowed to escape her past, judged and condemned by everyone … and the person who knew the truth never came forward.’
‘Who was she? Who was her child?’ I cried with frustration.
‘I was,’ Genevieve replied at last, her voice thick with emotion.
I missed my footing and almost tumbled on to the grave. ‘But … how can you be? We’re sisters … twins.’
‘I know.’
She took off one of her gloves and pushed away the snow to expose more of the headstone. I read three words – ‘Mother of Grace’.
I looked at Genevieve, who stared at me with the face of a conjurer who isn’t sure if the trick is going to work. Her fingers moved again and my eyes followed them as the snow disintegrated to reveal more letters. I read the final words – ‘and Hope. Rest in peace for all eternity’.
