by Lucy Clarke
Fiona lets her head tilt forward, until her forehead connects with the glass.
‘Jealousy is so dull, so fucking predictable. I hated myself for being jealous – but that’s what I was. After being in your house with all the space, the light, this sense of calm you created, it’s hard to return to your own house and not notice the cracks in the paintwork, or the threadbare patches of your carpet.’
Fiona turns, faces me. ‘Your being in Cornwall should have been something positive and wonderful, but instead, it just … wasn’t.’
A deep sadness spreads through my chest.
‘Since you’ve moved here, everyone new I meet says to me, You’re Elle’s sister, aren’t you? You are the reference point for who I am.’ Bitterness raises her voice a notch higher as she says, ‘Half the town follows your social media accounts. We’re all there looking on at your picture-perfect house, this fabulous career, the serene lifestyle you’ve created – but it’s all one big lie.’
She steps forward, jaw set, eyes narrowed. ‘You knew Bill and I had been struggling to make ends meet on one income, that our house was falling to bits – and there you were putting in your granite work surfaces and bifold doors and glass-fucking-walls, all of it with money that wasn’t yours.’
‘I tried to give you some … I offered to pay for your bathroom renovation … to pay off your mortgage—’
‘A handout! I thought you were giving us a fucking handout! Of course I said no. I didn’t realise that money really belonged to our mother.’ Her lips pull back over her teeth. ‘What about Drake? You could’ve put money aside for him, for when he’s older. But instead you ploughed it all into the house. And now you’re on the cusp of losing it all – when you had everything.’ Her mouth twists. ‘You took Mum’s dream. Made it your own. You cheated her. You cheated all of us, Elle!’
She is so close now that I can smell the sour tang of her breath, muddied with a hint of perfume. I can hear the draw of air into her lungs, quick and low. Your face, I’m thinking. Who are you? Veins straining to escape her neck, teeth bared, a lock of hair caught in her mouth.
But then Fiona’s expression seems to shift, alter. The twist of her mouth loosens, the creases above her brow release. Her eyes turn blank – not filmed, but vacant – and her expression shutters, entirely impenetrable.
I’m no longer looking at my sister, but a distant version of her.
‘You,’ Fiona says, her voice a steel whisper, ‘deserve everything you’re going to get.’
36
Elle
We could be strangers.
I try to reconcile this Fiona with the one who used to braid my hair while she sat cross-legged on the floor, humming. Or with the teenage Fiona who would take me to the park when our mother was working. Or the Fiona who’d lift the corner of her duvet and let me slip in beside her if I woke from a nightmare.
Yet the Fiona standing in front of me, moved into my house, broke into my writing room, pried through my possessions … And then what?
My thoughts are travelling back through the events of the past few weeks, rippling over the unsettling things that have felt different in the house, the paranoia and doubt that have lit up my mind.
‘You locked me in here. I didn’t imagine it. You had the key.’
Fiona looks straight at me. ‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Bill came over earlier that day, helped you move your bed.’
That is right.
‘Before he paid you a visit, he showered, put on a clean shirt, patted his jaw with aftershave. I had to watch my husband dress with as much care as if he were meeting a date. Except he was meeting you.’
Beyond the writing room, the wind gusts across the water, rakes over the cliff face.
‘I’d guessed months ago,’ Fiona says.
‘Guessed?’
‘That he is infatuated with you. Oh, it’s so obvious; it’s the way he lingers when you visit, or this alertness he has when you’re in the room. He tries to hide it, of course – tries not to look at you for longer than necessary – but he can’t help himself. I found him watching one of your Facebook Live sessions a few weeks ago. He went scarlet, like I’d caught him watching porn.’
‘Fiona—’
She holds up a finger, silencing me. ‘Bill told me what happened in your lounge.’ She draws breath. ‘That night I came over to talk to you. I don’t know what I was planning to say. I knocked on the front door, but you didn’t answer. I could see the light was on in your writing room and guessed you were working with your headphones on,’ she says, ‘so I let myself in.’
Goose bumps travel across the backs of my arms.
‘I climbed the stairs – and there you were, writing your next novel with absolutely no clue what you’d done to me. I was so furious, so hurt, that I simply pulled the door shut. Turned the key. There was no plan. No big idea.’ She laughs then, a short, bitter note. ‘But of course, you tried to get out, and when you couldn’t, you called me.’
Fiona had been in my house the whole time. I remember hearing the police siren, the crunch of tyres on gravel – but now I realise that I’d only heard one vehicle arrive. Fiona’s car must have already been in the drive.
I stare at my sister, utterly confounded. ‘You locked me in – and then you unlocked the door before the police arrived.’
My thoughts are accelerating, tripping and scrambling in my hurry to piece it together.
‘All the things that have been happening in the house … the words circled in my novel, the smashed paperweight … I thought I was going mad, imagining things. That Facebook post that I sent you as a text message … was that … did you—’
Fiona sighs, impatient. ‘Do you know how nauseating it is to read all that crap you post? The filtered shots of this house, the soft-focus selfies, the captions about your word counts and your inspirational view. And let’s not forget your Facebook Live writing tips.’ She takes off my voice perfectly: ‘“I never feel qualified to give advice …” but here’s a shit load of the stuff anyway. It amazes me that thousands of people tune in to watch. That you can sit here, in your glass writing room, blathering away, giving people – real writers, hard-working writers without six-figure advances and international deals – your advice. What a fucking joke!’
She arrows a finger at my chest. ‘I listened, Elle. To them all. There was one piece of advice that resonated.’ She pauses for a beat. ‘“Shift the lens. Adjust the angle of the lens to reveal – or expose – the truth of their character.”’ She looks right at me. ‘Smart advice.’
Fiona’s bitterness is so overpowering that I take another step back. ‘How did you know my password?’
‘Your hard-drive,’ she says, inclining her head towards the case where I store all my electrical items.
I suddenly understand how Fiona has managed it. The hard-drive contains all my passwords, including details of my Cloud account, my Facebook account, the login for my emails. With a feeling of dread, I realise that it would have allowed Fiona access to absolutely everything.
Thirty-three years of knowing her. Running to the shops to select cola cubes together. The way she always amends her food order at the last moment. Her girlishness when she swims, head bobbing high above the waterline.
Part of my brain rebels, tells me, This can’t be your sister! Except, of course, it can. It is. Her ruthlessness as a journalist. Her ability to park emotion and focus on the task at hand. Her determination to succeed, to win.
It is all moving into sharper focus. My fingers clench and release as I realise that it was Fiona who set up the Facebook Live feed of my deserted writing room, trunk lid open. A message, a little prelude of what was to come. Creative in her malice. She must have done it before coming to book club.
‘My God,’ I say, the sudden unfurling of understanding. ‘The dead moth.’ I picture her standing on my doorstep, examining the collar. ‘You pinned it to my coat.’
‘Yes,’ Fiona says, eyes dar
k, her expression as blank, as masked, as I’ve ever seen.
‘You positioned it exactly where Mum’s brooch used to be.’
‘You don’t remember, do you? Mum bought that brooch when she had her first short story published. She never treated herself to anything. Every penny was saved for us – so that we could have new shoes, or the bags that the other kids were wearing. I was so happy that she’d treated herself. I asked why she’d chosen a silver swift, and she said that when she wrote, she felt like she was soaring.’ Her lips pinch tight to the words she directs at me: ‘You didn’t deserve to wear it.’
‘So you took it.’
‘Yes.’
‘But that’s not all you did,’ I say, voice rising, throat throbbing with anger. ‘You pinned a dead moth in its place! It’s so … so completely messed up.’
On my desk, light reflects in the curve of my paperweight. I reach for it, turning the cool glass through my hands, feeling the jagged crack that runs through it.
‘And this …’ I say.
I’d told Fiona about my fear that someone had been in my writing room, chipped the paperweight. Her laugh, dismissive. It’s all in your head.
Except it wasn’t.
‘You cracked it.’ My grip on the paperweight tightens as I think of the missing shard of glass that found its way into my bedroom. Not walked in there on the heel of a shoe, but purposefully embedded in the plush weave of the carpet – right in front of my bedroom mirror. ‘You planted the shard in the exact place you knew I’d stand.’
‘Yes.’ The word is delivered firmly, without apology.
The passive violence of it, the utter cruelty in her planning, the implicit threat …
The air in the room feels impossibly dense, hard to draw. Everything is tilting, spinning away. My sister has purposefully, wilfully hurt me. Over and over …
The hard weight of the glass globe in my hands, my thumb pressing into the jagged groove.
The darkness of her irises, the hatred I see reflected at me.
My arm draws back, tendons tightening.
She registers the paperweight, the angle of my wrist. I see her brows rise in surprise even as she begins to duck, arms reaching up to shield her face.
I launch the paperweight with force – but in the moment it leaves my fingers, I twist.
The glass wall shatters. A perfect icicle of broken fragments cling together, as if strung from the web of a spider.
There is silence. The room fills with it, so only the sea wind breathes in through the ruined glass wall, twisting between the tiny gaps.
Fiona’s voice emerges as something smaller than it was before. ‘You were going to throw it at me.’
I am thinking about all the hours I’ve spent in this room, attempting to write a novel that atones for the one I’ve taken from my mother, the words I’ve laboured over, crafted, doubted and rewritten.
‘My manuscript. Did you delete it?’ I ask – but I already know the answer. Fiona has been through my files, my emails, my Cloud account. She has waited until the day before my deadline to be sure my book deal was ruined.
‘Every copy.’
My teeth grind together, pressure building in my jaw. I tip back my head and open my mouth, a low throttle of a groan escaping.
‘What do you want?’ I cross the room, grabbing my mother’s manuscript from the desk. ‘Are you keeping this as some kind of collateral? Are you waiting to show it to the press – to bring me down publicly so that everyone can see I’m a fraud? Or is there something else you want? Money? Revenge? What is it, Fiona?’
‘Look at the envelope.’
Beneath the manuscript, I remove a manila envelope, turn it to face me. It is addressed to Jane Riley, my editor.
‘What I want,’ Fiona says, ‘is for you to send it to her.’
I squeeze my eyes shut, picturing how it will unfold. All copies of my book in circulation will have to be withdrawn. There will be a legal case. Financially I’ll be ruined. I will never be able to publish again. Everyone I know and care about will hear.
‘Do you think,’ I say, opening my eyes, staring down my sister, ‘that this is the life I would’ve chosen? I wanted to write – but not like this. What I wanted was a home, children, marriage.’
‘You made a series of choices. Told a thousand small lies. Lived and perpetuated a deception that affected all of us. Don’t try to rewrite the story to make yourself the victim.’
‘If that’s what you want to believe, then do; tell yourself that every move was orchestrated and planned. But I think you know that’s not what I did.’ I pause, look her hard in the eye. ‘That’s what you did, Fiona.’
I grip the manuscript to my chest. The handwritten pages contain hour upon hour of our mother’s thoughts, the moments where she’d paused to think, the pen nib resting against the page so that the ink spread into the weave of the paper.
When I had begun typing the story, I’d intended to change things – make some of it my own – but it was impossible. The voice was so distinctive, each word crisp and perfectly placed, sparse yet haunting. The story was complete as it was. The manuscript became the most important thing in my possession – it showed the brilliance, talent, and empathy of our mother.
But it was also the one thing I know I should never have kept.
37
Elle
Fiona holds out her hand. ‘Give it to me.’
I don’t move.
Fiona’s brows arch sharply, as if to say, Now.
Turning my back to my sister, I slide open the desk drawer and reach inside. I know it’s in here. My fingers brush its plastic casing and I draw it swiftly towards the bottom edge of the manuscript, flicking the metal coil with my thumb.
A perfect blue-yellow flame springs to life and I hold the lighter steady. A few seconds will be enough …
The paper catches alight, the lower corners of the manuscript beginning to curl and blacken. The flames lick higher, swallowing words, sentences, paragraphs. The metal bin is beneath my desk; I just need to let it flame for a beat longer.
I expect my sister to launch herself at me. To yell at me to stop. But she does nothing.
‘Do you honestly think that’s the only copy I have?’
Of course she would have other copies! Everything would be meticulously planned. No stone left unturned. Suddenly flames are licking at my fingers – and I cry out, dropping the manuscript.
Lit pages soar like burning wings. I watch transfixed, as they flame and curl through the air, drifting downwards.
As they settle on the wooden floor, the room looks set alight.
I lurch into action, stamping out the flames. Heat singes at my ankles as I press the soles of my shoes over the burning pages.
When one sheet is put out, I hurry to the next, pressing my heels to the floor – but each time a flame is suffocated, another seems to rise.
There is a fire extinguisher in the kitchen. I can get downstairs and back in under a minute. I rush towards the door – then halt. Behind me, Fiona has begun to scream.
I turn. The hem of Fiona’s long coat is on fire. A flame has caught the synthetic material, heat streaking upwards. She is yanking her arms free, her movements jerky and frantic, eyes wide with terror. I rush to help, dragging the coat from her, the flaming material collapsing to the floor.
I stamp across her coat, smoke rising from the smouldering fabric, catching at the back of my throat.
‘You okay?’ I ask, breathless.
Fiona says nothing, shock etched across her face.
In the corner of my eye, I see a page of the manuscript has caught the base of my reading chair, which is beginning to flame.
I seize my water jug from my desk – there’s no more than a cup of liquid in it – and I slosh it against the material, which sizzles, the flames dampening immediately. A small drift of smoke rises from it, a final flame flickering, which I suffocate with the sole of my shoe.
I set down the jug, catch my br
eath.
‘Elle …’
In the reflection of the glass wall, I can see Fiona standing with her hands pressed to her face. I swing around.
‘What?’
And then I see it.
In the corner of the room, by the door, something is aglow. At first, I don’t understand. But as I focus, I see a mouth of flames seething from my bookcase. The fire has spread across the lowest shelf of the bookcase, where paperbacks, maps and travel books are burning like kindling.
‘My God …’ I whisper as the whole case is set alight.
I turn and see the fire has spread towards the oak trunk. Blue and green flames are curling relentlessly from the plastic sleeves of photo albums, acrid smoke pluming upwards.
‘No,’ I cry, running towards it, falling to my knees and trying to grab for an album, save it. But the heat forces me back. I stagger to my feet, watching helplessly as the fire consumes everything – the pile of cards from Flynn, photos of our mother, my journals and diaries. All of it ignited in seconds. The room is alive with noise, the creak of wood expanding then cracking, the roar of flames.
‘We’ve got to get out!’ Fiona cries, grabbing my wrist, pulling me away.
A hot, dark cloud of smoke rises towards the ceiling. I feel it burning into my airways.
Instinctively, I pull my jumper over my mouth. We hurry towards the doorway, but a searing heat pushes us back. The flames have already burned through the frame creating a deadly ring of fire.
Black plumes of smoke thicken and deepen at the ceiling.
We crouch low, Fiona shrieking, ‘What now?
I whirl round, mind racing. I look at the shattered pane of the glass wall – and know it is our only option.
‘Help me with this,’ I shout, picking up my desk chair – a heavy oak carver with solid legs.
We lug it towards the glass wall, and then raise it so the chair legs are angled at glass.
‘On three,’ I shout.
We draw the chair back and launch it hard against the glass. A leg pushes through the weakened centre, widening the hole.
We batter the glass a second time and a third, then I kick out the rest of the glass, fragments bouncing off my jeans as I smash through it.
