by Sibel Hodge
I put on another smile – a grateful, humble one – as she counted out some dollars and handed them to me. ‘I’ll call you for a top-up when we’re getting low again.’
I stuffed the bills into my purse. Another smile. Breezy, fun. ‘Fantastic! Shall I put them on the rack for you on my way out?’
‘Oh, yeah, that would be great, thanks.’
I took the cardboard box to the postcard rack outside and picked out a batch, banging them on the windowsill to order them into a perfect oblong so they’d fit in the wire holders. I stood back to admire them, humming to myself, because that’s what happy people did. When I turned to leave, my gaze strayed further up the road, towards a couple strolling along, hand in hand, heading my way. They hadn’t noticed me yet, as I was hidden by the postcards, and I froze – eyes wide, heart almost stopping, a flash of confusion detonating in my head.
He wasn’t bad looking. A bit preppy, maybe. Tall. Floppy blond hair. Designer clothes. But it wasn’t him I was concentrating on. Instead, I stared at the woman.
Someone who looked exactly like another me.
THE OTHER ONE
Chapter 21
We weren’t just similar. It wasn’t simply a slight resemblance going on. We were identical! I recognised those lips, the top one just slightly fuller than the bottom, the arching sweep of those eyebrows over brown oval pools framed by long, dark lashes. The chocolate-brown hair, loose in long waves, the slender nose. High cheekbones.
As they approached, I backed into the shop again, hidden, watching with the corner of my eye through a display in the window, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. My forehead scrunched up as I delved into the dark years inside my head, searching for something that would explain how this was possible. If we were identical, then that could only mean we were twins, which meant . . . I was adopted! What the fucking fuck!
I had to find out more about them. About her. Who was she? How did I never know I had a sister out there? Did she know about me? Had she been laughing at me behind my unknowing back all this time?
I watched them walk past the shop, him saying something to her, her throwing her head back and laughing. They looked happy. In love. Casually strolling along as if they didn’t have a care in the world. Oblivious to the turmoil building up inside me.
I delved into my bag and pulled out a pair of sunglasses and a big floppy hat that covered most of my face. I always kept them in there in case I wanted to blend into the background at any time. Old habits die hard, and I couldn’t risk being spotted without a disguise.
I followed them to a plush hotel, watched them enter a lift. There was a complimentary newspaper stand by the bar to one side, so I grabbed a paper and sat inside the lobby with it open on my lap, as if I was a guest leisurely whiling away a few hours, but really I was watching, waiting, wondering what the hell was going on here, my brain scrambling and fizzing away.
Three hours later, they re-emerged from the lift. They’d changed clothes and had that happy post-coital glow about them. As they walked past me, totally wrapped up in each other, I took in his clothes, his watch, his shoes, her engagement and wedding rings, her handbag. They looked like the type who had money. Had everything, probably. I wanted some of that. This was an opportunity I couldn’t miss.
I left the paper on a coffee table and followed at a discreet distance until they went inside a small clothing boutique. I couldn’t follow them forever, and I knew that if I asked at the hotel about them, they’d never divulge any information on the guests. I didn’t know if they were Australian or foreign tourists, but if they were staying in a hotel then they wouldn’t be here forever. At some point they’d move on and they would slip away to their normal non-vacationy lives. I had to find out who she was right now before that happened. Whoever said patience is a virtue was an arsehole. Patience is just a massive waste of time.
It was time to meet the other me.
I removed my sun hat and sunglasses, stuffed them in my bag, and shook out my hair. Then I calmly entered the shop. I spied them in the corner. She was sliding dresses along a rack with him patiently standing beside her with a look of adoration. She pulled out a dress and held it in front of her.
‘What do you think?’ she asked him. Even our voices were similar, despite her English accent and the Australian twang I was using at that time.
I kept my head down and moved closer towards them, as if I was browsing.
I heard her gasp and say, ‘Oh, my God!’
I glanced up then, as if I’d only just noticed her. My lips fell open with fake shocked surprise as the woman walked closer, studying me as carefully as I studied her.
She was too busy staring at me to notice Mr Preppy looking from one of us to the other, like an umpire at a tennis match.
‘What the . . .’ he said.
I quickly ran through my ‘normal’ checklist in my head, wondering what was appropriate in a situation like this. Meeting someone who is identical to you . . . do you gasp, laugh nervously, smile with a mix of uncertainty, run away?
I settled for laughing nervously. ‘Who are you?’
She grinned widely. I recognised those teeth, too. She pointed a tapered finger to her chest. ‘Me? I was about to ask you the same question.’
‘Sam,’ I said, adding an uncertain smile to my performance.
‘I don’t believe it.’ The guy, who I assumed was her husband, was still pumping his umpire act for all it was worth. ‘You’re identical! You look like you could be . . .’
‘Twins!’ the other me and I said in unison.
I stepped closer to her, drinking her in. I hadn’t been mistaken. She was the same. ‘Identical twins. How is that possible?’
An elderly woman huffed at us, trying to get past while we blocked the aisle.
‘Look, why don’t we all go somewhere more private, have a coffee, and find out what’s happening here.’ Mr Preppy interrupted our mutual staring-fest.
‘Good idea.’ The other me smiled, unable to turn her face away from me.
‘I know a place, just down the road.’ I indicated further along the street to a coffee shop with tables spilling out on to the pedestrian area and umbrellas dotted around.
The woman spoke to me as we walked, but her words didn’t penetrate. I was too busy trying to stop the roiling anger surfacing. Because if we were twins, if I’d been adopted, then . . .
‘What would you like to drink?’ Mr Preppy asked me, his voice tearing me back to the present. He chose a table for four in a secluded corner and pulled out chairs for the woman and me.
‘Um . . . an iced soya latte, please.’
‘Usual for you, darling?’ he asked her.
She nodded at him and sat down. ‘This is so weird.’
I followed her lead, sitting opposite her, both of us unable to tear our eyes away from our duplicate faces. ‘That’s an understatement.’
She held her hand out for me to shake. ‘I’m Alissa. Alissa Stanhope – oops, I mean, Alissa Burbeck now. We just got married.’ Her shoulders scrunched up to her ears and she gave me a goofy, happy grin.
I took her hand in mine. Even the shapes of our hands, our fingers, were the same. ‘Sam. Sam Folds.’
She held on to my hand, mirroring my own stare. ‘We’ve got to be twins. Identical twins, right? I mean, I know people say everyone’s got a doppelganger and all that, but . . . we don’t just look similar. We look exactly the same.’ Her eyes widened. ‘But I don’t understand. I mean, that would mean . . .’ Her face paled as the thought hit her. ‘Oh, my God, what does your birth certificate say?’
‘Um . . .’ I shook my head, trying to think, confused with shock and something else I couldn’t analyse yet. ‘It says my name’s Sam Folds. I was born on the nineteenth of February, 1992, in England. My parents were . . .’ I fought the bubbling anger at the mention of their names, wondering whether to lie. I wanted to get a look at her birth certificate, so no doubt she’d want to look at mine and then she’d find out.
‘They were called John and Elizabeth. Apparently, they emigrated here from England when I was a baby.’
‘My birth date is the same! But my parents were Rita and Bernard Stanhope.’
Her husband came back, carrying a tray of coffees. He dished them out, then put the tray on the next empty table and squeezed Alissa’s hand, doing the umpire thing again, which was beginning to get annoying. ‘I’m Max, by the way.’ He hastily shook my hand. ‘This is a bit bizarre.’
I sucked in some coffee through the straw to bring moisture back to my throat. Bizarre didn’t even cut it. ‘Have you lived in England all your life?’ I asked.
‘Well, yeah. I mean, my earliest memory is of the house I grew up in. How about you? Where did you live?’
The coffee threatened to climb back up my throat. I swallowed hard. ‘Here in Australia. In the middle of nowhere, on a rural farm. My parents had a farm.’ I forced the word ‘parents’ to sound calm, loving. ‘Like you, I remember living there from an early age.’ Unfortunately! The place was called Hell, have you heard of it?
‘So, how did this happen? Who are we?’ She clutched Max’s hand.
I forced out a laugh, confused, intrigued, check! ‘I’ve got no idea.’
Max leaned forward, repositioning the hand holding Alissa’s on to his thigh. ‘You both must’ve been adopted, obviously by different people.’
Duh! Really, Max?
I dug my fingernails into my palms to stop the unhelpful, nasty thoughts. They wouldn’t help me extract information.
‘My parents never said a word,’ Alissa muttered, staring off into space. ‘My dad died when I was fourteen, and my mum . . . well, she’s had a couple of strokes. She can’t speak now – she’s in a nursing home. I couldn’t even ask her about this if I wanted to. How about your parents? Are they still alive? Can you ask them about all . . .’ She waved her hand in a circle in the air, as if searching for the right word. ‘This?’
‘Sorry to hear about your mum.’ My eyebrows furrowed together, concerned, like a prospective, new, out-of-the-blue sister’s would. ‘Yes, they’re still alive, but they’re not in great health, either,’ the lie rolled off my tongue without missing a beat, like a million others I’d had practice at. ‘My dad had a heart bypass operation six months ago and he’s not supposed to get stressed. And Mum . . .’ I fluttered a hand to my chest, devastated with daughterly love, check! ‘Well, she’s just discovered she has bowel cancer. I wouldn’t want to put a strain on them by getting them upset about all this. Can we keep this just between us, until we know what’s going on, what’s happened?’
Alissa looked to her husband, as if for guidance, and I tried to gauge what I saw in her face. Apart from the obvious prettiness, there was something sweet and wholesome there – something weak, too, as if she needed him to take care of her. There was love and admiration there, definitely. Happy, gooey, sickly, just-got-married love.
Alissa nodded her agreement. ‘My mum hasn’t got long left, and I don’t really want this kind of thing out in the open before she goes in case it tips her over the edge. My parents obviously had their own reasons for not telling me the truth before.’
‘I totally agree,’ I said, not too breathy or overly anxious. I didn’t want anyone knowing about this. Not until I could work out how it would benefit me, because even then, before I knew the whole story, before I knew what I could do with it, a new plan was growing from a little spark of an idea. It was like some mystical alignment of the universe was happening. Crash, bang, slam! I could see it all clearly now, for the first time. Everything had always been leading to this point. There had always been a purpose to the life I’d had before. And all this was happening right here. Right now. I’d been steadily moulding myself all along, working hard to get the right skills needed for the job. My opportunity to put everything I’d learned into action was here! Everything suddenly made complete sense.
THE OTHER ONE
Chapter 22
I listened to Alissa tell me about her wonderful childhood. How she was a daddy’s girl who’d follow him around as soon as he got back from work, climbing on to his knee as he read her a story, giving her mum a break from looking after her all day. Alissa’s mum and dad had ‘date nights’ once a week to keep their marriage fresh.
‘It’s hard work having kids, isn’t it?’ Alissa said. ‘I definitely want to start trying now we’re married, but a couple needs to still work at their marriage to keep things alive, don’t they?’
‘Absolutely,’ I agreed. What the hell did I know with my parents as an example? Theirs wasn’t a marriage – it was a death sentence.
So, a storybook childhood it was for Alissa, as she recounted family holidays to Devon and Cornwall as a kid, trips abroad, birthdays, so much fun and laughter and happiness.
‘My parents weren’t rich,’ she said. ‘But they were comfortable. Dad had a good job and earned enough for Mum to be a stay-at-home mum. They couldn’t buy everything they wanted, but it didn’t matter. They had each other and me, and that was enough richness for them.’
How sweet. I mentally shoved my fingers down my throat and chucked up.
‘Being an only child, they spoiled me.’ She said it with a touch of embarrassment – or maybe modesty – as she tucked her hair behind her ear for the third time, which I made a note of. She glanced down at the floor sadly. ‘I still miss Dad, though.’
I expressed my condolences, the way you do, and she told me more.
Alissa didn’t have a lot of friends growing up. She’d been bullied a bit by some kids at school who were jealous of her. Awwww, what a shame. But she had one best friend she’d known since primary school called Vicky, who she told me all about. Alissa had got good grades, though, was well behaved, excelled at English, and she was going to be an author, don’t you know? Working on her debut romantic novel and already had the interest of a prospective agent. Spiffing!
‘How amazing!’ I gushed. ‘I’m creative, too. An artist.’
‘I wonder who we got those genes from,’ she said wistfully, studying my face without blinking.
Max looked at his watch. ‘Sorry to interrupt you, ladies, but I’ve got a business meeting I need to get to.’
‘Oh, right, I completely forgot!’ Alissa said.
‘Well, I’m sure you’ve both got much to talk about, anyway. Why don’t I meet up with you later?’ He looked between his darling wife and her lovely new sister.
‘We definitely do,’ I said.
‘Will you be staying here?’ Max stood and kissed Alissa on the cheek.
‘Actually, I could do with something stronger than coffee.’ Alissa grinned at me. ‘What do you think?’
‘Oh, God, yeah! Look, I’ve got an apartment not far from here, why don’t we go back there, crack open a bottle, and carry on talking? Looks like we’ve got a lot to find out.’
She took my hand in hers again, squeezing it gently. ‘That would be lovely.’
I gave Max the address and directions, and he said he’d meet us there later.
‘What does Max do?’ I asked casually as we walked to my place.
‘He builds things.’ She laughed. ‘He owns Burbeck Developments. They do houses, apartments, shopping malls. He wants to start up some developments over here, too, which is one of the reasons we got married in Australia. We’re having a working holiday-slash-honeymoon.’
‘He must be doing really well, then.’
‘Yeah. His dad owned the company before him, so it’s well established. And even with the recession, things have been going really well.’
How nice not to have to worry about money. I made a mental note of the company name in my head to research later.
‘Here we are.’ I let her into my one-bedroom apartment. ‘It’s small, but it’s home.’ I stood back and did a fun ta-da!
‘It’s cute.’ She glanced around and walked towards a finished canvas of an elephant hanging on one wall. ‘Wow, this is amazing! It looks like a photo, not a painti
ng.’ She stared at it, drinking it in. ‘Really beautiful.’ Her gaze swept over some more of the pictures hanging up. ‘Did you do these?’
‘Yes.’ I magicked up a humble blush from nowhere.
‘They’re fantastic. You’re really talented.’
‘Thanks.’ I walked into the galley-style kitchen. I could stand in the middle and touch the walls, it was so tiny. I opened the fridge and peered inside. ‘Sorry, we could’ve stopped at the shop, but I didn’t think. I’ve only got white wine, is that OK?’
‘White’s my favourite.’ She beamed.
‘I wonder what else we’ve got in common.’ I giggled.
‘Well, I’m here for another two weeks, so we’ve got plenty of time to find out.’
We sat on the tiny balcony, drinking chilled wine.
She took my cold hand in her warm one, blinking at me with misty eyes. ‘I always wanted a sister.’
‘Me too. You have no idea!’ I willed my own tears to suddenly do their stuff and clasped her hand tighter. ‘So, tell me more. I want to hear everything about you.’
She brought my hand to rest against the top of her chest. ‘And I want to hear everything about you!’
It was the quick version I got from her that day. The rest would come later, all the little details I needed, but I was already taking down these snippets of information, filing them away to memorise when I was on my own, where I could examine and copy and repeat them to myself so I could fire them back at people when needed.
An actress, learning her lines, starring in the best role of her life, channelling my ever-growing chameleon. A time to shine!
I fabricated an equally happy childhood. All lies. I had loving parents, who I modelled on David and Caroline, my foster parents. I was an only child, too. How amazing – so much in common! I’d had lots of pets, running gaily around the farm, where the animals were also thought of as part of the family and treated accordingly. I’d had the space and freedom to play in acres of sun-kissed open spaces. Plenty of fun friends to while away all my free time with. No pressures. Nothing bad ever happened in the fake life of Sam Folds.
