Duplicity

by Sibel Hodge

  ‘It sounds amazing, Sam.’ Her eyes twinkled. ‘Very exotic. It makes my life sound boring and dull.’

  ‘But it doesn’t at all. Your life sounds perfect.’

  Perfect Alissa.

  The perfect bitch who’d stolen my life.

  THE OTHER ONE

  Chapter 23

  Alissa wanted answers. I didn’t. I already knew the answers, but I had to go along with her. At least for a while. So I dug out my birth certificate and showed it to her. It was a ‘certified copy’, and as we researched, reading through various websites containing adoption information, huddled together on my threadbare sofa, we realised there was a different birth certificate that neither of us had: one that showed a ‘live birth’.

  She bit her lip as she read over my shoulder, something she seemed to do a lot. ‘So that’s why it’s got your adoptive parents listed as your mother and father. There probably would’ve been an adoption order, and then your birth certificate was amended from the live birth, showing our real parents, to the certified copy, showing your new adoptive parents.’ She dug out her birth certificate from her bag. She’d had to bring it to Australia with her for the wedding documentation.

  This time I read over her shoulder. Hers showed the certified copy, too.

  She took a dainty sip of wine and stared at me. ‘I’m not imagining things, am I? Not jumping to conclusions? We have to be twins.’

  I grabbed a mirror from the bathroom and sat back down next to her with it in front of our faces. There was no way on this earth we couldn’t be twins.

  ‘God, I’m so confused.’ Her eyebrows shot up. ‘I mean, my mum and dad . . . well, who I thought were my mum and dad . . . were so lovely. I don’t know whether to be angry or upset that they didn’t tell me at any stage. I’m in shock.’

  ‘Me too. But, like I said before, I don’t want to bring this up with my parents right now when they’re so ill. And maybe they had a good reason for not telling us. Maybe our mum was a crack whore or something. She obviously didn’t care much about us if she gave us up. I don’t want to find her, anyway.’ I nodded towards the page we’d just read on my laptop that offered advice on how to find birth parents through the system. ‘It doesn’t change anything for me.’ Yeah, right, ha ha! This will change everything! ‘The only important thing to come out of this is that I’ve found you. My long-lost sister!’

  ‘I know what you mean. Maybe I’m not ready for that, either, finding out who my real mum is, but . . . I do want to find out about us, for certain.’

  A niggle of fear jarred behind my sternum. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Can’t we do a DNA test or something? Just to find out for sure?’

  ‘Great idea!’ I tapped away on my laptop and found a lab not far away that could do the test and give us the result within two days, if we made an appointment for the next morning.

  That first night we polished off two bottles of wine, talking, talking, talking, until Max appeared and the excited, chattery questions and answers died down a little. It was 2 a.m. by the time Max suggested they leave and that we should meet up the next day to go and do the test.

  I couldn’t sleep, though. I was wired. Already planning. They were only here for two weeks and there was a lot to do. The first thing was to google Burbeck Developments, which was interesting. I looked up the company accounts for the last few years and laughed out loud. Oh, yes, this was definitely going to be worth it. Then I found some articles about a development they’d completed a while back that had been built on contaminated land and Burbeck Developments was passing the buck, not willing to pay for the place to be cleaned up and the houses rebuilt. The more I read, the more I thought Max deserved what he was going to get. Well, who’d have thought he was like that from his charming exterior? Still, I supposed he had to be a bit ruthless for his company to be worth so much. He didn’t have a clue what ruthless was yet, though. There were angry quotes from the homeowners who’d effectively lost their life savings tied up in those properties. Some of them were really ill. And still there were no comments from Burbeck Developments.

  The more I found out, the more I thought that this could be my angle. And it was, until Alissa gave me something much better to work with.

  THE OTHER ONE

  Chapter 24

  We sat in the waiting room of LifeZone Laboratories. Alissa chewed on her lower lip, her right leg crossed over her left, tapping through the air to an imaginary beat. I held her hand tightly and gave her a practised anxious smile. Max was at another business meeting, so it was just the two of us. Just two sisters, ecstatic to have found each other after all these years. What a fairy tale!

  A few minutes later, we were called to get our results from the test we’d taken two days before.

  We sat down in a bright and airy office in front of a female doctor wearing a requisite white coat over her clothes and a warm smile.

  ‘Here are your results.’ She handed us both an envelope. ‘You are, as you’d obviously guessed, identical twins.’

  ‘Wow!’ Alissa grinned at me and gripped my hand.

  ‘Identical twins are also known as monozygotic twins. At the start of your mother’s pregnancy, there was one egg, which was fertilised by one sperm. Usually, a fertilised egg would divide and grow to form one baby, but sometimes after fertilisation it starts to divide and can split. When that happens, each half can grow, giving identical twins.’

  ‘So we are identical in every way?’ Alissa asked eagerly.

  ‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? After all, you’re derived from just one fertilised egg, containing one set of genetic instructions that combine the chromosomes of both parents. But identical twins are rarely perfectly the same. You may have different birthmarks or scars, for example. One may have a particular illness, while the other may not. You also have different fingerprints.’

  ‘Do we have the same DNA, then?’ I asked.

  ‘Technically, yes, you do. According to the basic laws of biology, identical twins share the same DNA, although recent studies have shown that there can be genetic variations between them, and more research is being done on that subject. Environmental influences and lifestyle are thought to contribute to any such differences – you could say this is nurture overcoming nature.’

  ‘Wow, this is so . . . fascinating.’ I put on an appropriately fascinated face. It was indeed pretty damn amazing, but probably not for the reasons they both thought. ‘So what if one twin committed a crime? Could the police tell them apart if they found DNA at the scene?’ I kept my tone deliberately jokey.

  ‘I have been asked that before.’ She chuckled. ‘It’s a very interesting question, and a complex one. Theoretically, it is possible that if there are a number of DNA variants or mutations that differ between them, then these could be used to identify which twin committed a crime. But a test to look for any changes is problematic. One reason is because such changes don’t occur in all of your cells. It may be that only a few cells have a particular mutation. For any such test to work, they would have to sequence a lot of DNA to find the base pair difference between the twins. They would also need to know which tissue the DNA came from to compare it with the right tissue in the other twin. There are scientists who’ve been researching new tests, such as the melting of DNA, and also exploiting a feature of DNA called “single nucleotide polymorphism”, but these are still in their early stages or are expensive. At the moment, with the technology available, it would still be very hard for the police to be able to identify which twin committed a crime if they were relying on DNA, because a standard DNA test would show them to be identical.’

  Incredible. Incredible and lucky! Yee haw!

  Five minutes later, we were out in the car park in the warm sunshine. ‘That was so interesting,’ I said to Alissa. ‘Imagine sharing the same DNA with someone.’

  ‘I still can’t quite believe everything.’ She blinked rapidly.

  ‘I suppose it could be handy if you ever wanted to commit a
crime.’ I summoned up a fun laugh.

  ‘Don’t forget the fingerprints, though.’ She laughed back.

  ‘Only if they found fingerprints, and I guess they’d need to actually have your prints on record, or something, wouldn’t they? You know, to compare them to? How would they know your prints weren’t mine and mine weren’t yours if you’d never had them taken before?’

  ‘Good point.’

  ‘So.’ I bumped her shoulder with mine good-naturedly. ‘Have you got a criminal record you haven’t told me about? I wouldn’t want to get into trouble or anything.’

  ‘Me? No, the only bad thing I’ve ever done is return my library books late!’ She threw her head back and laughed, exposing her creamy neck.

  It took all the strength I had not to strangle her there and then.

  THE OTHER ONE

  Chapter 25

  Luckily, thanks to Max’s business meetings, Alissa and I had a lot of time to spend alone, catching up on all those missed years. I suggested a day at the beach because you can’t hide much in a bikini, and I wanted to find out exactly how identical we were. After visiting the lab, I’d read that some monozygotic twins had identical birthmarks, while some had identical marks but on opposite sides of their bodies. Barring what was hidden underneath the bikini, I’d get a good look at her to be sure.

  I’d also had the brilliant idea of recording a lot of our conversations on my phone. That way, I’d get to write things down later if I missed anything, and it also meant I could practise copying her accent and mannerisms when I was on my own. Ingenious!

  We walked to a secluded spot on the beach, dappled with shade from some trees. I spread out a blanket and some towels and put down the cool bag containing drinks and a picnic lunch I’d prepared.

  She dropped her Michael Kors handbag on to the sand and arranged her towel neatly, before stripping off her jean shorts and tank top.

  I glanced over at her, dressed in a red halter-neck bikini, taking in the protruding clavicle, the lines of her ribs, her flat stomach, the shape of her arms, her thighs. Everything was so similar to my own features. The only difference I noticed immediately was the colour of her skin. She was paler than me, but a few weeks in the sun would sort that out.

  She glanced over, watching me as I wriggled out of my sundress, revealing a black bikini. ‘It’s weird, isn’t it?’ Her gaze roamed my body like mine had done to hers.

  ‘Completely. Have you got any birthmarks? I don’t.’ I told her what I’d read on the Internet.

  ‘No.’ She pulled down the top edge of her bikini bottoms, showing me her hip. ‘I’ve got two beauty marks here, though.’

  I pulled down mine slightly, too, and examined the same part of my body. Nope, no marks there. Still, how many people would get to see that part? Only Max, most likely. And there were ways around that. Sex with the lights off, et cetera. Maybe the sudden urge for a tattoo? But I was already prepared and had also found out that beauty marks can spontaneously regress and disappear suddenly due to the immune system – the perfect excuse.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve got any beauty marks,’ I said, turning around so my back faced her. ‘Have I?’

  ‘No, can’t see any.’

  I reached for some sun lotion in my bag. ‘Want me to do your back?’ I had an ulterior motive, as it gave me a way to do a bird’s-eye inspection. You couldn’t just copy the big things. It was the little things that counted just as much.

  ‘That would be great, thanks.’ She flopped down on to her towel on her stomach and tied her long hair into a messy knot on top of her head that I’d perfect later back at home.

  I smoothed in some low-factor lotion for her, committing every inch of her to memory. When I finished, she did my back and we lay down, staring at the sky. She tucked one arm behind her head to prop herself up. So did I. Perfect mirror images.

  ‘I know our DNA is identical, but I keep wondering about other stuff,’ I said. ‘Like, what about our favourite things? Food, colours, music, books, things like that. Is it nature or nurture that makes us individuals?’

  ‘OK, you go first. What foods do you like and dislike?’

  ‘Well, I’m vegan,’ I said. I’d never been able to stomach meat and dairy since the nightmare at the farm.

  ‘How long have you been vegan?’

  Since I got free and I had a choice. ‘A while now.’

  ‘Is that for health or ethical reasons?’

  ‘Ethical, but as long as you have a balanced diet, the health benefits are amazing. What about you? What kind of foods do you like?’

  ‘I do love veggies, but I also eat meat. I love fish, especially things like fresh tuna and grouper and prawns.’ She dug her toes in the sand as she thought. ‘Chocolate! I’m a chocoholic. Thai food.’

  ‘What would be your favourite Thai dish then?’

  ‘Pad thai. I just love peanuts. Especially chocolate peanuts!’

  ‘What else?

  ‘Um . . . I hate marrow. Love rocket. Hate curry. Love Chinese.’

  ‘I love Chinese, too!’ Oh, look at us bonding!

  ‘Mmm, crispy fried beef, egg fried rice, salt and pepper squid. Yum. I like all the stodgy British food, too. Good old fish and chips, shepherd’s pie, stew and dumplings.’

  ‘So, what would you have for breakfast, lunch, and dinner on a typical day?’ I propped myself up on one elbow.

  ‘I’d probably have toast and jam or maybe Marmite. Then for lunch I’d have soup and a cheese sandwich. Or maybe a ham and cheese toastie. For dinner it would probably be something chickeny. Or fish. Or pasta.’

  ‘Do you like cooking?’

  ‘Yeah, but sometimes I cheat!’ She giggled. ‘I get these ready meals from a shop called Marks and Spencer. They’re fab. And Max can’t tell the difference.’

  ‘Does he cook, too?’

  ‘Yeah, he does a mean spag bol. And a great fry-up for breakfast.’

  ‘Are you allergic to any food?’ I asked.

  ‘Kiwi fruit. It brings me out in terrible hives.’

  After we’d exhausted food, we took a dip in the sea, bobbing up and down. I wanted to keep her in there as long as possible so the sun could do its magic on her skin.

  ‘How about music?’ I asked.

  ‘Hmm . . . I like a lot of eighties music, and romantic songs.’

  ‘I like rocky stuff – Nirvana, The Cult, Guns N’ Roses. How about books?’ I asked her. ‘You must’ve read a lot to be writing a book. How clever is that, I wouldn’t know where to begin!’

  ‘Yeah, but you can draw and paint. If I did that they’d just be smudgy little stick men or something.’ She threw her head back and laughed. I’d noticed her laugh was throaty. It would take a while to get the right pitch. Difficult, but not impossible. Nothing was impossible if you tried hard enough.

  ‘What’s your novel about?’

  ‘It’s a romance.’

  ‘Ooh, perfect man meets perfect woman? Tell me more.’

  ‘Well, it’s about a woman who’s an environmental activist and she falls in love with the CEO of an oil company. Obviously, because of their different core values, it’s a rocky road, but they end up together – it’s a romance, after all.’

  ‘Fascinating! Where did you get the idea from?’

  ‘It just came to me one day when I was watching a programme about an oil spillage affecting marine life on National Geographic. I thought it could create some good conflict for the opposing characters.’

  ‘How far have you got with it?’ I rested my knees on the sand and let the gentle waves bob me to and fro.

  She told me how she’d finished the first draft, which took forever, apparently, and that she was going through and editing it now. She’d sent the first few chapters off to some agents and had one who wanted to consider the whole manuscript when it was finished. I wondered how much money authors made. Or how much I’d make if I ever published it. Still, money was no object now. Not if Max was worth millions.

  ‘Writin
g is all I ever wanted to do.’ She interrupted my thoughts. ‘Being an only child means entertaining yourself a lot – well, you probably experienced that yourself, didn’t you?’

  ‘Definitely.’ I nodded wisely.

  ‘So, I always read a lot when I was a kid, and I always knew that’s what I wanted to do as a career.’

  ‘So Max supports you when you’re writing – what a perfect set-up.’

  An ecstatic smile lit up her face. ‘He’s brilliant. I mean, I know he’s a lot older than me, but I like that. He’s mature, kind, considerate. And good fun. I’m really lucky.’

  And rich. Don’t forget that part, sweetheart.

  ‘He works a lot, of course. I don’t have anything to do with his business, though, so, you know, sometimes he’s working long hours and I don’t get to see him. But it means I can concentrate on my work, too, and the time we do get together is extra special then.’

  ‘How did you two meet? I want to hear all about it!’ I said as we got out of the sea and started on the picnic.

  THE OTHER ONE

  Chapter 26

  ‘Hi, my name’s Alissa Burbeck.’ I held out a hand to my reflection in the mirror by way of introduction.

  Damn, my voice was too sharp.

  ‘Hi, my name’s Alissa Burbeck.’

  Better. A little softer.

  I tried again.

  ‘Alissa Burbeck. Alissa Burbeck. Alissssssa Burrrrrrrrrrrbeck.’

  Correct it. Correct it. Try again and correct yourself!

  I rounded out the vowels, worked on the pitch, accent, cadence.

  ‘I’m an author.’ I smiled sweetly. Head tilting.

  ‘I’m an author. I’m writing my first book. It’s a romance.’

  Too flat.

  ‘A romance!’

  Gushy. Better. Alissa was very gushy and chirpy sometimes.