by Gayle Curtis
After Sebastian had been sentenced, Cecelia had turned to Samuel in his absence. Any talk of him during Cecelia’s visits to the young offender’s unit just fuelled a temper in Sebastian that she hadn’t seen before. Once she’d told him she was expecting a baby with Samuel, Sebastian had refused to see her. Around their eighteenth birthdays, she heard that he’d been moved to an adult prison to serve the rest of his sentence. Somehow, through all the lies and false statements, she’d convinced herself that she was innocent, passing opinion about the situation when it arose between those around her as though she couldn’t believe her brother was capable of murder, as if she was as shocked as they were.
Some months later, childbirth had engulfed her. She had been so young at eighteen, and her time had been taken over by new life, and the separation from Sebastian made her realise how unhealthy their relationship had been. The longer she stayed away, the easier it was to never go back.
And here Sebastian was now, at her gate, where she’d seen him regularly over the past two weeks. It was the same place they’d last lived together, their foster home, which had become Cecelia’s permanent residence after she’d married Samuel. She’d spent the last few years questioning her reasons for this decision.
Sebastian didn’t venture beyond the garden boundary, and she in turn never went out to him. It was clear that they wanted to meet, but neither one acted on the impulse.
The day that Sebastian had been convicted, one of the foster children who had been there less than a week took himself down to the war bunker and slit his wrists. He survived but the whole incident was seen as a bad omen. From then on their home, her sanctuary, was strictly void of anything she deemed foreboding or sinister. There had been enough horrible things leaking through the cracks in the walls throughout her childhood.
Sebastian’s release from prison coincided with the discovery of the blasted knife and Cecelia couldn’t help feeling it was symbolic. The knife she couldn’t bring herself to dispose of for fear of it bleeding a curse over her family – a superstition that she had picked up from Eleanor. There was something about this particular knife. It was long with an arched blade decorated with an engraved pattern on one side of the handle, which was now worn and looked like an old piece of driftwood. She couldn’t bear to touch it, and even briefly resting on what it might have been used for and why it had been concealed in the back of a drawer caused her nerves to shudder, her imagination running wild. The old house didn’t help disperse the feeling that something bad would happen if they got rid of it. Now she just wished Samuel hadn’t shown it to her. He’d bought an old chest from an antique place around the corner, and upon pulling out the drawers in order to fit it into the back of the car, he had found it bumping around inside. Why had he brought it home, was all she kept thinking. If only he’d disposed of it on his way back. She was angry that he hadn’t had any forethought or understanding.
So, for fear that she’d be cursed if she got rid of it, Cecelia placed it on the kitchen window sill behind some old jugs, where it couldn’t be seen, but it was an acknowledgement to her superstition that she’d actually given it a home. From then on, it tormented her with its presence. She was worried that one of her family might find it and hurt themselves or someone else, or that she might do something with it during one of her sleepwalking episodes, which had become more frequent of late.
In the end, Samuel had come up with the idea to bury it – that way, they were keeping it, but it was away from the house. She was glad to pass the burden to him, relinquishing all responsibility for the consequences. She’d completely ignored the fact she’d been an accessory to the crime, having watched the burial of it from the gentle confines of her home. And then, shortly afterwards, she’d dug it up during the night, washed it and placed it back on the window sill. Although she had no recollection of doing it, the muddy evidence was caked beneath her nails. But there had been some comfort in having it back in the house. It was a feeling she couldn’t explain – that maybe facing her fears would disperse them in some way.
For a while she’d felt greatly relieved and then the wind picked up, carrying the leaves across the garden like snowfall, and everything had changed.
Sebastian’s presence today was different. She’d felt something pulling her towards him like she always had before he went away, but this was slightly different as Sebastian wasn’t facing her. She followed his gaze and saw her daughter, Caroline, talking to some of her friends. Sebastian watching her intently. Her beautiful Caroline.
Swilling the shards of ice in her drink, she drained the rest of the vodka in her glass. When she looked back, he’d gone. The tip of the blade on the window sill seemed more prominent than ever as it glistened in the shine of the twinkling garden lights hanging from the window. Her obsession with that knife hadn’t just been a coincidence; it had appeared in her life for a reason.
CHAPTER THREE
Sebastian squirted several different coloured oils onto his makeshift easel – a large piece of board he’d found in the cupboard under the stairs. Emptying each tube, he took his palette knife and began scraping up the paint and swirling it onto the main wall of the loft room. It had taken him an entire day to remove all the pieces of paper Cecelia had pasted onto the wall all those years ago. The varying shapes and italics had irritated him somewhat; it was a confusion of shapes, lines and dirty shades of white, completely unfitting for his idea of art. It occurred to him how typical it was of Cecelia to be so flippant with the layout, and, so it appeared, in most things in her life.
Standing back, he observed the rough pencil outline of what he wanted the subject to look like. Now he could add plenty of colour, bringing the abstract face to life. She was a prison officer he’d been mildly infatuated with. No one understood that it was her face, her frame he was most interested in; she had an incredible balance that ran through her entire being. The images of her had never left his mind and, until he recreated her in oils, the emotions he felt would never subside. She’d been his friend to begin with, or so he’d thought, and he knew he hadn’t imagined the odd glance, or the way she singled him out with a touch on the arm, a squeeze of his shoulder. In the end she’d transferred to a new wing.
Sebastian’s creative surge lasted for most of the day and it filled him with a deep satisfaction to let go of the erotic images he’d been carrying around in his head. She was beautiful, but only he would know who was painted on the wall, and that alone thrilled him.
Sitting down on the sofa, he lit a cigarette and looked up at the face that was indecipherable to anyone but him. Resting the cigarette in the glass ashtray on the coffee table he placed his hands together, finger to finger, perfectly matching. It offered some calm relief, eased the draught that seemed to be permanently hovering in the bottom of his stomach. He closed his eyes, smoke swirled around the ashtray and across the coffee table, visions of Cecelia merged with Caroline; the draught was lifting and he knew it was time for a walk. In prison he’d learnt that movement helped the draught to subside. It was far better than staying in the same place and losing his mind altogether. A psychologist’s assessment told him he was suffering from anxiety but he wasn’t convinced of this diagnosis.
‘Just going for a walk,’ he called to Yvonne, who was in the kitchen cooking.
‘OK. You haven’t forgotten I’m going out, have you?’
‘Nope. See you later.’
It was dusk, his favourite time for wandering. There was always a whisper of anticipation in the air, an expectation that everything could suddenly change under the night’s dark shadow.
On his way back he stopped at the shop around the corner from his house to pick up some newspapers and cigarettes. The only publications available in prison were tabloids that were shared around and that he didn’t really care for. The lack of reading material and Sebastian’s extreme boredom had caused another slight obsession to develop and now, free of any restrictions, he took great pleasure in buying several broadsheets every day.
There wasn’t always time to read everything, but knowing he had been free to purchase them was enough.
Before he let himself into Yvonne’s house he paused on the opposite side of the road, observing the orange-lit street and the place he now lived. A house he was now seeing differently since finding out that Cecelia had lived there, albeit briefly.
Glancing up, he saw a young woman staring at him from the upstairs window of the house two doors down. She was pretty in a flat, uncharismatic way, but there was something oddly familiar about her. He knew her large dark eyes from somewhere. He noticed her hair was parted to the left side, with the rest tied in a ponytail loosely hanging on her right shoulder. The draught lifted slightly in the bottom of his stomach, the lack of symmetry beginning to bother him.
The woman smiled and hesitantly lifted her hand in a gesture of greeting. He stared at her for a few moments, as her fingers crumpled like paper back down to her side, and then he crossed the street and went inside his house.
Pouring himself a glass of wine he observed the woman he’d seen at the window in his mind, registering his presumed facts about her as he did with anyone he focused on for any length of time: drab shirt, one size too big, worn out bra, one breast hanging irritatingly lower than the other. He imagined her to have a small amount of make-up layered on top of the previous day’s. Not enough to show that she’d made an effort – further evidence of a lack of interest in herself and suggesting low confidence.
Glancing at the window, his eyes focusing, he caught a glimpse of his own face, the stark kitchen light shining above his head projecting two reflections. He might have appeared saintly if it hadn’t been for the slight expression of disgust he was unaware of. He despised people like her: lazy, pathetic and unkempt. Not like Cecelia.
Taking his wine and freshly rolled cigarettes into the sitting room he began to carefully look through the broadsheets, before folding and adding them to the new pile which was growing like an arch of thorny roses either side of the door to the understairs cupboard. He was adding some balanced order to his mother’s clutter.
Stoking the fire for the night, he made his way up to the bathroom and began filling the tub. For the first time in over eighteen years he was going to sit in the bath and draw. He paused in the doorway, remembering Cecelia sitting on the old wooden chair, allowing him to draw her as she chatted. The rickety old chair had been her favourite seat in the old farmhouse. Now, in the bigger picture he held in his mind, Caroline was sitting there instead.
Shutting off the taps he walked into the room where he’d been painting and sat down to observe his work from a new perspective.
Closing his eyes he visualised Caroline, his mind settling on the symmetry of her face, the definition of her straight, freckled nose, blunt cut fringe and long hair. Her cheekbones were still developing underneath her flesh. Flesh that would thin as the years passed, revealing two beautifully carved bones, identical to her mother’s.
In the bath he occupied himself drawing Caroline’s perfect, almond-shaped green eyes. Like the old days, he thought. It would be just like the old days.
CHAPTER FOUR
The blade of the knife winked at Cecelia from its place on the window sill. She took a deep breath and counted, one . . . two . . . three . . . four. Sebastian was at the gate again, like a dark apparition hovering outside their home, threatening to upturn her family like broken furniture.
‘Who is that man at the gate?’ Caroline stood up from the kitchen table to get a better look. ‘I’ve seen him before.’
‘Have you?’ Cecelia was wistful, not really present within the room. She was strangely drawn to Sebastian and had found herself looking out for him each day, however much she told herself she didn’t want to see him or allow him to be a part of her life, the pull was there – the same connection they’d had to one another when they were children.
‘Yeah, he’s been hanging around outside the school . . . always smiles at me . . . like he knows me. Bit weird.’
‘He does what outside the school?’ Cecelia landed back in the room with a thud.
Caroline tutted. ‘I just said, I’ve seen him outside the school. He looks at me like he knows me . . . Who is he, Mum? Do you know him? He looks ever so much like you. He’s not a long lost relative is he?!’ She laughed, pushing her chair back as she packed away her school books.
‘You haven’t spoken to him, have you?’ Cecelia grabbed Caroline’s arm.
‘No! Why?’ Caroline tried to pull away.
‘Because . . . I don’t want you to.’ Cecelia released her fingers, and it was only then that she realised how hard she’d been gripping her daughter’s arm.
They held each other’s gaze.
‘Tell me why first.’
‘You shouldn’t need a reason why, you should just do as I ask.’
‘Oh come on, Mum, who is he? If you don’t tell me, I’ll just get it out of Dad.’
Cecelia pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. ‘He’s my brother . . . My twin, actually . . .’
A cold silence drifted through the kitchen and Cecelia looked up to see an open-mouthed Caroline. Her face so quickly becoming child-like, as it always did when she was upset. Cecelia missed that little girl; she’d begun to feel her slipping away rapidly when she’d reached seventeen. She watched Caroline fall rather than sit back down in her chair. Then the rubble began tumbling down the cliff as Cecelia realised the enormity of what she’d said.
‘You’re not a twin, you’re lying . . .’
Cecelia sighed. ‘I’m not lying; he is my twin brother, Sebastian.’
‘Sebastian? You told me he was your uncle. Your uncle who shot your father.’
‘No.’ Cecelia shook her head. ‘Sebastian is my brother, there is no uncle.’
‘Your brother killed your dad?’ The rims of Caroline’s eyes were quickly turning red.
‘That’s why I don’t want you having anything to do with him.’ Cecelia decided to avoid Caroline’s question, convincing herself she was telling the truth.
‘How could you lie to me about something like that?’ Caroline’s lip trembled. ‘You told me you were an only child . . . how could you do that . . . knowing I’m a twin as well . . .’
‘Caroline . . .’
The chair tumbled backwards and before Cecelia could stop her, Caroline had run from the room, her footsteps resounding on the wooden staircase.
‘What’s wrong with her now?’ Samuel wandered in from the sitting room, empty mug in his hand.
‘I’ve just told her about Sebastian.’ She sighed.
‘What, all of it, or just about him being your brother?’
‘All of it,’ she said, with slight irritation.
Samuel placed his cup next to the kettle and switched it on.
‘She was bound to find out some time. It’s better it comes from you than from someone else. He’s been released, for God’s sake; you know how people talk, especially round here.’
‘Yes, but it holds far more meaning for her, doesn’t it?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Yes you do. I told you this would happen and, as always, you refused to pay any attention.’ Cecelia stood up, her chair rattling to steady itself as she roughly shoved it towards the table.
‘This is ridiculous. You’ve told her you have a twin. Big deal. She’s just being melodramatic, like all teenagers are. I would have thought she’d be more upset that he killed her grandfather.’
‘Well, she knows how I felt about Roger, how he treated us, so she wouldn’t be that bothered. She didn’t even know him.’
‘All beyond me. I can’t understand why she gets so upset about everything.’ Samuel peered into the fridge while he waited for the kettle to boil, assessing the food. ‘What are we going to have for dinner?’
‘Are you just pretending to be stupid?’ She stared at him, waiting for the information to connect to his brain. ‘I’m a t
win, she’s a twin.’
‘Yes. There are lots of twins all over the world. I still don’t see why finding out you’re a twin has any consequence on her life. It really has nothing to do with her. She had a sister, not a brother, and don’t give me all that crap about twins sharing a secret world that no one else understands.’
‘But it has a huge impact on her life, Samuel, it really has . . . and actually, it’s not crap, twins are part of a special relationship that no one else could ever begin to understand.’ Cecelia shook her head at him and walked from the room. ‘You especially,’ she muttered under her breath. The words rested on her lips, then crept back in like small crabs, making her swallow hard as she felt them catch in her throat, threatening to choke her.
‘Everything OK?’ Eleanor looked up from her armchair as Cecelia walked into the garden room.
‘Just the usual. Caroline’s upset, Samuel doesn’t understand.’ She brushed it off with her hand, not wanting to burden her mother-in-law with anything negative; she was ill and didn’t need to hear about their family troubles.
‘Parts of my body might be giving up but there’s nothing wrong with my eyes and ears. I’ve seen Sebastian hanging around.’
‘It’s nothing for you to worry about.’ Cecelia absently flicked through a magazine, seeing the articles without registering them.
‘When have I ever worried about anything? Maybe you should ask him in, leave the past behind.’
‘Maybe you should keep your opinions to yourself.’ As soon as Cecelia said it, she wished she could take it back.
Eleanor’s eyebrows rose slightly. ‘Sebastian is your twin brother; you were so close once. I remember the bond you had with one another.’ She looked at Cecelia pointedly.
‘What do you mean?’ Cecelia put the magazine back on the coffee table and eyed Eleanor with interest.
