Bad Twins

by Rebecca Chance

  ‘The last we heard was several hours, I’m afraid,’ she said, almost unable to look directly at his handsome face, which she recognized from aftershave advertisements. ‘They’re having to drain off cerebrospinal fluid and that can mean maybe removing a section of the skull—’

  Paul waved his hands around frantically, and Joan stopped immediately, recognizing him as one of the class of relatives whose stomach was too delicate for detailed surgical information.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea as well?’ she asked. ‘Or a coffee? It won’t be what you’re used to, of course . . .’

  ‘I’m fine, thank you so much,’ Paul answered, with a smile that, though by no means his full wattage, made Joan, once safely in the nurses’ break room, fan herself madly for a good few minutes before she could even put the kettle on. She was disappointed, on her return, to see that he was no longer there. Charlotte had sent him home to put together what she called a ‘survival kit’ for the hospital.

  ‘I found some Darjeeling for you,’ Joan said proudly. ‘It’s really Dr Singh’s, but she’s in surgery, and I’m sure she wouldn’t mind if—’

  ‘Ugh,’ Charlotte said, looking at the chipped mugs. But Bella took hers very gratefully.

  ‘Thanks, Joan,’ she managed, ducking her head over the cup.

  ‘I put in lots of sugar,’ Joan said. ‘You always need it, even if you think you don’t.’

  On hearing this, Charlotte promptly handed her mug back to Joan, who retreated to sit further down the corridor by the solicitor. She offered it to him, but he shook his head politely, so Joan could, in good conscience, treat herself to Darjeeling from a mug, no matter how chipped, instead of vending-machine tea from a polystyrene cup. Charlotte was occupied in compiling a list of things on her phone that she felt Bella needed to sustain herself in these brutal surroundings, which Paul would fill out once he got back home: mineral water, a thermos of good tea, a range of healthy snacks, a cashmere blanket, a pillow, slippers, handwash, hand lotion, a hairbrush, Evian facial spray, eau de toilette, moisturizer . . .

  This gave Bella a much-needed respite to explore how she was feeling, now that she had once again recounted her version of events and had it unquestioningly accepted. It was shocking how easy this was proving to be. Blowing on the surface of her tea, Bella realized that she was half believing the solicitor-constructed story herself. It sounded much more plausible than the ridiculously dramatic truth. Even the paramedics who had attended the scene, seeing the laptop lying beside Thomas, had mentioned sympathetically to her how often they dealt nowadays with people who took tumbles looking at their phones or electronic devices.

  The solicitor was the only person who knew there was more to the story than Bella was telling. When Thomas had grabbed at Bella’s arms, she had had no sense of how hard he was gripping her. She must be stronger than she knew to have made him let go, because on both her forearms the imprints of his fingers and thumb were clearly visible, bruises which would take weeks to fade completely.

  And as she had talked to the solicitor, pointing up the staircase, the sleeve of her pyjama top had fallen back a little from one arm, enough to reveal the marks: they had noticed them simultaneously. This was where it became obvious how Greenberg and Clinton earned their huge retainer and mammoth fees for billable hours: even as Bella swiftly covered up her arm again, the solicitor had suggested, without so much as a blink, that she go upstairs and put on something ‘warm and comfortable’ before going to the hospital. Bella had found a sweater with long sleeves finishing in knitted welts, snug enough that they could not accidentally expose her bruises, and a pair of cashmere lounging trousers.

  As she held her mug, she found herself instinctively wrapping her free hand round the other forearm, putting the lightest amount of pressure on the bruises her husband had caused. It barely hurt, but it was a reminder that she had nothing to feel guilty about.

  Bella examined her conscience about the fact that her husband was having emergency surgery, and could not find any sensitive point. He had chased her. He had attacked her repeatedly. He had told her he was going to hurt her. Her arms were proof of that. And he would not have stopped there. She was very lucky that she hadn’t been seriously injured fighting him off. She hadn’t even meant to hurt him, just to get him away from her. Thomas had got exactly what he deserved.

  There had been no indication that the police might want to talk to her again. They hadn’t even asked for Thomas’s laptop, which the solicitor had told her might be a possibility, in a superbly casual way that was also a tacit enquiry about whether they might find anything on it she might prefer them not to see. Bella had responded instantly that she would be fine with handing over her husband’s computer. So far, however, that had not happened, and the two police officers had expressed condolences for her husband’s accident in a way that had seemed to make it clear that, short of Bella walking into a police station to make a confession, she would not be hearing from them again.

  ‘You seem so calm, Bell!’ Charlotte said, finishing her list for Paul, hitting Send and looking once more at her sister, who could not help noticing that Charlotte had not asked her once what she might like or need. Charlotte knew best. ‘Did they give you anything? Do you want anything? I could get Paul to bring some of my pills—’

  ‘No, I’m okay,’ Bella said, and saw the solicitor shift position. ‘I mean, of course, I’m not okay!’ she corrected herself quickly. ‘But I can’t quite connect with anything. I must still be in shock, I think. I didn’t even know Thomas was coming home, and then just a few minutes later I was having to ring an ambulance for him!’

  The solicitor gave a small nod. That had been one of the points he had made, that Thomas had barely been in the house for ten minutes before falling down the stairs, a fact, he had observed, that would be easily verified by the taxi firm with which his company had their account. Clearly, there had not been time for any kind of fight or even awkwardness to happen, he had said blandly, which was even more corroboration for Bella’s version of events.

  Not, of course, he had added, that any were needed . . .

  ‘You’ll begin to feel the natural emotions of all this sooner or later, when the shock wears off,’ Joan said, leaning forward, eager to do her job. ‘I’d be more than happy to give you the info on our counselling services—’

  ‘Oh, do be quiet!’ Charlotte said impatiently to her. ‘If Bella needs any counselling, it certainly won’t be from someone in this godforsaken place! Do you actually need to be here? I’ll wait with my sister. And why are we sitting in the corridor? Isn’t there some room we can take her to? Why don’t you go away and see if you can find one?’

  The solicitor’s face went perfectly blank again. Joan, managing not to make a humphing noise, stood up and bustled off, and Bella reached over and took her sister’s hand, squeezing it hard, and not just out of gratitude that she had silenced Joan.

  ‘God, Bell, I don’t know how to ask this,’ her twin said more softly, returning the squeeze, ‘but what are they thinking about Thomas? I mean, he’s been in the operating theatre for a while, right? Do you have any idea if . . . um . . .’

  ‘It’s not good,’ Bella answered, her voice oddly flat, which Charlotte attributed to Bella trying womanfully not to break down in public. ‘There’s brain swelling they need to take down. We don’t know anything yet and won’t for a while. But Joan’s been explaining to me that Thomas rates as a severe brain injury on the Glasgow Coma Scale. She said I have to drastically lower any expectations about how okay he’ll be if he survives the surgery.’

  This was a direct quote from Joan, who had delivered it with great empathy, quite unaware of the enormous relief it brought to the recipient.

  Which means he’s very unlikely to be able to tell everyone how he came home and caught me Skyping with my lover and I pushed him down the stairs, Bella thought now. I’m not a doctor. But when he lay there in the hallway for twenty-five minutes till the ambulance came, barely
moving a muscle, I was more and more sure that he wasn’t going to wake up on his own. I sat there and watched him and I could hardly even see him breathing. By the time the paramedics got there, it was obvious that he was really badly injured.

  And that I was safe.

  ‘Oh, darling,’ Charlotte said, putting an arm around her twin’s shoulders. She glanced at Bella and saw that her sister’s lips were pinched together, defending her emotions: she knew that meant she shouldn’t offer any more sympathy for the moment.

  ‘I’ve left a message for Bart,’ she said instead. ‘And I talked to Samantha. She sends huge sympathy and love. I’ve said I’ll let her know as soon as we have any news. It looks like Conway might be back with her, by the way. She said they’d both come and visit whenever you want – it sounded like she was talking for them as a couple.’

  The sisters exchanged a glance, and in that moment, the solicitor thought, the resemblance between them was positively eerie. It was the absolute similarity of their expressions, even more than their identical features. He could not, of course, know that they had been directly involved in the estrangement between their brother and his wife, and that they were now speculating whether Conway reuniting with Samantha would put him back in the running for the CEO position. If it did, they asked each other silently, would he automatically be once more at the top of their father’s list?

  ‘Daddy and Adrianna are coming up to town tomorrow morning,’ Charlotte continued. ‘They were at Vanbrugh this weekend, but they said of course they want to be in London for you. How things have changed, eh? I wonder what would have happened if he’d still been with Jade! I can only imagine!’

  ‘He was very sweet when I rang him,’ Bella said. ‘He sent someone from Greenberg and Clinton to look after me.’

  She indicated the solicitor. Charlotte acknowledged him with a swift glance.

  ‘Yes, he told me,’ she said. ‘Very sensible. Everything’s okay with that side of things, right?’

  ‘Totally fine,’ Bella said, as the solicitor nodded confirmation. ‘The police came and took a statement from me, but that’s completely standard, apparently.’

  ‘Good,’ Charlotte said. ‘I mean’ – she grimaced – ‘it’s good to get a line drawn under that, anyway.’

  She shifted, moved her arm away, and rolled her shoulders back one after the other, stretching out. When she spoke again, her tone had altered fractionally. Her twin, acutely attuned to every nuance of her sister’s voice, sat up a little straighter, wondering what was coming.

  ‘So does this mean that Thomas’ll need a lot of looking after?’ Charlotte asked, and it was all Bella could do not to show, by the faintest flicker of her expression, that she knew exactly why her twin was asking this seemingly concerned question. Only a few more months remained until Jeffrey was due to crown the new CEO of the Sachs Organization. If Bella’s husband required a significant amount of care, that would undeniably sabotage her work on the very ambitious rewards points scheme on which she was counting to make an excellent impression on their father.

  Ever since Jeffrey’s announcement, Bella had been on the steepest of learning curves, both personal and professional. Now, however, she found herself at the intersection of those two, and it was a considerable shock to hear in her sister’s voice Charlotte’s sudden shift from supportive twin to work rival.

  ‘I’ll just have to wait and see, I suppose,’ Bella said, tilting her head a little. Her sister mirrored her gesture, nothing but sympathy in those big blue eyes, no hint of the calculations Charlotte must be making, her assumption that Thomas’s head injury might mean that Bella would not be able to put in the work necessary to equal Charlotte’s own efforts.

  Bella studied her twin sister’s face for any hint of triumph, and couldn’t find it. Charlotte was really good at this. But then, wasn’t Bella also pretty good? She closed her hand once more around her arm, pressing gently on her bruises, reminding herself again why Thomas’s welfare was no longer any concern of hers. To her twin, her eyes were limpid, with nothing to indicate how little Bella cared about Thomas’s potential recovery.

  Is it possible that I could play this game better than Lottie? Bella wondered. I know her, but she doesn’t know me. She thinks I’m her sidekick, the boring one, the plodder.

  Lottie doesn’t know me at all. She’d be amazed to find out I was having an affair with Ronaldo, let alone that I was quick and clever and resourceful enough when Thomas fell down the stairs to cover my tracks, swap out the laptops, make sure I rang Daddy to get the best lawyer possible, give the police the story so convincingly that they believed every word.

  I think I definitely have the advantage here. Because I know exactly what Charlotte’s capable of. But she has no idea about me.

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘It’s so brave of you going out this evening,’ Nita said, shaking her head in sympathy for her boss. Bella, who was having her hair and make-up done, could move neither her head nor her mouth, but she raised her hand and waved it at Nita to show that she appreciated the sympathy.

  Behind Nita, a stylist wheeled in a rack of dresses she had picked out for Bella’s appearance at the Style Travel award ceremony that evening. How things had changed since Bella had sat in that bar with Robin in Chicago, and Robin had so nicely and tactfully pointed out that Bella Sachs could summon any make-up artist or hairdresser she wanted to come to her office! Nita had been delighted to arrange for Bella to be painted and primped, positively rejoicing in the fact that her boss was taking an interest in her appearance. These last weeks had been gruelling: Thomas lying in a coma in the hospital, while Bella bravely threw herself into her work by way of distraction.

  Brave, Bella thought, as her lips were outlined and filled in. That’s my new adjective. Nita had told her all about the upswell of sympathy for her throughout the Sachs Organization, conversations from the canteen to the boardrooms, the refrain that went:

  Bella’s so brave considering her husband’s in a coma! It’s so brave the way she’s thrown herself into work! Did you know she barely goes back to their house any more? It’s too upsetting for her. I don’t blame her – can you imagine using those stairs every day after her husband nearly died falling down them? She’s taken over a suite at the Sachs Piccadilly and she’s pretty much living there. I don’t know if I could carry on with this huge project with my husband lying in a coma! But you know what Bella’s like – so conscientious – she doesn’t want to let everyone else down. Have you seen her recently? She’s lost weight with it all, poor thing, but she’s still pushing on. Nita says she’s got meetings scheduled from morning to night! It must be so hard for her. She really is so brave.

  Bella certainly had lost weight, but it was unrelated to grieving for Thomas. Once the doctors had broken the news to her that Thomas had survived the operation but was, as they had anticipated, in a coma, she was lifted up once more by the sensation which had flooded through her as she told him that she wanted a divorce. Lightness, floating, freedom. It was as if she had been granted the divorce, but without any mess or fuss or division of common property.

  All that had shown on her face, however, was a dazed expression, which was perfectly natural under the circumstances. Her solicitor had driven her back home, and when she walked into the house that she had never liked, full of old-fashioned furniture and noise-muffling carpets, she stood in the hallway, staring at the staircase down which her husband had fallen, wondering what to do next. This was her home, where she had lived for years, and yet she had a very strong urge to turn on her heel, walk out the front door and never come back.

  What happened next? What did you do after you had left your husband in a coma and were, frankly, pretty okay with that state of affairs? Was she thirsty? Did she want to eat something? The healthy snacks Paul had brought her from his and Charlotte’s larder had been dry as dust and entirely unsatisfying, puffy and nutty and flavoured with algae. She still had bits stuck in her teeth. But she had no desire to go
into the kitchen, open the fridge and pull something full-fat from the cheese drawer to cancel out the taste.

  Slowly, it dawned on Bella that her dizzyingly lightheaded feeling of new-found freedom, of being untethered from an older, old-fashioned husband who was tying her down to a place she didn’t want to live – had never, if she were honest, wanted to live – and her lack of appetite were very closely connected. She thought of Thomas’s insistence on regularly shopping at the local French delicatessen, the Viennese patisserie, the Italian vinoteca, which he had said they were so lucky to have in the neighbourhood: the cheese and bread, the wine and cake, with which the house was always well stocked.

  And she had a blinding flash of revelation: a husband who was avoiding sex with his wife might well fill the house with fattening food so that she would put on weight, feel less happy about her body, press him less often for intimacy . . .

  Bella had no desire to be as slim as Charlotte. Apart from anything else, that would be putting herself into direct competition with her sister, and she had enough of that already. Some basic instinct told her that Charlotte would take Bella weighing the same as her as a full-frontal attack.

  No, Bella just wanted to get back to the weight she had been on her wedding day. She had dieted hard to get into her dress, looked lovely in the photographs, been happy with her curves, and thought it was a sensible weight that she could maintain. But that had been before Thomas had started his cheese and patisserie regime, and Bella had promptly put the pounds back on, with a few more to boot.

  So that afternoon, very discreetly, Bella moved out to the Sachs Piccadilly and consulted a nutritionist. To the latter she explained, in case anyone thought it odd that she was starting a diet the day after her husband went into a coma, that she was naturally distraught and wanted to make sure she did not fall into bad, comfort-eating habits, but stayed healthy for him during this difficult time. Currently, her breakfasts and most of her dinners were prepared at the Sachs Piccadilly in accordance with her new eating plan, and the nutritionist provided daily lunches at the office, calorie-counted and portion-controlled. Since Bella was in the office every single day, the opportunities for temptation or snacking outside were very few. She knew the five pounds she had already lost were being attributed to grief, which was exactly what she had hoped.