After She Died

by Collette Heather

  Dr Thornton pushed his glasses up his long nose and scratched his beard thoughtfully – gestures that she had come to know well over the course of their sessions together.

  “I am here to sample the delights of your cooking.”

  His glib response nothing short of infuriated her. A vivid image of smashing him over the head with the nearest frying-pan flashed through her mind, but she curbed the rage.

  “Just fucking well tell me why you’re here,” she said through gritted teeth, her voice low.

  She could feel the adrenalin coursing through her system, heating the blood in her veins and clouding her judgement.

  “How are your nightmares, Cassie? Have you been having any hallucinations? Have you been seeing your dead twin lately? And how about that fantasy man that you dreamed up? You do realise that you are functioning alcoholic, don’t you?”

  The words washed over her, frightening her, yet angering her at the same time.

  “What is this shit? Why are you psycho-analysing me? What the fuck do you want?”

  “Oh, I’m right then, you have been seeing Chloe, haven’t you? My God, I really do believe that you’re starting to unravel. That your carefully built-up existence is about to come crashing down around your ears in spectacular style.”

  In that moment, she hated him with all the passion in the world, plus a little extra.

  “Get the fuck out of my house.”

  “No.”

  The doorbell sounded, making her jump.

  “Well, I wonder who that could be?” Dr Thornton said in infuriatingly calm tones.

  “I’m going to march in there right now and tell Hugh that you’re my shrink.”

  “Hugh doesn’t even know that you’ve been seeing someone for your problems. And I will just deny it. There’s no record of you on my books, I would be happy to share these with Hugh, my esteemed work colleague.”

  This simply couldn’t be happening. It beggared belief. She thought that she might be dreaming, but she was awake, she knew she was.

  “That’s insane. What do you want from me? You’re fucking crazy. Was it you that sent me those letters?”

  Dr Thornton threw back his head and laughed.

  “Now that’s just silly.”

  The doorbell sounded again, which in no way helped her heightened state of anxiety.

  “Aren’t you going to get that?” Dr Thornton asked.

  “Hugh can get it.”

  “Sure he can,” he laughed.

  But Cassie was barely listening. She was marching down the hallway, determined to put an end to this madness. She was going to do what she should’ve done in the first place. She was going to tell Hugh that she knew Dr Thornton, that he was a nutter, that he was playing some kind of unfathomable game with them.

  She burst into the living room, a ball of energy just about ready to explode.

  “Hugh, I know Fred. He’s my psychiatrist, I’ve been…”

  But the words died on her lips because Hugh, along with Bob and Mandy, was gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “You really need to answer the door, Cassie,” Dr Thornton called to her from the other end of the hallway.

  She leaned against the doorframe of the living room, suddenly feeling sick and dizzy. The doorbell sounded again, and she groaned in terror.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, but she wasn’t especially asking Dr Thornton, despite him being the only one around.

  Where the damn hell was Hugh?

  Panic clawed inside of her, a bubbling pressure pot that threatened to explode at any second.

  I need to call the police.

  But first she needed to open the door. In a daze, she took the few, short steps over towards the front door. It wasn’t like she could ignore it. And whoever was on the other side of it had to be better than being alone with creepy Dr bloody Thornton.

  Maybe it was Hugh, along with their dinner guests. Yes, that made sense. They had popped outside for some reason and now they were locked out.

  Wishing fervently that this was going to be the case, she pulled open the door…

  And saw her ex, Jon Anderson on her doorstep.

  “Hello Cassie, can I come in?”

  She looked at him incredulously.

  “What? No! You can’t come in! I’m in the middle of something, here.”

  The words left her in a rush, high-pitched and teetering on the precipice of shouting. She could feel her mind squirming against her skull, as if testing the perimeters, as if looking to be set free.

  “Please. It won’t take long.”

  She glared at him, not believing that he was here, at her home. It was just one more thing to add to the ever-growing list of all things weird and alarming.

  Then the obvious occurred to her:

  “How the hell did you know where I live?”

  “Yeah, well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I’m sorry, Cassie, this has to be done.”

  And with that, he barged right by her, into her hallway.

  “You can’t do that!”

  “I just did.”

  Incredulously, she watched his overweight figure disappear through the living-room door.

  “Get out of my house,” she called after him, following him into the room, more angry than scared.

  “Jesus, Cassie, how long have you lived like this?”

  “What? Are you serious? You force yourself into my home and start criticising the décor? What the hell is this shit? Hugh!” she shouted.

  “You don’t have to pretend anymore, I know you live alone. Craig told me. Although you probably know him as Ethan. I owe you an apology Cassie. When you didn’t recognise me in the library, I thought the worst, but then when Ethan showed me the photos of the scars on your back, I knew it was you. Jesus, I’m so sorry, not just for having you followed, but for what you’re going through. Let me help you, I should’ve done this years ago. Let me be the one to help you.”

  The man was talking in riddles, but the worst feeling curdled in her guts.

  “Hold on, back up there a second, buster,” she said in a frantic whisper, “what do you mean, Ethan showed you the scars on my back?”

  “It’s not like I asked him to hurt you, or anything. All I wanted was the photographic evidence, you know, indisputable proof that you were, well, you know, you. He said he’d drug you, nothing too heavy, but enough to knock you out so he could take the picture.”

  She could feel her mouth hanging open as she gaped at him. She couldn’t believe this, she could barely grasp a word he was saying. She glanced over at the door. Where the hell was her husband, and Bob and Mandy? And what about that mind-game playing arsehole, Dr Thornton?

  “I don’t understand.”

  Although, she thought that perhaps she did.

  “Look, Cassie, I’m not proud of myself, here. I haven’t stopped thinking about you for five years. Five years. I came into a bit of money a few months back, I thought I would use it to track you down. I wanted to hire a private detective and Craig came highly recommended. I guess I always had my doubts, the way you disappeared like that – the Cassie I knew would never do that to me. And I was right, wasn’t I? The Cassie I knew wouldn’t. But it changed you, didn’t it? What happened broke you in ways I couldn’t even conceive of. I want to help you. Let me help you. Let me make it up to you.”

  “You sent those letters,” she said flatly.

  “Yes. I’m sorry. I thought you were Chloe. When you didn’t immediately recognise me that day in the library. God help me, I thought you were Chloe. But your scars…” He shook his head sadly, his blue eyes pleading with hers behind his glasses.

  A rage ran through her, a rage that she had never known before.

  Although perhaps she did.

  “Get out of my house, Jon, before I do something I’ll regret.”

  “Cassie, please, I’m begging you. Please don’t call the police. We can work this out, just let me help you.”

&n
bsp; “The police? Why would I want to do a thing like that?”

  The rage was barely contained now, bubbling just under the surface. Yet she felt good.

  “The truth shall set me free,” she said softly.

  “What?”

  “I’m not talking to you, fuckwit.”

  And with that, she punched him in the face. Her knuckles caught the side of his mouth, splitting his lip and snapping his head sideways. The way in which he gaped at her, bug-eyed, was pure comedy, and she couldn’t help but laugh.

  “You have no idea what you’re dealing with here, you dumb fuck.”

  Before he had a chance to react, she lunged for him with a war cry. Her body went slamming into his and he staggered backwards, toppling over and losing his balance. His bulky frame went down with a resounding thunk, his back smacking into the floorboards.

  Planting her kitten-heeled feet either side of his face, she peered down at him. There was a good chance he had concussion – she had seen the way the back of his head had bounced on the floorboards.

  His glasses sat wonky on his face, making him look like the village idiot.

  “Urgh, ra bur,” he said.

  She felt his hands feebly pawing at her shins, and she stepped away from him in disgust. She spied a champagne flute on the coffee table, and went to retrieve it, gently smashing it against the edge of the table. Just enough to shatter it into three bits.

  She held up the long stem of the glass under the overhead light, examining the jagged remains of the glass itself. She twirled it around, admiring the sharp, irregular edges. It put her in mind of a glass rose.

  With a steady hand, she leaned over and drew the shattered glass across his jugular.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  FIVE YEARS AGO

  “Mum, please, you have to believe me, Chloe is crazy. She’s a psycho and a killer.”

  Cassie didn’t know this for sure, as there was a chance it could all be fantasy on Chloe’s part, but in her heart she knew that it was the truth. Just a few days ago, Chloe had sat down with her and told her that she had killed a man.

  And Cassie was quite sure that she was not joking.

  “Cassie,” her mum said with deliberate slowness like she was talking to a retarded child rather than a twenty-one-year-old, recent graduate. “I don’t know why you’re saying this, but it’s not funny.”

  How could her mum think that she was joking? What kind of a person would joke about something like this?

  “You have to believe me.”

  A sense of unreality washed over her as she stood there in her parents immaculate living room saying those words, like she was an actor playing a part. None of this felt real. Nothing had felt real to her for a very long time – her mum was right; her entire life had played out like one long, bad joke.

  “I just don’t understand why you’re so jealous of your sister. You are equally academically gifted and you are identical in every single possible way. There’s no need for you to feel that way.”

  “No, Mum, I’m not jealous. Chloe’s crazy. Look what she did to my back.”

  Cassie swivelled around on the spot in the middle of the living room and lifted up her t-shirt, revealing the long, criss-cross patterns of scars across her back.

  “If she did, which I don’t believe for a second, why are you just telling me this now? Those scars are old.”

  How typical of her mum, she thought sadly. Her general apathy towards her and Chloe – and especially to her – showed no signs of dimming now that she was a young adult. Considering that she had just shown her mother a back-full of aggressive scarring, she seemed remarkably unmoved.

  Great sadness twisted in her heart. Chloe had done this to her when they had been sixteen years old. For five years, she had kept her back hidden from her parents, hiding her dirty little secret. Because those scars on her back made her feel exactly that: Dirty.

  On a rational level, she knew that the scars weren’t her fault, but there was a small part of her that wore them like a symbolic mark of her failure. They were a constant, stark reminder that she had failed. Failed to either rein in her twin or tell somebody about the real Chloe.

  Before she had killed someone.

  Because now, it was too late, and the blood of the hapless young man was on her hands as surely as it was on that of her sister’s.

  “I wish you would believe me, Mum,” she said sadly, knowing perfectly well that it was falling on deaf ears.

  This was just like when she was a kid, when her parents just would not listen. Her mother may never have beaten them, or even have been particularly verbally harsh with them, but she was still a cold, cold woman. Both she and her dad had been more preoccupied with their respective teaching careers and each other rather than with their children. From the ages of twelve to sixteen, they had been shipped off to an all-girls boarding school down south in Tunbridge Wells, only to come home during the holidays. And right at this moment, it was much the same. Both of them had effectively moved out for good at the age of eighteen to attend University, and both of them had begun to carve out their future lives. Cassie still house shared with her friends from Uni, and she had an interview next week for a writing position for a well-known fashion magazine.

  Cassie pulled down her top and turned back around to meet her mother’s unconcerned gaze.

  “Chloe did do that to me, Mum.”

  “I don’t believe you. You probably fell into a bramble bush or something when you were younger. I don’t know, you were always such a clumsy child.”

  “I wasn’t clumsy, it was Chloe. She hurt me constantly, then made me say that I had hurt myself. She’s a fucking psychopath.”

  Her mum’s eyes widened.

  “Don’t use such foul language, Cassie, it’s so uncouth.”

  In that moment, Cassie found herself studying her mother objectively, seeing her as an outsider of the family might. She was still beautiful, a fairer, daintier version of her and Chloe. The Michelle Pfeiffer type, physically. A classically beautiful ice-queen.

  Yes, her mother was as cold as ice. And that coldness had translated into something else with Chloe. It had translated into full-blown psychosis.

  “Oh, Mum, you are so far off the mark, with everything. I should’ve told you all this years ago, but I’ve only just known myself how bad it was. I always made excuses for her, in my head, growing up. I knew she was wired differently to other people, I knew that she bullied and hurt me, I knew that she could hurt animals, but I didn’t think that she was a killer. She dropped out of Uni a few months ago.”

  “What on earth are you talking about? She called me from Edinburgh University the other day. Why are you telling these lies?”

  “No, Mother, I am not lying. Chloe will never become a doctor because she dropped out. She could easily keep up the pretence for at least another year, as the Medicine degree takes so long.”

  “You really are a piece of work, Cassie. In fact, I think you should leave. You’re not welcome in my home, anymore.”

  “But I never was welcome, was I Mum?”

  “Oh, will you spare me the pity party? What is wrong with you?”

  “No, the question should be, what is wrong with Chloe? She killed a man. Why are you not hearing me?”

  “Who? Who did she kill, Cassie?”

  “A boy she was seeing before she dropped out of Uni. She said that he was getting too clingy. So she killed him. Officially, he just disappeared, but I know the truth. Chloe slit his throat and buried him in her own back garden.”

  Her mum threw back her head and laughed, but there was no humour in the sound.

  “You have a problem, Cassie. She’s in a house share, like you. Are you telling me that this went unnoticed in their communal garden? I think your degree in Creative Writing has warped your mind. But then, you always were the difficult child, weren’t you? Always the moody one, the dreamer. The sulker. Yes, Chloe has always been so much easier than you. Always so level-headed and sel
f-sufficient. Always so easy to get along with. She never suffered with mood-swings, not even as a teenager.”

  Cassie shook her head, refusing to let her mother get to her. Refusing to be derailed. Her mother had never loved her, or even Chloe for that matter. She just preferred Chloe because she was easier. Maybe Cassie had always known this, deep down, but this was the first time that she had been confronted with the full truth of it.

  But she couldn’t dwell on that now.

  “Chloe killed a man. His name was Robert Logan and he was a law student.”

  “For God’s sake! A boy drops out of University and drops off the grid for a while because he’s under stress and suddenly Chloe killed him? You need help, Cassie. What you’re saying is so wrong. There is something wrong with you.”

  “No. There’s something wrong with Chloe. And for the life of me I don’t know why you’ve always refused to see it.”

  Tears prickled her eyes, but she refused to give into them.

  “Where’s Dad?”

  “In his office.”

  She rolled her eyes. Of course he was in his office, she didn’t even know why she’d bothered asking. Fleetingly, she wondered if the pattern of her parents’ marriage would repeat itself if and when she ever decided to get married. Would she be married to a man that she would hardly ever see, who worked constantly, even when he was supposed to be home, with his family?

  Dear God, she hoped not.

  And if her mum was cold and indifferent, her dad was even worse, because he simply didn’t care.

  Yes, when she looked at it objectively, it was hardly surprising that Chloe had turned out to be a psychopath, because when it came down to it, her nature was only one step beyond that of their parents.

  “Hey what’s happening?”

  Cassie’s heart instantly started hammering when her twin waltzed into the room.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  FIVE YEARS AGO

  Chloe stood there in the doorway, smiling sweetly, the spitting image of herself in every single way, right down to the way the wore their hair long and subtly highlighted. Cassie had toyed with the idea of changing her hairstyle, but she didn’t see her twin enough to worry about it. Besides, she liked her hair, why should she change it? And she knew, in her heart, that Chloe wound just copy her if she did, and then say that it was the other way around. That it was she copying her.