The Minute I Saw You

by Paige Toon

  She stares at me for a long moment, her mind ticking over. ‘You really want to know what I think?’ she asks at last.

  This is unprecedented.

  ‘Yes.’ I nod determinedly.

  ‘Anna would not want you to be lonely.’

  Lonely, not sad. Sadness is not something I can control.

  But loneliness is.

  *

  It’s close to ten p.m. by the time I’ve collected myself together. My stomach is writhing with nerves as I press dial on Sonny’s number.

  He answers on the third ring.

  ‘Hello?’ He sounds wary.

  ‘It’s Hannah.’

  ‘So says Caller ID. Are you okay?’

  ‘Oh, I’m a little . . .’ I’m trying for breezy, but I can’t even get the words out. My eyes are stinging and now they refill with tears. So much for getting my act together before calling him.

  ‘Hey,’ he says gently as I swallow and swallow and swallow the lump down. ‘Hannah.’

  This is ridiculous. I called him. Now I can’t even speak.

  ‘I miss you,’ he says quietly.

  ‘I miss you too,’ I manage to get out.

  ‘I did another photo shoot today,’ he says, and I appreciate him trying to distract me from whatever it is that’s distressing me.

  ‘Did you?’ I encourage him to go on.

  ‘It was my third one so far. It was with Mel.’

  ‘No way?’

  ‘Yeah. I found her on the corner of Green Street and Sidney Street. She took some persuading, I can tell you, but she came around. I was processing the pics when you called – they’ve come out well, I think.’

  ‘That’s amazing. Have you got a gallery space lined up for the exhibition yet?’ I ask tearfully.

  ‘Funny you should ask, I got something agreed today. It’s all coming together. Archie’s finishing the posters when he gets back next week, so soon you’ll see them plastered all over the railings in Cambridge.’

  ‘I can put some up for you,’ I offer.

  ‘Thanks,’ he replies softly. ‘That would be great.’

  ‘How are the girls?’

  ‘They’re good. We went camping a few days ago. Natalie had a freak out when an owl started up outside the tent, but other than that, it was uneventful.’

  ‘Have you taken them to Wicken Fen yet?’

  ‘No, we were thinking about going on Monday.’

  ‘Do you . . . Do you think . . . Could I come with you?’ I ask hesitantly, dragging a fresh tissue across my nose.

  He pauses. ‘You want to come with me, Imogen and Natalie?’ He sounds doubtful and I’m reminded of the look on his face when he realised I was reluctant to spend the day with all three of them.

  ‘I’d like to see them,’ I insist, but it comes out sounding false.

  He sighs. ‘You don’t have to—’

  ‘No, you don’t understand,’ I cut him off. ‘I do find it difficult to be around them, but not for the reasons you’re thinking.’

  ‘What, then?’ He’s confused. ‘It’s . . .

  It’s all part of it.’

  ‘All part of what you’re not telling me?’

  ‘All part of what I’d like to tell you,’ I reply bravely. ‘I grew up near Wicken Fen. I thought perhaps I could take you there.’

  There’s silence at the other end of the line.

  ‘Do you want me to come over?’ he asks after an age, and oh God, I do. I’m aching to touch him, to have him hold me.

  ‘I think I need a couple of days to compose myself,’ I force myself to reply.

  ‘I could take you to Wicken Fen another time. We don’t have to go with the girls.’

  ‘No, despite what I’ve just said, I think it will help to have them there. They’ll keep things light-hearted.’

  ‘Okay, if you’re sure.’

  ‘I am.’

  I don’t think either of us is entirely convinced.

  Chapter 33

  Sonny comes to collect me at ten thirty on Monday morning after texting me to say he’s getting his daughters first. He pulls up on the driveway and I watch from the kitchen window as the back doors of his car fly open and the girls spill out.

  I try to take a calming breath as I walk into the hall, but I can’t stop breathing up into my ribcage. I’m wracked with anxiety.

  Bertie barks and pushes past me as I open the door and Imogen and Natalie fawn all over her, their eagerness to get to the door explained.

  Their father appears behind them and my breathing becomes shallower still.

  ‘Hi,’ he says. His mouth has formed a soft smile, but his eyes have a touch of trepidation about them.

  ‘Hi.’

  He sidesteps the wriggling bundle of limbs at his feet and comes to give me a hug.

  As soon as our bodies connect, my butterflies burst into a frenzy, the feeling of his chest pressed against mine and his steady hand on my back doing funny things to my heart.

  His arms slacken after a quick squeeze and I dutifully begin to withdraw, but then he brings me back in for another hug. It’s fierce and all-encompassing, but still over too soon.

  ‘Can Bertie come too?’ Natalie asks me, her blue eyes pleading and her hands clasped together in prayer.

  ‘It’s up to you,’ I say to Sonny. ‘Otherwise, Evelyn will take her out at lunchtime.’

  ‘Please, Daddy, please?’ Natalie implores.

  ‘Are dogs allowed at Wicken Fen?’ Sonny asks me.

  ‘On a lead, yes, but we wouldn’t be able to do the boat ride.’

  ‘Boat ride?’ Imogen’s eyes have gone round.

  ‘They have a motorboat there that takes you on cruises around the waterways, but no dogs are allowed and we can’t leave Bertie in the car. I’m afraid it’s one or the other: boat or Bertie.’ I feel mean for putting nine-year-olds in this position.

  ‘Can we go on your canoe again another day?’ Imogen asks me.

  ‘Of course we can.’

  She looks at Natalie and they both nod, a mirror of each other, before turning to me and saying simultaneously: ‘Bertie.’

  Every time they do that it’s like a knife through my heart.

  ‘Sounds like we have a plan.’ I reach for Bertie’s lead from behind the door.

  Oblivious to my pain, Sonny ruffles his daughters’ hair and goes to ready the car boot for our fifth passenger.

  It’s about a half-hour drive to the nature reserve and we keep conversation light on the way. I spend most of the time swivelled around in my seat chatting to Imogen and Natalie. Imogen wants to tell me all about her latest Minecraft world in great detail, while Natalie is more interested in regaling me with story ideas, reading out one of her creations when she can get a word in edgeways from a notepad she’s brought with her.

  Soon we’re driving through wide-open fields full of crops, past rows of pebble-dashed houses and under towering power lines resembling tall metallic trees.

  This area has an end-of-the-world kind of feel about it – the sort of landscape you’d see in zombie movies. Natalie points out a scarecrow and Imogen notes that the higgledypiggledy gravestones belonging to the old church are on both sides of the car – the road carves straight through the graveyard.

  I’m quiet as we drive into Wicken, lost in my memories of the journeys I took to come back here as a teenager when I was older and wiser and starting to make sense of my unusual upbringing. I used to think that this little village with its restored windmill that produces flour was a bustling metropolis, but that was because I’d grown up in a landscape of fields and skies, one tiny cottage and not much else.

  Cambridgeshire is known for its vast skies because there are so few hills, but here in the fens they’re even bigger, arcing right up and over the flat wetlands that stretch out in every direction.

  The landscape today is a wash of pale greens, blues, whites and greys, with clouds punctuating the heavens above.

  Every so often, the sun breaks through before di
sappearing behind forbidding formations that look as though they could offload at any second. The weather forecast claimed the rain would hold off. I hope we weren’t wrong to trust it.

  ‘This was the first nature reserve owned by the National Trust,’ Sonny reads aloud from the guide as we set off on a trail around the ancient Sedge Fen – a remnant of un-drained fenland. ‘It used to be two acres in 1899 and now it’s almost two thousand. Nine thousand species of plants, animals, birds and insects live here,’ he tells the girls.

  They’re nonplussed. The only creature they care about right now is Bertie.

  Imogen won the coin toss.

  ‘Can we go to the windmill?’ she asks her dad breathlessly, pointing up ahead at the old black weatherboarded wind pump with its dominant white sails.

  ‘Sure.’ He nods and they set off at a run, their trainer-encased feet pounding the recycled plastic boardwalk.

  We follow at a slower pace.

  On our right is a field containing two ponies, one a rich chocolate brown and the other tawny, his cream underbelly contrasting with his grey socks, mane and swishing tail. He reminds me of Finnegan, the pony we used to have.

  It’s so quiet. It may be the school holidays, but it’s a Monday and there aren’t many people here. Occasionally we hear far-off chatter, but mostly the clean air is filled with the sound of tall reeds rustling and shivering in the breeze. They sound like waves at the seaside or a seashell when you press it to your ear.

  Or whispers.

  ‘You okay?’ Sonny asks as I shiver.

  ‘I’m nervous,’ I reply unevenly.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I want to tell you. I want to tell you everything. But I . . . It’s hard for me to say it.’

  A gust of wind causes the reeds to bend and lift, a rippling Mexican wave that begins on our left and carries on towards the windmill. I can hear the girls laughing.

  ‘You don’t have to do this now, you know,’ he says gently. ‘We can talk later, drop the girls home and go back to yours.’

  ‘No, I need to get it out. Make it quick, like pulling off a plaster.’

  Despite me saying that, we walk on in silence.

  ‘Do you want to start with the accident?’ he prompts.

  I wince at the lie, then tell him the truth. ‘It wasn’t an accident.’

  This makes him pause for thought. ‘But you were in a car crash?’

  ‘No. It was easier to say that. But I need you to know,’ I add hastily, ‘that it’s not because I’m ashamed. That’s not why I find this so hard to talk about. I’m not ashamed.’

  ‘Okay.’ His voice is measured, but there are worry lines etched onto his brow.

  I swallow down hard and force out the words. ‘I had a sister.’

  He’s listening intently.

  ‘Anna. She was my twin. My identical twin. I lost her when we were seven.’

  ‘Oh, Hannah,’ he murmurs with shock and sympathy, and I’m sure he understands now why I find it so hard to be around his daughters.

  He snags one of my horribly clammy hands and pulls me to a stop, but I place my palms on his chest and hold him at bay. He wants to console me, but there’s more that I need to say and how he reacts to this next part will be crucial. It could change everything. It will change everything. It will go one way or the other and I feel sick to my guts, but I need to know.

  He’s regarding me with concern and confusion, waiting for an explanation. I release his chest and take a step away from him, meeting his eyes directly.

  ‘We weren’t just twins.’ I jut my chin out defiantly and tell him: ‘We were conjoined.’

  He visibly pales.

  A stinging sensation starts up at the back of my eyes. He takes a step towards me, but again, I put my hands up and he stops.

  ‘We were joined at the hip. Literally.’ I touch my hand to my left-hand side. ‘We were fused together at our pelvises.’

  He looks shaken, but to my relief, he doesn’t seem repulsed. Not as far as I can tell.

  ‘When we were born, doctors wanted to separate us, but our parents wouldn’t let them. Later, Anna pushed for it. But she died soon after the operation.’

  An operation to separate conjoined twins is never simple, but ours should have been a fairly straightforward procedure – even more so had we been separated as babies. We didn’t share any internal organs and we had two full sets of limbs, although Anna was slightly smaller – a feature that impacted on the early growth of my left leg.

  As seven-year-olds the operation was more complicated, but there was still relatively little risk involved. What actually caused Anna’s demise was an infection post-op and her death devastated everyone who had known her.

  I was destroyed beyond repair. I’m still reeling from her loss.

  She was a part of me then and she’s a part of me now. I still carry her name within mine – our parents made it that way, named us so we could never truly be parted, even if we one day chose to be physically so. The inside of the bracelet they gave me weeks before the operation is engraved with my name: HannaH.

  Anna had a near-identical one: hANNAh.

  My throat closes up.

  And then I’m in Sonny’s arms and he’s holding me tightly, crushing me against his chest, his hand cradling the back of my head and his breath warm against my hair.

  The weight I’ve been carrying slides from my shoulders and it is such a relief, such a blessed, blessed relief that I could burst into tears.

  Before I can entertain doing any such thing, I pull away, knowing that I can’t – don’t want to – lose it. I look up at his face to see that his dark eyelashes are spiked with tears.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he whispers, caressing my face with the back of his hand.

  I swallow, nodding fervently, then turn to walk towards the windmill. He swipes my hand, squeezes it hard, and barely lets it go for the rest of the walk.

  By the time we drive further north towards the home where I grew up, the clouds have grown even blacker and a golden light is spearing through the cracks. It’s the sort of weather that could lead to rainbows and it’s gratifyingly dramatic.

  I direct Sonny down a narrow country road. It’s in good shape now, but it used to be a dirt track, overgrown with grass and riddled with potholes. Whoever is living here has had it fixed up.

  That’s if the cottage even still stands. It’s been a few years since I’ve been back.

  The road winds around to the left and I’m on tenterhooks as we drive past the final copse of trees, then, there it is: a small whitewashed building with a low wonky red-tiled roof, crooked walls, lopsided windows and a tall fat central chimney.

  My heart squeezes. ‘Stop,’ I whisper.

  Sonny pulls over on the verge and waits patiently for instructions.

  ‘That’s where I used to live, kids,’ I say, doing my utmost to keep my voice light as I point out the front window.

  Natalie and Imogen lean forward.

  ‘Aw, it’s so cute!’ Natalie cries.

  ‘It looks like where Goldilocks would live!’ Imogen pipes up.

  ‘Where the three bears would live, you mean,’ Natalie corrects her.

  They continue to squabble as I stare, trying to absorb the scene before me, a lump in my throat.

  There’s no smoke spiralling out of the chimney. We almost always had a fire going. Not only because we had no central heating, but because my parents cooked directly over the flames in a cast-iron cauldron, everything from soups to casseroles. I feel a pang at the memory of larder cupboard shelves lined with homemade preserves that glittered red and orange when you held them up to the light.

  ‘They still have a vegetable garden.’ I point at the bean trellis off to the side of the house. Further back, behind a garden bursting with summer flowers, it’s possible to make out large leafy vegetables – cabbages, I think.

  ‘I wonder if they still have chickens. We used to keep them in the pen over there. And there’s the pond. We had
ducks too.’

  ‘Do you want to get out and take a closer look?’ Sonny asks. ‘It doesn’t appear that there’s anyone in, but I’m sure they wouldn’t mind you knocking on their door anyway, especially if you told them you used to live here.’

  ‘No, I’m good. You should never go back. It won’t be the same. They’ve done it up. I want to remember it how I remember it.’

  With its bowing ceilings, low beams, peeling paint and exposed floorboards.

  I blink back tears and smile at him. ‘But thank you for bringing me. We can go now.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ he asks hesitantly.

  I nod. ‘I’m sure.’

  He puts on music for the return journey and I sit and stare out of the window, lost in my thoughts. At one point he reaches across and takes my hand in his. The feeling of his steady warmth brings comfort to my aching heart.

  I feel a deep relief at having told him about Anna, but it doesn’t quell the pain. Nothing ever will. And there’s still so much I haven’t explained. I’m sure he has questions.

  ‘I’ll take the girls home first, okay?’ he checks with me in a low voice. ‘Shall we pick up a bite to eat on the way back to yours?’

  I nod, unable to ignore the churning in my stomach.

  He definitely has questions.

  Rochelle comes outside to say hello – I’d stayed in the car, but when I see her approaching, I open up the door and climb out, dangling my arms over the side. It would feel rude to speak to her through an open window, but I sense this is going to be a quick conversation.

  ‘Thank you for the book,’ she says with a reserved, slightly uncomfortable smile.

  I bought the girls a book about dragonflies in the gift shop at Wicken Fen. Couldn’t resist.

  ‘I hope they like it,’ I say as warmly as I can, maintaining eye contact with her even as Sonny joins us. He’s said goodbye to the girls – they’re already inside the house. ‘How are you?’ I ask politely.

  ‘Good, thanks. You? Nice day?’ she asks in turn.

  ‘Lovely.’

  It’s an awkward exchange, but it’s something. She’s trying and I’m grateful.

  I haven’t fully comprehended why she’s trying or why I’m grateful, but I decide to bury that one and examine it later.