The Ice Twins Read online

  Fifteen minutes later Angus and I walk out of the yellow-painted office, down the red-painted hall, and exit into the damp of an October evening. In Bedford Square, Bloomsbury.

  Angus has the deeds in his rucksack. They are finished; it is completed. I am looking at an altered world; my mood lifts commensurately.

  Big red buses roll down Gower Street, two storeys of blank faces staring out.

  Angus puts a hand on my arm. ‘Well done.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘That intervention. Nice timing. I was worried I was going to deck him.’

  ‘So was I.’ We look at each other. Knowing, and sad. ‘But we did it. Right?’

  Angus smiles. ‘We did, darling: we totally did it.’ He turns the collar of his coat against the rain. ‘But Sarah … I’ve got to ask, just one more time – you are absolutely sure?’

  I grimace; he hurries on: ‘I know, I know. Yes. But you still think this is the right thing? You really want’ – he gestures at the queued yellow lights of London taxis, glowing in the drizzle – ‘you really, truly want to leave all this? Give it up? Skye is so quiet.’

  ‘When a man is tired of London,’ I say, ‘he is tired of rain.’

  Angus laughs. And leans closer. His brown eyes are searching mine, maybe his lips are seeking my mouth. I gently caress one side of his jaw, and kiss him on his stubbled cheek, and I breathe him in – he doesn’t smell of whisky. He smells of Angus. Soap and masculinity. Clean and capable, the man I loved. Love. Will always love.

  Maybe we will have sex tonight, for the first time in too many weeks. Maybe we are getting through this. Can you ever get through this?

  We walk hand in hand down the street. Angus squeezes my hand tight. He’s done a lot of hand-holding this last year: holding my hand when I lay in bed crying, endlessly and wordlessly, night after night; holding my hand from the beginning to the end of Lydia’s appalling funeral, from I am the resurrection and the life all the way through to Be with us all evermore.

  Amen.

  ‘Tube or bus?’

  ‘Tube,’ I say. ‘Quicker. I want to tell Kirstie the good news.’

  ‘I hope she sees it like that.’

  I look at him. No.

  I can’t begin to entertain any uncertainty. If I stop and wonder, then the misgivings will surge and we will be stuck for ever.

  My words come in a rush, ‘Surely she will, Angus, she must do? We’ll have our own lighthouse, all that fresh air, red deer, dolphins …’

  ‘Aye, but remember, you’ve mainly seen pictures of it in summer. In the sun. Not always like that. Winters are dark.’

  ‘So in winter we will – what’s the word? – we’ll hunker down and defend ourselves. It’ll be an adventure.’

  We are nearly at the Tube. A black flash flood of commuters is disappearing down the steps: a torrent being swallowed by London Underground. I turn, momentarily, and look at the mistiness of New Oxford Street. The autumn fogs of Bloomsbury are a kind of ghost – or a visible memory – of Bloomsbury’s medieval marshes. I read that somewhere.

  I read a lot.

  ‘Come on.’

  This time I grasp Angus’s hand, and linked by our fingers we descend into the Tube, and we endure three stops in the rush-hour crowds, jammed together; then we squeeze into the rattling lifts at Mornington Crescent – and when we hit the surface, we are practically running.

  ‘Hey,’ Angus says, laughing. ‘Is this an Olympic event?’

  ‘I want to tell our daughter!’

  And I do, I do. I want to give my surviving daughter some good news, for once, some nice news: something happy and hopeful. Her twin Lydia died fourteen months ago today – I hate the way I can still measure the date so exactly, so easily – and she has had more than a year of anguish that I cannot comprehend: losing her identical twin, her second soul. She has been locked in an abyssal isolation of her own: for fourteen months. But now I can release her.

  Fresh air, mountains, sea lochs. And a view across the water to Knoydart.

  I am hurrying to the door of the big white house we should never have bought; the house in which we can no longer afford to live.

  Imogen is at the door. The house smells of kids’ food, new laundry and fresh coffee; it is bright. I am going to miss it. Maybe.

  ‘Immy, thanks for looking after her.’

  ‘Oh, please. Come on. Just tell me? Has it all gone through?’

  ‘Yes, we’ve got it, we’re moving!’

  Imogen claps her hands in delight: my clever, dark-haired, elegant friend who’s stuck with me all the way from college; she leans and hugs me, but I push her away, smiling.

  ‘I have to tell her, she knows nothing.’

  Imogen grins. ‘She’s in her room with the Wimpy Kid.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Reading that book!’

  Pacing down the hall I climb the stairs and pause at the door that says Kirstie Lives Here and Knock First spelled out in clumsily scissored letters made from glittery paper. I knock, as instructed.

  Then I hear a faint mmm-mmm. My daughter’s version of Come in.

  I push the door, and there is my seven-year-old girl, cross-legged on the floor in her school uniform – black trousers, white polo shirt – her little freckled nose close to a book: a picture of innocence but also of loneliness. The love and the sadness throbs inside me. I want to make her life better, so much, make her whole again, as best I can.

  ‘Kirstie …’

  She does not respond. Still reading. She sometimes does this. Playing a game, mmmNOT going to talk. It has become more frequent, this last year.

  ‘Kirstie. Moomin. Kirstie-koo.’

  Now she looks up, with those blue eyes she got from me, but bluer. Hebridean blue. Her blonde hair is almost white.

  ‘Mummy.’

  ‘I’ve got some news, Kirstie. Good news. Wonderful news.’

  Sitting myself on the floor, beside her, surrounded by little toys – by her penguins, and Leopardy the cuddly leopard, and the Doll With One Arm – I tell Kirstie everything. In a rush. How we are moving somewhere special, somewhere new, somewhere we can start again, somewhere beautiful and fresh and sparkling: our own island.

  Through it all Kirstie looks at me. Her eyes barely blinking. Taking it all in. Saying nothing, passive, as if entranced, returning my own silences to me. She nods, and half smiles. Puzzled, maybe. The room is quiet. I have run out of words.

  ‘So,’ I say. ‘What do you think? Moving to our own island? Won’t that be exciting?’

  Kirstie nods, gently. She looks down at her book, and closes it, and then she looks up at me again, and says:

  ‘Mummy, why do you keep calling me Kirstie?’

  I say nothing. The silence is ringing. I speak:

  ‘Sorry, sweetheart. What?’

  ‘Why do you keep calling me Kirstie, Mummy? Kirstie is dead. It was Kirstie that died. I’m Lydia.’

  2

  I stare at Kirstie. Trying to smile. Trying not to show my deep anxiety.

  There is surely some latent grief resurfacing here, in Kirstie’s developing mind; some confusion unique to twins who lose a co-twin, and I am used to this – to my daughters – to my daughter – being different.

  From the first time my own mother drove from Devon, in the depths of winter, to our little flat in Holloway – from the moment my mum looked at the twins paired in their cot, the two identical tiny babies sucking each other’s thumbs – from the moment my mother burst into a dazzled, amazed, giddy smile, her eyes wide with sincere wonder – I knew then that having twins was something even more impressive than the standard miracle of becoming a parent. With twins – especially identicals – you give birth to genetic celebrities. People who are impressive simply for existing.

  Impressive, and very different.

  My dad even gave them a nickname: the Ice Twins. Because they were born on the coldest, frostiest day of the year, with ice-blue eyes and snowy-blonde hair. The nickname felt a li
ttle melancholy: so I never properly adopted it. Yet I couldn’t deny that, in some ways, the name fitted. It caught their uncanniness.

  And that’s how special twins can be: they actually had a special name, shared between them.

  In which case, this piercingly calm statement from Kirstie – Mummy, I’m Lydia, it was Kirstie that died – could be just another example of twin-ness, just another symptom of their uniqueness. But even so, I am fighting panic, and the urge to cry. Because she’s reminding me of Lydia. And because I am worried for Kirstie.

  What terrible delusion is haunting her thoughts, to make her say these terrible words? Mummy, I’m Lydia, it was Kirstie that died. Why do you keep calling me Kirstie?

  ‘Sweetheart,’ I say to Kirstie, with a fake and deliberate calmness, ‘it’s time for bed soon.’

  She gives me that placid blue gaze, identical to her sister’s. She is missing a milk tooth from the top. Another one is wobbling, on the bottom. This is quite a new thing; until Lydia’s death both twins had perfect smiles: they were similarly late in losing their teeth.

  Holding the book a little higher, Kirstie says,

  ‘But actually the chapter is only three more pages. Did you know that?’

  ‘Is it really?’

  ‘Yes, look it actually ends here, Mummy.’

  ‘OK then, we can read three more pages to the end of the chapter. Why don’t you read them to me?’

  Kirstie nods, and turns to her book; she begins to read aloud.

  ‘I had to wrap myself up in toi-let paper so I didn’t get hypo … hy … po …’

  Leaning closer, I point out the word and begin to help. ‘Hypoth—’

  ‘No, Mummy.’ She laughs, softly. ‘No. I know it. I can say it!’

  ‘OK.’

  Kirstie closes her eyes, which is what she does when she really thinks hard, then she opens her eyes again, and reads: ‘So I didn’t get hy-po-thermia.’

  She’s got it. Quite a difficult word. But I am not surprised. There has been a rapid improvement in her reading, just recently. Which means …?

  I drive the thought away.

  Apart from Kirstie’s reading, the room is quiet. I presume Angus is downstairs with Imogen, in the distant kitchen; perhaps they are opening a bottle of wine, to celebrate the news. And why not? There have been too many bad days, with bad news, for fourteen months.

  ‘That’s how I spent a pretty big chunk of my sum-mer holidays …’

  While Kirstie reads, I hug her little shoulders, and kiss her soft blonde hair. As I do, I feel something small and jagged beneath me, digging into my thigh. Trying not to disturb Kirstie’s reading, trying not to think about what she said, I reach under.

  It is a small toy: a miniature plastic dragon we bought at London Zoo. But we bought it for Lydia. She especially liked dragons and alligators, all the spooky reptiles and monsters; Kirstie was – is – keener on lions and leopards, fluffier, bouncy, cuter, mammalian creatures. It was one of the things that differentiated them.

  ‘When I got to school today … every-one was acting all strange.’

  I examine the plastic dragon, turning it in my hand. Why is it here, lying on the floor? Angus and I carefully boxed all of Lydia’s toys in the months after it happened. We couldn’t bear to throw them away; that was too final, too primitive. So we put everything – toys and clothes, everything related exclusively to Lydia – in the loft: psychologically buried in the space above us.

  ‘The prob-lem with the Cheese Touch is that you’ve got it … un-til you can pass it on to some-one else …’

  Lydia adored this plastic dragon. I remember the afternoon we bought it; I remember Lydia skipping down Regent’s Park Road, waving the dragon in the air, dreaming of a pet dragon of her own, making us all smile. The memory suffuses me with sadness, so I discreetly slip the little dragon in the pocket of my jeans and calm myself, listening to Kirstie for a few more minutes, until the chapter is finished. She reluctantly closes the book and looks up at me: innocent, expectant.

  ‘OK darling. Definitely time for bed.’

  ‘But, Mummy.’

  ‘But, Mummy nothing. Come on, Kirstie.’

  A pause. It’s the first time I’ve used her name since she said what she said. Kirstie looks at me, puzzled, and frowning. Is she going to use those terrible words again?

  Mummy, I’m Lydia, it was Kirstie that died. Why do you keep calling me Kirstie?

  My daughter shakes her head, as if I am making a very basic mistake. Then she says, ‘OK, we’re going to bed.’

  We? We? What does she mean by ‘we’? The silent, creeping anxiety sidles up behind me, but I refuse to be worried. I am worried. But I am worried about nothing.

  We?

  ‘OK. Goodnight, darling.’

  This will all be gone tomorrow. Definitely. Kirstie just needs to go to sleep and to wake up in the morning, and then this unpleasant confusion will have disappeared, with her dreams.

  ‘It’s OK, Mummy. We can put our own ’jamas on, actually.’

  I smile, and keep my words neutral. If I acknowledge this confusion it might make things worse. ‘All right then, but we need to be quick. It’s really late now, and you’ve got a school day tomorrow.’

  Kirstie nods, sombrely. Looking at me.

  School.

  School.

  Another source of grief.

  I know – all-too-painfully, and all-too-guiltily – that she doesn’t like her school much. Not any more. She used to love it when she had her sister in the same class. The Ice Twins were the Mischief Sisters, then. Every schoolday morning I would strap them in the back of my car, in their monochrome uniforms, and as I drove up Kentish Town Road to the gates of St Luke’s I would watch them in the mirror: whispering and signalling to each other, pointing at people through the window, and collapsing in fits of laughter at in-jokes, at twin-jokes, at jokes that I never quite understood.

  Every time we did this – each and every morning – I felt pride and love and yet, also, sometimes I felt perplexity, because the twins were so entire unto themselves. Speaking their twin language.

  It was hard not to feel a little excluded, a lesser person in either of their lives than the identical and opposite person with whom they spent every minute of every day. Yet I adored them. I revered them.

  And now it’s all gone: now Kirstie goes to school alone, and she does it in silence. In the back of my car. Saying nothing. Staring in a trance-like way at a sadder world. She still has friends at the school, but they have not replaced Lydia. Nothing will ever come close to replacing Lydia. So maybe this is another good reason for leaving London: a new school, new friends, a playground not haunted by the ghost of her twin, giggling and miming.

  ‘You brushed your teeth?’

  ‘Immyjen did them, after tea.’

  ‘OK then, hop into bed. Do you want me to tuck you in?’

  ‘No. Mmm. Yes …’

  She has stopped saying ‘we’. The silly but disturbing confusion has passed? She climbs into bed and lays her face on the pillow and as she does she looks very small. Like a toddler again.

  Kirstie’s eyes are fluttering, and she is clutching Leopardy to her chest – and I am leaning to check the nightlight.

  Just as I have done, almost every evening, for six years.

  From the beginning, the twins were horribly scared of total darkness: it terrified them into special screams. After a year or so, we realized why: it was because, in pitch darkness, they couldn’t see each other. For that reason Angus and I have always been religiously careful to keep some light available to the girls: we’ve always had lamps and nightlights to hand. Even when the twins got their own rooms, they still wanted light, at night, as if they could see each other through walls: as long as they had enough light.

  Of course I wonder if, in time, this phobia will dwindle – now that one twin has gone for good, and cannot ever be seen. But for the moment it persists. Like an illness that should have gone away.


  The nightlight is fine.

  I set it down on the side table, and am turning to leave when Kirstie snaps her eyes open, and stares at me. Accusingly. Angrily? No. Not angry. But unsettled.

  ‘What?’ I say. ‘What is it? Sweetheart, you have to go to sleep.’

  ‘But, Mummy.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Beany!’

  The dog. Sawney Bean. Our big family spaniel. Kirstie loves the dog.

  ‘Will Beany be coming to Scotland with us?’

  ‘But, darling, don’t be silly. Of course!’ I say. ‘We wouldn’t leave him behind! Of course he’s coming!’

  Kirstie nods, placated. And then her eyes close and she grips Leopardy tight; and I can’t resist kissing her again. I do this all the time now: more than I ever did before. Angus used to be the tactile parent, the hugger and kisser, whereas I was the organizer, the practical mother: loving them by feeding them, and clothing them. But now I kiss my surviving daughter as if it is some fervent, superstitious charm: a way of averting further harm.

  The freckles on Kirstie’s pale skin are like a dusting of cinnamon on milk. As I kiss her, I breathe her in: she smells of toothpaste, and maybe the sweetcorn she had for supper. She smells of Kirstie. But that means she smells of Lydia. They always smelled the same. No matter what they did, they always smelled the same.

  A third kiss ensures she is safe. I whisper a quiet goodnight. Carefully I make my exit from her bedroom, with its twinkling nightlight; but as I quietly close the door, yet another thought is troubling me: the dog.

  Beany.

  What is it? Something about the dog concerns me; it agitates. But I’m not sure what. Or why.

  Alone on the landing, I think it over. Concentrating.

  We bought Beany three years ago: an excitable springer spaniel. That’s when we could afford a pedigree puppy.

  It was Angus’s idea: a dog to go with our first proper garden; a dog that matched our proximity to Regent’s Park. We called him Sawney Bean, after the Scottish cannibal, because he ate everything, especially chairs. Angus loved Beany, the twins loved Beany – and I loved the way they all interacted. I also adored, in a rather shallow way, the way they looked, two identically pretty little blonde girls, romping around Queen Mary’s Rose Garden – with a happy, cantering, mahogany-brown spaniel.