Книга - The Ice Twins

The Ice Twins
S. K. Tremayne


One of Sarah’s daughters died. But can she be sure which one? *THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLING NOVEL*A terrifying psychological thriller perfect for fans of THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN.A year after one of their identical twin daughters, Lydia, dies in an accident, Angus and Sarah Moorcraft move to the tiny Scottish island Angus inherited from his grandmother, hoping to put together the pieces of their shattered lives.But when their surviving daughter, Kirstie, claims they have mistaken her identity – that she, in fact, is Lydia – their world comes crashing down once again.As winter encroaches, Angus is forced to travel away from the island for work, Sarah is feeling isolated, and Kirstie (or is it Lydia?) is growing more disturbed. When a violent storm leaves Sarah and her daughter stranded, Sarah finds herself tortured by the past – what really happened on that fateful day one of her daughters died?























Copyright (#u220114fa-9c98-5466-bc97-f3d2f6b6f779)


Published by HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015

Copyright © S. K. Tremayne 2015

Photographs © S. K. Tremayne

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2015

Cover photographs © Alan Clarke / Archangel Images (girls), Shutterstock.com (http://Shutterstock.com) (all other images)

S. K. Tremayne asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books

Source ISBN: 9780007563036

Ebook Edition © JANUARY 2015 ISBN: 9780007459247

Version: 2017-10-18




Dedication (#u220114fa-9c98-5466-bc97-f3d2f6b6f779)


For my daughters


Table of Contents

Cover (#u74863922-81f3-5f10-b70f-ae0a78173c09)

Title Page (#ud2a4bc8d-e2a0-5006-93bd-2a7ecf13219e)

Copyright (#u342f20ae-cf61-5eb6-98db-616032e1ea10)

Dedication (#u53fa925d-1ac2-5762-aea4-e3a04b36a86f)

Author’s Note (#ub7091cc9-7542-5e95-8f69-1f64e59b9172)

Chapter 1 (#uc87c05fd-2dae-5399-9326-f47814686b65)

Chapter 2 (#u49b0efe9-189d-575d-8a64-f3dae7db8656)

Chapter 3 (#u1ca41f95-d7c3-5c76-b07f-e680e9397c52)

Chapter 4 (#u5656d56a-440f-5f95-b496-cbfddfb314ab)

Chapter 5 (#u8f5126b1-fd66-5e52-8232-4fcd9f825933)



Chapter 6 (#u5748d288-a5f4-5526-bb1f-13b5f03a3389)



Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)



Six Months Later (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)

Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)



About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)



About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)




Author’s Note (#u220114fa-9c98-5466-bc97-f3d2f6b6f779)


I would like to thank Joel Franklyn and Dede MacGillivray, Gus MacLean, Ben Timberlake, and, in particular, Angel Sedgwick, for their help with my research for this book.

Anyone who knows the Inner Hebrides will quickly notice the very strong resemblance between ‘Eilean Torran’ and the real Eilean Sionnach, off Isleornsay, in Skye. This is no coincidence: the book was inspired, in part, by a lifetime of visiting that beautiful tidal island, and staying in the whitewashed cottage under the lighthouse.

However, all the events and characters described herein are entirely fictional.

Editorially, I want to thank Jane Johnson, Helen Atsma, Kate Stephenson and Eugenie Furniss: without their encouragement, and wise advice, this book would not exist.

Finally, I owe a debt of gratitude to Hywel Davies and Elizabeth Doherty, for sowing the original seed, which grew into an idea: twins.










1 (#u220114fa-9c98-5466-bc97-f3d2f6b6f779)


Our chairs are placed precisely two yards apart. And they are both facing the big desk, as if we are a couple having marital therapy; a feeling I know too well. Dominating the room is a pair of lofty, uncurtained, eighteenth-century sash windows: twin portraits of a dark and dimming London sky.

‘Can we get some light?’ asks my husband, and the young solicitor, Andrew Walker, looks up from his papers, with maybe a tinge of irritation.

‘Of course,’ he says. ‘My apologies.’ He leans to a switch behind him, and two tall standing lamps flood the room with a generous yellow light, and those impressive windows go black.

Now I can see my reflection in the glazing: poised, passive, my knees together. Who is this woman?

She is not what I used to be. Her eyes are as blue as ever, yet sadder. Her face is slightly round, and pale, and thinner than it was. She is still blonde and tolerably pretty – but also faded, and dwindled; a thirty-three-year-old woman, with all the girlishness long gone.

And her clothes?

Jeans that were fashionable a year ago. Boots that were fashionable a year ago. Lilac cashmere jumper, quite nice, but worn: with that bobbling you get, from one too many washes. I wince at my mirrored self. I should have come smarter. But why should I have come smarter? We’re just meeting a lawyer. And changing our lives completely.

Traffic murmurs outside, like the deep but disturbed breathing of a dreaming partner. I wonder if I’m going to miss London traffic, the constant reassuring white noise: like those apps for your phone that help you sleep – by mimicking the ceaseless rushing sounds of blood in the womb, the mother’s heartbeat throbbing in the distance.

My twins would have heard that noise, when they were rubbing noses inside me. I remember seeing them on the second sonogram. They looked like two heraldic symbols on a coat of arms, identical and opposed. The unicorn and the unicorn.

Testator. Executor. Legitim. Probate …

Andrew Walker is addressing us as if we are a lecture room, and he is a professor who is mildly disappointed with his students.

Bequeathed. Deceased. Inheritor. Surviving Children.

My husband Angus sighs, with suppressed impatience; I know that sigh. He is bored, probably irritated. And I understand this; but I also have sympathy for the solicitor. This can’t be easy for Walker. Facing an angry, belligerent father, and a still-grieving mother, while sorting a problematic bequest: we must be tricky. So his careful, slow, precise enunciation is maybe his way of distancing, of handling difficult material. Maybe it is the legal equivalent of medical terminology. Duodenal hematomas and serosal avulsions, leading to fatal infantile peritonitis.

A sharp voice cuts across.

‘We’ve been through all of this.’

Has Angus had a drink? His tone skirts the vicinity of anger. Angus has been angry since it happened. And he has been drinking a lot, too. But he sounds quite lucid today, and is, presumably, sober.

‘We’d like to get this done before climate change really kicks in. You know?’

‘Mr Moorcroft, as I have already said, Peter Kenwood is on holiday. We can wait for him to come back if you prefer—’

Angus shakes his head. ‘No. We want to get it done now.’

‘Then I have to go through the documents again, and the pertinent issues – for my own satisfaction. Moreover, Peter feels … well …’

I watch. The solicitor hesitates, and his next words are tighter, and even more carefully phrased:

‘As you are aware, Mr Moorcroft, Peter considers himself a long-standing family friend. Not just a legal advisor. He knows the circumstances. He knew the late Mrs Carnan, your grandmother, very well. He therefore asked me to make sure, once again, that you both know exactly what you are getting into.’

‘We know what we are doing.’

‘The island is, as you are aware, barely habitable.’ Andrew Walker shrugs, uncomfortably – as if this dilapidation is somehow his company’s fault, but he is keen to avoid a potential lawsuit. ‘The lighthouse-keeper’s cottage has, I am afraid, been left to the elements, no one has been there in years. But it is listed, so you can’t completely demolish and start again.’

‘Yup. Know all this. Went there a lot as a kid. Played in the rock pools.’

‘But are you truly apprised of the challenges, Mr Moorcroft? This is really quite an undertaking. There are issues concerning accessibility, with the tidal mudflats, and of course there are various and salient problems with plumbing, and heating, and electrics in general – moreover there is no money in the will, nothing to—’

‘We’re apprised to the eyeballs.’

A pause. Walker glances at me, then at Angus again. ‘I understand you are selling your house in London?’

Angus stares back. Chin tilted. Defiant.

‘Sorry? What’s that got to do with anything?’

The solicitor shakes his head. ‘Peter is concerned. Because … ah … Given your recent tragic bereavement … he wants to be absolutely sure.’

Angus glances my way. I shrug, uncertainly. Angus leans forward.

‘OK. Whatever. Yes. We’re selling the house in Camden.’

‘And this sale means you will realize enough capital to enable renovations to Ell—’ Andrew Walker frowns. At the words he is reading. ‘I can’t quite pronounce it. Ell …?’

‘Eilean Torran. Scots Gaelic. It means Thunder Island. Torran Island.’

‘Yes. Of course. Torran Island. So you hope to realize sufficient funds from the sale of your present house, to renovate the lighthouse-keeper’s cottage on Torran?’

I feel as if I should say something. Surely I must say something. Angus is doing all the work. Yet my muteness is comforting, a cocoon, I am wrapped in my silence. As ever. This is my thing. I’ve always been quiet, if not reserved; and it has exasperated Angus for years. What are you thinking? Tell me. Why do I have to do all the talking? And when he says that, I usually shrug and turn away; because sometimes saying nothing says it all.

And here I am, silent again. Listening to my husband.

‘We’ve already got two mortgages on the Camden house. I lost my job, we’re struggling. But yeah, I hope we’ll make a few quid.’

‘You have a buyer?’

‘Busting to write a cheque.’ Angus is obviously repressing anger, but he goes on. ‘Look. My grandmother left the island to me and my brother in her will. Right?’

‘Of course.’

‘And my brother, very generously, says he doesn’t want it. Right? My mother is in a home. Yep? The island therefore belongs to me, my wife, and my daughter. Yes?’

Daughter. Singular.

‘Indeed—’

‘So that’s that. Surely? We want to move. We really want to move. Yes, it’s in a state. Yes, it’s falling down. But we’ll cope. We have, after all’ – Angus sits back – ‘been through worse.’

I look, quite intently, at my husband.

If I was meeting him now, for the first time, he would still be very attractive. A tall, smart guy in his thirties, with three days of agreeable stubble. Dark-eyed, masculine, capable.

Angus had a tinge of stubble when we first met, and I liked that; I liked the way it emphasized his jawline. He was one of the few men I had met who could happily own the word handsome, sitting in that large, noisy, Covent Garden tapas bar.

He was laughing, at a big table, with a bunch of friends: all in their mid-twenties. Me and my friends were on the next table over. Slightly younger, but just as cheerful. Everyone was drinking plenty of Rioja.

And so it happened. One of the guys tossed a joke our way; someone came back with a teasing insult. And then the tables mingled: we shifted and squashed, and budged up, laughing and joking, and swapping names: this is Zoe, this is Sacha, this is Alex, Imogen, Meredith …

And this is Angus Moorcroft, and this is Sarah Milverton. He’s from Scotland and he’s twenty-six. She’s half English, half American, and she’s twenty-three. Now spend the rest of your lives together.

The rush-hour traffic grows louder outside; I am stirred from my reverie. Andrew Walker is getting Angus to sign some more documents. And oh, I know this procedure: we’ve signed so very many documents this last year. The paperwork that attends upon disaster.

Angus is hunched over the desk, scribbling his name. His hand looks too big for the pen. Turning away, I stare at a picture of Old London Bridge on the yellow-painted wall. I want to reminisce a little more, and distract myself. I want to think about Angus and me: that first night.

I remember it all, so vividly. From the music – Mexican salsa – to the mediocre tapas: luridly red patatas bravas, vinegary white asparagus. I remember the way other people drifted off – gotta get the last Tube, got to get some sleep – as if they all sensed that he and I were matched, that this was something more important than your average Friday-night flirtation.

How easily it turns. What would my life be now, if we’d taken a different table, gone to a different bar? But we chose that bar, that night, and that table, and by midnight I was sitting alone, right next to this tall guy: Angus Moorcroft. He told me he was an architect. He told me he was Scottish, and single. And then he told a clever joke – which I didn’t realize was a joke until a minute later. And as I laughed, I realized he was looking at me: deeply, questioningly.

So I looked right back at him. His eyes were a dark, solemn brown; his hair was wavy, and thick, and very black; and his teeth were white and sharp against his red lips and dark stubble, and I knew the answer. Yes.

Two hours later we stole our first drunken kiss, under the approving moon, in a corner of Covent Garden piazza. I remember the glisten of the rainy cobblestones as we embraced: the chilly sweetness of the evening air. We slept together, the very same night.

Nearly a year after that, we married. After barely two years of marriage, we had the girls: identical twin sisters. And now there is one twin left.

The pain rises inside me: and I have to put a fist to my mouth to suppress the shudder. When will it go away? Maybe never? It is like a war-wound, like shrapnel inside the flesh, making its way to the surface, over years.

So maybe I have to speak. To quell the pain: to quiet my thoughts. I’ve been sitting here for half an hour, docile and muted, like some Puritan housewife. I rely on Angus to do the talking, too often; to provide what is missing in me. But enough of my silence, for now.

‘If we do the island up, it could be worth a million.’

Both men turn to me. Abruptly. She speaks!

‘That view,’ I say, ‘is worth a million by itself, overlooking the Sound of Sleat. Towards Knoydart.’

I am very careful to pronounce it properly: Sleat to rhyme with slate. I have done my research; endless research, Googling images and histories.

Andrew smiles, politely.

‘And, ah, have you been there, Mrs Moorcroft?’

I blush; yet I don’t care.

‘No. But I’ve seen the pictures, read the books – that’s one of the most famous views in Scotland, and we will have our own island.’

‘Indeed. Yes. However—’

‘There was a house in Ornsay village, on the mainland, half a mile from Torran …’ I glance at the note stored in my phone, though I remember the facts well enough. ‘It sold for seven hundred and fifty thousand on January fifteenth this year. A four-bedroom house, with a nice garden and a bit of decking. All very pleasant, but not exactly a mansion. But it had a spectacular view of the Sound – and that is what people pay for. Seven hundred and fifty k.’

Angus looks at me, and nods encouragement. Then he joins in.

‘Aye. And if we do it up, we could have five bedrooms, an acre – the cottage is big enough. Could be worth a million. Easily.’

‘Well, yes, Mr Moorcroft, it’s worth barely fifty thousand now, but yes, there is potential.’

The solicitor is smiling, in a faked way. I am struck with curiosity: why is he so blatantly reluctant for us to move to Torran? What does he know? What is Peter Kenwood’s real involvement? Perhaps they were going to make an offer themselves? That makes sense: Kenwood has known of Torran for years, he knew Angus’s grandmother, he would be fully apprised of the unrealized value.

Was this what they were planning? If so, it would be seductively simple. Just wait for Angus’s grandmother to die. Then pounce on the grandkids, especially on a grieving and bewildered couple: shell-shocked by a child’s death, reeling from ensuing financial strife. Offer them a hundred thousand, twice as much as needed, be generous and sympathetic, smile warmly yet sadly. It must be difficult, but we can help, take this burden away. Sign on the line …

After that: a stroll. Ship a busload of Polish builders to Skye, invest two hundred thousand, wait for a year until the work is done.

This beautiful property, located on its own island, on the famous Sound of Sleat, is for sale at £1.25 million, or nearest offer …

Was that their plan? Andrew Walker is gazing at me and I feel a twinge of guilt. I am probably being horribly unfair to Kenwood and Partners. But whatever their motivation, there is no way I am giving up this island: it is my exit route, it is an escape from the grief, and the memories – and the debts and the doubts.

I have dreamed about it too much. Stared at the glowing pictures on my laptop screen, at three a.m., in the kitchen. When Kirstie is asleep in her room and Angus is in bed doped with Scotch. Gazing at the crystal beauty. Eilean Torran. On the Sound of Sleat. Lost in the loveliness of the Inner Hebrides, this beautiful property, on its very own island.

‘OK then. I just need a couple more signatures,’ says Andrew Walker.

‘And we’re done?’

A significant pause.

‘Yes.’

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 (#u220114fa-9c98-5466-bc97-f3d2f6b6f779)


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 little 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.

Tourists would actually point and take photos. I was virtually a stage mother. Oh, she has those lovely twins. With the beautiful dog. You know.

Leaning against a wall, I close my eyes, to think more clearly. I can hear distant noises from the kitchen downstairs: cutlery rattling on a table, or maybe a bottle-opener being returned to a drawer.

What is it about Beany that feels wrong? There is definitely some troubled thought that descends from the concept dog – yet I cannot trace it, cannot follow it through the brambles of memory and grief.

Downstairs, the front door slams shut. The noise breaks the spell.

‘Sarah Moorcroft,’ I say, opening my eyes, ‘Get a grip.’

I need to go down and talk to Immy and have a glass of wine and then go to bed, and tomorrow Kirstie – Kirstie – will go to school with her red book bag, wearing her black woollen jumper. The one with Kirstie Moorcroft written on the label inside.

In the kitchen, I find Imogen sitting at the counter. She smiles, tipsily, the faint tannin staining of red wine on her neat white teeth.

‘Afraid Gus has nipped out.’

‘Yes?’

‘Yeah. He had a minor panic attack about the booze supply. You’ve only got’ – she turns and looks at the wine rack by the fridge – ‘six bottles left. So he’s gone to Sainsbury’s to stock up. Took Beany with him.’

I laugh, politely, and pull up a stool.

‘Yes. Sounds like Angus.’

I pour myself half a glass of red from the open bottle on the counter, glancing at the label. Cheap Chilean Merlot. It used to be fancy Barossa Shiraz. I don’t care.

Imogen watches me, and she says: ‘He’s still drinking a bit, ah, you know – excessively?’

‘That’s a nice way of putting it, Immy: “a bit excessively”. He lost his job because he got so drunk he punched his boss. And knocked him out.’

Imogen nods. ‘Sorry. Yes. Can’t help talking in euphemisms. Comes with the day job.’ She tilts her head and smiles. ‘But the boss was a jerk, right?’

‘Yes. His boss was totally obnoxious, but it’s still not great, is it? Breaking the nose of London’s richest architect.’

‘Uh-huh. Sure …’ Imogen smiles slyly. ‘Though, y’know, it’s not all bad. I mean, at least he can throw a punch – like a man. Remember that Irish guy I dated, last year – he used to wear yoga pants.’

She smirks my way; I force half a smile.

Imogen is a journalist like me, though a vastly more successful one. She is a deputy editor on a women’s gossip magazine that, miraculously, has a growing circulation; I scrape an unreliable living as a freelancer. This might have made me jealous of her, but our friendship is, or was, evened out by the fact I got married and had kids. She is single and childless. We used to compare notes – what my life could have been.

Now I lean back, holding my wine glass airily: trying to be relaxed. ‘Actually he’s not drinking as much as he used to.’

‘Good.

‘But it’s still too late. For his career at Kimberley.’

Imogen nods sympathetically – and drinks. I sip at my wine, and sigh in a what-can-you-do way, and gaze around our big bright Camden kitchen, at all the granite worktops and shining steel, the black espresso machine with its set of golden capsules: all of it screaming: this is the kitchen of a well-to-do middle-class couple!

And all of it a lie.

We were a well-to-do middle-class couple, for a while, after Angus got promoted three times in three years. For a long time everything was pristinely optimistic: Angus was heading for a partnership and a handsome salary, and I was more than happy for him to be the main earner, the provider, because this allowed me to combine my part-time journalism with proper mothering. It allowed me to do the school run, to make cooked but healthy breakfasts, to stand in the kitchen turning basil into organic pesto when the twins were playing on one of our iPads. For half a decade we were, most of the time, the perfect Camden family.

Then Lydia died, falling from the balcony at my parents’ house in Devon, and it was as if someone had dropped Angus from a height. A hundred thousand pieces of Angus were scattered around the place. His grief was psychotic. A raging fire of anguish that could not be quenched, even with a bottle of whisky a night, much as he tried. Every night.

The firm gave him latitude, and weeks off, but it wasn’t enough. He was uncontrollable; he went back to work too soon and got into arguments, then fights. He resigned an hour before he was sacked; ten hours after he punched the boss. And he hasn’t worked since, apart from a few freelance design jobs pushed his way by sympathetic friends.

‘Sod it, Imogen,’ I say. ‘At least we’re moving. At last.’

‘Yes!’ she says brightly. ‘Into a cave, right, in Shetland?’

She’s teasing. I don’t mind. We used to tease each other all the time, before the accident.

Now our relationship is more stilted; but we make an effort. Other friendships ended entirely, after Lydia’s death: too many people didn’t know what to say, so they said nothing. By contrast, Imogen keeps trying: nurturing the low flame of our friendship.

I look at her, and say,

‘Torran Island, you remember? I’ve shown you photos, every time you’ve come here, for the last month.’

‘Ah yes. Torran! The famous homeland. But tell me again, I like it.’

‘It’s going to be great, Immy – if we don’t freeze. Apparently there are rabbits, and otters, and seals—’

‘Fantastic. I love seals.’

‘You do?’

‘Oh yes. Especially the pups. Can you sort me out a coat?’

I laugh – sincerely, but guiltily. Imogen and I share a sense of humour; but hers is wickeder. She goes on. ‘So this place. Torran. Remind me. You still haven’t been there?’

‘Nope.’

‘Sarah. How can you move to a place you’ve never even seen?’

Silence.

I finish my glass of Merlot and pour some more. ‘I told you. I don’t want to see it.’

Another pause.

‘Uh-huh?’

‘Immy, I don’t want to see it for real, because – what if I don’t like it?’ I stare into her wide green eyes. ‘Mmm? What then? Then I’m stuck here, Imogen. Stuck here with everything, all the memories, the money problems, everything. We’re out of cash anyway, so we’ll have to move to some stupid tiny flat, back where we started, and – and then what? I’ll have to go out to work and Angus will go stir crazy and it’s just – just – you know – I have to get out, we have to get out, and this is it: the way of escape. And it does look so beautiful in the photos. It does, it does: so bloody beautiful. It’s like a dream, but who cares? I want a dream. Right this minute, that’s exactly what I want. Because reality has been pretty fucking crap for a while now.’

The kitchen is quiet. Imogen raises her glass and she gently chinks mine and says: ‘Darling. It will be lovely. I’m just going to miss you.’

We lock eyes, briefly, and moments later Angus is in the kitchen; his overcoat speckled with cold autumn rain. He is carrying wine in doubled orange plastic bags – and leading the dampened dog. Carefully he sets the bags on the floor, then unleashes Beany.

‘Here you go, boy.’

The spaniel shivers and wags his tail and heads straight for his wicker basket. Meanwhile I extract the wine bottles, and set them up on the counter; like a small but important parade.

‘Well, that should last an hour,’ Imogen says, staring at all the wine.

Angus grabs a bottle and unscrews it.

‘Ach. Sainsbury’s is a battleground. I’m not gonna miss the Camden junkies, buying their lemon juice.’

Imogen tuts. ‘Wait till you’re three hundred miles from the nearest truffle oil.’

Angus laughs – and it is a good laugh, a natural laugh. Like a laugh from before it all happened. And finally I relax; though I also remember that I want to ask him about the little toy: the plastic dragon. How did that end up in Kirstie’s bedroom? It was Lydia’s. It was boxed and hidden away, I am sure of it.

But why ruin this rare and agreeable evening with an interrogation? The question can wait for another day. Or for ever.

Our glasses replenished, we sit and chat and have an impromptu kitchen-picnic: rough slices of ciabatta dipped in olive oil, thick chunks of cheap saucisson. And for an hour or more we talk, companionably, contentedly – like the three old friends we are. Angus explains how his brother – living in California – has generously forgone his share of the inheritance.

‘David’s earning a shedload, in Silicon Valley. Doesn’t need the cash or the hassle. And he knows that we DO need it.’ Angus swallows his saucisson.

Imogen interrupts: ‘But what I don’t understand, Gus, is how come your granny owned this island in the first place? I mean’ – she chews an olive – ‘don’t be offended, but I thought your dad was a serf, and you and your mum lived in an outside toilet. Yet suddenly here’s grandmother with her own island.’

Angus chuckles. ‘Nan was on my mother’s side, from Skye. They were just humble farmers, one up from crofters. But they had a smallholding, which happened to include an island.’

‘OK … ’

‘It’s pretty common. There’re thousands of little islands in the Hebrides, and fifty years ago a one-acre island of seaweed off Ornsay was worth about three quid. So it just never got sold. Then my mum moved down to Glasgow, and Nan followed, and Torran became, like, a holiday place. For me and my brother.’

I finish my husband’s story for him, as he fetches more olive oil: ‘Angus’s mum met Angus’s dad in Glasgow. She was a primary school teacher, he worked in the docks—’

‘He, uh … drowned, right?’

‘Yes. An accident at the docks. Quite tragic, really.’

Angus interrupts, walking back: ‘The old man was a soak. And a wife-beater. Not sure tragic is the word.’

We all stare at the three remaining bottles of wine on the counter. Imogen speaks: ‘But still – where does the lighthouse and the cottage fit in? How did they get there? If your folks were poor?’

Angus replies, ‘Northern Lighthouse Board run all the lighthouses in Scotland. Last century, whenever they needed to build a new one, they would offer a bit of cash in ground rent to the property owner. That’s what happened on Torran. But then the lighthouse got automated. In the sixties. So the cottage was vacated. And it reverted to my family.’

‘Stroke of luck?’ says Imogen.

‘Looking back, aye,’ says Angus. ‘We got a big, solidly built cottage. For nothing.’

A voice from upstairs intrudes.

‘Mummy …?’

It’s Kirstie. Awakened. And calling from the landing. This happens quite a lot. Yet her voice, especially when heard unexpectedly, always gives me a brief, repressed, upwelling of grief. Because it sounds like Lydia.

I want these drowning feelings to stop.

‘Mummyyy?’

Angus and I share a resigned glance: both of us mentally calculating the last time this happened. Like two very new parents squabbling over whose turn it is to baby-feed, at three a.m.

‘I’ll go,’ I say. ‘It’s my turn.’

And it is: the last time Kirstie woke up, after one of her nightmares, was just a few days ago, and Angus had loyally traipsed upstairs to do the comforting.

Setting down my wine glass, I head for the first floor. Beany is following me, eagerly, as if we are going rabbiting; his tail whips against the table legs.

Kirstie is barefoot, at the top of the stairs. She is the image of troubled innocence with her big blue eyes, and with Leopardy pressed to her buttoned pyjama-top.

‘It did it again, Mummy, the dream.’

‘Come on, Moomin. It’s just a bad dream.’

I pick her up – she is almost too heavy, these days – and carry her back into the bedroom. Kirstie is, it seems, not too badly flustered; though I wish this repetitive nightmare would stop. As I tuck her in her bed, again, she is already half-closing her eyes, even as she talks.

‘It was all white, Mummy, all around me, I was stuck in a room, all white, all faces staring at me.’

‘Shhhhh.’

‘It was white and I was scared and I couldn’t move then and then … then …’

‘Shushhh.’

I stroke her faintly fevered, blemishless forehead. Her eyelids flicker towards sleep. But a whimpering, from behind me, stirs her.

The dog has followed me into the bedroom.

Kirstie searches my face for a favour.

‘Can Beany stay with me, Mummy? Can he sleep in my room tonight?’

I don’t normally allow this. But tonight I just want to go back downstairs, and drink another glass, with Immy and Angus.

‘All right, Sawney Bean can stay, just this once.’

‘Beany!’ Kirstie leans up from her pillow, and reaches a little hand and jiggles the dog’s ears.

I stare at my daughter, meaningfully.

‘Thuh?’

‘Thank you, Mummy.’

‘Good. Now you must go back to sleep. School tomorrow.’

She hasn’t called herself ‘we’, she hasn’t called herself ‘Lydia’. This is a serious relief. When she settles her head on the cool pillow I walk to the door.

But as I back away, my eyes fix on the dog.

He is lying by Kirstie’s bed, and his head is meekly tilted, ready for sleep.

And now the sense of dread returns. Because I’ve worked it out: what was troubling me. The dog. The dog is behaving differently.

From the day we bought Beany home to our ecstatic little girls, his relationship with the twins was marked – yet it was, also, differentiated. My twins might have been identical, but Sawney did not love them identically.

With Kirstie, the first twin, the buoyant twin, the surviving twin, the leader of mischief, the girl sleeping in this bed, right now, in this room, Beany is extrovert: jumping up at her when she gets home from school, chasing her playfully down the hall – making her scream in delighted terror.

With Lydia, the quieter twin, the more soulful twin, the twin that used to sit and read with me for hours, the twin that fell to her death last year, our spaniel was always gentle, as if sensing her more vulnerable personality. He would nuzzle her, and press his paws on her lap: amiable and warm.

And Sawney Bean also liked to sleep in Lydia’s room if he could, even though we usually chased him out; and when he did come in to her room, he would lie by her bed at night, and tilt his head, meekly.

As he is doing now, with Kirstie.

I stare at my hands; they have a fine tremor. The anxiety is like pins and needles.

Because Beany is not extrovert with Kirstie any more. He behaves with Kirstie exactly as he used to with Lydia.

Gentle. Nuzzling. Soft.

The self-questioning surges. When did the dog’s behaviour change? Right after Lydia’s death? Later?

I strive, but I cannot remember. The last year has been a blur of grief: so much has altered I have paid no attention to the dog. So what has happened? Is it possible the dog is, somehow, grieving? Can an animal mourn? Or is it something else, something worse?

I have to investigate this: I can’t let it lie. Quickly I exit Kirstie’s room, leaving her to her reassuring nightlight; then I pace five yards to the next door. Lydia’s old room.

We have transformed Lydia’s room into an office space: trying, unsuccessfully, to erase the memories with work. The walls are lined with books, mostly mine. And plenty of them – at least half a shelf – are about twins.

When I was pregnant I read every book I could find on this subject. It’s the way I process things: I read about them. So I read books on the problems of twin prematurity, books on the problems on twin individuation, books that told me how a twin is more closely related, genetically, to her co-twin, to her twin sibling, than she is to her parents, or even her own children.

And I also read something about twins and dogs. I am sure.

Urgently I search the shelves. This one? No. This one? Yes.

Pulling down the book – Multiple Births: A Practical Guide – I flick hurriedly to the index.

Dogs, page 187.

And here it is. This is the paragraph I remembered.

Identical twins can sometimes be difficult to physically differentiate, well into their teenage years – even, on occasion, for their parents. Curiously, however, dogs do not have the same difficulty. Such is the canine sense of smell, a dog – a family pet, for instance – can, after a few weeks, permanently differentiate between one twin and another, by scent alone.

The book rests in my hands; but my eyes are staring into the total blackness of the uncurtained window. Piecing together the evidence.

Kirstie’s personality has become quieter, shyer, more reserved, this last year. More like Lydia’s. Until now I had ascribed this to grief. After all, everyone has changed this last year.

But what if we have made a terrible mistake? The most terrible mistake imaginable? How would we unravel it? What could we do? What would it do to all of us? I know one thing: I cannot tell my fractured husband any of this. I cannot tell anyone. There is no point in dropping this bomb. Not until I am sure. But how do I prove this, one way or another?

Dry-mouthed and anxious, I walk out onto the landing. I stare at the door. And those words written in spangled, cut-out paper letters.

Kirstie Lives Here.




3 (#u220114fa-9c98-5466-bc97-f3d2f6b6f779)


I once read a survey that explained how moving house is as traumatic as a divorce, or as the death of a parent. I feel the opposite: for the two weeks after our meeting with Walker – for the two weeks after Kirstie said what she said – I am fiercely pleased that we are moving house, because it means I am overworked and, at least sometimes, distracted.

I like the thirst-inducing weariness in my arms as I lift cases from lofty cupboards, I like the tang of old dust in my mouth as I empty and scour the endless bookshelves.

But the doubts will not be entirely silenced. At least once a day I compare the history of the twins’ upbringing with the details of Lydia’s death. Is it possible, could it be possible, that we misidentified the daughter we lost?

I don’t know. And so I am stalling. For the last two weeks whenever I’ve dropped Kirstie off at school, I’ve called her ‘darling’ and ‘Moomin’ and anything-but-her-real-name, because I am scared she will turn and give me her tranced, passive, blue-eyed stare and say I’m Lydia. Not Kirstie. Kirstie is dead. One of us is dead. We’re dead. I’m alive. I’m Lydia. How could you get that wrong, Mummy? How did you do that? How?

And after that I get to work, to stop myself thinking.

Today I am tackling the toughest job. As Angus has left, on an early flight to Scotland, preparing the way, and as Kirstie is in school – Kirstie Jane Kerrera Moorcroft – I am going to sort the loft. Where we keep what is left of Lydia. Lydia May Tanera Moorcroft.

Standing under the hinged wooden trapdoor, I position the unfeasibly light aluminium stepladder, and pause. Helpless. Thinking again.

Start from the beginning, Sarah Moorcroft. Work it out.

Kirstie and Lydia.

We gave the twins different-but-related names because we wanted to emphasize their individuality, yet acknowledge their unique twin status: just as all the books and websites advised. Kirstie was named thus by her dad, as it was his beloved grandmother’s name. Scottish, sweet, and lyrical.

By way of equity, I was allowed to choose Lydia’s name. I made it classical, indeed ancient Greek. Lydia. I chose this partly because I love history, and partly because I am very fond of the name Lydia, and partly because it was not like Kirstie at all.

I chose the second names, May and Jane, for my grandmothers. Angus chose the third names, for two little Scottish islands: Kerrera and Tanera.

A week after the twins were born – long before we made the ambitious move to Camden – we ferried our precious, newborn, identical babies in the back of the car, through the freezing sleet, home to our humble apartment. And we were so pleased with the result of our name-making efforts, we laughed and kissed, exultantly, as we parked – and said the names over and over.

Kirstie Jane Kerrera Moorcroft.

Lydia May Tanera Moorcroft.

As far as we were concerned, we had names that were subtly intertwined, and apposite for twins; we had names that were poetic and pretty and nicely paired, without going anywhere near Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

So what happened then?

It is time to sort the loft.

Climbing the stepladder, I shove hard against the trapdoor – and with a painful creak it flies open, quite suddenly, slamming against the rafters with a smash. The sound is so loud, so obtrusive, it makes me hesitate, tingling with nerves: as if there is something up here, asleep – which I might have just woken.

Pulling the torch from the back pocket of my jeans, I switch it on. And direct it upwards.

The square of blackness stares down at me. A swallowing void. Again, I hesitate. I am trying to deny that frisson of fear. But it is there. I am alone in the house – apart from Beany, who is sleeping in his basket in the kitchen. I can hear the November rain pattering on the slates of the roof above me, up there in the blackness. Like many fingernails tapping in irritation.

Tap tap tap.

Anxieties stir in my mind. I climb another rung on the stepladder, thinking about Kirstie and Lydia.

Tap Tap Tap. Kirstie And Lydia.

When we brought the twins home from hospital, we realized that, yes, we might have sorted the names satisfactorily, but we still had another dilemma: differing between them in person was much harder.

Because our twins matched. Superbly. They were amongst the most identical of identicals, they were the kind of brilliant ‘idents’ that made nurses from other wards cross long corridors, just to ogle our amazing twins.

Some monozygotic twins are not that identical at all. They have different skin tones, different blemishes, very different voices. Others are mirror-image twins, they are identical but their identicality is that of a reflection in the mirror, left and right are switched: one twin will have hair that swirls clockwise, the other will have hair that swirls anti-clockwise.

But Kirstie and Lydia Moorcroft were true idents: they had identically snowy-blonde hair, exactly matching icy-blue eyes, precisely the same button-noses, the same sly and playful smiles, the same perfect pink mouths when they yawned, the same creases and giggles and freckles and moles. They were mirror images, without the reversal.

Tap, tap, tap …

Slowly and carefully, maybe a little timidly, I ascend the last rungs of the ladder and peer into the gloom of the attic, following the beam of my torch. Still thinking. Still remembering. My torch-beam picks out the brown metal frame of a Maclaren twin buggy. It cost us a fortune at the time, but we didn’t care. We wanted the twins to sit side by side, staring ahead, even as we wheeled them around. Because they were a team from birth. Babbling their twinspeak, entirely engrossed in each other: just as they had been from conception.

Through my pregnancy, as we went from one sonogram to the next, I actually watched the twins move closer, inside me – going from body contacts in week 12, to ‘complex embraces’ in week 14. By week 16, as my paediatrician pointed out, my twins were occasionally kissing.

The noise of the rain is more persistent now, like an irritated hiss. Hurry up. We’rewaiting. Hurry up.

I do not need encouragement to hurry. I want to get this job done. Briskly I scan the darkness – and my torch-beam alights on an old, deflated Thomas the Tank Engine daybed. Thomas the Tank Engine leers at me, dementedly cheerful. Red and yellow and clownish. That can definitely stay. Along with the other daybed, which must be up here. The blue one we bought for Kirstie.

Daughter one. Daughter two. Yellow and blue.

At first, we differentiated our babies by painting one of their respective fingernails, or toenails, yellow or blue. Yellow was for Lydia, because it rhymed with her nickname: Lydee-lo. Yell-ow. Blue was for Kirstie. Kirstie-koo.

This nail-varnishing was a compromise. A nurse at the hospital advised us to have one of the twins tattooed in a discreet place: on a shoulder-blade, perhaps, or at the top of an ankle – just a little indelible mark, so there could be no mistake. But we resisted this notion, as it seemed far too drastic, even barbaric: tattooing one of our perfect, innocent, flawless new children? No.

Yet we couldn’t do nothing. So we relied on nail varnish, diligently and carefully applied once a week, for a year. After that – until we were able to distinguish them by their distinctive personalities, and by their own responses to their own names – we relied on the differing clothes we gave the girls; some of the same clothes that are now bagged in this dusty loft.

As with the nail varnish, we had yellow clothes for Lydie-lo. Blue clothes for Kirstie-koo. We didn’t dress them entirely in block colours; a yellow girl and a blue girl, but we made sure that Kirstie always had a blue jumper, or blue socks, or blue bobble hat, while the other was blue-less; meanwhile Lydia had a yellow T-shirt, or maybe a dark yellow ribbon in her pale yellow hair.

Hurry now. Hurry up.

I want to hurry, but it also seems wrong. How can I be businesslike up here? In this place? The cardboard boxes marked L for Lydia are everywhere. Accusing, silent, loaded. The boxes that contain her life.

I want to shout her name: Lydia. Lydia. Come back. Lydia May Tanera Moorcroft. I want to shout her name like I did when she died, when I stared down from the balcony, and saw her little body, splayed and yet crumpled, still breathing, but dying.

And now I am gagging on the attic dust. Or maybe it is the memories.

Little Lydia running into my arms as we tried to fly kites on Hampstead Heath and she got scared by the rippling noise; little Lydia sitting on my lap earnestly writing her name for the first time, in waxy scented crayon; little Lydia dwarfed in Daddy’s big chair, shyly hiding behind a propped atlas as large as herself. Lydia, the silent one, the bookish one, the soulful one, the slightly lost and incomplete one – Lydia the twin like me. Lydia who once said, when she was sitting with her sister on a bench in a park: Mummy, come and sit between me so you can read to us.

Come and sit between me? Even then, there was some confusion, a blurring of identity. Something slightly unnerving. And now beloved Lydia is gone. Isn’t she? Or maybe she is alive down there, even as her stuff is crated and boxed up here? If that is the case, how would we possibly untangle this, without destroying the family?

The complexities are intolerable. I am talking to myself.

Work, Sarah, work. Sort the loft. Do the job. Ignore the grief, get rid of the stuff you don’t need, then move to Scotland, to Skye, the open skies: where Kirstie – Kirstie, Kirstie, Kirstie – can run wild and free. Where we can all soar away, escaping the past, like the eiders flying over the Cuillins.

One of the boxes is ripped open.

I stare, bewildered, and shocked. Lydia’s biggest box of toys has been sliced open. Brutally. Who would do that? It has to be Angus. But why? And with such careless savagery? Why wouldn’t he tell me? We discussed everything to do with Lydia’s things. But now he has been retrieving Lydia’s toys, without telling me?

The rain is hissing, once again. And very close, a few feet above my head.

Leaning into the opened box, I pull back a flap to have a look, and as I do, I hear a different noise – a distinctive, metallic rattle. Someone is climbing the stepladder?

Yes.

The noise is unmistakable. Someone is in the house. How did they get in without my hearing? Who is this climbing into the loft? Why didn’t Beany start barking, in the kitchen?

I stand back. Absurdly frightened.

‘Hello? Hello? Who is it? Hello??’

‘All right, Gorgeous?’

‘Angus!’

He smiles in the half-light which shines from the landing beneath. He looks definitely odd: like a cheap horror movie villain, someone illuminated from below by a ghoulish torch.

‘Jesus, Angus, you scared me!’

‘Sorry, babe.’

‘I thought you were on the way to Scotland?’

Angus hauls himself up, and stands opposite. He is so tall – six foot three – he has to stoop slightly, or crack his dark handsome head on the rafters.

‘Forgot my passport. You have to take them these days – even for domestic flights.’ Angus is glancing beyond me, at the ripped-open carton of toys. Motes of dust hang in the air, between our two faces, caught by my torchlight. I want to shine the torch right in his eyes. Is he frowning? Smiling? Looming angrily? I cannot see. He is too tall, there is not enough light. But the mood is awkward. And strained.

He speaks. ‘What are you doing, Sarah?’

I turn my torch-beam, so it shines directly on the cardboard box. Crudely knifed open.

‘What it looks like?’

‘OK.’

His silhouette, with the downstairs light behind him, has an uncomfortable shape, as if he is tensed, or angry. Menacing. Why? I talk in a hurry.

‘I’m sorting all this stuff. Gus, you know we have to do something, don’t we? About – About—’ I swallow away the grief, and gaze into the shadows of his face. ‘We have to sort Lydia’s toys and clothes. I know you don’t want to, but we have to decide. Do they come with us, or do we do something else?’

‘Get rid?’

‘Yes … Maybe.’

‘OK. OK. Ah. I don’t know.’

Silence. And the ceaseless rain.

We are stuck here. Stuck in this place, this groove, this attic. I want us to move on, but I need to know the truth about the box.

‘Angus?’

‘Look, I’ve got to go.’ He is backing away, and heading for the ladder. ‘Let’s talk about it later, I can Skype you from Ornsay.’

‘Angus!’

‘Booked on the next flight, but I’ll miss that one too, if I’m not careful. Probably have to overnight in Inverness now.’ His voice is disappearing as he clambers down the ladder. He is leaving – and his exit has a furtive, guilty quality.

‘Wait!’

I almost trip over, in my haste to follow him. Slipping down the ladder. He is heading for the stairs.

‘Angus, wait.’

He turns, checking his wristwatch as he does.

‘Yeah?’

‘Did you—’ I don’t want to ask this; I have to ask this. ‘Gus. Did you open the box of Lydia’s toys?’

He pauses. Fatally.

‘Sure,’ he replies.

‘Why, Angus? Why on earth did you do that?’

‘Because Kirstie was bored with her toys.’

His face has an expression that is designed to appear relaxed. And I get the horrible sensation that he is lying. My husband is lying to me.

I’m lost; yet I have to say something.

‘So, Angus, you went into the loft and got one out? One of Lydia’s toys? Just like that?’

He stares at me, unblinking. From three yards down the landing, with its bare pictureless walls and the big dustless squares, where we have already shifted furniture. My second-favourite bookcase, Angus’s precious chest of drawers, a legacy from his grandmother.

‘Yes. So? Hm?? What’s the problem, Sarah? Did I cross into enemy territory?’ His reassuring face is gone. He is definitely frowning. It is that dark, foreboding frown, which presages anger. I think of the way he hit his boss. I think of his father who beat his mother: more than once. No. This is my husband. He would never lay a finger on me. But he is very obviously angry as he goes on: ‘Kirstie was bored and unhappy. Saying she missed Lydia. You were out, Sarah. Coffee with Imogen. Right? So I thought, why not get her some of Lydia’s toys. Mm? That will console her. And deal with her boredom. So that’s what I did. OK? Is that OK?’

His sarcasm is heavy. And bitter.

‘But—’

‘What would you have done? Said no? Told her to shut up and play with her own toys? Told her to forget that her sister existed?’

He turns and crosses the landing – and begins to descend the stairs. And now I’m the one that feels guilty. His explanation makes sense. Yes, that’s what I would do, in the same situation. I think.

‘Angus—’

‘Yes?’ He pauses, five steps away.

‘I’m sorry. Sorry for interrogating you. It was a bit of a shock, that’s all.’

‘Tsch.’ He looks upwards, and his smile returns. Or at least a trace of it. ‘Don’t worry about it, darling. I’ll see you in Ornsay, OK? You take the low road and I’ll take the high road.’

‘And you’ll be in Scotland before me?’

‘Aye!’

He is laughing now, in a mirthless way, and then he is saying goodbye, and then he is turning to leave: to get his passport and his bags, to go and fly up to Scotland.

I hear him in the kitchen. His white smile lingers in my mind.

The door slams, downstairs. Angus is gone. And quite suddenly: I miss him, physically.

I want him. Still. More. Maybe more than ever, as it has been too long.

I want to tempt him back inside, and unbutton his shirt, and I want us to have sex as if we haven’t had sex in many months. Even more, I want him to want to do that to me. I want him to march back into the house and I want him to strip away my clothes: just like we did, in the beginning, in our first years, when he would come home from work and – without a word passing between – we would start undressing in the hall and we would make love in the first place we found: on the kitchen table, on the bathroom floor, in the rainy garden, in a delirium of beautiful appetite.

Then we’d lie back and laugh at the sheen of happy sweat that we shared, at the blatant trail of clothes we’d left behind, like breadcrumbs in a fairy tale, leading from the front door to our lovemaking, and so we’d follow our clothes back, picking up knickers, then jeans, then my shirt, his shirt, then a jacket, my jumper. And then we’d eat cold pizza. Smiling. Guiltless. Jubilant.

We were happy, then. Happier than any other couple I’ve known. Sometimes I actively envy us, as we were. Like I am the jealous neighbour of my previous self. Those bloody Moorcrofts, with their perfect life, completed by the adorable twins, then the beautiful dog.

And yet, and yet – even as the jealousy surges, I know that this completion was something of an illusion. Because our life wasn’t always perfect. Not always. In those long dark months, immediately following the birth, we almost broke up.

Who was to blame? Maybe me; maybe Angus; maybe sex itself. Of course I was expecting our love-life to suffer, when the twins arrived – but I didn’t expect it to die entirely. Yet it did. After the birth Angus became a kind of sexual exile. He did not want to touch me, and when he did, it was as if my body was a new, difficult, less pleasant proposition, something to be handled with scientific care. Once, I caught sight of him in a mirror, looking at me: he was assessing my changed and maternal nakedness. My stretch marks, and my leaking nipples. A grimace flashed across his face.

For too long – almost a year – we went entirely without lovemaking.

When the twins began sleeping through the night, and when I felt nearer to myself again, I tried to instigate it; yet he refused with weak excuses: too tired, too drunk, too much work. He was never home.

And so I found sex elsewhere, for a few brief evenings, stolen from my loneliness. Angus was immersed in a new project at Kimberley and Co, blatantly ignoring me, always working late. I was desperately isolated, still lost down the black hole of early motherhood, bored of microwaving milk bottles. Bored of dealing with two screaming tots, on my own. An old boyfriend called up, to congratulate the new mother. Eagerly I seized on this minor excitement, this thrill of the old. Oh, why not come round for a drink, come and see the twins? Come and see me?

Angus never found out, not of his own volition: I ended the perfunctory affair, and simply told my husband, because the guilt was too much, and, probably, because I wanted to punish my husband. See how lonely I have been. And the irony is that my hurtful confession saved us, it refuelled our sex life.

Because, after that confession, his perception of me reverted: now I wasn’t just a boring, bone-weary, conversation-less new mother any more, I was once again a prize, a sexual possession, a body carnally desired by a rival. Angus took me back; he seized me and recaptured me. He forgave me by fucking me. Then we had our marital therapy; and we got our show back on the road. Because we still loved each other.

But I will always wonder what permanent damage I did. Perhaps we simply hid the damage away, all those years. As a couple, we are good at hiding.

And now here I am: back in the attic, staring at all the hidden boxes that contain the chattels of our dead daughter. But at least I have decided something: storage. That’s what we will do with all this stuff.

It is a cowardly way out, neither one thing nor the other, but I cannot bear to haul Lydia’s toys to far northern Scotland – why would I do that? To indulge the passing strangeness of Kirstie? Yet consigning them to oblivion is cruel and impossible.

One day I will do this, but not yet.

So storage it is.

Enlivened by this decision I get to work. For three hours I box and tape and unpack and box things up again, then I grab a quick meal of soup and yesterday’s bread, and I pick up my mobile. I am pleased by my own efficiency. I have one more duty to do, just one more doubt to erase. Then all this silliness is finished.

‘Miss Emerson?’

‘Hello?’

‘Um, hi, it’s Sarah. Sarah Moorcroft?’

‘Sorry. Sarah. Yes, of course. And call me Nuala, please!’

‘OK …’ I hesitate. Miss Emerson is Kirstie’s teacher: a bright, keen, diligent twenty-something. A source of solace in the last horrible year. But she has always been ‘Miss Emerson’ to the kids – and now to Kirstie – so it always seems dislocating to use her first name. I find it persistently awkward. But I need to try. ‘Nuala.’

‘Yes.’

Her voice is brisk; it is 5 p.m. Kirstie is in after-school club, but her teacher will still have work to do.

‘Uhm. Can you spare a minute? It’s just that I have a couple of questions, about Kirstie.’

‘I can spare five, it’s no problem. What is it?’

‘You know we are moving very soon.’

‘To Skye? Yes. And you have another school placement?’

‘Yes, the new school is called Kylerdale, I’ve checked all the Ofsted reports, it’s bilingual, in English and Gaelic. Of course it won’t be anything like St Luke’s, but …’

‘Sarah. You had a question?’

Her tone is not impatient. But it expresses busyness. She could be doing something else.

‘Uh, yes. Sorry, yes, I did.’

I stare out of the living-room window, which is half open.

The rain has stopped. The tangy, breezy darkness of an autumn evening encroaches. The trees across the street are being robbed of their leaves, one by one. Clutching the phone a little harder, I go on,

‘Nuala, what I wanted to ask was …’ I tense myself, as if I am about to dive into very cold water. ‘Have you noticed anything odd about Kirstie recently?’

A moment passes.

‘Odd?’

‘You know, er, odd. Er …’

This is pitiful. But what else can I say? Oh, hey, Miss Emerson, has Kirstie started claiming she is her dead sister?

‘No, I’ve seen nothing odd.’ Miss Emerson’s reply is gentle. Dealing with bereaved parents. ‘Of course Kirstie still misses her sister, anyone can see that, but in the very challenging circumstances I’d say your daughter is coping quite well. As well as can be expected.’

‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘I have just one last question.’

‘OK.’

I steel myself, once again. I have to ask about Kirstie’s reading. Her rapid improvement. That too has been bugging me.

‘So, Nuala, what about Kirstie’s skill levels, her development. Have you noticed anything different, any recent changes? Changes in her abilities? In class?’

This time there is silence. A long silence.

Nuala murmurs. ‘Well …’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s not dramatic. But there is, I think – I think there’s one thing I could mention.’

The trees bend and suffer in the wind.

‘What is it?’

‘Recently I’ve noticed that Kirstie has got a lot better at reading. In a short space of time. It’s a fairly surprising leap. And yet she used to be very good at maths, and now she is … not quite so good at that.’ I can envisage Nuala shrugging, awkwardly, at her end of the line. She goes on, ‘And I suppose you could say that is unexpected?’

I say, perhaps, what we are both thinking: ‘Her sister used to be good at reading and not so good at maths.’

Nuala says, quietly, ‘Yes, yes, that is possibly true.’

‘OK. OK. Anything else? Anything else like this?’

Another painful pause, then Nuala says: ‘Yes, perhaps. Just the last few weeks, I’ve noticed Kirstie has become much more friendly with Rory and Adelie.’

The falling leaves flutter. I repeat the names. ‘Rory. And. Adelie.’

‘That’s right, and they were,’ Nuala hesitates, then continues, ‘well, they were Lydia’s friends, really, as you no doubt know. And Kirstie has rather dropped her own friends.’

‘Zola? Theo?’

‘Zola and Theo. And it was pretty abrupt. But really, these things happen all the time, she’s only seven, your daughter, fairly young for her year.’

‘OK.’

My throat is numbed. ‘OK.’ I repeat. ‘OK. I see.’

‘So please don’t worry. I wouldn’t have mentioned this if you hadn’t asked about Kirstie’s development.’

‘No.’

‘For what it’s worth, Sarah, my professional guess is that Kirstie is, in some way, compensating for the absence of her sister, almost trying to be her sister, so as to replace her, to moderate the grief. Thus, for instance, she has worked to become a better reader, to fill that gap. I’m not a child psychologist – but, as I understand it, this might not be unusual.’

‘No. No. Yes.’

‘And all children grieve in their own way. This is probably just part of the healing process. So, when are you leaving? It’s very soon, yes?’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘This weekend.’

The phone feels heavy in my hand.

I gaze at the elegant houses across the street; the parked cars glinting under the streetlights. The twilight is now complete. The sky is clear. I can see all the many plane lights circling London, like little red sparks: rising from a vast and invisible fire.










4 (#u220114fa-9c98-5466-bc97-f3d2f6b6f779)


Angus Moorcroft parked outside the Selkie Hotel, climbed from his cheap, tinny rental car – hired last night at Inverness Airport – and gazed across the mudflats, and the placid waters, to Torran. The sky was clean of cloud, giving a rare glimpse of northern sun: on a cold November day. Despite the clarity of the air, the cottage was only just visible, peering above the seaweedy rocks, with the white lighthouse behind.

With a hand shielding the sun, Angus squinted at his family’s new home. But a second car disturbed his thoughts – squealing to a stop, and parking. An old blue Renault.

His friend Josh Freedland got out, wearing a chunky Arran jumper, and jeans faintly floured with the dust of granite, or slate, or marble. Angus waved, and briefly looked down at his own jeans. He was going to miss good suits and silk ties.

Josh approached.

‘The white settler has arrived!’

The two men hugged, slapping backs. Angus apologized for his own lateness, for missing the original flight – Josh told him not to worry.

This response had a certain irony, in Angus’s mind. There was a time when it was Josh who was always late. When Josh was the most unreliable man in Great Britain. Everything was changing.

As one, they both turned, and gazed at the view across the Sound.

Angus murmured. ‘You know, I’d forgotten just how beautiful it is.’

‘So, when was the last time you were here?’

‘With you. And the gang. That last summer holiday.’

‘Really?’ Josh smiled, in frank surprise. ‘Junkie overboard! Junkie overboard!’

It was a catchphrase from that memorable holiday: when they’d come up here as college kids, to Angus’s granny’s island. They’d spent an epic weekend drinking too much, laughing too much, being obnoxious and loud, annoying the locals – and having enormous fun. They’d nearly sunk the rowing boat as they sculled back from the Selkie in the sweet, violet, Scottish summer gloaming: the twilight that never went totally black. Seals had emerged: perpendicular, and observing them. ‘Junkie overboard’ was born from one spectacularly intoxicated episode, when Josh, completely mashed on Ecstasy, had tried to embrace one of these seals, then fallen in the cold black water – at maybe 11 p.m.

It was a potentially lethal accident, but they were twenty-one years old and obviously immortal. So Josh just swam to the island, fully clothed – and then they’d got drunk, all over again, in that cranky, beautiful lighthouse-keeper’s cottage.

‘How long ago was that? Fifteen years? Jesus!’ Josh was chatting away, hands in pockets. The cool sunny wind tousled his ginger Jewish hair. ‘But we had fun, didn’t we? All that cider we drank in Coruisk. You seen any of the gang?’

‘Not so much.’

Angus could have added for obvious reasons. But he didn’t have to. Josh knew all the facts.

This last year, following Lydia’s death, Angus had turned to Josh, above all others: for long consoling phone calls, and the odd one-sided session in the pub, when Josh came down to London. And Josh had done his duty, listening to Angus talking about Lydia. Talking until the words turned to spit, until the words were a bodily fluid being purged, drooling from his mouth; talking until whisky and sleep blotted everything.

Josh was the only man who had seen Angus really cry about his dead daughter: one, dark, terrifying evening, when the nightflower of anguish had opened, and bloomed. A taboo had been broken that night, maybe in a good way. A man crying in front of a man, snot running, tears streaming.

And now?

Josh was checking something on his phone. Angus surveyed distant Torran Island once more. It was a long way across the mudflats: much further than he remembered. He’d have to walk down to the foreshore, then hike all the way around the big tidal island of Salmadair, then cross the causeway to the smaller, secondary tidal island of Torran. It would take thirty or forty minutes at the very least.

And this walking distance mattered, because the old island rowboat had long ago rotted to nothing. Which meant they had no boat. And until they acquired a new boat, he, Sarah and Kirstie would have to trek these dank, slippy, treacherous mudflats to access the island, and they could only do that at low tide.

‘Know anyone with a cheap dinghy? To sell?’

Josh looked up from his phone.

‘Mate, you haven’t sorted a boat?’

‘No.’

‘Gus, come on. Really? How can you live on Torran without a boat?’

‘We can’t. But we’ll just have to, until I buy one. And money is an issue.’

‘I can give you a lift in mine, right now?’

‘No, I want to walk across the mudflats. Test it.’

Angus’s friend was tilting his head, offering a sceptical smile.

‘You do remember those mudflats are dangerous, right?’

‘Er. Yeah.’

‘Seriously, Gus, at night – after civil twilight – you don’t want to cross those mudflats. Even with a torch, you could break an ankle on rocks, get stuck in the mud, and then you’re fucked.’

‘Josh—’

‘In Skye, no one can hear you scream: half the houses along the shore are empty. Holiday homes. In winter the tide will come in, cold and lethal: you’d drown.’

‘Josh! I know all this. It’s my island! Practically lived here as a boy.’

‘But you nearly always came in summer, no? In winter, days are five hours long, or less. Mate. Think about it. Even with a boat, Torran can be very tricky in winter. You can still be stranded for days.’

‘All right. Aye. I know winters are tough. I know it won’t be easy. But I don’t care.’

Josh laughed. ‘Sure. I get it. I think.’

Angus pressed on: ‘So, you mentioned, on the phone, the tides. This afternoon?’

Josh glanced at the receding sea, then back at Angus. ‘I emailed you a link earlier: official Mallaig tide tables, with all the details.’

‘Haven’t had a chance to check: on the go since breakfast.’

Josh nodded. He was training his gaze, thoughtfully, on the mudflats and the seaweed, drying in the feeble sun. ‘OK. Well, low-tide today is four p.m. You’ve got an hour either side of that, max. So we have half an hour to kill; till about three.’

Another silence descended between them, momentarily. Angus knew what came next. Gently, his friend enquired: ‘… how’s Kirstie?’

Of course. This is what you have to ask. How’s Kirstie? How is Kirstie?

What should he say?

He wanted to tell the truth. Maybe six months ago Kirstie had begun behaving very peculiarly. Something truly strange and disturbing had happened to his surviving daughter: to her persona. Things got so bad Angus nearly went to a doctor: and then, at the last moment, Angus had found a remedy. Of sorts.

But Angus was unable to tell anyone, not even Josh. Especially not Josh, because Josh would tell Molly, his wife, and Molly and Sarah were fairly intimate. And Sarah could not be allowed to know about this; she must not be told, ever. He simply didn’t trust her with this. He hadn’t trusted her, for so many months, in so many ways.

So it had to be lies. Even with Josh.

‘Kirstie’s good. Given the situation.’

‘OK. And Sarah? Is she doing, y’know, all right now? Doing better?’

Another inevitable question.

‘Yes. She’s fine. We’re all fine. Really looking forward to moving.’ Angus spoke as calmly as he could. ‘Kirstie wants to see a mermaid. Or a seal. A seal would probably do.’

‘Hah.’

‘Anyway. We’ve got time to kill? Shall we have a coffee?’

‘Uh-huh. You’ll notice a few changes in here,’ Josh said, as he pushed the creaking door of the pub.

He wasn’t wrong. As they stepped inside the Selkie, Angus gazed around: surprised.

The old, stained, cosy, herring-fisherman’s pub was transformed. The piped pop music was replaced with piped modern folk – bodhrans and fiddles. The muddy carpeted floor had evolved into expensive grey slates.

At the other end of the bar a chalked sign advertised ‘squab lobster’; and in between the boxes of leaflets from local theatres, and stacks of pamphlets on sea-eagle spotting, a chubby teenage girl stood behind the beer-pumps, toying sullenly with her nose-ring – and obviously resenting the fact she had to take Josh’s order for coffees.

The metamorphosis was impressive, but not exceptional. This was yet another boutique hotel and gastropub, aiming itself at rich tourists seeking the Highlands and Islands experience. It was no longer the scruffy, vinegar-scented local boozer of two decades back.

Though, as it was mid-November, and a weekday afternoon, locals were the only clients to service, right now.

‘Yes, both with milk, thanks, Jenny.’

Angus glanced across to the corner. Five men, of varying ages and virtually identical crew-neck jumpers, sat at a large round wooden table. The pub was otherwise deserted. The men were silent as they squinted back at Angus over their pints.

Then they turned to each other, like conspirators, and started talking again. In a very foreign language.

Angus tried not to gawp. Instead he asked Josh, ‘Gaelic?’

‘Yep. You hear it a lot in Sleat these days, there’s a new Gaelic college down the road. And the schools teach it, of course.’ Josh grinned, discreetly. ‘But I bet they were speaking English before we walked in. They do it as a joke, to wind up the incomers.’

Josh lifted a hand and waved at one of the men, a stubbled, stout, handsome guy, in his mid-forties.

‘Gordon. All right?’

Gordon turned, and offered his own, very taciturn smile.

‘Afternoon, Joshua. Afternoon. Ciamar a tha thu fhein?’

‘Absolutely. My aunt was struck by lightning.’ Josh tutted, good-naturedly. ‘Gordon, you know I’ll never learn it.’

‘Aye, but maybe one day ye can give it a try now, Josh.’

‘OK, I will, I promise. Let’s catch up soon!’

The coffees had arrived: proffered by the bored bar-girl. Angus stared at the twee little cups in Josh’s rough, red, stonemason’s hands.

Angus yearned for a Scotch. You were meant to drink Scotch, in Scotland, it was expected. Yet he felt awkward downing booze, in the afternoon, with sober Josh.

It was a slightly paradoxical feeling: because Josh Freedland hadn’t always been sober. There was a time when Josh had been the very opposite of sober. Whereas the rest of the gang from Uni – including Angus – had mildly dabbled in drugs, then got bored and returned to booze, Josh had spiralled from popping pills at parties, into serious heroin addiction: and into darkness and dereliction. For years it seemed that Josh was slated for total failure, or worse – and no could save him, much as they tried, especially Angus.

But then, abruptly, at the age of 30, Josh had saved himself. With Narcotics Anonymous.

And Josh had gone for sobriety the same way he’d gone for drugs: with total commitment. He did his sixty meetings in sixty days. He completed the twelve-step programme, and entrusted himself to a higher power. Then he’d met a nice, affluent young woman in an NA meeting, in Notting Hill – Molly Margettson. She was a cocaine addict, but she was cleaning her scene, like Josh.

They’d promptly fallen in love, and soon after that Josh and Molly had married, in a small poignant ceremony, and then they’d exited London, stage north. They’d used the money from selling her flat in Holland Park to buy a very nice house, here in Sleat, right on the water’s edge, half a mile from the Selkie, in the middle of the place they had all loved: near to Angus’s grandmother’s island.

The beautiful Sound of Sleat, the most beautiful place on earth.

Now Josh was a stonemason and Molly, remarkably, was a housewife and businesswoman: she made a decent living selling fruits and jams, honeys and chutneys. She also did the occasional painting.

Angus stared across the pub. Pensive. After years of feeling sorry for Josh, the truth was, he now envied him. Even as he was happy for Josh and Molly, he was jealous of the purity of their lives. Nothing but air, stone, sky, glass, salt, rock and sea. And Hebridean heather honey. Angus too wanted this purity, he wanted to rinse away the complexities of the city and dive into cleanness and simplicity. Fresh air, real bread, raw wind on your face.

The two friends walked to a lonely table: far away from Gordon and his Gaelic-speaking mates. Josh sat and sipped coffee, and spoke with his own conspirator’s smile.

‘That was Gordon Fraser. He does everything, fixes shit from Kylerhea to Ardvasar. Toasters, boats, and lonely wives. If you need a boat, he could probably help.’

‘Yes, I remember him. I think.’ Angus shrugged. Did he really remember? How much could he recall, from so long ago? In truth, he was still shocked by his own miscalculation of Torran Island’s nearness to the mainland. What else had he remembered wrongly? What else had he forgotten?

More importantly, if his long-term memory was unreliable, how reliable was his judgement? Did he trust himself to live, peacefully, with Sarah on this island? It could be very difficult: especially if she was opening the boxes, shining lights into the darkness. And what if she was lying to him? Again?

He wanted to think about something else.

‘So, Josh, how much has it changed? Declined? Torran?’

‘The cottage?’ Josh shrugged. ‘Well you really should prepare yourself, mate. As I said on the phone, I’ve been doing my best to keep an eye on it. So has Gordon – he loved your gran – and the local fishermen stop by. But it’s in a state, no denying it.’

‘But – the lighthouse keepers?’

Josh shook his head. ‘Nah. They only come once a fortnight, and they’re in and out, polish a lens, fix a battery, job done, head back to the Selkie for a jar.’

‘OK.’

‘We’ve all done our best, but, y’know, life, it’s busy, man. Molly doesn’t like using the boat on her own. And your gran stopped coming here four years ago, so it hasn’t really been inhabited since then, at all.’

‘That’s a long time.’

‘Too right, mate. Four long Hebridean winters? Damp and rot and wind, it’s all taken a toll.’ He sighed, then brightened. ‘Though you did have some squatters for a while, last summer.’

‘We did?’

‘Yeah. Actually they were OK. Two guys, two girls – couple of lookers. Just kids, students. They actually came in the Selkie one night, bold as bollocks. Gordon and the guys told them all the stories – Torran was haunted – and they freaked. Left next morning. Didn’t do that much damage. Burned most of your gran’s remaining firewood though. Fucking Londoners.’

Angus acknowledged the irony. He remembered when he and the gang, from London, had been the same: sitting in this pub, listening to the folktales of Skye, told by locals, in return for a dram, those tales designed to while away the long winter nights. His granny had also told these stories of Skye. The Widow of Portree. The Fear that Walked in the Dark. And och, the Gruagach – her hair as white as snow, mourning her own reflection …

‘Why haven’t you been up since?’

‘Sorry?’

Josh persisted: ‘It’s fifteen bloody years since you’ve been here. Why?’

Angus frowned, and sighed. It was a good question: one he had asked himself. He struggled towards an answer.

‘Don’t know. Not really. Maybe Torran became a kind of symbol. Place I would one day return to. Lost paradise. Also it’s about five million miles away. Kept meaning to come up, especially since you guys moved here, but of course …’ And there it was again, that fateful pause. ‘By then we had the girls, the twins. And. That changed everything. Cold Scottish island, with yowling babies? Toddlers? All a bit daunting. You’ll understand, Josh, when you have kids with Molly.’

‘If we have kids.’ Josh shook his head. Stared down at the stains of milky coffee in his cup. ‘If.’

A slightly painful silence ensued. One man mourning his lost child, another man mourning the children he hadn’t yet had.

Angus finished the last of his lukewarm coffee. He turned in the uncomfortable wooden pew and glanced out of the window, with its thick, flawed, wind-resistant bullseye-glass.

The glass of the window warped the beauty of Torran Island, making it look ugly. Here was a leering landscape, smeared and improper. He thought of Sarah’s face, in the semi-dark of the loft, warped by the uncertain light. As she peered into the boxes.

That had to stop.

Josh spoke up: ‘The tide must be out now, so you’ve got two hours, max. You sure you don’t want me to come with, or give you a lift in the RIB?’

‘Nope. I want to squelch across.’

The two exited the pub into the cold. The wind had keened and sharpened as the tide had fallen. Angus waved goodbye to Josh – I’ll come round the house tomorrow – as Josh’s car skidded away, chucking mud.

Opening the boot, Angus hauled out his rucksack. He’d packed the rucksack, very carefully, this morning, at his cheap Inverness hotel, so he had everything he needed for one night on the island. Tomorrow he could buy stuff. Tonight he just had to get there.

Across the mudflats.

Angus felt a pang of self-consciousness: as if someone was watching him, mockingly, as he adjusted the straps of his rucksack, distributing the weight. Reflexively he glanced around – looking for faces in windows, kids pointing and laughing. The leafless trees and silent houses gazed back. He was the only human visible. And he needed to be on his way.

The path led directly from the Selkie car park, down to some mossed and very weathered stone steps. Angus followed the route. At the bottom of the steps the path curved past a row of wooden boats – their keels lifted high onto the shingle, safe from approaching winter storms. Then the path disappeared completely, into a low maze of seaweedy rocks, and grey acres of reeking mud. It was going to take him half an hour, at least.

And his phone was ringing.

Marvelling at the fact he could get a signal – hoping faintly, futilely, that there might also be a signal on Torran – Angus dropped his rucksack on to the pebbles, and plucked his mobile from his jeans pocket.

The screen said Sarah.

He took the call. The fourth, from his wife, of the day.

‘Hello?’

‘Are you there yet?’

‘I’m trying. I was about to cross. I’m at Ornsay. Just seen Josh.’

‘OK, so, what’s it like?’

‘I don’t know, babe.’ He tutted. ‘Told you: I’m not there yet. Why don’t you let me get there, first, and I’ll call you back as soon as I can.’

‘OK, yes, sorry. Hah.’ Her laughter was false. He could tell this even on a cell phone, from six hundred miles away.

‘Sarah. Are you all right?’

A hesitation. A distinct, definite pause.

‘Yes, Gus. I’m a bit nervous. You know? That’s all …’

She paused. He frowned. Where was this going? He needed to distract his wife, get her focused on the future. He spoke very carefully.

‘The island looks lovely, Sarah. Beautiful as I remember it. More beautiful. We haven’t made a mistake. We were right to move here.’

‘OK. Good. Sorry. I’m just jangling. All this packing!’

Sarah’s anxiety was still there, lurking. He could tell. Which meant he had to ask; even though he didn’t want to know any answers. But he had to ask: ‘How’s Kirstie?’

‘She’s OK, she’s …’

‘What?’

‘Oh. It’s nothing.’

‘Sorry?’

‘It’s nothing. Nothing.’

‘No, it’s not, Sarah, it’s clearly not. What is it?’ He gripped his frustration. This was another of his silent wife’s conversational stratagems: drop a tiny unsettling hint, then say ‘it’s nothing’. Forcing him to gouge the information out of her; so he felt guilty and bad – even when he didn’t want the information. Like now.

The tactic drove him crazy, these days. Made him feel actually, physically angry.

‘Sarah. What’s up? Tell me?’

‘Well, she …’ Another long, infuriating pause stopped the dialogue. Angus resisted the temptation to shout What the fuck is it?

At last Sarah coughed it up: ‘Last night. She had another nightmare.’

This was, if anything, a relief to Angus. Only a nightmare? That’s all this was about?

‘OK. Another bad dream.’

‘Yes.’

‘The same one?’

‘Yes.’ A further wifely silence. ‘The one with the room; she is stuck in that white room, with the faces staring at her, staring down. It’s nearly always the same nightmare. She gets that one, always – why is that?’

‘I don’t know, Sarah, but I know it will stop. And soon. Remember what they said at the Anna Freud Centre? That’s one reason we’re moving. New place, new dreams. New beginning. No memories.’

‘All right, yes, of course. Let’s talk tomorrow?’

‘Yes. Love you.’

‘Love you.’

Angus frowned, at his own words, and ended the call. Slipping his phone in his pocket, he hoisted his heavy rucksack – feeling like a mountaineer attempting a summit. He could hear the clink of a heavy wine bottle inside, knocking against something hard. Maybe his Swiss Army knife.

Picking his way through, he edged along rocks and sand, trying to find the safest route. The air was redolent with the heady smell of rotting seaweed. Seagulls wheeled above, calling and heckling. Haranguing him for something he hadn’t done.

The tide was way out, exposing old grey metal chains, slacked in the mud, linked to plastic buoys. Whitewashed cottages regarded him, indifferently, from the curving wooded shoreline of mainland Skye, to his right. On the left, Salmadair was a dome of rock and grass, encircled by sombre firs; he could just see the top of that big unoccupied house, on Salmadair, owned by the billionaire, the Swedish guy.

Josh had told Angus all about Karlssen: how he only came here for a few weeks in the summer, for the shooting and the sailing, and the famous views over the Sound: to the waters of Loch Hourn and Loch Nevis, and between them the vast massif of Knoydart, with its snow-iced hills.

As Angus trudged along, hunched under the weight of his rucksack, he occasionally lifted his head to look at these same brooding hills. The great summits of Knoydart, the last true wilderness in western Europe. Angus realized, as he surveyed the view, that he could still distinctly remember the names of Knoydart’s enigmatic peaks. His granny had taught him so many times: Sgurr an Fhuarain, Sgurr Mor, Fraoch Bheinn.

It was a poem. Angus was not a fan of poetry, yet this place was a poem.

Sgurr an Fhuarain, Sgurr Mor, Fraoch Bheinn.

He walked on.

The silence was piercing. A kingdom of quietness. No boats out fishing, no people walking, no engine noise.

Angus walked, and sweated, and nearly slipped. He wondered at the windless tranquillity of the afternoon, a day so still and clear he could see the last ferry, in the blue distance, crossing from Armadale to Mallaig.

Many houses, hidden in the firs and rowans, were totally shuttered for the winter. That accounted for much of the quiet: for this sense of desolation. In a way, this sheltered, stunning, southern peninsula of Skye was increasingly like one of the richest quarters of London: emptied by its own desirability, used by the wealthy for a few days a year. An investment opportunity. A place to store money. Other, less alluring parts of the Hebrides paradoxically had more life, because the houses were cheaper.

This place was cursed by its own loveliness.

But it was still lovely. And it was also getting dark.

The walk took him fifty difficult minutes, because the dark grey mud sucked at his boots, slowing him down, and because at one point he went wrong: climbing up onto Salmadair proper, heading unconsciously for the billionaire’s house with the huge, glass-walled living room, which suddenly reared in front of him, in the gathering gloom, protected by its rusty twines of barbed wire.

He’d taken the wrong path left. Instead of skirting Salmadair’s shingled beach.

Angus remembered Josh’s warnings about the mudflats at night. You could die out there. People die.

But how many really died? One a year? One a decade? It was still much safer than crossing a London road. This place was crime-free; the air was clean and good. It was much safer for kids. Safer for Kirstie.

Pressing between gorse bushes, slowly negotiating the beaten path, Angus scrambled over some very slippery rocks – gnarled with old barnacles, which scraped his fingers. His hands were bleeding a little. He was scratched and weary. The north wind was perfumed with seagull shit and bladderwrack, maybe the scent of newly chopped pine-wood, carried all the way from Scoraig and Assynt.

He was nearly there. In the dregs of the afternoon light he could see the exposed tidal causeway of rocks and grey shingle, littered with smashed crabshells. A slender green pipe snaked across the Torran causeway, burying itself in and out of the sands. He recognized the waterpipe, just as he recognized this part of the route. He remembered walking it as a boy, and as a very young man. And here he was again.

The lighthouse, the cottage, lay beyond, in the last of the cold, slanted sunlight. In just two minutes he would press the doorway, into his new home. Where his family would live: as best they could.

Reflexively, he looked at his phone. No signal. Of course. What did he expect? The island was entire and of itself: alone and isolated, and as remote as you could get in Britain.

As he ascended the final rise, to the lighthouse-keeper’s cottage, Angus turned and looked back at the mudflats.

Yes. Remote as possible. That was good. He was glad that he had coaxed his wife into making the decision to move here: he was glad he had persuaded her into believing, moreover, that it was her choice. He’d wanted them far away from everything for months, and now they had achieved it. On Torran they would be safe at last. No one would ask questions. No interfering neighbours. No friends and relatives. No police.










5 (#u220114fa-9c98-5466-bc97-f3d2f6b6f779)


Kirstie.

Glancing up, I see Kirstie’s face, impassive, unsmiling, in the rear-view mirror.

‘Nearly there, darling!’

This is what I have been saying since driving out of Glasgow; and, in truth, when I reached Glasgow I thought we were ‘nearly there’, it looked so close on Google Maps, we were halfway through Scotland, weren’t we? Look, it can’t take much longer. Just two more inches.

But instead, like a terrible endless story, told by a chuntering bore, the road has gone on, and on. And now we’re lost amid the ghastliness of Rannoch Moor.

I have to remind myself why we’re here.

Two days ago Angus offered money we didn’t have, to fly us to Inverness, where he would pick us up, and leave all the moving to the men we’d hired.

But doing it this way seemed, somehow, a cheat – something in me wanted to drive the whole distance, with Kirstie and Beany; and someone had to bring the car, whether now or later. So I’d insisted Kirstie and I would make the entire journey, from the bottom corner to the very top of Britain, to meet Angus in the Selkie car park, in Ornsay, with the celebrated view of Torran.

Now I have regrets.

It is all so vast, and so bleak. Rannoch Moor is a bowl of green and dismal greyness, glacial in origin, presumably. Dirty, peat-brown streams divide the acid turfs; in places it looks as if the peat turf has been ripped apart then sewn back together.

I glance at Kirstie, in the mirror, then I glance at myself.

I truly don’t want to, but I have to do this: I have to go over it all, yet again. I must work out what is happening with Kirstie, and whether it stems from the accident itself. From that terrible fracture in our lives.

And so.

It was a summer evening in Instow.

My father and mother retired to the little town of Instow, on the north Devon coast, almost ten years ago. They’d ended up with just enough money, salvaged from my dad’s gently failed career, to buy a biggish house, overlooking the wide slothful river, at the point where it became an estuary.

The house was tall, with three storeys, and balconies, to make the most of the view. There was a proper garden, with a further, rabbity slope of meadow at the back. From the top floor there were glimpses of the sea between the green headlands. You could watch red-sailed boats heading for the Bristol Channel, as you sat on the loo.

From the start I liked my parents’ choice, of Instow. It was a nice house, in a nice little town. The local pubs were full of sailors, and yachtsmen, yet they were without pretensions. The climate was kindly, for England: solaced by southwestern breezes. You could go crabbing on the quayside, with bacon and string.

Inevitably and immediately, Instow became our default holiday home. A pretty, cheap, convenient bolthole for Angus and me, and then a place where we could take the girls, knowing they’d be looked after by their doting grandparents.

And my folks really doted. This was partly because the twins were so pretty and adorable – when they weren’t squabbling – and partly because my wastrel younger brother was wandering the world, never likely to settle down: so the twins were IT. The only grandkids they were likely to enjoy.

My father was, as a result, always eager for us to come down and take another holiday; and my American mother, Amy – shyer, quieter, more reserved – more like me – was almost as fervent.

So when I got the call, from Dad, and he airily asked: What are you doing this summer? I readily agreed – to another vacation in Instow. It would be our seventh or eighth. We’d had too many to count. But all that free childcare was just so tempting. All those long, delicious sleeps, of adults on holiday, while the twins went off with Granny and Granddad.

And this was the very first night, of the very last holiday.

I’d driven down with the kids in the morning. Angus was delayed in London, but due later. Mum and Dad were out for a drink. I was sitting in the kitchen.

The large airy kitchen was where everything happened in my mum and dad’s house, because it had one of the best views – and a lovely big table. All was quiet. I was reading a book and sipping tea; the evening was long, and beautiful: rosy-blue skies arched over the headlands and the bay. The twins, already sunburned from an afternoon on the beach, were, I thought, playing in the garden. Everything was SAFE.

And then I heard the scream of one of my daughters.

That scream which will never go away. Never leave me.

Ever.

Here on Rannoch Moor I grip the wheel – accelerating. As if I can overtake the horror of the past and leave it dwindling in the mirror.

What happened next? Is there some clue, overlooked, that would unlock this awful puzzle?

For half a moment, sitting in that kitchen, I couldn’t work it out. The girls were meant to be on the lawn, enjoying that languid summer warmth; but this awful scream came from upstairs. So I rushed up the steps in blinding panic, and raced along the landing, and looked for them – not there, not there, not there – and I knew, somehow I knew, and I ran into the spare bedroom – yet another bedroom with a balcony. Twenty feet up.

The fucking balconies. If there was one thing I hated about Instow, it was the balconies; every window had them. Angus hated them too.

We always told the twins not to go near them; the iron railings were too low, whether you were adult or child. Yet they were so tempting. Because they all had those blissful views of the river. Mum liked to sit on her balcony, reading Swedish thrillers, drinking supermarket Chardonnay.

So, as I ran up the stairs, it was the balconies that ripped me open with terrible anticipation, and when I stepped into the bedroom I saw the silhouetted figure of one of my daughters, dressed in white, standing on the balcony, shouting.

The irony is that she looked so pretty that moment. Her hair was caught by the setting sun: she was coronated, gloried, flamingly haloed – she looked like a child of Jesus in a Victorian picture book, even as she was shouting, in icy and curdling terror.

‘Mummy Mummy Mummy Lydie-lo, it’s Lydie-lo, she’s falling off, Mummy, help her, MUMMY!’

For a second I was paralysed. Staring at her.

Then, choking on my panic, I looked over the railing.

And, yes, there was my daughter – broken, down there on the decking, blood spooling from her mouth, like a filled-in speech bubble, red and glossy. She looked like an icon of a fallen human, like a swastika shape with her arms and legs splayed. A symbol.

I knew Lydia was doomed as soon as I saw her body shaped that way, but I rushed downstairs, and cradled her still-warm shoulders, and felt for her slivery pulse. And at that precise moment my mum and dad came back from the pub, walking up the path: walking straight into this appalling tableau. They stopped, and gazed, quite stricken – and then my mum screamed and my dad frantically called for an ambulance, and we argued about moving Lydia or not moving Lydia, and my mum screamed again.

And then we all went tearfully to the hospital and spoke to absurdly young doctors, to young men and women in white coats with that flicker of tired shame in their eyes. Murmuring their prayers.

Acute subdural hematoma, severe and stellate lacerations, evidence of retinal haemorrhage …

At one point, awfully, Lydia came to consciousness. Angus had arrived to be engulfed by the same horror, so we were all in the room – me and Angus, my father, all the doctors and nurses – and my daughter faintly stirred and her eyes slurred open, and she had tubes in her mouth, and she looked at us, regretfully, melancho-lically, as if she was saying goodbye, then she went under again. And she never came back.

I hate these memories. I remember how one doctor blatantly stifled a yawn as she was talking to us, after Lydia was pronounced dead. Presumably she’d done a long shift. Another doctor said we were ‘unlucky’.

And monstrous as it was, he was, technically, right, as I discovered many weeks later – when I regained the mental capability to type words into a search engine. Most young children survive a fall of less than thirty feet, even forty feet. Lydia was unlucky. We were unlucky. Her fall was awkward. And this discovery made it all worse; it made my guilt even more unbearable. Lydia died because we were unlucky, and because I wasn’t looking after her properly.

I want to close my eyes, now, to block the world. But I can’t, because I’m driving. And so I drive on. Questioning the world. Questioning my memory. Questioning reality.

Who was the girl that fell? Is it possible I got it wrong?

The original and significant reason I thought that it was Lydia down there, dead, was because the twin who survived, told me that.

Mummy Mummy come quickly, Lydie-lo has fallen.

And naturally, when she said that, I took her at her word. Because there was no other immediate way of telling them apart. Because the girls were dressed so sweetly yet identically that day. In white dresses. With no blue or yellow.

This wasn’t my doing. It was the twins themselves. For a few months prior to that holiday they’d asked – they had demanded – that we dress them the same, cut their hair the same, make them look the same. Mummy, sit here between me and read to us. It was as if they wanted to be re-absorbed into each other. As if they’d had enough of being individuals for a while. Indeed, sometimes the twins would wake up, in those final months, and tell us they’d had exactly the same dream. I didn’t know whether to believe them. I still don’t know now. Is that possible? For twins to have the same dream?

Is it?

Touching the pedal, I race around a corner; urging myself on, as if the answer can be found on the coast. But the answer, if anywhere, is in my mind.

Angus and I had acceded to the twins’ impulsive wish – to be dressed exactly alike – because we thought it was just a phase, like tantrums or teething; and, besides, it was easy enough, by that time, to tell them apart by personality. By the different ways they bickered with each other.

But when I ran up the stairs and I saw one of my daughters, in her white dress, barefoot and totally distraught, there was no personality. Not at that moment. There was just one of the twins, shouting. And she was shouting Lydie-lo has fallen. And that’s what gave me her identity. Kirstie.

Could we have got it wrong?

I do not know. I am lost in the hall of mirrored souls. And again that terrible sentence pierces me.

Mummy Mummy come quickly, Lydie-lo has fallen.

That’s when my life cracked open. That’s when I lost my daughter. That’s when everything went black.

As it does now. I am shuddering with grief. The memory is so powerful it is disabling. Tears are not far away; my hands are trembling on the steering wheel.

Enough. I need to stop, I need to get out, I need to breathe air. Where am I? Where are we? Outskirts of Fort William?

Oh God. Oh God. Just STOP.

With a yank of the wheel I veer the car, fast and hard and straight into the forecourt of a BP garage, squirting grit with the wheels, almost smashing into a fuel pump.

The car gently steams. The silence is shocked.

‘Mummy?’

I look up at the rear-view mirror. Kirstie is staring at me in the mirror as I smudge the tears from my eyes with the heel of my hand. I stare at her reflection, as she must have stared so many times into mirrors, seeing her own reflection. Yet seeing her dead sister as well.

And now Kirstie smiles at me.

Why? Why is she smiling? She is mute and barely blinking: and yet smiling? As if she is trying to freak me out.

A sudden fear ripples through me. Absurd and ridiculous, yet undeniable.

I have to get out of the car. Now.

‘Mummy’s just going to get a coffee, OK? I just – just need a coffee. Do you want anything?’

Kirstie says nothing. Clutching Leopardy with her two fisted hands. Her smile is cold, and blank, and yet somehow, knowing. It is the kind of smile Lydia would sometimes do, Lydia the quiet one, the soulful one, the more eccentric of the twins. My favourite.

Fleeing my own child, and my own doubts, I rush into the little BP shop.

‘No petrol, thanks. Just the coffee.’

It’s too hot to drink. I stumble out into the raw, sea-scented air, trying to stay in control. Calm down, Sarah, calm down.

A hot cup of Americano in hand, I climb back in the car. I take deep, therapeutic breaths. Slowing my heartbeat. And then I gaze in the mirror. Kirstie remains quiet. She has also stopped smiling, and turned away. As she scratches Beany behind the ear, she is staring out of the window at the suburban houses that straggle the road, to and from the garage. They look foolish, and English, and incongruous, with their polite windows and twee little porches, set against the grandeur and immensity of the Highlands.

On, on, on.

I turn the key, and pull away. We take the long road towards Fort Augustus; to Loch Lochy, Loch Garry, Loch Cluanie. It is so long, we have come so far. I think about life before the accident, the happiness, so easily shattered. Our life was made of brittle ice.

‘Are we nearly there now?’

My daughter shakes me from my thoughts. I look in the mirror, again.

Kirstie is gazing at the summits of the mountains, which are veiled in grey mist, and returning rain. I smile in a reassuring way and say Yes and I drive my daughter, and Beany, and our hopes, along the dwarfed and single-track road that negotiates the endless wilderness.

But we are, indeed, nearly there. And now the distance I am putting between me and my old self, my old life, my dead daughter, her ashes scattered on Instow beach, feels right and good and necessary. If anything, I want to go further. This two-day journey from Camden to Scotland, overnighting in the Scottish Borders, has been so epic, it righteously underscores the life-change we are undertaking. This distance is so long there is no going back.

It feels like a nineteenth-century migration; as if we are pioneers heading for Oregon. So I grip the wheel and drive us out of the past; trying not to think who it is in the back of my car, which dancing and heraldic unicorn, which ghost of herself. It is Kirstie. It must be Kirstie. It is Kirstie.

‘This is it, Kirstie, look.’

We are approaching Skye. The family’s rusted Ford Focus is rattling through the touristic but rain-lashed port that is Kyle of Lochalsh – then we are steered along, by the high street, towards a great looping bridge. Abruptly the rain stops.

The grey, chopped-white waters of Loch Alsh flow beneath the soaring bridge – a gut-churning plunge. Then we swoop down onto a roundabout.

We have reached Skye. And the next little crowd of suburban houses soon yields to the emptiness.

It is a traumatized yet beautiful landscape. Islands and mountains are reflected in dark indigo waters to my left. Bow-backed moorland stoops down to the echoing shoreline. A boat drifts, alone. A plantation of firs is divided by a road that seems to go nowhere – disappearing into those dark, sombre regiments, then blackness.

It is harsh and daunting – and very handsome. Bright lozenges of late autumn sun blaze on the further hills, like organized fires, moving silently and very fast. And when we slow right down, on cattle-grids, I can see details: the way the dew in the grass is struck, by the sun, making tiny, shivering jewels.

We are just a few miles from Ornsay. The road is widening, and I begin to recognize the green hills and steely lochs from the pictures I have seen – from all those images on Google.

‘I can see Dada!’

Kirstie points, eagerly. Beany growls.

I slow the car to a crawl, and follow my little girl’s gesture, and yes, she is right. There are two men standing on a stone pier, in front of a big, white, gabled Victorian building, which is, in turn, staring out to the broad sea-channel. The men are recognizably Angus – and Josh Freedland. Josh’s red hair is particularly distinctive.

This is it. Must be. That’s the Selkie; and that’s the pub car park on the seafront. And Ornsay village is, surely, the scattered outcrop of orderly gardens, converted crofts, and glassy-walled new-builds that surrounds the tiny harbour.

And that in turn means, most importantly of all – I lift my eyes like a worshipper in a church – that the little island with the little lighthouse, out there, in the Sound – that islet humbled by the beautiful vastness of oceans and mountains: that is our destination.

This is my new home; and its name is like a tolling bell.

Torran.

Five minutes of narrow lanes brings me to the car park and the Selkie, and the tinkling sound of nervous boats, moored and anchored in the wind: lanyards, spinnakers, bowsprits; I don’t know what any of these words mean, but I will learn. I will have to acquire a new, maritime, seaworthy language, befitting someone who lives on an island. For all my anxieties, I quite like that idea. I want everything to be new.

‘Hello, darling,’ Angus is greeting Kirstie as she climbs, timidly, tentatively, blinking in the wind, from the back of the car; Leopardy is clutched, as ever, to her chest. The dog stirs, and barks, and follows my daughter, loping out onto the tarmac. ‘Hello, Beano!’ says Angus, and his smile widens. His beloved hound.

Amidst the sadness, I am pleased. Despite it all, I have successfully delivered the dog and the daughter.

‘Say hello to Uncle Josh, sweetheart,’ says Angus, as my seven-year-old gazes around, mouth half-open. Angus thanks me with another smile as our daughter says a polite and bashful ‘hi’ to Josh.

‘Not too bad a journey?’ Josh asks, eyeing me.

‘Only two days,’ I say. ‘I could have done with a bit more driving.’

‘Hah.’

‘Perhaps next time, Angus, we can move to Vladivostok?’

Angus chuckles politely. He already looks more Scottish, here in Scotland. His cheeks are ruddier, his stubble is darker, he is definitely a bit dirtier: more rugged, salt-bitten and masculine. Instead of his architect’s purple silk ties he has scratches on his hands and paint flecks in his hair. He’s been here three days ‘preparing the place’ so as to make it habitable for me and Kirstie.

‘Josh is going to give us a lift, in his boat.’

‘You guys,’ Josh says, kissing me warmly, on both sides of my face, ‘you guys REALLY HAVE to get a boat. Torran is a nightmare without a boat, the tides will drive you doolally.’

I force a smile. ‘Thanks, Josh, that’s just what we need to hear, on our very first day.’

He grins in that boyish way. And I remember that I like Josh. He is my favourite of Angus’s friends: it helps that he is a non-drinker – completely sober. Because he slows down Angus’s boozing.

Like a team of explorers abseiling, we climb down the steps of the pier, to Josh’s boat. Beany goes second, chivvied by Angus, then leaping with unexpected grace into the vessel. Kirstie follows: she is excited, in that eerie calm way that Lydia used to get excited; her head is perfectly still, staring out, as if she is catatonic, but you can see the shine in her eyes. Enraptured.

‘All aboard, shiver my timbers, Torran ahoy!’ says Josh, for Kirstie’s benefit – and Kirstie giggles. Josh poles the boat into the deeps and Angus gathers in the rope, very quickly, and we begin our miniature yet crucial voyage, rippling around the bigger tidal island, Salmadair, that divides Torran from Ornsay.

‘That’s where the packaging billionaire lives.’

Half my attention is given to Salmadair – but the other half is fixed on Kirstie’s happy little face: her soft blue eyes gazing in wonder at the water and the islands and the enormous Hebridean skies.

I remember her shout of despair.

Mummy Mummy come quickly, Lydie-lo has fallen.

Again, it strikes me, with painful force, how those words are, really, the only evidence we have for believing it was Lydia that died, not Kirstie. But why did I believe those words?

Because there was no obvious reason for her to lie. At that moment of all moments. But maybe she was confused in some bizarre way. And I can see why she might have been confused, given that the twins were always swapping names, swapping their whole identities, during that fateful summer. When they were dressed alike, when they had the same haircut. It was a game they liked to play, that summer, on me and Angus. Which one am I, Mummy? Which one am I?

So maybe they were playing that game that evening? And then disaster happened. And the fatal blurring of their identities froze over, and became fixed, like a flaw in ice.

Or maybe Kirstie is still playing this game. But playing it in the most terrifying way. Perhaps that is why she is smiling. Perhaps she is playing the game to hurt me, and to punish me.

But punish me for what?

‘OK,’ says Angus, ‘this is Torran Island.’




6 (#ulink_6ce4a608-be6c-5ba6-9b56-ae1008e5f0ea)


The next five days are all about work, I do not have time to stop and breathe and brood or think too much. Because the cottage is a brutal nightmare. God knows what it was like before Angus ‘prepared it’ for our arrival.

The basic structure of our new home is pretty sound: two gabled white cottages, designed by Robert Louis Stevenson’s father in the 1880s, and knocked into one family house in the 1950s. But the first hour’s exploration of Torran cottage proves, beyond doubt, that no one has significantly touched the buildings since the 1950s.

The kitchen is indescribable: the fridge is rotten, there is black stuff inside. The whole thing will have to go. The cooker is usable, but demonically filthy: on the afternoon of Day One I spend hours cleaning it, till my knees burn from the kneeling, but when the evening light falls – so early, so early – I’m only halfway finished. And I have not even touched the deep ceramic kitchen sink, which smells like it’s been used for butchering seabirds.

The rest of the kitchen is little better. The taps above the sink spout tainted liquid: Angus forgot to tell me that our only running water would be provided by a thin plastic pipe from the mainland – and this pipe is exposed at low tide on the causeway. It hisses with leaks, and lets seawater in; at low tide I can actually see the leaks as I stare out the kitchen window – joyous little fountains of spray, squirting from the pipe, and saying hello to the sky.

Because of this saline taint, we have to boil everything. But still everything tastes of fish. Fixing the water supply is consequently essential – we can’t keep humping bottled water from the Co-op supermarket at Broadford; we can’t spare the cash or the effort. Yet filtering or purifying water with tablets is too tricky and time-consuming, as a long-term solution. But how do we tempt the water company to come out and help us, just three people who chose, of their own volition, to go and live on a ridiculously remote island?





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