A Gingerbread House

by Catriona McPherson

  She couldn’t foster kittens. She’d never want to give them back. But she could – she would – buy one big comfortable cat to keep for her very own, even though there were none here tonight and she felt foolish now for thinking there might be. She had always wanted one. As a child she had begged for one. A cat would have spared her. Don’t, she told herself. It’s all a long time ago. She shook the thoughts away and listened. The voice had taken on a new note to go with a strange phrase.

  ‘What’s a “kill shelter”?’ Ivy whispered.

  ‘We’ve got an absolute beginner here, Carole,’ Ivy’s neighbour piped up, turning to give Ivy a wide smile. It wasn’t a kind smile, she thought to herself. ‘What’s a kill shelter? For the newbies.’

  ‘At least they don’t dress it up,’ the squat woman – Carole – said. ‘Homeless cats. What we used to call feral. What some people still call stray. As if it’s a choice they’ve made!’ She shook her head at the folly. ‘First, they trap them.’

  ‘No!’ said Ivy, imagining the snap of a spring and the crunch of bones. Except it would be more than a snap, wouldn’t it? In a trap big enough for a cat. It would be like a thunderclap.

  The memory surged back and overwhelmed her. When Mother told her that, aged nine, she was old enough to empty the traps now, Ivy couldn’t help the tears and couldn’t run away in time to hide them. ‘Ring the plumber!’ Mother said, staring down at her daughter’s streaming eyes and wobbling lip. ‘What’s wrong now?’ Ivy, too upset to bide by her usual rules of saying nothing, blurted out, ‘Can’t we get a mouser? I’d feed it and I’d groom it.’

  ‘Why should we keep a cat when we’ve got you?’

  ‘But, I can’t, Mum. I can’t stand the sound of them crying when they’re stuck in there. I can’t empty them. I can’t do it.’

  ‘You little fool,’ Mother said. It passed for affection. ‘They can’t cry with their necks broke. Even you’d stop crying if your neck was snapped in two.’

  Ivy did stop crying then, the shock of the words working on her like a slap.

  Carole had finished speaking.

  ‘So,’ Ivy said, ‘the humane shelters trap the cats, take them to the vet, knock them out, spay them and then release them again?’

  ‘They do. The cats go back to live out their natural lives.’ Carole was beaming.

  ‘And die their natural deaths,’ said Ivy.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Carole, although her smile dimmed.

  ‘Hit by a car or caught by a fox,’ said Ivy. ‘Or starving to death in a hedge somewhere, injured.’

  Carole opened her mouth but nothing came out. Behind Ivy, muttering had begun and, in front of her, the rows of backs and heads looked wooden. No one turned to see who was speaking.

  ‘So, really,’ Ivy said, ‘if they’re captured and injected – to be spayed – they’d be better off if the anaesthetic wasn’t anaesthetic at all. They’d be better off being put to sleep then and there. They’d never have the trauma of coming round in a cage and the pain of the stitches. They’d be free of all cares and their deaths would be … what did you say? … humane.’

  She was thinking aloud more than arguing. She thought aloud a lot. Only this time there were people listening.

  ‘Our name,’ said Carole, with a quick glance at the front row and a quick shake of her head. Ivy wondered if someone was taking minutes and had just been told to skip a bit, ‘is the Nine Lives League! Not the Quick Death League.’

  ‘But I always thought “nine lives” meant eight near misse—’ Ivy got out.

  ‘Were you hoping to join us?’ said Carole. ‘Or were you actually hoping to adopt a cat of your own? Because we can’t be too fussy about membership fees but, I can assure you, we’re very selective about who we let enter into the adoption process.’

  ‘Neither,’ Ivy said. ‘I just came to meet a friend.’

  ‘Oh?’ Carole lifted her head and scanned the seats, all the women silent again now. ‘Well, either your friend hasn’t turned up or else she’s decided not to claim you.’

  The silence lengthened. Then someone towards the back said: ‘I wouldn’t, if it was me.’

  Ivy stood up, swaying a little. ‘Sorry,’ she said, shuffling along the row. ‘Sorry. Excuse me.’ She couldn’t see Myra anywhere, just row after row of blank eyes, and that one avid pair: that same little woman, still staring.

  She was out in the cold hallway when she realized she was being followed. She felt a hand on her arm and turned to see her, tiny beside Ivy, as slight as a bird, with pale soft skin and dry lips. The lips were parted and her breath came quick and harsh, just like a scared bird when it gives up and waits to die, its heart fluttering.

  ‘Who are you?’ she said, breathy little sounds.

  ‘Myra?’ said Ivy, relief and anger mingled. ‘Why did you just sit and stare? Why didn’t you wave or come over?’

  ‘Who’s Myra?’ the woman asked. Ivy opened her mouth, to try to explain. ‘And who are you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  The woman’s hand fell away from where it had been clutching Ivy’s sleeve. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘You don’t need to answer. I know who you are. I’m looking right at you.’ She took a staggering step to one side.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Ivy looked around urgently for someone to come and help. She was no good with ill people, or upset people, and this little woman was as white as milk, smudges jumping out under her eyes as her cheeks drained and she sank down on to a bench underneath a row of old-fashioned coat pegs.

  ‘How old are you?’ she asked Ivy. ‘Sorry to be so blunt, but how old are you?’

  ‘Why?’ said Ivy, sitting beside her.

  ‘I’m fifty-four,’ the woman said.

  Ivy nodded. ‘So am I.’

  ‘I was born on the twenty-ninth of October.’

  Ivy felt her eyes open wide. ‘Me too.’

  ‘At the cottage hospital in Fraserburgh,’ the woman said. ‘The midwife unit, they call it now.’ She was talking very fast, as if to get the words out before they burned her mouth. ‘I’m a twin. Not identical. Obviously. Not that we ever had a test. Obviously.’

  ‘Obviously?’ Ivy said. Still there was no one else in the cold hallway who could help, and a stranger making no sense was just as bad as them being ill. Ivy couldn’t cope with that sort of thing.

  ‘My sister doesn’t look anything like me,’ the woman was saying.

  ‘Oh?’ said Ivy. Why did no one come? This peculiar little woman was going to faint. No one could be that colour all the time.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘But she’s the absolute dead spit of you.’

  THREE

  Ivy didn’t go to pubs, except maybe for lunch once a flood, and certainly not a pub like this one, with men three deep at the bar and a snooker table in the back room, but when the woman, still pale and trembling, had steered her towards it, Ivy had followed. They couldn’t sit forever under the coat pegs and they couldn’t stand outside. The wind had picked up and it drilled through Ivy’s thick coat. A pub would be better than freezing to death.

  ‘My name’s Kate,’ the woman said, once they were seated. ‘My sister’s Gail.’

  ‘Ivy.’ She paused a moment. ‘Is this real? It seems too …’

  ‘It is!’ Kate said. ‘Far “too”! I’m not even a member of this branch! I don’t even live here! It’s just that I’m up visiting my aunty and she’s driving me nuts. I needed to get out for a bit and saw the poster. I don’t even live here.’

  ‘I’m not a member either,’ Ivy said. ‘Of any branch at all. I was supposed to be meeting my friend but she never turned up.’ She had caught Kate’s excitement and she decided to join in with her exclamations, even though they were unlike her. ‘I nearly didn’t come in!’ she said. ‘I nearly went home before it started!’ Then she stared Kate for a moment. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Sure?’ Kate reached across the corner of the table – they were in a booth, on a cracked green leather-effect ban
quette – ‘Ivy, you are my sister’s double. You are my sister’s twin.’ She stared until her eyes dried and she had to blink them. ‘I’ll get us both a drink and then— Look, take my phone.’ She slapped it down on the table, solid and shiny in its case, nothing like Ivy’s scratched screen and finger marks. ‘Scroll through my photos while I’m getting a glass of what? White? Red? Or brandy? I might need a brandy.’

  ‘I can’t go snooping through your phone!’ Ivy said to the narrow back as Kate made her way through the three-deep fringe of men and put her elbows on the bar. She’s done that before, Ivy thought. She stared at the little legs above the high heels, the smart hem of the narrow skirt. Were those Mother’s delicate ankles she was looking at? Mother had always been proud of her legs, always wore tights and a skirt and had a little heel to her shoes even for every day. Even for home. Ivy had always believed her broad calves and splayed feet came from her father but now … Well, maybe they did.

  Kate was coming back. ‘Did you see?’ she said, sliding a glass towards Ivy. ‘Oh. You didn’t look? Here, let me.’ She took a sip of brandy. Ivy thought it must be brandy. It was too dark for whisky and the wrong glass for sherry. She brought her own glass to her lips, tilted it and let in a silken tongue of liquid, cold round the edges but fiery as it spread across the back of her throat. Kate was scrolling so fast through her photographs that the pictures themselves were no more than a blur. ‘I’m bound to have a good one of her somewhere,’ she said. ‘Last summer we went on one of those— Or you know what? Why don’t we phone her? Why don’t we FaceTime with her? Right now! What am I like, looking for old photos!’

  ‘Do you think?’ said Ivy. ‘Should you spring it on her?’

  ‘I can’t keep it to myself!’ Kate had hit speed-dial and Ivy could hear the notes of the saved number and then the trill of the other phone. Kate flashed her eyes and smiled, managing a second sip of her brandy while she turned the phone to speaker and slid up beside Ivy to share the view of the screen. Ivy could feel her heart start to pick up like when crowds of boys got on the bus and sat near her, or when someone had too many items in the express lane and she had to tell them. Only this was bigger.

  ‘A twin,’ she said. ‘I’ve been an only child my whole life. I’ve been so alone. That’s why I started thinking about a pet. That’s how I met Myra. Online. She was thinking of getting one too. I thought they’d have them there tonight, to choose from.’

  ‘You’ll have to settle for a sister,’ Kate said. ‘A sister!’ Then she took a breath so sharp it was almost a gasp and put the phone down, throwing it away from herself. It skidded a few inches across the polished top of the pub table before the bumper stopped it. It kept vibrating along with the ringtone. Ivy dragged her eyes away from it at last and towards Kate’s face. Her pale top lip was trembling and when she lifted her glass it made a hard clink as it hit her teeth.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Ivy said. She took the glass – tipped so far there was a danger of it spilling – out of Kate’s hand and set it down. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Stupid,’ Kate breathed. ‘I was so excited to see you. My twin’s twin. My sister’s sister. I’m so stupid.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’ Ivy took her hand and held it in both of her own, engulfing it. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Well, we’re not triplets, are we?’ Kate said.

  The game of snooker had ended, with the sharp crack of cue ball against black and a bray of triumph and scorn from the men watching. Ivy wished they were anywhere but here. Maybe if they were somewhere nice, with a pot of tea, or even a wine bar and soft music playing, she’d be able to think of what to say. But this rough, beer-steeped cave unsettled her.

  ‘You are my twin’s twin and I’m not,’ Kate said. Her words came out clipped and bitter and for one wild moment Ivy thought of Mother again, a harsh laugh and that edge of triumph always in her. ‘You’re my sister’s sister,’ Kate was saying, ‘And I’m no one.’

  For a beat, for a breath, for a blink, Ivy felt a surge inside. It was power and she could wield it. She could find that edge for herself and drape a sweetness over it that left just a glint out in the open. Then she took another breath and it was gone. She squeezed Kate’s little hand tighter. ‘That’s not true. Of course you’re your sister’s sister. You’ve been with her your whole life. Did you share a room? Did you have a twin pram? Nothing can take that away.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Kate said. ‘Thank you for saying that, Ivy. You’re a very kind person.’

  That was when Ivy started to cry. ‘I’ve never—’ she said, scrubbing her face with her hanky. ‘No one’s ever said— You’re thanking me?’

  ‘Don’t do that,’ said Kate. ‘The skin under your eyes is too thin to be scraping at it like that. Blot. Like this.’ She took a cotton hanky out of her own pocket – a cotton hanky, ironed and sweet-smelling, like Ivy’s own – and pressed it against Ivy’s closed eyes, as if it was a blessing. ‘Gail’s just the same. She shows it under her eyes if she’s tired and yet she rub-rub-rubs at them as if they’ve offended her. All summer long with her hay fever. Do you get hay fever?’

  ‘I do,’ Ivy said. ‘Do you?’ Kate shook her head and Ivy watched the light shining through her cloud of light hair, like thistledown, so different from Ivy’s coarse hanks. ‘How did it happen?’ she said. ‘In a cottage hospital, not in a great big place. How could you be mistaken for me? Look at us!’

  ‘But Gail and I were like two peas as newborns,’ Kate said. ‘We even weighed the same. We both weighed— Well, you know what we weighed.’

  ‘Six pounds six,’ Ivy said, nodding. Mother used to tell her she’d been a lovely baby – ‘very neat and pretty’ – and then she’d wonder aloud what had gone wrong.

  ‘Can you roll your tongue?’ Kate was saying.

  ‘I can,’ said Ivy. She stuck her tongue out, tightly rolled like a new leaf.

  ‘I can’t,’ said Kate. ‘And Gail can. My mum and dad could too. How about yours?’

  ‘Could?’ said Ivy. ‘Could?’

  Kate put a hand out and clutched Ivy’s sleeve. ‘I’m sorry!’ she said. ‘I should have led up to it. They’re gone. I’m so sorry.’

  I’m not, Ivy thought but managed not to say. Instead she gave a small smile of her own, hoping it looked like Kate’s. ‘Mine too,’ she said. ‘My father years back and Mother last Christmas. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Kate said. Then she put both hands over her mouth and let her eyes drop wide above them. ‘I don’t mean that how it sounds,’ she added, when she took her hands away again. ‘I mean … there would have been such … parents – mothers anyway – are more … I think it would have been … Oh, I can’t explain what I’m trying to say! I need to phone Gail. She’s the clever one. Are you clever, Ivy?’

  ‘But I know exactly what you’re trying to say.’ Ivy ignored the question. ‘You’ve got your mother and that’s that. Another one’s just going to make hurt feelings all round.’ Kate was nodding, drinking it in, so Ivy felt bold enough to keep talking. ‘A sister’s different. You can have as many sisters as there are beds in your house and you can just love all of them the same.’

  Kate beamed. She didn’t seem to have noticed that word, like a bombshell, that Ivy had said without thinking. A word not used in their house, except for malt loaf and some quiz programmes that were not to be interrupted.

  ‘Where do you live?’ Ivy asked hurriedly anyway.

  ‘Hephaw,’ said Kate. ‘Down in West Lothian. We’ve lived there since we were tiny. Since right after we left here.’

  ‘And do you live close?’ Ivy said. Kate frowned and shook her head, not understanding. ‘To each other. Oh! Here’s me never asked if you’re married. Either of you. If there are children.’ She felt a little dip in the warm feeling that had bubbled up inside her and was bobbing along under her collarbone, like laughter that might break out, or a burp if she was honest. What if there were husbands? She rubbed Kate’s hand in hers again and couldn’t fee
l a ring. Or what if Kate was on her own and Gail had a husband and big children in ripped jeans and trainers like the boys on the bus, and she was too busy to care about Ivy and she talked Kate out of her excitement too.

  ‘We live together,’ Kate said. ‘We always have. We shared a bedroom till we were thirty. We’ve never married, Gail and me. And we work together; our own little business. And oh! I can’t wait to show you the house. It’s a fairytale cottage. Our pride and joy. You’ll love it too – I know you will. As soon as I’ve told Gail, as soon as you can swing it, you’ll have to come down and stay for the weekend. Or it doesn’t have to be the weekend. What about your work? There’s so much we don’t know about you!’

  ‘My own little business,’ said Ivy, ‘just like you.’ It was nearly a lie, now she only had two clients, now that everyone could do their own online. Who needed a bookkeeper these days?

  She thought she saw a sharp look in Kate’s eyes then. She was probably wondering about money and property. Well, no shame in that for Ivy was thinking exactly the same.

  She was still thinking about it lying in her bed that night, close to midnight, looking up at the lamp shadow. A fairytale cottage. In Hephaw. She wasn’t familiar with the town but she knew the central belt of Scotland didn’t get on many calendars. Can’t wait to show you. It was sweet, how proud Kate seemed to be of the place, despite the location. And, besides, Aberdeenshire wasn’t the misty glens either. So Ivy was glad, all in all, that there was one of her and two of them, that it made sense for her to travel, for her to visit. She wouldn’t have wanted to see disappointment in their eyes at the sight of this flat, with the heavy old furniture saved from her parents’ place and the cheap new curtains she’d hemmed herself. Hemmed to the sills because the cost of floor-length was a slap when she’d checked.