They would burn.
Suffocate.
Die.
Carly stumbled over to the window as though smoke was already seeping into her lungs. She grasped hold of the metal bars, thankfully cool and not scorching hot. Lifted her feet from the ground.
Come on.
She wasn’t heavy enough to yank them from the window.
‘Girls. Come and help me.’
Leah slipped her arms around Carly’s waist, hanging from her like an infant monkey. Carly’s shoulder sockets screamed with pain, her clammy palms slipped, as the sisters tumbled onto the hard concrete ground, into a puddle of stagnant water that had pooled under the window. It stank.
‘I want to go home.’ Leah clung to Carly, the tips of her fingers digging into the already-bruised flesh of Carly’s arm.
‘We’re going to go home.’ Carly stood, and helped Leah up. Both of their skirts were sodden. ‘Why didn’t you help us, Marie?’
‘We can’t get out,’ Marie stated the simple truth.
Leah began to cry.
‘It’s okay, though.’ Marie stroked her twin’s hair, the way she had calmed Bruno the night fireworks lit up the sky behind their garden. ‘It’s a game. Isn’t it?’
Marie’s eyes met Carly’s and there was both question and fear in them.
‘Yes,’ said Carly eventually. Marie had the right idea. Leah was born only twelve minutes after Marie, but she’d always seemed much younger – the one they needed to protect with her endless worries. It was better to lie and calm her. ‘It’s a game.’
‘But I don’t want to play.’ Leah sobbed harder.
‘If we don’t all play, we can’t all stay together,’ Marie said.
‘What do you mean?’ Leah wiped her nose with the back of her hand.
‘I mean…’ Marie hesitated. Indecipherable emotions slid across her face – she had always been so hard to read – before she masked them with a half-hearted attempt at a smile. Forever the fearless one. Always trying to make her twin feel better. ‘We have to be good. Brave. We’re together, that’s the main thing.’
‘Might they split us up? Who are they? Don’t let them take me away.’
‘I won’t,’ Marie said firmly. ‘Cross my heart.’ But Leah still looked terrified until Marie curved her little finger into a hood and offered it to her twin.
‘A pinkie promise can’t be broke
Or you’ll disappear in a puff of smoke
This is my vow to you,
I’ll keep my promise through and through.’
‘See, it’ll be fine!’ Carly took a deep breath to steady her voice. ‘Marie’s right.’ She glanced at Marie. ‘We’ll treat it like a game. A mystery. We’re good at solving those, aren’t we?’ It wasn’t too long ago they’d created invisible ink. If only lemon juice could help them now. ‘Let’s make a plan.’ She crunched over the broken glass and perched on the mattress. It was filthy but safer than the floor. She patted the space either side of her. The twins huddled against her. ‘Right. I don’t know who took us, or why, but there’s two of them. Doc—’
‘A doctor?’ Leah asked.
‘No, but I call him that because of his boots, and Moustache is the other one. They haven’t hurt us yet so I don’t think they will.’ Carly crossed her fingers behind her back.
‘Look.’ Leah pointed with a shaky finger. On the wall, in jet black aerosol, the words, You’re going to die.
‘That isn’t aimed at us,’ Carly said. ‘Look how many other things have been written.’
‘Run.’ Leah read another.
‘I meant names and stuff. It’s vandals. Some of the kids at school have been here. Nobody is going to die.’
Think.
They fell silent.
Think.
Suddenly it came to her.
A plan.
‘Marie, we need you to pretend to be ill.’
‘Why?’ asked Marie.
‘Because you’re the best at acting.’ Marie had a confidence Carly could only wish for. Last Christmas she’d played Annie. Mum had styled her red hair into a mass of ringlets and she’d stood centre stage, belting out ‘Tomorrow’ without a hint of self-consciousness.
‘I know I’m the best. Acting is easy. You just pretend. I meant why should I look ill?’
‘That way I can call the men and they’ll think you’re really sick. If they’re worried you might die they’ll have to take you to hospital. There’ll be police there.’ Carly thought but she didn’t know. There were always policeman chatting up the nurses on Casualty.
‘No,’ said Marie. ‘It’s better we stay together. Besides, they won’t hurt us.’ She tried to form it as a statement. Carly knew she was trying to reassure Leah but there was still a tinge of doubt to her voice. This was the first time in her eight years Marie had caught a glimpse of how harsh the world could be and Carly didn’t blame her for not wanting to accept it. ‘They didn’t mean to scare us, did they, Carly?’ Marie raised her eyebrows and tilted her head towards her twin.
‘Of course not, but—’ Carly began.
‘There you go, then. I won’t leave Leah.’ She linked her fingers through her sister’s. ‘Or you,’ she added as she caught sight of the expression on Carly’s face.
‘Marie—’
‘No, Carly! Besides, they wouldn’t believe it if I was suddenly ill.’
‘It wouldn’t be much of a stretch.’ Carly gestured to the piles of rubbish littering the graffiti-daubed room. ‘It’s filthy here – there’ll be germs crawling all over the place, probably enough to kill us.’ Carly shuddered.
‘We could die of germs?’ Terror was thick in Leah’s voice. Her eyes rapidly scoured the floor as if searching for germs scurrying around.
‘Not really.’ Carly wished she could take back her words. Leah had a tendency to worry about everything.
‘Nobody’s going to die,’ Marie said. ‘It’s a game. That’s all. Pretend. We stay quiet and don’t make a fuss and we’ll be home before we know it. Right, Carly?’
‘Right.’ Carly tried to lift her mouth into a smile but she couldn’t. In truth she didn’t know if they’d ever go home, and even if they did, the thought of what they might have to endure between now and then was utterly horrifying.
Carly felt sick. Dizzy. The lump on her head throbbing.
Think.
She was all out of ideas and worse than that, her bladder was uncomfortably full. Again, her eyes travelled across the room, hopefully looking for a toilet.
‘I need to wee.’ She stood.
‘Are you going to knock on the door and ask?’ Marie said.
‘Don’t go out there without us, Carly,’ Leah begged.
‘I’m not. I’ll…’ She was hot with humiliation. ‘I’ll go over there, by the corner. You two face the wall.’
The twins did as they were told. Carly’s fingers reluctantly hitched up her skirt and dragged down her pants. At first she couldn’t go, too scared the men would come in and see her exposed. She closed her eyes and pictured the waterfall they’d visited a few years ago in Wales. The roar of the water, the surge of the current. Hot splashes splattered her legs as she released a stream of urine.
‘I’ve finished,’ she said quietly.
‘It stinks of wee now,’ Leah said.
‘It stank of wee anyway.’ Carly was horribly embarrassed. She needed to find something to soak it up with. Careful to avoid the broken glass, she crouched down beside the pile of rubbish. There was a large cardboard box she could tear apart. Carly pulled it towards her, expecting it to be light and empty. Instead it was heavy and full. Sealed with brown tape.
Carly felt dread settle heavily in her stomach before she’d even opened the box.
Before she had seen what was inside.
She somehow knew it would be bad.
Very bad.
Chapter Twelve
George
Now
George closes his eyes momentarily. He can’t concentrat
e on his breakfast meeting. Has no appetite for the full English in front of him despite the bacon being crispy and the egg yolks sunshine-yellow and runny, just the way he likes them. Guilt has eradicated his appetite. No room for food in his churning stomach.
‘George, do you agree?’
‘Umm. Yes. Absolutely.’
He tries to smile. Tries to pay attention but on each attempt to focus, his thoughts drift back to Leah. Were they too broken to fix? George doesn’t know. He doesn’t know if he wants them to be. In sickness and in health, George had promised, and it wasn’t that he hadn’t meant it, more that he never envisaged there being so much of the sickness. The minute he had opened the parcel yesterday and had seen the array of cleaning products, he knew. He just knew she was slipping backwards and it shamed him to admit that there was a split second when he had stood, rooted to the spot, with the thought that he could run away flickering across his mind. Never come back. Start a new life, one with love and laughter and happiness. But he couldn’t force his legs to move. He had too much to lose, but if he stayed, everything to gain.
‘George?’ The client stabs the last piece of sausage onto his fork with more force than necessary. George knows he’d been asked another question.
‘Sorry. I… My wife is unwell. I think I need to go. Sorry.’ He opens his wallet to throw some cash on the table but it is empty. Instead, he pulls out his credit card, hoping it won’t be refused.
‘It’s okay. I’ll settle up. You get home to your wife.’ The man sitting opposite him softens. George knows he has a family too, but that doesn’t always mean anything, does it? Families can cheat and lie. Betray each other in an instant.
He should know.
The needle on the fuel gauge hovers close to empty. He fills the tank with diesel and remembers he had forgotten to fill Leah’s car when he had promised to. Ashamed he’d let her down again, he picks up some yellow and orange flowers from the reduced-price bucket. The roses in the bouquet are browning and shrivelled but if he plucks them out the other flowers are fresh.
He hasn’t seen Leah since their row yesterday. They had eaten their lunch in silence. Even Archie had been quiet, chewing his crusts without complaint, finishing his carrot sticks before asking for a cookie. George doesn’t want him growing up in an atmosphere – it isn’t fair on anyone. Is having two unhappy parents under the same roof better for a child than being shuttled between argument-free homes? He just doesn’t know. Not that he can afford a second home, he is barely managing the first, sinking all his money into the mortgage on a property that’s not even in his name. That’s unfair, though. Leah didn’t have a mortgage before he’d wanted to set up a business. She’d believed in him enough to take on a job purely so the bank would give them more funds than they could feasibly afford to pay back. It wasn’t irresponsible money-lending but a calculated risk. They have plenty of capital. The house is worth much more than they owe. Even so, he feels the bank is just biding its time. Waiting to snatch their home away.
As he had hugged Archie goodbye before heading out for the evening, he pretended that he was saying goodbye after a weekend visit and leaving his boy for a week, just to see how it felt.
It hurt.
The clock in the hallway had displayed midnight by the time he returned. The tick-tick-tick of its hands seemed to reprimand him.
Liar-liar-liar.
He had hesitated. His foot on the bottom step, his fingers lightly resting on the bannister. He couldn’t climb into bed with his wife, not smelling of another woman’s perfume. Not when the smell would be so familiar to her. Instead, he had spent a restless night on the couch.
George doesn’t call out as he enters the house, he doesn’t quite know what to say. How to sound. The TV is on in the lounge, Archie cross-legged on the floor and glued to Shrek. George frowns. Archie hadn’t seemed unwell when he’d kissed him goodbye early that morning and by the way he is dipping his hand into a bag of Pom Bears, crunching the crisps, he probably isn’t ill. Instead of disturbing him, George wanders into the kitchen, in search of his wife. Leah is sitting at the table, studying something on her laptop.
For a moment George drinks her in. The way her soft hair hangs like a glossy sheet down her back, the sun through the window picking out natural golden highlights among the red. She really is beautiful. A one-of-a-kind gasp-in-surprise when she walks into a room type. Except she isn’t a one-off. Marie is almost identical although she has entirely different hair. An entirely different personality. His sister-in-law intrudes into his thoughts far more frequently than he’d like nowadays.
As George crosses the kitchen he can see Leah is watching the press coverage from her original case on YouTube. He feels a mixture of sadness and anger that their boy is alone in the lounge while Leah has again stepped into the past.
‘Hi.’ George ignores the way she flinches when she became aware of his presence.
He holds out BP garage’s finest peace offering. ‘Are you okay?’ he asks, although she clearly isn’t. Her eyes are bloodshot and red-rimmed as though she’s been crying for hours and he wonders if he’s been the cause of that or if it is something else.
Hurriedly, Leah slams the lid of the laptop down with her gloved hand before opening it again slightly. She repeats this ritual twice more, lightning fast, all the while unable to look George in the eye. It takes seconds and a casual observer might not have noticed, but George feels panic rising.
Threes.
He hadn’t realized she was quite so bad.
Again.
She pushes the computer angrily away. George feels she’s pushing him away. He feels alone, not like last night with arms and legs wrapped around him. Soft breath and warm moans in his ears.
‘Why isn’t Archie at nursery?’ he asks.
‘He’s out’ is all she says flatly and at first George is confused. Archie is out? What does that mean? But then she says, ‘Graham McDonald called to tell me,’ and he realizes why she was watching YouTube.
Watching him.
He’s out.
‘I couldn’t face leaving the house. The thought of him out there.’ She stares out of the window with wide eyes.
‘He was always going to be released sometime,’ George says, but his voice is thin. The memories of what happened last time he was released are still raw. Then he had desperately wanted to save Leah. He knows he should feel the same now. George reaches for his wife but she leans sideways on her stool, away from him. Instead, he crosses to the sink to wash his hands. Afterwards, she allows him to hold her but her body is stiff.
‘We can’t let this affect Archie. You can’t keep him inside forever. He needs to go to nursery. You have to go to work. You can’t let that… that man be the ruin of you. I bet he hasn’t given you a second thought. Any of you. Leah, you can choose to—’
Quickly, she pushes him away. ‘It seems we all have choices to make. I saw Marie yesterday. You’ll never guess what she said?’ Damp patches form in George’s armpits. He doesn’t know what he should say to that, what he could say, and so he says nothing. Has Marie given away their secret? He doesn’t think Leah would have kept quiet about it for twenty-four hours if she had. Infidelity isn’t something his wife would forget to mention. Besides, Marie would have warned him, wouldn’t she?
‘She’s been approached by a journalist.’
‘We’ve all been approached by journalists the past few weeks.’ Even George. He’d felt sick at first as the man in the coffee shop had leered at him as he pushed his card into George’s hand. What’s it really like living with a Sinclair Sister? Does she have trust issues? Issues with men? George knew what he was asking and he had wanted to throw a punch until the man hit him with a figure his paper was prepared to pay. ‘Fucking scum,’ George muttered but he was still staggered at the money on the table.
‘I say journalist, but it’s TV. A live show.’
George tries to rearrange his features into one of surprise, as though it’s the first time he
has heard this.
‘They want a new angle, apparently. I guess the fact he’s out there again, gives it a new angle.’ She laughs bitterly.
‘What do Carly and Marie think of the TV idea?’
‘Marie’s all for it. She thinks it will be healing. Get everything out there once and for all and lay it to rest. She thinks we’ll be left alone then.’
‘Maybe she’s right?’ George says cautiously. ‘You have nothing to be ashamed of, Leah. None of you,’ he says although he knows Marie should feel ashamed.
Does feel ashamed.
‘Marie says she wants forgiveness. Don’t we all?’ She sighs.
‘Yes,’ George says softly. Sometimes he thinks he wants to be found out but Leah doesn’t ask him what he needs to be forgiven for and he wonders – not for the first time – whether part of her knows. Whether she really believes he has so many evening meetings. ‘Maybe meet with the producer and talk it through? It could be good for you. Good for us.’ George purposefully doesn’t mention the huge fee he knows is at stake.
‘Carly hates the idea. Last night I rang her and she was crying and that was even before I told her the news. This morning when I called she could barely pull herself together long enough to talk. It’s too much, him being out so close to the anniversary. I can’t get hold of Marie either. I rang her about a million times last night after Graham called. She said she was going to be home all evening but she didn’t pick up. I thought I saw him yesterday, you know.’
‘Graham?’ George can’t keep up with the way her mind is fragmenting.
‘No. Not Graham,’ she says impatiently and George knows exactly who she means.
She thinks he’s coming after her like before.
It’s happening. It’s happening again.
‘Leah.’ He takes her hand. Wishing he could feel skin instead of cotton. ‘You have nothing to hide.’
‘You don’t understand…’
‘I do.’ He squeezes her fingers. ‘I know what happened to you back then. I know everything about you.’
‘Nobody knows everything about anyone,’ she says darkly. George knows he has made a promise to Marie. He knows the approaching twenty-year anniversary is landsliding it all back, threatening to bury them all completely.
The Stolen Sisters: from the bestselling author of The Date and The Sister comes one of the most thrilling, terrifying and shocking psychological thrillers of 2020 Page 7