She's Mine

by Claire S. Lewis

  ‘She wouldn’t listen to anything I said. I don’t think she took it in – that James is dead. “She’s mine” – that’s all she kept saying, over and over again. “I’m keeping the baby, because she’s mine.”’

  36

  Scarlett

  Even in danger and misery the pendulum swings.

  Thank God, Gabrielle blows out the flame before tossing the match to the floor. Suddenly she is in a good mood and our situation feels slightly less desperate. She draws deeply on her cigarette and leans back in her chair.

  ‘I’ve got a job for you,’ she says, puffing into my face. I gag from the combination of petrol fumes and smoke. She pushes the legal papers to one side, reaches into a cupboard above her head and takes out a large, leather-bound photograph album, the sort that pretentious people like to display their artsy photographs in, using those fiddly little corners. It’s embossed with the words THE ALBUM in large gold letters. It looks out of place lying there, along with the empty vodka bottle and the shot glasses. Then she turns to Christina. ‘Do you remember that silly programme we used to watch when we were kids?’ she says. ‘This Is Your Life – that’s what it was called. They used to haul in old celebrities as they approached death, wheel in their long-lost friends – and enemies! – and present them with an album of photographs at the end of it. Well, this is for you– even though you’re not old, and you’re not a celebrity– at least not for the right reasons.’ She pushes the album towards Christina and ends her little speech with a flourish. ‘So, this is our life, and I hope you enjoy it!’

  Our life – not your life or our lives but our life. That’s how Gabrielle refers to the photo album. This is her testament of their shared existence, of their intertwined, singular identity. She’s holding up a mirror to Christina’s face and the truth is not pretty.

  I glance across anxiously towards Christina.

  Gabrielle leafs through the album, turning the thick ivory-coloured pages with care. She’s laid it out artistically – a photograph on the right-hand side of each double page and on the left, a dense handwritten text in obsessively neat italic script, the letters beautifully formed in black ink. There they are, the ghosts from the past, the shadows of this drama – Gabrielle, Christina and the boy she was in love with – captured in their younger beauty, prisoners of the past.

  ‘There’s some unfinished business you can help with,’ says Gabrielle, cutting short my reflections.

  Catching sight of my grimy hands, she orders me to wash them at the galley sink. Absurdly, I feel ashamed of my chipped nail polish and dirty fingernails.

  ‘Don’t try any tricks,’ she warns me, holding the fillet knife up to Christina’s throat as I rinse my hands under the tap. Christina’s eyes are wide open, shining with fear, like an animal caught in the headlights.

  When I sit down again Gabrielle makes a theatrical sweep of the knife and tests the blade on her finger. For a second, I fear she’s going to slash her sister’s face but instead she runs the flat blade across her cheek like an old-fashioned barber.

  Then she stands back to observe Christina’s profile and says thoughtfully, ‘No. I’m not finished with her yet. I don’t want to spoil the photographs.’

  With the knife now hitched in the belt of Gabrielle’s jeans, I resolve to make a grab for the handle as she lights yet another cigarette. She’s practically chain-smoking now, discarding the butts in a half-drunk cup of coffee, and adding to my sickening sense of impending disaster, in case she lets one drop to the petrol-drenched floor. As I kick back my chair, she thrusts the cigarette in front of my face.

  ‘One false move, and this time The Phantasea goes up in flames.’ My eyes are trained on the red ash which hangs perilously on the end of her cigarette. She turns back to Christina. ‘Do you remember that show we did at school? Sweeney Todd,’ she says. ‘Of course, you got to play the beautiful, love-sick, Johanna.’ Her tone is reflective, philosophical. ‘And I got to play the mad, fire-obsessed, old hag, her mother.’ She takes a deep drag on her cigarette. ‘When I complained about the casting the teacher just banged on about family likeness.’ She grabs a handful of Christina’s hair. ‘The murderous Mrs Lovatt would have suited me a lot better!’ She laughs. ‘I always was jealous of your long golden hair.’ She holds the long strands up to the sunlight. ‘Golden and scintillating. Mine always looked somehow mousy next to yours.’ Suddenly, she sits forward, chattering manically. ‘Remember that time when we were only three? I got hold of the kitchen scissors and started cutting off your golden locks while you were sleeping in the cot. Mother ran in screaming!’

  ‘I don’t remember,’ says Christina, looking down at her bound hands. ‘There were so many times…’

  ‘Untie her,’ I say. ‘We need sit down together and talk this through calmly.’

  ‘All in good time,’ says Gabrielle. ‘We’ve got work to do.’ She jabs the cigarette at me. ‘You’re going to help me complete the album.’ That sounds ominous! ‘It will keep us entertained until your friends come to the rescue!’ She must have heard me sending the SOS.

  I glance across anxiously towards Christina. Her eyes are closed now. She seems to be almost fainting with the pain of the gunshot wound and the indignity of being tied up and humiliated.

  ‘Open your eyes,’ orders Gabrielle. ‘We’re not finished yet. Look, the last page is blank. Scarlett’s going to read to you while I set up the cameras for the final photograph.’ She flips back to the first page of the album and taps it with the blade of her knife. ‘Now read,’ she orders me. ‘Then you’ll understand.’

  There’s no getting out of this charade, so I start reading, deciphering with difficulty Gabrielle’s intricate writing describing each of the photographs, speaking as slowly and clearly as I can, playing for time, praying my distress call got through to the coastguard, and was transmitted to the police and that Costa will get his act together fast before Gabrielle loses it completely and turns the knife on her twin.

  As I turn the page, she casually aims a camera lens at me and clicks the shutter.

  ‘There’s no escape from our story. You’re part of it now.’

  *

  Now Gabrielle’s mood has turned as black as the weather. While I’ve been sitting here reading, the wind has changed. The air is electric and there are dark, menacing clouds on the horizon.

  ‘There’s a squall on the way,’ I say. ‘We need to get back to shore.’ The waves are building steadily, making The Phantasea rise and fall like a seesaw. The sky lights up and the first crack of thunder explodes overhead. ‘That sounds bad!’

  Gabrielle swears and blasphemes like a squaddie as she struggles to set up a tripod at the back of the saloon. Meanwhile I seize on the chance to dash through the galley to the cockpit to see if I can work out how to start up the engines.

  ‘Stop’, screams Gabrielle. ‘Get away from there.’

  Gabrielle is not the sort of woman it’s easy to say ‘no’ to – especially when she’s got the blade of a fisherman’s knife sticking out of her belt. But though I back off from the controls, I protest loudly,

  ‘We’re going to capsize. We need to find shelter fast. There’s no time to lose.’

  That really irks Gabrielle.

  ‘I’ve been sailing these yachts since I was thirteen years old. I know what I’m doing,’ she says. ‘You’ve been a great help so far, Scarlett but you’re really beginning to get on my nerves. Stop interfering. Get on with the reading or you can swim back to shore.’

  So, while I continue to read from the album and Christina remains slumped, half fainting in her seat, Gabrielle saunters round the saloon, defying the thunder and lightning, setting up screens and lighting and making final adjustments to angles and profiles. She’s in her element now, confident, in her professional comfort zone, mouthing the words I recite as she goes about setting up her photographic equipment. Walking past the galley, she tips the dregs of the vodka bottle into one of the shot glasses and tosses it back.


  Once satisfied with her arrangements, Gabrielle decides to punish me for my aborted attempt at mutiny. She locks the doors and for good measure, holds the knife to my neck while she orders me to sit down and with one hand deftly binds my ankles to the legs of the stool.

  ‘Any more false moves and she’ll suffer for it,’ says Gabrielle, flicking the knife towards Christina.

  I’m feeling more and more seasick by the minute, desperate to get out on deck away from the reek of petrol.

  ‘I need some fresh air,’ I say. ‘I’m going to be sick.’

  ‘You’re not going anywhere,’ says Gabrielle. ‘I haven’t finished with you yet. You’re part of our story now.’

  This time, she makes it sound like a death sentence!

  37

  Photograph Twelve

  14 February 2011: Maternity Ward, New York City Hospital

  I found this photograph in the drawer of Mother’s dressing table when I went home last Christmas. It’s of you, propped up on the pillows of a hospital bed, dishevelled, your hair damp with sweat and the sheets stained with blood – the midwife can’t have been too fastidious. I suppose she must have taken the photograph for you. It’s time stamped 1.35 a.m. on 14 February 2011. I can’t imagine who else could have been there to hold your hand at that ungodly hour of the night.

  There you are, impersonating the blessed Virgin Mary herself, a pastiche of maternal love. I’ve never seen you looking so happy and serene. You’re robed in hospital blue, holding my newborn baby, swaddled in a white sheet, her tiny face close to your breast.

  My darling Rose, born so poignantly on Valentine’s Day, was already a prisoner in your arms.

  With James dead and buried, who, other than me, could know the darkness that was in your thieving, cuckoo heart?

  *

  In the days following the drowning tragedy, Lara spent her time reminiscing about her past life in Oxford with James – heady days spent punting and pub crawling, drinking coffee in each other’s rooms over shared essay crises, or getting drunk beneath the rose bushes in the Nuns’ Garden on alcohol-drenched fruit picked from the bottom of a punch bowl. She smiled at the memory of those sweet debauched summer afternoons. The nuns would have blushed.

  Ah! And then Venice – the agonising beauty of Venice. She could scarcely allow herself to dwell on memories of the reawakening of love she had shared with him there, winding along the sunny canals and under shady bridges. Reliving those images was like dipping her fingers into a black lagoon of grief – she dared not plunge beneath the shimmering surface for fear of being sucked under and drowned.

  Unlike Gabrielle, all she had were her memories. There was no album to thumb, no images to peruse online. She had no interest in keeping pictures of the past. Life was for living in the moment. Lara’s distrust for photography stemmed from her relationship as a twin. She had spent too much time when growing up confronted with a living image of herself. In her eyes, photography was just more unnecessary duplication.

  In contrast, photography was Gabrielle’s passion. From the age of six, she’d delighted in recording the minutiae of their lives. Lara saw this as part of her sister’s obsessive need for control. Gabrielle wished to capture, process and document every aspect of their shared existence, to arrange it in the selection and order that she wanted – to own it. She was forever snapping away, first with her little instamatic, then with a sophisticated SLR camera that she had begged her parents to buy for her thirteenth birthday. A frequent target of Gabrielle’s photo shooting projects, Lara felt no need to record their shared reality for herself. Now in the absence of photographs, and in fear of her memories, Lara focused on the new life that was growing inside her womb – experiencing every movement and sensation with renewed intensity.

  As for Gabrielle, she found the inquest painful but she was excused from testifying on account of her precarious mental state. The coroner recorded a finding of accidental death by drowning. His report praised Gabrielle’s bravery in having heroically risked her own life to attempt the rescue of James who had been trapped underwater in the car. The report noted that James’s escape had been impeded by a faulty clasp on the passenger seatbelt. Bruising around the deceased’s neck appeared to have been caused by the seatbelt becoming caught at the neckline either at the time of impact or in his struggle to escape from the car. The report also noted that high levels of alcohol found in the deceased’s body may have contributed to his tragic death.

  Gabrielle kept her emotions in check for the legal proceedings and the small private funeral but afterwards fell into a black depression. She took three months’ leave of absence from work and moved back to the family home, spending hours each day locked in the bedroom that she used to share with Lara when they were girls.

  She revived a few weeks later in time to plan a stylish memorial service for James to which more than two hundred of his friends and colleagues were invited. She insisted on taking control of everything, planning it meticulously like a VIP event organiser – she let her artistic instincts fly. It was to be an extravagant, vibrant, celebration of his life. Not some miserable, weak-tea-and-soggy-sandwiches affair. She would personally hand out glasses of James’s vintage Claret to each of the guests as they stepped into the church. There was to be live music and dancing in the aisles.

  She brought in professional photographic equipment from her studio in Chelsea and rigged up a vast projection screen behind the altar, so that life size black-and-white photographs and video sequences of herself and James, as the star-crossed lovers, could be projected up like an old-fashioned movie onto the back wall of the church. At the wake, they would drink buckets of champagne and eat smoked salmon and cupcakes.

  ‘I’ll make the cupcakes,’ said Mrs Kennedy. ‘I’d like to help.’

  ‘I’ve got it covered,’ said Gabrielle briskly. ‘I’ve ordered them from our local patisserie on the King’s Road – we go there for tea on Saturday afternoons.’

  She planned her outfit meticulously – classic designer brands in retro-chic, complete with veiled hat, dark glasses, clutch bag and pearls like a 1950s star of the silver screen. She was going for the Grace Kelly look. No one was going to pity her. She was going to stun them all with her beauty and poise.

  Her twin was not invited.

  Back in New York, Lara remained absorbed in her own private mourning. After reading the report of the inquest that her mother sent to her, she reached her own conclusions. There were so many unanswered questions. She was appalled that the police had not launched a criminal investigation and thought cynically that the fact that Gabrielle was the daughter of a vicar had unjustly absolved her from suspicion. After the birth, she wrote to her mother, enclosing a photograph taken by the midwife of her baby daughter, Catherine Jamie. In her letter, she tried to explain why she was cutting herself off from the family but mostly she wrote to say goodbye:

  She killed him, Mother. I’m sure of it. I knew as soon as I read the report of the inquest. She strangled him with the leather strap of a handbag I chose for her in Venice, and she drove the car off the bridge to hide her crime. If any of you ever try to track me down, I’m going straight to the police – I can prove it. She killed James to punish me. I know how her mind works. How could I give my baby girl to the woman who killed her father and my first love? We made her – James and I. She is unique, she is beautiful and she belongs to me. I can’t blame Gabrielle for hating me, for wanting me dead too… The power of maternal love – it’s terrifying. Now I understand why her desperation for that love, drove her mad. I won’t be coming back to England. I’m applying for US citizenship and I’m staying here in New York. Please don’t try to contact me. I have a new identity. I’m starting a new life to protect my baby. Though it breaks my heart, I can never see you again.

  Forget you ever had a daughter named Lara. She is gone.

  38

  Scarlett

  Finally, she’s ready.

  ‘OK, let’s go,’ she says. ‘Photograph
Thirteen. This will be the last – a fitting ending to the album of our life.’

  Without taking her eyes away from the viewfinder targeting Christina’s face, she points to the Album and says,

  ‘Scarlett, turn to the end.’

  The last double page is blank. There’s only a heading at the top on the right-hand side, written in black ink and underlined.

  Photograph 13: Unlucky for Someone

  Then below, the blank space, for a photograph.

  ‘So, Scarlett,’ says Gabrielle, with an ironic smile. ‘What shall it be? You’ve done a little modelling yourself, haven’t you? You should have some interesting ideas!’

  Ouch!

  Her swipe at my character confirms what I’ve known for some time – she was behind the YouPorn video and e-Face. She was the woman I corresponded with by email and spoke to on the phone.

  Gabrielle swings the lens back round to Christina, and with professional ease, swiftly adjusts the exposure settings. She sings softly and I catch fragments of lyrics from one of last year’s hits, ‘You watching me…’ She puts a hand under Christina’s chin and tilts her head firmly towards the porthole to make the most of the remaining light. ‘Hanging by a string this time…’ Now Gabrielle is completely absorbed in composing the image. ‘My smile's worth a hundred lies…’ She adjusts the position of Christina’s arms and Christina cries out in pain. ‘Whatever happened to you?’ says Gabrielle, noticing the blood-stained tourniquet underneath her shirt. She doesn’t wait for the answer. She unbuckles the belt and loosens the rope around Christina’s ankles. ‘Stand up,’ she says coldly, ‘I want a full-length shot.’

  As Christina struggles to her feet, she picks up the camera, spins the lens to focus and lock the settings, then clicks on the shutter button.