Shadow Sister

by Simone Vlugt

  Sylvie takes a deep breath and exhales slowly. ‘You should call the police. If you think there’s someone in your house, they should come and look around.’

  ‘There isn’t anybody here but Lydia. I can’t see her but she’s here with me. I know it sounds crazy and I won’t blame you if you don’t believe a word of it, but.’ I break off the sentence, empty the sink and wonder whether I should go on.

  ‘Are you paranormally gifted or something?’ Sylvie asks.

  I shake my head. ‘No, it’s not that. At least, I don’t think so. I don’t see ghosts, I don’t hear ghosts and I don’t expect to either. But my mother has always said that I’m very intuitive.’

  ‘Oh, I am too,’ Sylvie says. ‘Sometimes I’ll be talking to someone and I’ll know that they’re lying, or hiding something from me. It’s the way they fiddle with their clothes or avoid my gaze.’

  That is not at all what I meant. ‘In those instances it’s revealed in people’s behaviour, but I also get it when I’m talking on the phone.’

  Sylvie nods in agreement. ‘Yes, when they want to cancel a date. Then they get a bit stuttery or come up with excuses. Men in particular are so transparent.’

  ‘Yes, but I get it as soon as I pick up and say my name,’ I say. ‘I often know who’s calling before they’ve said anything.’

  ‘Oh yes, sometimes you know even before you’ve picked up,’ Sylvie laughs. ‘One of my friends always used to call me at exactly half past eight, once the news had finished. Then I’d pick up and say, “Hey Manon” straight away. She never understood how I always knew it was her.’ She grins. ‘These days I have caller recognition, but I didn’t then.’

  I remain silent and begin to understand why Lydia always got annoyed with Sylvie. It doesn’t bother me because I know Sylvie better than anyone else. It’s not that she’s told me that much about herself, but her history comes across in what she doesn’t say. I know that she didn’t have an easy childhood, that she’s alone in the world.

  Sylvie brings me back to earth. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Was I staring?’ I say with an apologetic laugh. ‘Sorry. I was just thinking that I know very little about you, for such a good friend. I know that you haven’t had it easy and that you’re not in touch with your family anymore, but you’ve never told me why.’ I fill the coffee machine with water and put a filter into the holder. ‘Ever since Lydia died, I find it very easy to imagine how lonely you must be. And I’ve still got my parents, and Raoul and Valerie.’

  ‘Yes.’ The smile has disappeared from Sylvie’s eyes and her voice is flat. ‘I’ve always been quite jealous of you. I’m always jealous of people who have families.’

  I spoon the coffee into the filter. ‘Do you really not have anybody? No one at all?’

  ‘Yes, but I don’t see them anymore,’ Sylvie says. ‘I’m an only child and my father walked out on us when I was six. You might think I was too young to remember much about him, but I can actually remember quite a lot, and it hurts. I’ve never been able to understand why he left us. He never tried to explain it. Before he left he was such a good dad. I missed him so terribly, and then some.’

  Her voice breaks and I reach out my hand and touch her arm to comfort her.

  ‘Sorry.’ Sylvie’s smile is weak. ‘I came round to help you.’

  ‘Perhaps it would help me more to know that I’m not the only one who has it hard,’ I say. ‘Not that I want you to be unhappy, but I’m tired of people’s sympathy. I’m a good listener too, you know.’ I touch her arm. ‘Tell me, is your mother still alive?’

  ‘Yes, but we’re not in touch anymore. After my father left, my mother and I were on our own for years until she met Bert.’ A shadow passes across her face. ‘He moved in with us when I was thirteen. I couldn’t stand him at first. The idea he might think he could take my father’s place made me furious. But that wasn’t Bert’s plan. He left my upbringing to my mother and treated me like a friend. We were close.’

  Sylvie is silent for while, sinks into a kitchen chair and continues. I can barely hear her. ‘A bit too close. One night he came into my bedroom and tried to get in bed with me. I kicked him away and threatened to call the police. That shook him. He never tried it again, but he’d stare at me if I was walking around in my nightie, or if I was sunbathing in my bikini in the garden. Try to imagine what that was like for a growing girl. What a creep he was!’

  I’m horrified. ‘And your mother? Did you tell her?’

  ‘She didn’t believe me,’ Sylvie says. ‘She thought I was imagining things and said that she’d never noticed anything. If I had a problem with him looking at me, I shouldn’t go wear a bikini or parade around the house in mini-skirts. Parade! That was the word she used, as if I was inviting him to keep accidentally brushing against me whenever we passed each other in the hall.’

  Sylvie stares ahead without speaking and I feel deep sympathy for her. No wonder she never reveals much about her childhood. I pour the coffee.

  ‘How long did it go on for?’ My voice is full of repressed anger.

  ‘Until I was sixteen. I left school, got a job and moved out. I was too young of course, but they made no attempt to stop me,’ Sylvie says. ‘So you understand why I don’t visit them.’

  We go into the sitting room carrying our mugs and sit down on the sofa.

  ‘Did you ever see your real father again?’

  Sylvie shakes her head. ‘As far as I’m concerned he can stay away. I’ve managed without him all this time, the rest of my life should be possible too.’ She straightens her shoulders and smiles. ‘Enough about me. Let’s talk about something else.’

  I nod, but the silence that falls stretches out.

  ‘How’s it going with your studio?’ she asks.

  It’s a difficult change of tack, but Sylvie clearly doesn’t want to talk about herself anymore.

  ‘I haven’t been doing much, but I can allow myself not to work for a while.’

  ‘That makes a difference,’ Sylvie says. ‘It must be useful, having so much money. But both of you went out and got jobs, didn’t you?’

  ‘What else were we going to do? The money has never been that important,’ I say. ‘It made it easier to study, that’s true. We didn’t need weekend jobs and we could afford to live in nice places, but neither of us would have been happy doing nothing. I’ve invested a lot of my money in my studio, and in my house, of course.’

  ‘And Lydia?’

  ‘In Raoul’s company. I think she owns half of the shares. That was smart, Software International is going to be big some day.’

  I realise that I’m talking about my sister in the present tense, and the reality undoes me. I struggle for breath and close my eyes in an attempt to master the pain.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Sylvie’s voice is gentle.

  I nod, even though I’m not really. ‘When I talk about Lydia, I keep forgetting that she’s gone.’

  I can’t hold it back anymore and Sylvie puts her arms around me. She lets me cry until I’ve calmed down, which takes quite a while. I’m embarrassed about crying, but Sylvie doesn’t seem to mind. She rubs my back, makes consoling noises and says all kinds of things that barely get through to me.

  Finally I wipe the tears from my face. ‘How could she just die, Sylvie? One minute she was here and the next she was gone. She can’t be gone, she just can’t. How can you just suddenly stop existing?’

  Sylvie looks at me helplessly. ‘I don’t know.’

  Another silence falls. After a while I wipe my hair out of my face, look at her and ask, ‘Do you believe there’s life after death?’

  Sylvie hesitates. ‘I don’t completely rule it out, but I don’t really believe in it either. I’ve never had a reason to believe there’s anything more.’

  I get up and fetch a box of tissues from the cupboard. I pull one out and blow my nose. Crumpled tissue in my hand, I say, ‘Lydia and I always used to go and look for chestnuts in the graveyard in the autumn.’
r />   Sylvie looks at me expectantly.

  ‘The chestnut trees were enormous. At the end of September the conkers would be pouring off them and we’d cycle there with big plastic bags.’

  ‘Didn’t you think it was scary?’

  I shake my head. ‘Not at all. Lydia certainly didn’t, she wasn’t afraid of anything, and I felt more respect for all those graves than fear. I didn’t see the graveyard as a place full of dead people, but as a sort of…spirit realm. It’s not that I saw anything in particular, but I could feel the presence of all those souls.’

  ‘Really?’ Sylvie shivers.

  ‘I was just a kid, so I didn’t really think about it, but I knew exactly which graves we could get chestnuts off and which we’d better leave alone.’

  Sylvie’s fingers tap against her mug. ‘And now you think that Lydia is visiting you.’ Her voice is cautious.

  ‘Well, maybe she is. Just because I don’t have a sixth sense doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.’

  She takes a sip of coffee and adds, ‘I’m happy I don’t have a feeling for paranormal things, it seems dead creepy.’

  My eyes wander around the room and come to rest on the chair where Lydia liked to sit when she visited. I picture her there, one leg crossed over the over, chatting away.

  ‘It’s not creepy, it’s reassuring,’ I say gently. ‘It means that she hasn’t gone completely away.’

  25.

  She hasn’t gone. Most of the time she’s with me. She goes away when I sleep, work or when I’m momentarily distracted by my grief. I can sense it immediately when she’s not there and I try to summon her back

  On a sunny, windy day, I catch the train to my parents’ house. I know they aren’t home and that’s why I’ve chosen to go today. I haven’t been home since Lydia’s death; I’m afraid of the memories.

  On the path up to the house I contemplate the imposing white manor. It looks so familiar, so unchanged while everything else is in pieces. Part of me expected the trees to have lowered their branches, the leaves to have withered and the sun to have disappeared from the place where I was once so happy. I stand there for ages, my hands buried in my pockets, until my feet take me further along the garden path. I follow it past the house and, once again, I feel a shadow joining my own. It comes to stand next to me when the back garden opens out in front of us.

  ‘Papa made that picnic table so that we could eat outside in the summer,’ a voice says.

  ‘Yes,’ I say quietly. ‘And we turned it into a den.’

  ‘Do you remember how we wanted to spend the night in it?’

  ‘We weren’t allowed to.’ I smile at the memory.

  ‘No, we were upset about that, weren’t we?’

  ‘We were furious!’

  I go deeper into the garden and feel Lydia close to me. She moves within each gust of wind, she envelops me in the sunlight that dances over the grass. Together we summon up the memories hidden in every nook and corner.

  Here we…there we…do you remember…?

  I stay in the garden until the shadows grow longer and the sun sinks behind the fence. I’m reluctant to leave my childhood home, afraid I’ll lose Lydia again if I do. But she fills every corner of the train back to Rotterdam with her presence.

  When I get home, Thomas is waiting for me in the back garden. I see him through the kitchen window when I go to inspect the fridge for possible dinner ingredients. He’s sitting in a garden chair, smoking a cigarette and reading the paper.

  I repress the urge to knock on the window and instead decide to observe him for a while. How long has he been there? He must have climbed over the gate to get into the garden, but why didn’t he go away again when he realised I wasn’t in?

  Because Thomas doesn’t mind waiting, I know that. He’s the most patient person I know. Elisa isn’t home? Then I’ll just wait until she gets back. His body is not as busy as his mind, my father would say.

  And what he doesn’t see doesn’t exist is something else I’d add. When we were students I had a couple of relationships. Whenever I was in love, Thomas acted like he didn’t know me. He walked right past me in the corridor and sat next to me in the photo lab without saying a word. He only looked at me if I said something to him, with an expression difficult to gauge.

  I don’t know if Thomas had set his sights on more than friendship back then. I still wonder whether he isn’t in love with me. He’s never said anything, never tried to kiss me, but I wonder.

  After all these years, I still don’t really understand his behaviour. Perhaps that’s why Lydia didn’t like him. Understanding people was vital to her job, but she could never pin Thomas down. Right from the start she told me to avoid him, which was a good reason for me to keep inviting him to my birthdays and to see him more often.

  All of a sudden Thomas looks over and our eyes meet. I gesture as though I was about to knock on the window, but I know he saw me standing there, staring at him.

  I open the door with a wide grin. ‘You been sitting here long?’

  ‘About an hour.’ Thomas puts the paper down, stubs out his cigarette and comes inside. He starts to set up the coffee machine. ‘Want one too?’

  ‘I was about to make something to eat.’

  ‘First coffee.’ Thomas spoons the coffee into the filter and fills up the water container. ‘What were you going to eat?’

  ‘Pasta maybe.’ I lean against the counter and watch Thomas’s preparations. ‘Are you staying for dinner?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Then I’ll start cooking.’ I get out a packet of macaroni and a jar of sauce.

  ‘First coffee.’

  Thomas watches the water running slowly, spluttering like an engine having trouble starting. He stands there until the very last drop has fallen and fills up a mug. In the meantime, I’ve put a pan of water on the stove and I’m frying a mixture of minced meat, herbs and onions.

  ‘Why didn’t you open the door right away?’ Thomas asks without looking at me.

  That’s what Thomas is like, he cuts to the chase, no messing around. We’ve always been like this with each other and so I give him a straight answer.

  ‘I thought it was a bit strange that you were sitting there like that. I was wondering why you were waiting.’

  ‘Because you weren’t here,’ Thomas says matter-of-factly. He gulps the coffee. It must be burning hot, but he drinks it as though it’s a pint of beer. In between sips he looks at me, then says, ‘You were thinking about something, weren’t you?’

  ‘About you and Lydia.’

  ‘Me and Lydia? What do you mean?’

  ‘I just think it’s a shame that she never got to know you like I do.’

  Thomas shrugs. ‘You mustn’t worry about that. What other people think really isn’t important.’

  ‘She is, was, my twin sister. It was important to me.’

  We are standing quite close, facing each other, Thomas with his coffee and me with the frying pan. The kitchen is filled with the smell of caffeine, herbs and meat cooking. And with Lydia’s presence. It’s as if the air solidifies, like she’s wormed her way between Thomas and me. Without thinking I step back.

  ‘What is it?’ Thomas asks at once.

  ‘I…nothing. It’s nothing. Would you lay the table?’

  I turn around to the counter and get out a tin opener. My confusion must be visible because Thomas looks at me with concern.

  ‘You looked odd suddenly. What is it? Did it feel like Lydia was nearby again?’

  I’d told him about it over the phone a few days before. It doesn’t sound as if he thinks I’m crazy, but still I nod with some hesitation.

  ‘She came and stood between us. That must sound idiotic.’

  Thomas sits down at the dining table and pats the wood. I sit down opposite him.

  ‘Elisa, I know you need to think that Lydia is nearby. I also understand that you’d like to go on believing it for the rest of your life, but it’s time to face up to reality.’
/>   Cold, empty disappointment. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘I mean—’ Thomas begins but I don’t let him finish.

  ‘You believe that everything stops with death. That the world is only for the living, and that one day you simply stop existing.’ My voice sounds shrill.

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘When you die your blood stops circulating and everything stops, indeed. Death is death. Lydia isn’t here anymore, Elisa. You have to get on with your life.’

  ‘I am doing that. I am getting on with my life. I—’

  ‘You’re walking around in a dream world,’ Thomas interrupts. ‘I understand that it’s a survival mechanism, but it has to end some time. When your sister was alive she had too much influence over you and I can’t bear to see her carrying on controlling your life after her death.’

  ‘Where did you get that idea from? She’s not controlling me, she’s consoling me!’

  Thomas leans forward over the table and rests his hand on mine. ‘It’s normal to deny that you’ve lost someone for good. Believe me, I know what it’s like. I went through the same thing when my father committed suicide. It’s not a bad thing to convince yourself otherwise, or you risk going mad with grief, but you’re going too far. Do you know what I think the problem is? That you got so used to Lydia telling you what you could and couldn’t do that you don’t know what to do with your freedom.’

  I don’t get angry. I don’t yell. The only thing I feel is disappointment. I’d hoped that Thomas would be open to this kind of thing.

  ‘I didn’t make it up, she really is there.’ My voice shakes slightly and because Thomas is looking at me with such an exhausted pity I leave it at that. I should have kept it to myself.

  ‘Are you angry now?’ Thomas asks quietly.

  I look up at him, into the warm brown eyes of a friend who only means well.

  ‘No,’ I say with difficulty.

  ‘I had to say it.’ Thomas spreads out his hands, a gesture of helplessness.

  I nod.

  ‘So we’re still good friends?’ Thomas takes hold of both of my hands.

  I nod again and he smiles.