by Emily Barr
I was walking on what seemed to be the right road out of Lonavala, but I stopped in the shade for a sip of water, and unfolded the note again.
Matthew, it said in what was unquestionably my sister’s writing. I hope you made it through. I think you did, but maybe I just want to think that. If Persephone finds you, then I just want to say that I forgive you. It hasn’t been easy but I genuinely do. I live differently now. Don’t try to find me. I send you blessings and love. I want nothing to do with my old life, but I need to send you forgiveness and light and hope. You can beat it, my twin. You can, and if you are holding this in your hand, you will have beaten it. Love xxx
I pushed my hair back off my face and kept walking. I was covered in sweat and really feeling very unsuited to walking up a hill in India with only the smallest idea of where I was going. I wasn’t sure this was the right road, and I hadn’t been able to ask anyone because I was going to a place that nobody knew.
My legs wobbled, but I was stronger these days, and I kept going. I rarely felt a craving any more, but I monitored myself all the time. During the two days I’d spent in Mumbai, acclimatizing, I had been to three Narcotics Anonymous meetings. I had sat in a church in Bandra and found my people, and they had given me the strength.
I kept walking. The sun was strong on my head. Tania Roswell could have been hallucinating it all, but the letter from Vicky was real. I walked, believing that I was walking towards her.
The DANGER RADIATION sign was there. I felt a surge of triumph. That showed me I was on the right road. I sped up, and there was the gate in the fence, and I could reach through and open it from the other side just like Tania had said.
I opened the gate. It squeaked as I pushed it inwards. I stepped into the forest.
I followed the path straight ahead as far as I could, mainly travelling downhill. Sometimes I would have to choose a direction, and once or twice the path I took petered out and I had to go back and take the other one. I circled round and found myself back where I had started. I pulled out my sleeping bag when it got dark, and spent a night awake in the forest.
In the morning I found them.
I looked between the trees and saw it. A clearing deep in the forest, with hills on every side. There was a shack, and an area of packed-down earth, and a fire and everything that Tania had said there would be.
I stood and stared, my heart pumping fast. I was entirely uninvited. Tania had told me not to come here. Vicky had specified that I mustn’t look for her. I had told my parents I was here for work and they believed me because of course they did.
I stood and watched for a while. A man and a woman were digging a hole in the ground. I remembered the people Tania had described, and decided that these people were now known as Inari and Hella. I watched for a while, and then I must have moved slightly, because Hella stood up and said, ‘What was that?’
She looked right at me.
I stepped forward.
She walked towards me, looking furious.
‘And who the fuck are you?’ She turned and shouted to the rest of the clearing, ‘Anyone know why there’s a white guy standing in the trees spying on us?’
It all happened at once. They pulled me into the centre of the clearing and demanded to know what I was doing. Before I could answer, though, someone came running out from between the trees, and she was my sister.
And she was holding a baby.
26
Grandma and Arty tried to piece it together. They walked along the seafront, the wind cold in Arty’s face.
‘Could it be another bear the same?’ Arty said. ‘One that Venus got me in India or something?’
‘I really doubt it.’
‘Me too.’
‘Matthew went to India,’ said Grandma. ‘He must have found your mother after all. He must have done. He never said.’
Whatever scenario they tried, they always came back to that.
There was a tree that had been blown so hard by the wind that it had grown in a wind-blasted shape. They turned up a road to walk to the town and straight away it was less windy.
‘That Lily was a sweet girl,’ said Grandma. ‘I hadn’t seen Tessa with her grandchildren before. She had her hands full! She lives just down the road. Tessa Bourne. We’ve known each other years.’
‘She was nice.’
‘She used to be hard work. She’s mellowed a little.’
‘She looked like a lovely grandma. Not as nice as you, though.’
‘Oh, Arty.’ Grandma put her hand on her shoulder and gave her a tiny hug. Arty stopped, turned round, and hugged her grandmother properly, enveloping her in her arms.
They went to the library because Grandma needed to give her books back.
‘I daresay your bear will like it here,’ she said with a little smile. She handed her books back (Grandma liked books about orphans with drawings of sad children on the cover) and went to choose some more of the same.
Arty loved the library. It made her think of her clearing job, when she had been the librarian, but it didn’t make her sad. In the clearing the library had been her window on to everything else, and here in Clevedon it was still exactly that. You could find all the wider worlds you could imagine, and many more, inside the pages of the books here. She loved the smell of the place. She could calm herself in here. She did it now. She felt confused by the news about the bite, and the puzzle of the bear, and the email from Tania, which she hadn’t told Grandma about because she thought she might get too worried that Arty would leave.
She stood in the middle of the room and took some deep breaths.
I can see shelves of books.
I can hear the librarians talking and it’s a comforting sound.
I can smell books.
I can feel the warm air on my skin and the ground beneath my shoes.
I can still taste the ice cream if I think about it.
I am here.
I am in the library with Grandma nearby.
I am present.
She sat on a chair with a random book from the shelf. It was a thriller about a missing girl and a birthday party, and she turned page after page, throwing herself into the book world.
She felt that this place was a bigger version of the library she had looked after at home, and she adored that. The people in this one were kind and always said cheery hellos to her. They never looked annoyed at the sight of her.
She sat there reading, and then Grandma came and said, ‘I’m off now, Artemis, but there’s no need for you to come. I’ll see you at home. I want to make a start on tea. Just be back by three for Lucy.’
Arty checked from her face whether she really meant that, and she did.
‘I won’t be long,’ she said, and then she read for ages more, losing track of time altogether until the librarian came over. She was a tiny woman, and she looked as if she could have been Indian too, though Arty didn’t ask.
‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry to interrupt your reading. But we’ve had your grandmother on the phone, Arty, and she sounded a bit worried about you. I said, “Don’t worry, Jane. She’s right here where you left her, lost in the selfsame book.” But she wanted me to tell you that Lucy’s waiting. If that makes sense?’
‘Oh!’ Arty closed the book. ‘I forgot. Oh, sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry to me, Arty. I’d love to see you curled up reading here all day long. But you’d better be off.’
When she got to the house Grandma was standing on the pavement waiting for her.
‘Sorry, Grandma.’ She had run all the way back, and it had made her feel better. She could feel her heart working, the blood in her cheeks.
‘Honestly, Arty,’ said Grandma, but she didn’t seem cross. She was wearing a bright green jumper that Arty had said she should buy when they were shopping last week. She looked much nicer in proper colours than she had when Arty had first met her, when everything was grey.
‘Is Lucy still here?’
‘Well,’ said
Grandma, and she was excited about something, Arty could tell. ‘She is. Yes. But we’re going to skip today’s lesson. Come on, Arty. Come in! Come on, darling. Something amazing … an absolutely wonderful thing has happened.’
She led Arty into the house, past the door to the basement and into the kitchen. There, sitting at the table, was Lucy, and next to Lucy was a man.
Arty had to stare at him for quite a long time before she was sure, because it was impossible. She thought that perhaps she was in the basement, hallucinating, the way Uncle Matthew had done. Perhaps she was asleep in the library, dreaming. Maybe she was dead, and now she would meet her family one by one.
His hair and his beard were shorter. He was thinner. There were bags under his eyes and he looked exhausted. But it was him. He was sitting right there at her grandparents’ table with a cup of tea in his hands, and he was smiling at her with the kindest eyes in the world.
Arty put her bag down and ran as fast as she could into his arms.
‘Oh, Vishnu!’ she said. ‘Oh, Dad. Oh, my dad.’ And she cried and cried and cried.
January
Vicky saw me and she froze. I saw her pulling the baby tightly into her, resting its little face on her shoulder. She stared at me. I stared back. She had wanted me to find her, but she couldn’t tell any of the rest of them that. I could read that in her face, because we were twins, because we had known each other since we were cells.
But a part of her still hated me.
‘Matthew,’ she said. She said it so quietly that I couldn’t hear the words at all. I had to lip-read them.
‘Vicky,’ I whispered back. ‘I’m sorry.’
Everyone, even the cross woman, Hella, was silent. They watched as Vicky walked towards me, and I stepped towards her. When we were in front of each other I reached out to touch the baby, but she took a step back.
‘No,’ she said.
‘You had a baby?’
She smiled at that. ‘Looks like it,’ she said. ‘And you found us. You look well.’
‘I am well. Vicky, I’m so sorry. I know that counts for nothing, but I am. I’m sorry. I was a monster. I’m clean now. I’m good. I’m all right. What Mum did. It worked in the end.’
‘You sat in the basement and got better? I don’t believe you.’
‘Well, no. I set fire to the basement and then got out of there and got better.’
She nodded. ‘Yes. That’s more likely.’
I nodded to the baby. ‘Who’s this?’ I asked, but again she stepped back and shielded it from me.
One of the men stepped forward. He was tall and thin and not at all pleased to see me.
‘I’m Vishnu,’ he said. That seemed to pull Vicky back to herself. She handed Vishnu the baby and turned round, beckoning everyone forward like a teacher.
‘This is my brother, Matthew,’ she said. ‘I imagine his appearance has something to do with Persephone.’
‘Who have you told about us?’ said the man who had been digging, stepping forward. ‘Persephone swore. She promised she’d tell no one. This is very bad.’
‘I’ve told no one,’ I said, and I hadn’t. ‘I swear. No one knows I’m here. I just said I was coming to India for work, and our parents believed me. My friends believed me. My work takes me all over the place. Vicky’s been gone so long that no one even asked if I was coming to look for her. Not now.’
‘But Persephone clearly told you exactly where we were,’ he said.
‘There’s nothing we can do about that now,’ said Hella, but she looked furious. ‘We’re never going to see her again. But if she’s going round telling everyone how to find us. Shit.’
‘Sending junkies through the forest to us. Thanks a lot. Jesus fucking Christ.’
‘Inari,’ said Vicky, and her voice had a strange authority to it.
‘Sorry to swear, but this is the fucking worst-case scenario come true. This was not meant to happen! I knew we should never have let her go.’
‘Of course we had to let her go,’ said Vicky. ‘She’s a free agent. We’re not a prison. What would you do – kill her to keep her quiet?’
While they argued about it I watched my sister. Her hair was long and tied back at the nape of her neck. Her clothes were loose and faded. Her face was clear and, despite this setback, I could see that she was, above all else, happy. She lived in this weirdest of places, but she was utterly in her element. She had made something new.
And she had a baby. I tried to look at it as Vishnu cradled it in his arms, but all I could see was a shock of black hair and some pumping fists. He wouldn’t let me get close either.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said in the end. ‘Tania called me because she had a message from Vicky. I wanted to tell Vicky that I was alive. That I was well. That if she ever did come back everything would be different. I pieced together where you were from the things Tania said. She didn’t tell me. In fact, she very much told me not to come here, as did Vicky.’
Hella turned to my sister. ‘You sent a note out with Persephone?’
Vicky looked back at her. ‘Yes I did. He’s my twin and last time I saw him he was about to die. I thought I was writing a note to a ghost. I might as well have written it and burned it on the fire.’
‘You bloody well should have.’
The other people were staying silent. I looked between them, matching them up with Tania’s descriptions. The young white woman with tangled curls was Delphine, now known as Kali, who had been to medical school in France, then left when her boyfriend attacked her. The black man with the afro was Odin, who was from Senegal and had escaped addiction in much the same way I had. I hoped I would get to talk to him. The Indian woman was Diana, a fearsome intellect who had refused a good marriage.
‘Look,’ said Vicky finally. ‘Forget everything else. We should be welcoming to strangers. I don’t want us to be the sort of people who consider all outsiders to be intruders, and who turn them away before they’ve said a word. Is that us? Is that in keeping with what we do?’
Vishnu put a hand on her shoulder. ‘I agree with Venus. Let’s get the man a cup of tea and a bowl of rice, at least.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Inari. ‘The white man is among us. Everyone drop everything and attend to his needs.’
Odin burst out laughing at that, and even though it was at my expense I joined in. Someone gave me a cup and I sipped the drink, which was strong minty tea and the best thing I had ever had.
I sat on the ground with them and stared at Vicky.
‘Go on then,’ she said. ‘Tell me everything.’
They softened towards me as I slowly convinced them that I wasn’t going to sell the story of ‘my sister and the tribe of dropouts’ to the papers in exchange for drug money. I sat by the fire and ate the rice and vegetables that Vishnu gave me, and I told them my story, right up to the moment I had walked into the clearing. I knew I wasn’t allowed to meet the baby until I had in some way proved myself, so I talked and talked until I had nothing more to say.
But it turned out there was more I had to say. I finished my story in the middle of the afternoon, and everyone went off to do the things they did. There was a buzz of industry as wood was chopped, washing was taken to the stream, and people went off to where I could see cultivated land behind the clearing itself. Vishnu showed me a treehouse and told me to go up there and rest. There was a mattress on the floor with an embroidered throw over it and very little else, and as soon as I lay down I was asleep.
It was dark and Vicky was shaking my shoulder. I was confused for a second, because Vicky had woken me by shaking my shoulder countless times, for midnight feasts, or for school, or, later, when I was in a drugged or alcoholic coma and she thought I might be dead.
‘Matthew,’ she said. ‘It’s the evening. Come down. Come to the fire.’
She still hadn’t mentioned the baby. It wasn’t with her now. She disappeared down the tree and I stretched, pulled myself together, and went too.
‘Right, everyone.’
Vicky was focused. ‘As you know, my brother, Matthew, is here. I thought he’d be dead, but he’s not. I’m sorry I asked Persephone to find out for me, even though I never thought I would know the answer. I wanted her to know. I wanted one of us to know that fact. But he’s here and I’m afraid I’m glad he is because he’s my twin.’
There was a bit of muttering about it, but she shushed it quickly.
‘However,’ she said. ‘I do have a test for him. Matthew. You’ve come to a place you’ve been specifically told not to visit. I need to know how much you’ve changed, because that behaviour belongs to the old Matt. I need you to own a few things.’
I realized what she was going to make me do. I swallowed hard.
‘Go on,’ I said.
‘Please will you tell everyone the things you did that affected me directly. Everyone, bear in mind that he did just as many things that were directed at our mother, our father, our neighbours, our wider family, everyone at our school, everyone in our town, strangers on the street, and so on. Odin, you can step in any time you like because you’ve been there too. Everyone else, please just listen.’
I took a deep breath. This was worse than any therapy I had ever been to, because I realized I wanted to stay here, and I knew that Vicky was testing me to see whether or not I could be allowed.
‘Vicky,’ I said.
‘Venus,’ said Hella and Inari together.
‘Venus,’ I said. ‘Sorry. Venus, I wronged you in so many ways. I started stealing from you when we were fifteen. I stole your birthday money because I’d spent mine on drugs. I stole your savings. I stole things from your room and sold them for pennies. I lied to you. I looked you in the eye and swore on both our lives that I was just popping out to the shop and that I had no intention of doing anything other than buying a can of Coke, but then I would get a gram of coke instead. I took every type of drug. I went from being your best friend and partner in everything to being your worst enemy.’