The Other Twin

by L. V. Hay

  Facing Ana, fury makes me flush. ‘That’s not why I left! You know that. You both do – right, Matthew?’ I throw my appeal at him, sure he will validate it. But, like in the office at Elemental, I am disappointed. Matthew shrugs, almost imperceptibly. He won’t look me in the eye.

  It’s the confirmation Ana needs. ‘He needed you. But off you went, gallivanting round London, leaving us to pick up the pieces. Selfish bitch.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ I insist. ‘I was going anyway! We both were. Matt decided to stay…’

  ‘Yes. That was your cue.’ Ana enunciates each word slowly, as if I am a child. ‘Guess you missed it.’

  Anger pricks my skin. ‘Look. I’m going, OK?’

  Matthew opens the big glass door for me. I stalk out, without a backward glance at the twins. The noise from inside is muted as the door closes behind me. I totter across the car park, like I’m going home. As I reach the parking barrier, I stop.

  I steal a glance back at The Obelisk. I can see Matthew and Ana still by the doors, but now deep in conversation, their backs to me. Matthew puts a hand out, brushing his sister’s arm, but she jerks away, as if she can’t bear him to touch her. She watches him disappear into the throng, before stalking off in the opposite direction.

  I lean down and pull my heels off, my bare feet flinching as they touch the cold tarmac. When I saw him in the crowd, the playboy had an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth.

  I know where Jayden is.

  Forty

  I sidle past a service entrance to another backroom area, ducking behind a pillar. A hungover chef staggers out with a bunch of bags and cardboard. He shoves it all in the compactor and presses a button. I wait until he’s gone, then make my way around The Obelisk’s peace gardens, towards the smoking shelter beyond.

  ‘Smoking shelter’ is a misnomer. That word brings forth notions of shacks in pubs with roofs made of corrugated iron, plus broken benches and dog ends littering the concrete. But like everything else, The Obelisk’s smoking shelter is a work of art. It’s more akin to an ornate bandstand, its posts carved with tiny, intricate designs in gold and silver.

  Just as I hoped, Jayden Spence is holding court there. A small cluster of all-male sycophants stand around him, lapping up his every word.

  ‘So yeah, obviously, blud. I told him to go fuck himself.’

  Jayden’s hangers-on erupt into peals of laughter. His voice is reedy, plummy and slightly musical, the unmistakable timbre of someone who’s had a wealth – literally – of education. But despite his accent, Jayden’s words are more street (adjective. Common. Related words: rough, poor) than he looks. They seem false and stilted on his tongue, like a non-native English speaker’s.

  I sit down nearby on one of the baroque seats to eavesdrop. I look over at the group of men. I stare shamelessly at Jayden. I nod, as if I’m entranced by everything he’s saying. As some other bore drones on in his ear about contracts, Jayden catches sight of me in his peripheral vision. I avert my eyes, feigning embarrassment. When I look back, I can see him grinning to himself, like he’s hit the jackpot. He believes my bluff, just like I knew he would. Men like him always do.

  Two minutes pass. His cronies find themselves dismissed, as Jayden focuses his sights on me. Beyond the smoking shelter, the weather has taken a turn for the worse. The hairs on my arms prickle. The shelter is open, glass-topped. I can see the stars through the panes as raindrops hammer down on them. Jayden appears by my side on the bench.

  ‘Haven’t seen you around here before?’

  Even I can’t suppress my mirth. ‘That’s your opener?’

  ‘Innit. True though.’ Jayden pulls another cigarette from a silver case with his initials engraved on it.

  I let the question stand. I know him but he doesn’t recall me. Ana got together with him long after I left Brighton. I just smile at him, watching the wheels of his mind spinning round. As far as the likes of Jayden Spence are concerned, all women want them. All he need do is divide them into two categories: the ones he wants and the ones he doesn’t. And he wants me. He makes no secret of that. He takes me in, looking me and up and down, approving. I flutter my eyelashes and flip my hair like a prize pony. ‘I don’t remember putting you on the guest list.’

  I offer a girlish laugh. ‘I bought a ticket.’

  He offers me a cigarette, but I decline with a shake of my head.

  He’s not paying any attention, though. It’s just a ruse to move his whole body towards me, into my space. His breath smells sour: whisky and ash. I force myself not to shift away from him in distaste.

  He places one hand on my thigh. I let him. That little voice in the back of my head pipes up again: Now what? India’s face swims into my mind. Could the hand on my leg right now be the same one Jayden used to push my little sister from the bridge? I suppress a shudder.

  ‘My name’s Poppy.’

  Jayden purses his lips. ‘Oh, I know who you are.’

  It all happens so fast. The playboy drops his cigarette and grabs my right forearm in the same movement. He grips my wrist and twists my flesh. It causes me to cry out in pain. He is strong. I’m caught completely off guard.

  ‘This is about India.’ So he does remember me, after all. ‘Am I right?’ He twists again, making tears spring up in my eyes. ‘I heard you’d been sniffing around. I don’t like ambushes, Poppy Wade.’

  Raw anger kicks in. I know how to handle scrotes like Spence. Growing up with a suspicious mother like mine, who saw threats everywhere, I’d opted to take self-defence classes, just to get her off my back. I’m glad of them, now.

  I turn my free hand into a hook and drive it hard into Jayden’s side. His eyes roll in agony. He lets go of my arm and falls to one knee, both hands in the small of his back, where I know my blow must be reverberating.

  I’m not finished. I backhand him across the mouth. Bitch slap (noun. A blow with an open hand. Related words: strike, whack). He whimpers like the coward he is. He falls backwards on his arse, both arms raised in surrender.

  I stand over him, triumphant. ‘Hey, blud, don’t treat women like shit!’

  As I stare at the crumpled playboy at my feet, sound registers: clapping. Confused, I look up.

  There’s a flash of movement and someone appears in the smoking shelter. But not from the hotel side door. He appears from the grounds, like I had. Out of the darkness, like he’s taking form from the shadows.

  Matthew.

  Forty-one

  ‘Reckon he’s had that coming for a while.’

  Matthew leans against one of the smoking shelter’s ornate posts. I shrug, unable to speak for a minute. I’m wired; my body is still twitching slightly from the fight.

  I note an almost predatory gleam in Matthew’s eye at the sight of the blood on his brother-in-law’s face. His suit is drenched with rain. Matthew must have been standing watching beyond the smoking shelter for a while. I realise: He is pleased I’ve hurt Jayden.

  ‘Fuck you, Matt.’ Jayden hisses.

  Matthew smirks. He grabs Jayden from the floor, lands him heavily on the bench.

  Jayden groans and touches a hand to his mouth. Blood on his fingertips: a split lip. ‘She’s a crazy bitch!’

  ‘True,’ Matthew concedes. He catches my eye and smiles, the first real warmth I’ve had from him since my return. I smile back, despite myself.

  Jayden’s head jerks from me to Matthew, like a Wimbledon match. ‘Oh, so you two are back together, are you? Brilliant. Can I go now?’

  ‘No!’ Matthew and I say this together.

  Jayden regards us, his face dark with petulant fury. I decide to grab my chance while I can.

  ‘Why did you come to India’s funeral?’

  ‘I didn’t. Not exactly, anyway.’ Jayden stays where he is, slumped on the bench, one hand still clasped to his aching back. He shoots an appealing glance at Matthew. ‘I just wanted to see Ana, innit. She wasn’t answering my texts or picking up the phone.’

  I look
to Matthew to confirm this.

  He casts his mind back, then nods. ‘It’s true. He waited for her afterwards.’

  But I’m not willing to give up, just yet. ‘Where were you, Jayden, between six and nine on 22nd December?’

  The playboy regards me, slack-jawed. ‘Are you for real? What is this Miss Marple sh—?’

  Jayden’s words cut off as Matthew looms by my side, arms folded, the threat obvious. Any excuse.

  Jayden raises his eyes skywards. ‘Fine!’

  The playboy digs in his pocket. I think he’s going to pull out yet another cigarette, but it’s his mobile. He taps the buttons, scrolls through his diary app.

  ‘I was … here. It was the Marchand Christmas party.’

  I recollect JoJo telling me the same. I look to Matthew again. ‘Is he telling the truth – was he here?’

  Matthew shrugs this time. ‘No clue. You’d have to ask Ana.’

  Another stalemate. She’s already told me Jayden was with her.

  ‘Even if he was here, he could have left and then come back, right?’

  ‘Whoa, whoa, are you saying what I think you’re saying?’ Jayden’s drink-addled mind finally catches on. ‘You reckon I killed India. For real? Jesus!’ Jayden shakes his head, as if he can’t quite believe it, forgetting his own unprovoked violence towards me just minutes’ previously.

  ‘You got motive.’ I find myself saying. A phrase lifted from a TV show.

  Jayden sighs. ‘Yeah, yeah, OK: I admit it. I hated India. She nearly screwed me and Ana up for good…’

  Matthew butts in, his visage a ferocious snarl. ‘You nearly screwed you and Ana up for good.’

  Jayden hawks a gob of bloody phlegm at Matthew’s feet. ‘Like I could get a look in, “little bro”!’

  I assumed Ana deleted Jayden’s pictures in a fit of pique, once she learned of his infidelity. But maybe Jayden just didn’t figure that highly on Ana’s radar? I’ve seen only that one picture of him on Ana’s Facebook profile, compared to countless photos of Matthew and, of course, her daughter, Ivy. It could explain the affair: he wasn’t getting what he wanted from Ana; she was freezing him out?

  Jayden regards Matthew, whose face is full of scorn. Jayden’s expression is curiously triumphant. ‘We’re over it now, anyway. Life’s good.’

  ‘You’re lying. I know Ana’s moved out.’ I enjoy the renewed panic in Jayden’s eyes.

  ‘OK, OK! We’re still working on it.’ Jayden admits, his visage now as sulky as a twelve-year-old boy’s. ‘But we’re making progress. Why would I screw that up months after the fact by killing your bitch of a sister?’

  Matthew’s gaze meets mine, requesting permission. I nod, without hesitation. He lands another blow on Jayden, this time to his stomach. I see Matthew’s lip curl with a disconcertingly delighted sneer. Jayden doubles over, air deflating from him with a rasping moan.

  But whether I like it or not, Jayden has a point. It doesn’t seem likely that an empire like the Spences’ would place itself in jeopardy over something that is now public knowledge. Why would he kill India after she’d told everyone about him and JoJo?

  ‘How do you know Jenny?’ I demand.

  ‘Jenny who?’ As Matthew raises another fist, Jayden gives a weedy shriek: ‘I know lots of Jennys, man! Don’t hit me again! Which one?’

  Which one? Well, isn’t that a question. I can feel myself beginning to grasp at straws. ‘You got any Jennys working here, at The Obelisk?’

  Jayden looks at us with wide eyes. ‘I dunno…’ The playboy flinches from another blow from Matthew that doesn’t come. ‘Maybe! You’d have to ask my dad. He does the hiring and firing.’

  I have an urge to walk back into the ball and grab Gordon Spence by the lapels. ‘And where is your dad? Is he here tonight?’

  ‘Dubai.’ Jayden snivels, wiping his nose with a sleeve. ‘Went yesterday. Check if you don’t believe me! My mum’s with him, OK?’

  A sense of anticlimax settles over me. I look to Matthew. ‘We’re wasting our time.’

  Matthew’s gaze is still on Jayden, the shadow of violence still on his face. His shoulders are tense, his hands balled into fists by his sides. I’m unnerved. I’ve never seen him in such a pose before. It’s as if he’s having to concentrate on not hitting Jayden again. He must really hate him.

  ‘What the hell does Ana see in him?’ I take Matthew’s arm.

  He looks up at me, remembering I’m there. ‘Beats me.’

  We turn our backs on the wilting playboy. I pick my bag up from where it fell on the shelter floor and grab my shoes. The rain has now downgraded to just mizzle (noun, dialect. Light rain. Related words: drizzle, shower); the air and grass are alive with moisture under my bare toes. It’s cold, but not unpleasant. My feet sink into the muddy ground. I have to pick my way across the lawn with exaggerated steps, half leaning on Matthew.

  The grass becomes concrete. We’ve made our way around the massive building, back to the car park. I stop, suddenly world-weary. My sister’s words come back to me: ‘You will be free … as I am, now’. Maybe it was a suicide note. Perhaps, like Ana said, I’m making up conspiracies to fit.

  As if he senses my disquiet, Matthew stops and cups my face in his big hands. ‘India wouldn’t want you to torture yourself like this.’

  Matthew brings his lips to mine. As I close my eyes, I see my sister. India laughs and runs across a beach. She’s wearing the long, hippy skirt with the bells from her Facebook picture. She wheels around in a circle, her head thrown back at the bright-blue skies overhead. India loved life. Deep inside me, I know that. Nothing could have affected her so radically as to change that. The image shatters like glass. I turn my face away from Matthew’s, taking a moment to compose myself.

  ‘I’m sorry, I thought…?’

  I look back at him: his expression seems open, vulnerable. Any trace of malice is gone. I grab his hand, pulling him to me.

  We kiss again.

  He envelops me in his big arms. I breathe him in, as if I can absorb the whole of him. His lips are soft, though his chin is scratchy. He tastes of beer as his tongue moves into my mouth. I can feel his heartbeat, pressed against his hard chest.

  ‘C’mon, let’s get out of here.’ Matthew’s voice is playful.

  Holding hands, we race back up the seafront towards his car, away from The Obelisk.

  Forty-two

  I don’t ask where we’re going. I don’t need to.

  Matthew does not drop me at the Coach House. Instead, his car cuts through Brighton’s streets. At night and out of season, they are all but deserted even now, at the weekend. Beyond, the neon lights of the business park glitter. A handful of youngsters appear from a pizza joint and hoot at someone else across the road.

  The clock on the dashboard reads just past midnight. Looking at Matthew, his hands on the wheel, he seems so familiar, yet so different, too. But I’ve known him the best part of twenty years. I lost my virginity to him; lived with him. This is Matthew, I remind myself.

  We arrive at a modest white converted building about a fifteen-minute drive from The Obelisk. An apartment block. Matthew pulls in to an adjoining car park and we get out of the vehicle.

  ‘You live here?’

  There’s a small front lawn, a couple of washing lines, a kid’s pedal truck abandoned on its side. It’s less than Matthew is used to at Coy Ponds with his family, but I’m not really surprised. Matthew never really went in for the trappings of wealth. Our flat in Hove was far worse than this.

  ‘I’m on the top floor.’

  ‘Oh, the penthouse?’ I tease.

  ‘Hardly.’

  Matthew lets us in through the front door, which opens with a code. There’s a spacious hallway, a small stained-glass window and a door that leads out to a back garden. To the right, a number of pigeonholes for post. On the left, a stairway with a large, curved banister. I follow Matthew up. The building is higher than it looks: three, four, five storeys.

  Finally, we’r
e at the top. There is only one flat up here. Matthew stops outside a scarred door and lets us in. It opens directly onto a large kitchen/living area. Through a doorway, I can see a compact bedroom, a double bed. As I might expect from Matthew, everything is pathologically neat, just so. He gets this from Maggie. I recall the inside of Coy Ponds always looks like a show home, despite the mad jumble of ornaments on the lawn.

  He opens a cupboard. ‘Do you want a drink?’

  But I’m bored of pretending everything is innocent between us. ‘Not really.’

  Matthew reaches out and grabs my waist. He pulls me to him and towards the bedroom. Contrary as ever, I pull in the opposite direction, forcing him to use more power than he should need to. I can feel the sinews in his arms contract.

  I smirk at him, as if to say, Now what?

  He pushes me against the wall outside his room. His weight is on my chest, pinning me there. I couldn’t resist him if I wanted to. But I don’t want to. I want him so bad I can feel a ball of heat exploding within my stomach. It works its way out of me, between my parted legs. I feel him harden. Material strains against my thigh.

  Forceful, Matthew kisses me. He pushes his tongue into my mouth. I can’t breathe. One hand finds my breasts; I’m not wearing a bra. Matthew’s other hand finds its way under my dress, between my legs. His long fingers press past the thin material of my knickers. Two probe inside me and an involuntary moan emanates from my throat.

  He hooks his thumbs in my underwear and yanks them down. I hiss. It is not unpleasant; I’m just surprised. Matthew lets go of me and stands back, appraises me.

  I am wrong-footed again, my knickers round my ankles. I tense. Have I just fallen into another trap, like in the office at Elemental? I expect him to sneer at me, to tell me to go.