The Other Twin

by L. V. Hay

  What the fuck is going on?

  I pull at the ropes securing my hands with my teeth, but stiffen as I hear Maggie’s voice behind me.

  ‘What do you want me to say?’

  She’s not in the room; the sounds echo like she’s in the next one. Which is that, the kitchen? I can’t think straight.

  I move my hands towards my pocket, as surreptitiously as I can. I can’t feel my phone in there. Maggie or Alan must have taken it. For a moment, hope dashes through me: Would Matthew come looking for me? No, he’s at Elemental. Mum probably thinks I’m with him. Shit!

  Alan sounds weary. ‘How are we going to explain this to Matt?’

  ‘We don’t need to. That little bitch ran away from him before – abandoned him when he was sick; she can run off again.’ Maggie’s reply is cold, flat. ‘She just needs to not be here anymore. Do you understand me, Alan?’

  The two of them could be having a minor marital dispute over something banal, like putting the bins out. And then, with sickening clarity, I realise what Maggie is telling Alan to do. She’s telling him to finish me off.

  Panic surges through me; I renew my attempts to gnaw at my bonds. I can’t equate the voices of the two people I hear next door with the family friends I’ve known practically my whole life. I have never seen Maggie behave in any way that is not openly affectionate and respectful towards Alan. Similarly, he’s always acted in public as if he adores her. But now he sounds put-upon, hen-pecked.

  ‘I’m just the one who’s had to pick up the pieces all these years, remember?’ Maggie’s tone is venomous, full of deep resentment and scorn.

  Alan relents. ‘How many times do you want me to apologise? It was one time with Kirsten! I couldn’t have known all this would happen! And how could you let me kill India, knowing…?’ He can’t finish.

  Though Maggie stops short of laughter, the gloating edge in her reply is unmistakable:

  ‘Two birds, one stone.’

  For a moment it’s as if her icy reach has spread into the room where I’m lying. I’m frozen by the easy practicality of her tone. But what is the other bird? The other reason why she wanted India dead?

  I find my strength again. But the knots around my hands won’t budge. My flesh is turning purple. There’s a flash of denim by the patio doors. I flinch, dread seizing me. I’m certain either Maggie or Alan has left the house by the back door of the kitchen and has crossed the patio towards me, intent on dragging me out so they can take me somewhere I won’t be coming back from. A terrified sob catches in my throat.

  The moment passes. I realise I can still hear the Temples’ debate in the other room. The figure outside crouches down. In one hand, a Stanley knife.

  He opens the patio door, deliberate and slow, ensuring the sound of it sliding back is as quiet as possible. The figure squeezes through quickly and quietly, like I did before – how long ago it was, I don’t know now.

  He looms over me as he raises a finger to his lips. Eyes wide, my gaze flies from the sharp blade, to his face. He looks so much like Matthew did at the same age. But he’s longer in the face, bonier, ganglier than his older brother was.

  He raises the knife.

  ‘James,’ I whisper, my voice a rasp. ‘Don’t!’

  Sixty-four

  I’m sure James is going to stab me, or draw the blade across my throat as I lie prone and helpless on the living-room floor. I don’t utter another sound. I’m utterly frozen with fear.

  But James does not push the Stanley knife into my flesh. The teenager squats down and cuts the ropes around my hands, then my feet. The rope unspools. I am free. I stare at my saviour, still unable to comprehend what is happening.

  ‘We’ve gotta go,’ James murmurs.

  I stand, shock making me vacant. But there’s no time for further thought. James springs to attention as Maggie and Alan appear at the living-room door. Their eyes widen at the sight of me, untied.

  ‘Stay back!’ James points the blade at his parents then thrusts it forwards, forcing Alan and Maggie to back up. He stands in front of me, his other hand behind him, indicating I should stay where I am.

  Agog, I do as he says. I watch James reach towards the rack hanging over a bureau in the corner of the room. The teen swears under his breath. ‘Where are the car keys?’

  ‘Sweetheart, don’t do this.’ Maggie’s eyes flit from James to me and back again. Her demeanour betrays her panic, though her voice is calm.

  ‘Listen to your mother, son,’ Alan growls.

  Maggie seems to wince at his choice of words.

  James’s voice is low and dangerous. ‘I am not your son!’

  Spittle flecks at the corner of James’s mouth. I realise with a jolt the teenager is not scared. He’s absolutely furious.

  ‘This has gone far enough!’ James points the blade at Maggie and Alan, his other hand ushering me back towards the patio windows.

  The situation seems to have turned on its head again. It’s like James is the dangerous one, now.

  Maggie edges forward slightly, hands in front of her. ‘We’re just trying to do the right thing…’

  This seems to infuriate James more. The feral snarl I’ve seen on Ana’s face so many times paints itself on his visage now. But Maggie, her face earnest, does not stop edging towards him, hands raised.

  ‘Right thing?’ James spits. ‘For God’s sake, will you listen to yourself? … I said get back!’ He lurches forwards, slashing the knife through the air.

  The blade connects with Maggie’s right wrist. The skin splits open. Blood floods out.

  She freezes.

  The three of them take this in, for a second unable to compute what has happened.

  Maggie’s knees buckle. Alan grabs her. He follows her to the floor of the living room, clamping one hand over the wound. There’s no time for recriminations. Alan unknots his tie. He wraps it around Maggie’s forearm, a makeshift tourniquet.

  The movement makes James refocus. ‘Keys!’

  Dazed, Alan rifles through his jacket pocket. He locates the car keys and throws them at the teenager.

  James snatches them from the air and turns on his heel, guiding me towards the patio doors. I let him hurry me across the lawn, towards Alan’s waiting car next to the garage.

  I feel movement behind us. Then Alan’s rushed, pleading voice. ‘We won’t let you do this!’

  James stops, turning back. Alan raises his hands, showing he has nothing in them. He beckons to the teen, asking for him to give him the Stanley knife.

  But James does not relinquish the blade. Appalled, I watch the teenager hold it to his own neck. ‘Come any closer … I’ll finish it!’

  He nicks his flesh. Bright red blood flowers at the base of his throat. Alan nods, hasty, casting his eyes downwards. He stays where he is on the lawn.

  Satisfied, James dashes across the grass, pulling me with him. When we’re out of reach, but not earshot, I hear Alan’s voice:

  ‘Hello, police?’ He’s on the phone.

  As we draw level with the back garage I can hear Alan’s loud, artificially panicked voice, concocting some fantasy for the police dispatcher: A young woman has attacked his wife with a knife and has abducted his son.

  ‘What is he … Why would he …?’ My voice is hoarse.

  James opens the passenger door and pushes me in. Then he clambers into the other side. James is not much of a driver. The car surges forward as the teen presses the wrong pedal. But then he remembers. He reverses the car down the drive and out onto the road.

  James jerks the car through a three-point turn and we’re on our way.

  Sixty-five

  ‘Where are you taking me?’

  After Alan Temple’s assault, it hurts to talk. I catch sight of my reflection in the car’s side mirror. My eyes are bloodshot. There are long fingermarks around my neck. I shudder.

  But James still does not answer. He stares at the road ahead. He has the Stanley knife clasped in one fist, the other hand on the
wheel. He’s muttering wordlessly, lost inside himself, replaying what just happened.

  ‘Your mum said you were away at school.’

  I gain his attention now. His jaw clicks, scorn entering into his voice. ‘She’s not my mum.’

  Dread seizes me a second time. I’m suddenly not so sure James intends to rescue me from Alan and Maggie, to take me to safety.

  I force some authority into my tone. ‘James. Where are we going? Tell me.’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  I don’t like the sound of this. I try and drag my thoughts together. But I find nothing. My mind insists on seeing James as the little boy who was always there, in the background, when we were kids. He’d drag a toy after him, thumb in his mouth. Now he’s an angry young man.

  ‘So tell me what I can do to help?’ I try to come over friendly, motherly. But it’s not me. It sounds wooden, false on my tongue.

  ‘I’ll show you.’

  About ten minutes of excruciating silence later, James parks up on a deserted side road. He turns the engine off. My gaze follows his through the windscreen. Trepidation floods through me.

  I’m not sure where we are. But I can see the railway embankment, an unmanned, automated signal box towering into the air. There’s a level crossing, above us, its red-and-white-striped barriers raised. Rubbish drifts in the breeze off the railway line and onto the road.

  But it’s not the railway that’s drawing my attention. It’s the small bridge further on, its struts filthy with pollution. There is a single, sad bouquet of wilting flowers strapped to one of them. I’ve not been here before; I’ve avoided it since I returned to Brighton at Christmas.

  The bridge where India fell.

  James gets out of the driver’s side and comes around for me. The Stanley knife is still in his hand. My subconscious, animal side is petrified. Yet my more human, conscious mind insists on giving me a running commentary: You always thought you would put up a fight, didn’t you? You thought you would run. Yet now, here you are. Doing nothing.

  James wrenches open the passenger door. He grabs my arm and pulls me out, to my feet. He is wiry and strong, just like Alan. He holds the Stanley knife to my side, a reminder not to try anything.

  I take in the quiet road and the chicanes on the one-way street. If I shout out, would anyone hear? Would someone get to me before I bleed out on the pavement? James was willing to raise a blade to Maggie, his own family. I am in no doubt that he’d do the same to me.

  I’m desperate to stall. ‘Are you taking me to Jenny?’

  James shoots me an exasperated glance as he forces me along, up the embankment. ‘You could say that.’

  The teenager shoves me forward. I stumble, putting out my hands, but I don’t fall to my knees. I persist, determined to find out why I’m going to die.

  ‘Why didn’t they want anyone to know about Jenny?’

  James regards me, slack-jawed. ‘You really have no idea.’

  I eyeball him back. ‘So tell me.’

  He indicates the bridge. ‘It’s easier if I show you.’

  My chest rises with short gasps. I feel light-headed. ‘So you can throw me off the bridge? No thanks.’

  James’s face clouds with hurt. ‘I’m not going to kill you!’

  I just stare, not believing him. I indicate the blade in his hand.

  James looks at the Stanley knife curiously, like he’s forgotten he was carrying it. He sighs and hands the blade to me. He opens his hands afterwards for emphasis: Better?

  Feeling awkward, I pocket the knife. ‘But you knew about India’s blog, right?’

  James shoots me another withering glance. ‘Yes. C’mon.’

  He walks past me. I flinch away, but James carries on, up the embankment and onto the railway. Then he walks over the level crossing without looking. I become aware of the sound of traffic beyond.

  I follow, a few steps behind the teenager, just in case. I pick my way up the embankment then across the concrete-and-wooden rail sleepers, towards the small metal footbridge. As we climb higher, up the stairwell, I look down the line.

  I can see Brighton station, a small rectangle down the track. Beyond it, the Brighton Wheel in the distance. It’s a white circle floating above the buildings, bright sunlight glancing off the chrome and glass of the town centre. I reach the top of the steps. Suspicion still prickles through me. I stay where I am, one hand on the rail, just in case James tries anything.

  The teen appears to take this in his stride. He kneels by the strut where the bouquet is strapped and plucks something from the wilted flowers.

  He looks at it, as if uncertain about what he’s going to do. Then he turns and presents it to me, pushing it into my hand. Defiance is written all over his face. I take it. It’s a florist’s card, handwritten with spidery letters: ‘Sleep soundly, my twin soul. Jenny xxx’

  A kaleidoscope of imagery, their colours bright and contrasting, yet every piece makes up a pattern. I’ve been looking at each one in isolation. To put them together – to truly understand them – I’ve had to return to the scene of my sister’s death. And now, it’s as if I’m standing back, taking in the entire picture, comprehending, at last, how each piece fits together.

  The pink-and-blue rooms at Coy Ponds, the meticulous housekeeping in both. James’s snarl: ‘I’m not your son.’ Jenny’s irritation with me: ‘You people.’ Alan’s desperate face, his hands round my throat, his shout after us: ‘We won’t let you do this!’ Finally, from my sister’s supposed suicide note: ‘Real girls’.

  I reach forward and grab James’s forearm. He lets me. I roll his sleeve back, even though I know already what I will find there.

  A tattoo.

  A sugar skull.

  Sixty-six

  ‘You’re Jenny?’

  I struggle to connect the two: James and Jenny. The teenager in front of me looks so like Matthew had at the same age: squared-off jaw, brown eyes, rosebud lips.

  My gaze falls on James’s chest. The mounds under his shirt, the curve of his body. I realise: It’s not puppy fat, but breasts.

  ‘You’ve been transitioning in secret? How?’

  A bitter, sad smile draws itself on the teen’s face. ‘It’s amazing what drugs and hormones you can get on the Internet.’

  I look for other differences. No pale make-up, of course. James’s hair, short, yet still long in comparison to Matthew’s smooth, shaven head. I recall Jenny removing her red wig at the Prince Albert; her long, poker-straight, black hair beneath. My heart fills with dismay. I reach forward, feeling his short locks beneath my palm.

  ‘They cut your hair?’ I mean Maggie and Alan.

  The teenager flinches from my touch. ‘They think no one will understand.’

  ‘They’re wrong. You know that, right?’

  A flash of Adonis and the others at the Prince Albert enters my thoughts, their unapologetic stance: We’re here. We’re queer. But James shrugs, his face full of despair. It makes no difference. Jenny is trapped in James’s body, his life.

  So this was India’s mission: to liberate Jenny from James – from the young man the Temples insisted Jenny be. I can appreciate, at last, what James (Jenny) has been put through. I feel out of my depth. Silence fills the chasm between us, there is only the sound of the traffic beyond the bridge.

  My mind begins to work fast. I should take James to the police; but how do I stop him running away from me?

  There is a squeal of brakes on the street below. The sound of a car door opening comes next, but the car owner does not slam it shut again. Instead he yells both of our names, ordering us both to stay where we are. I hear his footsteps running along the pavement. I see him scramble up the embankment, then stride towards the level crossing.

  Matthew.

  Alan is with him.

  James freezes, his alarmed gaze meeting mine.

  ‘I’m not going back with him. Not this time!’ The teenager jumps up onto the bridge railing. He swings his legs over effortlessly; I hav
e no time to rush forwards and grab him back.

  But James does not jump right away. The teen sits on the rail, balanced precariously over the line below, his arms behind him. All he needs to do is push off. I resist the urge to grab both his wrists. I might startle him, make him fall.

  Matthew and his father are now on the line below, on the level crossing. I watch them split up: Matthew runs towards the rail bridge’s right-hand steps, the side closest to me. Alan is making his way up the left steps. A pincer movement. They have me and James trapped.

  ‘Don’t!’ I warn, my gaze flitting from Matthew’s face to James’s perilous grip on the railing. I know Matthew is here to contain me, with Alan there to grab James back off the bridge. Inside my pocket, my hand closes around the Stanley knife.

  ‘Poppy, what the hell are you doing?’

  Matthew raises both hands, like his mother did in the living room at Coy Ponds – edging forwards, towards me. His suspicion stings, but I swallow my feelings down. I pull the Stanley knife from my pocket.

  ‘No!’ I shriek at Matthew and his father.

  Then, as I speak, James’s words return to me: ‘She’s not my mum’, he’d said of Maggie. Again, I see Ana, shaking her head at Matthew, the night he forcibly carried Jenny to the car.

  I wield the blade at Alan. ‘You might have been India’s father, but you’re not James’s, are you?!’

  Downwind, I can smell the older man’s aftershave, the cigarettes on his breath. I breathe through the urge to lunge at Alan and plunge the blade into his pallid skin.

  Colour drains from his face, but he doesn’t try to deny my words. His nicotine-stained fingers find the bridge railing. His eyes are fixed on James, not me. ‘I’ve loved him like he was mine. You can’t say any different!’

  James shakes his head, eyes fiery. ‘Don’t make me laugh. You never did anything to stop her!’

  The truth hits Alan like a weight. He sighs, shoulders slumped. ‘I’m sorry!’