by Sam King
The Evil Twin
Sam King
Published by Mercurial Avenue
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 Sam King
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the copyright holder.
Published in the United States of America
1st Kindle Edition
Photo-manipulation and cover design by Justin Baxter
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Chapter 1
Susan worried about Tom a lot. He was her eldest boy, she often said to herself, though of course he’d been born only three hours and seventeen minutes before his brother, Luke. The two of them were twins, and when she’d been pregnant she’d been silly enough to think that the two of them would turn out just the same, that they’d have the same likes and dislikes, the same attitudes, the same propensity for good or evil and so on. Though this wasn’t the case. They were very different.
Now they were fifteen, the two of them, and they liked to raise hell. Luke was her good boy, her youngest, but Tom … well, Tom was a problem.
Both of them were at Waverly now, which was costing Michael a fortune, but they needed a good education, didn’t they? She thought so.
She turned away from the microwave and posted two English muffins into the toaster. The boys would be down in a moment, and though they were perhaps a little old for it, she liked to make them breakfast each morning, at least on weekdays. On the weekends, she tended to let them fend for themselves, though if Luke was up early on a Saturday, they did sometimes have breakfast together. She liked to rise early, with the dawn, and spend a precious hour or more on her own. She would sit in the kitchen and work over the bills, or drift into daydreams as she drank her first cup of tea of the day.
On Saturdays, when Luke came down, it was a little different. He would walk sheepishly into the room and look up at her, or he had when he was a little boy. Soon he would be taller than her. They both would. She’d make him tea and toast with plenty of butter, the way her grandmother had made it for her, and they would talk confidentially, mother and son.
Sadly, though, it must have been two or three months since Luke had come down on a Saturday morning. Tom had never come. He liked to sleep late and always had.
She winced, thinking of Tom. Yesterday she had found an iPod in his school bag, one that obviously didn’t belong to him. It was the latest model, the one he’d been asking for for his birthday, though Michael had decided he didn’t deserve it. Now he had one, somehow. It was sitting on the kitchen table, where she’d left it, so he would see it when he came in. She supposed it was stolen. Perhaps from some other boy. It wouldn’t be the first thing he’d stolen. Though he surely wanted for nothing.
She sighed, and the muffins came up. She began to butter them as she heard the first clatters and clunks from upstairs. The boys would be down in a moment, and already Michael was in the shower, as she could gage from the sigh of the water in the pipes.
Luke came in a moment later, already dressed in his school uniform, and with his hair neatly combed. It was a little damp, but as usual, her breath caught in her throat. He was so beautiful. They both were. Blond and with that perfect, honey-toned skin. She wanted to step across the room and draw him into her arms, but they were getting too old for that now, and with this realisation came a stab to her chest, as though a claw were tearing at her heart. It was difficult to bear, the pain of it, and she raised her hand to her breast.
“You okay, Mum?”
“Yeah,” she said.
And then Tom stepped into the room, dressed in boxers and shirtless, his hair mussed. Sleep in his eyes.
“You’ve got about twenty minutes, Tom.”
“I know, Mum,” he said, and then poked his tongue out at her.
If anything, he looked even more beautiful that Luke did, half-dressed and sloe-eyed. And wasn’t he naturally more beautiful in some way? They were identical, or they had been, but somehow Tom had got some sort of advantage, or she often thought so. Then again, there were those times when she failed to tell them apart, even now, particularly when they were dressed in their school uniforms.
“Is that my iPod?” Tom said.
“Your iPod?”
“Yes, it’s mine.”
“Where did you get it, Tom?”
“Martin sold it to me.”
“Martin?”
He nodded.
“I see. And what did you pay for that?”
“Oh, some,” Luke said, and then giggled.
“I have that money from Grandma Ellen, you know. That money for my birthday.”
Susan nodded. She tried to hold his gaze, but blinked, and he turned away. He reached for the iPod, seized it, and then turned to walk out of the room. A moment later she heard the strains of some modern song as Tom crashed up the stairs.
“You know about this?”
Luke nodded, but had his eyes downturned. He took a seat at the table and reached for a muffin. A moment later he was chewing, smiling at her, his eyes twinkling in the bright fluorescent light, and she decided to let it go. No doubt there was more to it, but Luke was covering for Tom, which meant the real story would be difficult to uncover.
Chapter 2
Michael walked into the kitchen a moment later. He was dressed for work, in a pale blue shirt and navy tie. The tie had an art deco pattern on it, and she recalled buying it for him only last month, though this was the first time he had worn it.
“Oh, that looks good,” she said.
“What?”
“The tie.”
He glanced at it, but seemed distracted. “Where was Tom off to in such a hurry?”
“Up to his room,” Luke said.
Susan sliced two more muffins and popped them into the toaster. Then Tom appeared again.
“Tom,” Michael said, “have you got that slip?”
“It’s in my bag.”
“Well, you make sure you hand it in today.”
Susan nodded. The boys were going on an excursion to the art gallery on Thursday, and if Tom didn’t hand the permission slip in today, he would most likely be barred from it. It had happened before.
She buttered the muffins, reached for the teapot, and poured everyone a cup. Luke was chewing, but said thanks. She hated coffee, though the boys sometimes asked for it. Her best reply to this was to say that she had forgotten to buy any.
She took a seat at the table, though she had already eaten. In a moment the boys might ask for something more, for a hash brown, or something she might cook up quickly, but breakfast was rushed these days. When they were younger, it had always been a good forty to forty-five minutes. Somehow, though, the time had slipped away, and it was difficult to get anyone moving any earlier.
Michael gulped his tea and then wiped his mouth with his napkin. “I have to check something in the study,” he said, and got up. He was as much a child as the other two, or it often seemed that way. Three boys together, and all of them pitched against her.
“Mum,” Luke said, “is my swimming stuff in my bag?”
She nodded.
She kept track of all their clothes, and with two boys at Waverly this wasn’t easy. There was the formal uniform, the casual blue shirts, the school and house ties, a uniform for P.E., another for wood and metal work, the various sporting outfits, and now, in the summer, the swimmers and towels. All of it had to be monogrammed and kept spotlessly clean. She wondered how the mothers who worked managed to keep up. It must have been a nightmare, trudging to wo
rk everyday only to have to come home and wash and iron.
But she didn’t work, and she was happy with that. When Michael and her were first married she’d worked as a secretary, but he’d said he wanted to “take her away from all of that,” using those precise words, as though they were actors in a film. She had laughed, but he’d said he was serious. “I make plenty of money. Why should my wife have to work?” She’d nodded and smiled. If she didn’t have to work, then, well, she wouldn’t work. Who would want to?
Michael was an accountant. He worked for Stanley, Patlock and Murton, one of the best accounting firms in the country. He said he enjoyed it, though what he could find to enjoy she didn’t know. Numbers and money left her feeling nothing. Nothing.
The boys got up, moving with one accord as they often did. Luke turned and walked out of the room, but Tom hesitated.
“I have swimming today too, you know?”
“I know, Tom.”
“Well, is my gear in my pack?”
“Of course it is.”
“Right,” he said, and nodded.
She had forgotten once, only once. She had packed Luke’s swimming gear a few weeks back, but had somehow forgotten Tom’s. He had had a terrible time of it at school. As it turned out, it had rained, but the boys had played in the gym, while Tom had had to stand on and watch. The P.E. master had given him a terrible time, asking time and again if he wasn’t some sort of idiot, if he couldn’t read a timetable.
She sighed as Tom walked out of the room, and then gripped her forehead. The beginnings of a headache. She got up and found some aspirin in the drawer. She would have to drive the boys to school, and it wasn’t a short drive. They lived on the North Shore, but the school was in Eastwood, which was miles away.
Stacking the dishwasher was a pain, one of her least pleasant tasks, though she did the housework happily enough. Michael had at one point suggested a cleaner, but she liked doing it, or, more precisely, liked having things the way she had them. She wouldn’t have been happy to have some unknown stranger in the house destroying every germ with an excess of chemicals.
“Are you ready to go?” she said a few moments later, standing in the hall as the boys came down the stairs. Tom, miraculously, had managed to have a shower, and now his hair was as neat as Luke’s. He had his tie neatly knotted and his blazer buttoned. It was difficult to tell them apart.
She smiled.
Chapter 3
In the Epping tunnel, a man cut her short, changing into her lane at the last possible moment. He was travelling at about forty-five kilometres per hour. She switched lanes, and then had to put her foot down, as there was someone gaining on her from behind. The Volvo roared into life and leapt ahead. Her heart jumped. She took a deep breath and changed left again, just as the car behind was about to hit her.
“Wow! This thing can really move,” Luke said.
She suppressed a smile, glancing into the rear view mirror at the idiot behind her, who was drinking something from a Styrofoam mug. Coffee, no doubt.
“You should drive like that more often,” Tom said.
She nodded non-commitally. He was sitting in the seat beside her, it being his turn to ride “shotgun” today, as the boys put it, both of them picking up these American terms somehow. Their life seemed imbued with them, to the point where she often wondered what was happening to Australia. It was disappearing into the morass of American culture.
She turned into the gates of the school a few moments later, and then had to slow to 15 km. She passed the old mansion house, the prep school, and continued up the drive to the senior school. A Rolls Royce passed her, and then a Maybach. She could barely keep her head up in the Volvo. Waverly was the most prestigious school in the country, and driving in in the mornings was like driving into a showroom of the most expensive cars.
She pulled up in the parking lot of King House, and as the car came to a halt, the doors clicked, the boys jumping out immediately, with no thought for a kiss or a hug.
“Bye, Mum.”
“Bye, Mum.”
And then they were gone.
She sighed, but sat on for a moment. Then Jean appeared beside her in the royal blue Jaguar she so envied. It slid to a halt and Jude opened the door. He waved to her, and then he was walking down the path and into King House.
A moment later there was a tap on her window.
Jean.
She let it down.
The raucous cry of kookaburras and magpies and ravens fought the ABC news, and she cut the radio.
“You’re looking good.”
“I had my hair done,” Susan said.
“Not bad.”
“I thought I could wear it a little shorter.”
“It suits your face.”
“Thank you.”
Jean hesitated, glancing across the garden at the house. “Are your two off to the art gallery on Thursday?”
Susan nodded.
“That should be interesting. We took Jude and Frieda only last month.”
“I know. We’ve been too. But not since last year.”
“They have some Van Gough at the moment.”
“Yes, that’s the attraction.”
Jean was a neighbour. She lived seven doors down, yet the boys had never played with Jude before they’d started at Waverly. When she was a child, her brother and her had played with everyone in the street, knowing all the neighbours and their families. Ralph had used to make a game of spying on everyone. He would talk Susan into stealing into their houses when they were unaware, and then they would hide behind a sofa or in a cupboard and watch the ordinary and everyday lives of those around them. Usually, it was boring — Mrs Peterson cooking the evening meal, Mrs Jenson on the telephone — though they did one time get caught in the middle of an enormous argument between the Caulfield’s, Mr and Mrs. Her overriding memory of the game, however, was watching Mrs Matthews iron for more than an hour.
She remembered this wryly and began to smile. Then she thought of Ralph, her brother, who was in a psychiatric ward at the moment. It wasn’t his first time, but how had that happened? she wondered. He had been such a happy boy.
“You’re away with the fairies.”
“Oh — sorry. It’s just …” She waved her hands ineffectually.
Jean nodded. “I might pop around for tea later today — or maybe tomorrow.”
“Oh — okay.” That would be nice. The one thing she hated about being a housewife was the loneliness.
Chapter 4
She parked the car in the garage and trotted upstairs. Another cup of tea, and then she would clean the kitchen and see what else had to be done.
Michael’s mother needed a physiotherapist. Just last week she’d had a hip replaced, and the young man she had wasn’t very good, apparently. Susan wondered whether this was true. She’d known Ellen to take a set against people in the past, and often it was the poor men taking on the traditional female roles, the nurses in the hospital, and at one stage a cleaner Ellen had had in. It was understandable, she guessed, but even so it wasn’t 1945.
Luke’s room was spotless for once, but Tom’s was a mess. She’d had a word to both of them after school yesterday, and had told them to clean their rooms if they didn’t want her “invading their privacy.” Luke had taken heed, and she respected this, simply walking through to his bathroom and making sure the toilet was clean.
She spent almost an hour in Tom’s room, opening the window first, as it had that fudsy smell. Then, with the heat of the day, she began perspiring, and had to close it again. The air conditioner took over and she sat on the bed, staring at the confusion. Clothes mainly. Though there were towels and books and plates and cups and his iPad tossed in amongst it all.
She sighed, and then flopped backwards onto the bed. She landed on something hard, something beneath the doona, and sat up again. It was a book, a copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. She had heard of it, but had never read it.
S
omeone who didn’t know Tom well might have thought he was having trouble making friends. This wasn’t the case and never had been. The boys had plenty of friends. They had always been popular. Most likely, he was interested in influencing people, and in influencing them in some Machiavellian way.
She closed her eyes for a moment, and then turned the book over and read the blurb. The phrase “win people to your way of thinking” caught her eye, and then there was something about “applying the principles of psychology.” But surely it was harmless. Millions of people had read the book.
She reached forward and placed it on his desk, and then turned and looked out of the window. All that could be seen from her position on the bed were the leaves of the ghost gums in the front garden. They were olive green and seemed to be covered in dust. It hadn’t rained for weeks, but in a few days there would be a storm. The days were getting hotter, and growing humid too.
After making the bed, she considered putting the book back under the doona. Tom had thrown the doona over the bed, and had most likely thought it was good enough, yet it had been sitting askew. It hadn’t been a serious attempt, she decided, and it would most likely be obvious that she had smoothed the doona and creased it near the pillows. Then again, he might not notice. Though he would certainly notice his room, because she intended to make it spotless.