The Ice Twins

by S. K. Tremayne

  Tourists would actually point and take photos. I was virtually a stage mother. Oh, she has those lovely twins. With the beautiful dog. You know.

  Leaning against a wall, I close my eyes, to think more clearly. I can hear distant noises from the kitchen downstairs: cutlery rattling on a table, or maybe a bottle-opener being returned to a drawer.

  What is it about Beany that feels wrong? There is definitely some troubled thought that descends from the concept dog – yet I cannot trace it, cannot follow it through the brambles of memory and grief.

  Downstairs, the front door slams shut. The noise breaks the spell.

  ‘Sarah Moorcroft,’ I say, opening my eyes, ‘Get a grip.’

  I need to go down and talk to Immy and have a glass of wine and then go to bed, and tomorrow Kirstie – Kirstie – will go to school with her red book bag, wearing her black woollen jumper. The one with Kirstie Moorcroft written on the label inside.

  In the kitchen, I find Imogen sitting at the counter. She smiles, tipsily, the faint tannin staining of red wine on her neat white teeth.

  ‘Afraid Gus has nipped out.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Yeah. He had a minor panic attack about the booze supply. You’ve only got’ – she turns and looks at the wine rack by the fridge – ‘six bottles left. So he’s gone to Sainsbury’s to stock up. Took Beany with him.’

  I laugh, politely, and pull up a stool.

  ‘Yes. Sounds like Angus.’

  I pour myself half a glass of red from the open bottle on the counter, glancing at the label. Cheap Chilean Merlot. It used to be fancy Barossa Shiraz. I don’t care.

  Imogen watches me, and she says: ‘He’s still drinking a bit, ah, you know – excessively?’

  ‘That’s a nice way of putting it, Immy: “a bit excessively”. He lost his job because he got so drunk he punched his boss. And knocked him out.’

  Imogen nods. ‘Sorry. Yes. Can’t help talking in euphemisms. Comes with the day job.’ She tilts her head and smiles. ‘But the boss was a jerk, right?’

  ‘Yes. His boss was totally obnoxious, but it’s still not great, is it? Breaking the nose of London’s richest architect.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Sure …’ Imogen smiles slyly. ‘Though, y’know, it’s not all bad. I mean, at least he can throw a punch – like a man. Remember that Irish guy I dated, last year – he used to wear yoga pants.’

  She smirks my way; I force half a smile.

  Imogen is a journalist like me, though a vastly more successful one. She is a deputy editor on a women’s gossip magazine that, miraculously, has a growing circulation; I scrape an unreliable living as a freelancer. This might have made me jealous of her, but our friendship is, or was, evened out by the fact I got married and had kids. She is single and childless. We used to compare notes – what my life could have been.

  Now I lean back, holding my wine glass airily: trying to be relaxed. ‘Actually he’s not drinking as much as he used to.’

  ‘Good.

  ‘But it’s still too late. For his career at Kimberley.’

  Imogen nods sympathetically – and drinks. I sip at my wine, and sigh in a what-can-you-do way, and gaze around our big bright Camden kitchen, at all the granite worktops and shining steel, the black espresso machine with its set of golden capsules: all of it screaming: this is the kitchen of a well-to-do middle-class couple!

  And all of it a lie.

  We were a well-to-do middle-class couple, for a while, after Angus got promoted three times in three years. For a long time everything was pristinely optimistic: Angus was heading for a partnership and a handsome salary, and I was more than happy for him to be the main earner, the provider, because this allowed me to combine my part-time journalism with proper mothering. It allowed me to do the school run, to make cooked but healthy breakfasts, to stand in the kitchen turning basil into organic pesto when the twins were playing on one of our iPads. For half a decade we were, most of the time, the perfect Camden family.

  Then Lydia died, falling from the balcony at my parents’ house in Devon, and it was as if someone had dropped Angus from a height. A hundred thousand pieces of Angus were scattered around the place. His grief was psychotic. A raging fire of anguish that could not be quenched, even with a bottle of whisky a night, much as he tried. Every night.

  The firm gave him latitude, and weeks off, but it wasn’t enough. He was uncontrollable; he went back to work too soon and got into arguments, then fights. He resigned an hour before he was sacked; ten hours after he punched the boss. And he hasn’t worked since, apart from a few freelance design jobs pushed his way by sympathetic friends.

  ‘Sod it, Imogen,’ I say. ‘At least we’re moving. At last.’

  ‘Yes!’ she says brightly. ‘Into a cave, right, in Shetland?’

  She’s teasing. I don’t mind. We used to tease each other all the time, before the accident.

  Now our relationship is more stilted; but we make an effort. Other friendships ended entirely, after Lydia’s death: too many people didn’t know what to say, so they said nothing. By contrast, Imogen keeps trying: nurturing the low flame of our friendship.

  I look at her, and say,

  ‘Torran Island, you remember? I’ve shown you photos, every time you’ve come here, for the last month.’

  ‘Ah yes. Torran! The famous homeland. But tell me again, I like it.’

  ‘It’s going to be great, Immy – if we don’t freeze. Apparently there are rabbits, and otters, and seals—’

  ‘Fantastic. I love seals.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Oh yes. Especially the pups. Can you sort me out a coat?’

  I laugh – sincerely, but guiltily. Imogen and I share a sense of humour; but hers is wickeder. She goes on. ‘So this place. Torran. Remind me. You still haven’t been there?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Sarah. How can you move to a place you’ve never even seen?’

  Silence.

  I finish my glass of Merlot and pour some more. ‘I told you. I don’t want to see it.’

  Another pause.

  ‘Uh-huh?’

  ‘Immy, I don’t want to see it for real, because – what if I don’t like it?’ I stare into her wide green eyes. ‘Mmm? What then? Then I’m stuck here, Imogen. Stuck here with everything, all the memories, the money problems, everything. We’re out of cash anyway, so we’ll have to move to some stupid tiny flat, back where we started, and – and then what? I’ll have to go out to work and Angus will go stir crazy and it’s just – just – you know – I have to get out, we have to get out, and this is it: the way of escape. And it does look so beautiful in the photos. It does, it does: so bloody beautiful. It’s like a dream, but who cares? I want a dream. Right this minute, that’s exactly what I want. Because reality has been pretty fucking crap for a while now.’

  The kitchen is quiet. Imogen raises her glass and she gently chinks mine and says: ‘Darling. It will be lovely. I’m just going to miss you.’

  We lock eyes, briefly, and moments later Angus is in the kitchen; his overcoat speckled with cold autumn rain. He is carrying wine in doubled orange plastic bags – and leading the dampened dog. Carefully he sets the bags on the floor, then unleashes Beany.

  ‘Here you go, boy.’

  The spaniel shivers and wags his tail and heads straight for his wicker basket. Meanwhile I extract the wine bottles, and set them up on the counter; like a small but important parade.

  ‘Well, that should last an hour,’ Imogen says, staring at all the wine.

  Angus grabs a bottle and unscrews it.

  ‘Ach. Sainsbury’s is a battleground. I’m not gonna miss the Camden junkies, buying their lemon juice.’

  Imogen tuts. ‘Wait till you’re three hundred miles from the nearest truffle oil.’

  Angus laughs – and it is a good laugh, a natural laugh. Like a laugh from before it all happened. And finally I relax; though I also remember that I want to ask him about the little toy: the plastic dragon. How
did that end up in Kirstie’s bedroom? It was Lydia’s. It was boxed and hidden away, I am sure of it.

  But why ruin this rare and agreeable evening with an interrogation? The question can wait for another day. Or for ever.

  Our glasses replenished, we sit and chat and have an impromptu kitchen-picnic: rough slices of ciabatta dipped in olive oil, thick chunks of cheap saucisson. And for an hour or more we talk, companionably, contentedly – like the three old friends we are. Angus explains how his brother – living in California – has generously forgone his share of the inheritance.

  ‘David’s earning a shedload, in Silicon Valley. Doesn’t need the cash or the hassle. And he knows that we DO need it.’ Angus swallows his saucisson.

  Imogen interrupts: ‘But what I don’t understand, Gus, is how come your granny owned this island in the first place? I mean’ – she chews an olive – ‘don’t be offended, but I thought your dad was a serf, and you and your mum lived in an outside toilet. Yet suddenly here’s grandmother with her own island.’

  Angus chuckles. ‘Nan was on my mother’s side, from Skye. They were just humble farmers, one up from crofters. But they had a smallholding, which happened to include an island.’

  ‘OK … ’

  ‘It’s pretty common. There’re thousands of little islands in the Hebrides, and fifty years ago a one-acre island of seaweed off Ornsay was worth about three quid. So it just never got sold. Then my mum moved down to Glasgow, and Nan followed, and Torran became, like, a holiday place. For me and my brother.’

  I finish my husband’s story for him, as he fetches more olive oil: ‘Angus’s mum met Angus’s dad in Glasgow. She was a primary school teacher, he worked in the docks—’

  ‘He, uh … drowned, right?’

  ‘Yes. An accident at the docks. Quite tragic, really.’

  Angus interrupts, walking back: ‘The old man was a soak. And a wife-beater. Not sure tragic is the word.’

  We all stare at the three remaining bottles of wine on the counter. Imogen speaks: ‘But still – where does the lighthouse and the cottage fit in? How did they get there? If your folks were poor?’

  Angus replies, ‘Northern Lighthouse Board run all the lighthouses in Scotland. Last century, whenever they needed to build a new one, they would offer a bit of cash in ground rent to the property owner. That’s what happened on Torran. But then the lighthouse got automated. In the sixties. So the cottage was vacated. And it reverted to my family.’

  ‘Stroke of luck?’ says Imogen.

  ‘Looking back, aye,’ says Angus. ‘We got a big, solidly built cottage. For nothing.’

  A voice from upstairs intrudes.

  ‘Mummy …?’

  It’s Kirstie. Awakened. And calling from the landing. This happens quite a lot. Yet her voice, especially when heard unexpectedly, always gives me a brief, repressed, upwelling of grief. Because it sounds like Lydia.

  I want these drowning feelings to stop.

  ‘Mummyyy?’

  Angus and I share a resigned glance: both of us mentally calculating the last time this happened. Like two very new parents squabbling over whose turn it is to baby-feed, at three a.m.

  ‘I’ll go,’ I say. ‘It’s my turn.’

  And it is: the last time Kirstie woke up, after one of her nightmares, was just a few days ago, and Angus had loyally traipsed upstairs to do the comforting.

  Setting down my wine glass, I head for the first floor. Beany is following me, eagerly, as if we are going rabbiting; his tail whips against the table legs.

  Kirstie is barefoot, at the top of the stairs. She is the image of troubled innocence with her big blue eyes, and with Leopardy pressed to her buttoned pyjama-top.

  ‘It did it again, Mummy, the dream.’

  ‘Come on, Moomin. It’s just a bad dream.’

  I pick her up – she is almost too heavy, these days – and carry her back into the bedroom. Kirstie is, it seems, not too badly flustered; though I wish this repetitive nightmare would stop. As I tuck her in her bed, again, she is already half-closing her eyes, even as she talks.

  ‘It was all white, Mummy, all around me, I was stuck in a room, all white, all faces staring at me.’

  ‘Shhhhh.’

  ‘It was white and I was scared and I couldn’t move then and then … then …’

  ‘Shushhh.’

  I stroke her faintly fevered, blemishless forehead. Her eyelids flicker towards sleep. But a whimpering, from behind me, stirs her.

  The dog has followed me into the bedroom.

  Kirstie searches my face for a favour.

  ‘Can Beany stay with me, Mummy? Can he sleep in my room tonight?’

  I don’t normally allow this. But tonight I just want to go back downstairs, and drink another glass, with Immy and Angus.

  ‘All right, Sawney Bean can stay, just this once.’

  ‘Beany!’ Kirstie leans up from her pillow, and reaches a little hand and jiggles the dog’s ears.

  I stare at my daughter, meaningfully.

  ‘Thuh?’

  ‘Thank you, Mummy.’

  ‘Good. Now you must go back to sleep. School tomorrow.’

  She hasn’t called herself ‘we’, she hasn’t called herself ‘Lydia’. This is a serious relief. When she settles her head on the cool pillow I walk to the door.

  But as I back away, my eyes fix on the dog.

  He is lying by Kirstie’s bed, and his head is meekly tilted, ready for sleep.

  And now the sense of dread returns. Because I’ve worked it out: what was troubling me. The dog. The dog is behaving differently.

  From the day we bought Beany home to our ecstatic little girls, his relationship with the twins was marked – yet it was, also, differentiated. My twins might have been identical, but Sawney did not love them identically.

  With Kirstie, the first twin, the buoyant twin, the surviving twin, the leader of mischief, the girl sleeping in this bed, right now, in this room, Beany is extrovert: jumping up at her when she gets home from school, chasing her playfully down the hall – making her scream in delighted terror.

  With Lydia, the quieter twin, the more soulful twin, the twin that used to sit and read with me for hours, the twin that fell to her death last year, our spaniel was always gentle, as if sensing her more vulnerable personality. He would nuzzle her, and press his paws on her lap: amiable and warm.

  And Sawney Bean also liked to sleep in Lydia’s room if he could, even though we usually chased him out; and when he did come in to her room, he would lie by her bed at night, and tilt his head, meekly.

  As he is doing now, with Kirstie.

  I stare at my hands; they have a fine tremor. The anxiety is like pins and needles.

  Because Beany is not extrovert with Kirstie any more. He behaves with Kirstie exactly as he used to with Lydia.

  Gentle. Nuzzling. Soft.

  The self-questioning surges. When did the dog’s behaviour change? Right after Lydia’s death? Later?

  I strive, but I cannot remember. The last year has been a blur of grief: so much has altered I have paid no attention to the dog. So what has happened? Is it possible the dog is, somehow, grieving? Can an animal mourn? Or is it something else, something worse?

  I have to investigate this: I can’t let it lie. Quickly I exit Kirstie’s room, leaving her to her reassuring nightlight; then I pace five yards to the next door. Lydia’s old room.

  We have transformed Lydia’s room into an office space: trying, unsuccessfully, to erase the memories with work. The walls are lined with books, mostly mine. And plenty of them – at least half a shelf – are about twins.

  When I was pregnant I read every book I could find on this subject. It’s the way I process things: I read about them. So I read books on the problems of twin prematurity, books on the problems on twin individuation, books that told me how a twin is more closely related, genetically, to her co-twin, to her twin sibling, than she is to her parents, or even her own children.

  And I al
so read something about twins and dogs. I am sure.

  Urgently I search the shelves. This one? No. This one? Yes.

  Pulling down the book – Multiple Births: A Practical Guide – I flick hurriedly to the index.

  Dogs, page 187.

  And here it is. This is the paragraph I remembered.

  Identical twins can sometimes be difficult to physically differentiate, well into their teenage years – even, on occasion, for their parents. Curiously, however, dogs do not have the same difficulty. Such is the canine sense of smell, a dog – a family pet, for instance – can, after a few weeks, permanently differentiate between one twin and another, by scent alone.

  The book rests in my hands; but my eyes are staring into the total blackness of the uncurtained window. Piecing together the evidence.

  Kirstie’s personality has become quieter, shyer, more reserved, this last year. More like Lydia’s. Until now I had ascribed this to grief. After all, everyone has changed this last year.

  But what if we have made a terrible mistake? The most terrible mistake imaginable? How would we unravel it? What could we do? What would it do to all of us? I know one thing: I cannot tell my fractured husband any of this. I cannot tell anyone. There is no point in dropping this bomb. Not until I am sure. But how do I prove this, one way or another?

  Dry-mouthed and anxious, I walk out onto the landing. I stare at the door. And those words written in spangled, cut-out paper letters.

  Kirstie Lives Here.

  3

  I once read a survey that explained how moving house is as traumatic as a divorce, or as the death of a parent. I feel the opposite: for the two weeks after our meeting with Walker – for the two weeks after Kirstie said what she said – I am fiercely pleased that we are moving house, because it means I am overworked and, at least sometimes, distracted.