The Ice Twins

by S. K. Tremayne

  The basic structure of our new home is pretty sound: two gabled white cottages, designed by Robert Louis Stevenson’s father in the 1880s, and knocked into one family house in the 1950s. But the first hour’s exploration of Torran cottage proves, beyond doubt, that no one has significantly touched the buildings since the 1950s.

  The kitchen is indescribable: the fridge is rotten, there is black stuff inside. The whole thing will have to go. The cooker is usable, but demonically filthy: on the afternoon of Day One I spend hours cleaning it, till my knees burn from the kneeling, but when the evening light falls – so early, so early – I’m only halfway finished. And I have not even touched the deep ceramic kitchen sink, which smells like it’s been used for butchering seabirds.

  The rest of the kitchen is little better. The taps above the sink spout tainted liquid: Angus forgot to tell me that our only running water would be provided by a thin plastic pipe from the mainland – and this pipe is exposed at low tide on the causeway. It hisses with leaks, and lets seawater in; at low tide I can actually see the leaks as I stare out the kitchen window – joyous little fountains of spray, squirting from the pipe, and saying hello to the sky.

  Because of this saline taint, we have to boil everything. But still everything tastes of fish. Fixing the water supply is consequently essential – we can’t keep humping bottled water from the Co-op supermarket at Broadford; we can’t spare the cash or the effort. Yet filtering or purifying water with tablets is too tricky and time-consuming, as a long-term solution. But how do we tempt the water company to come out and help us, just three people who chose, of their own volition, to go and live on a ridiculously remote island?

  Perhaps when the water company eventually come to our aid, they will also, out of pity, help us to get rid of the rats.

  Because there are rats everywhere. I can hear them when I sleep – they wake me with their scrabbling in the walls, playing and tumbling, dancing and squealing. The rats mean we have to keep all our food in wire baskets, in the kitchen, suspended from a metal clothes line.

  I would like to put our food in the kitchen cupboards: but they are all damp and rotten; when I first opened the door of the very largest cupboard I found nothing but mould, dirt, and emptiness – and the small, white, intricate skeleton of a shrew, placed in the centre of the shelf.

  It was like a beautiful museum piece, collected by an antiquarian: something strange and exquisite, something macabre but marvellous. I got Angus to throw it into the sea.

  Now it is Day Five, and I am sitting here, smutted and tired, and alone, in the gathering darkness of a solitary lamp; I am letting the big fragrant woodfire crackle into nothing: because I like staring at the dying flames. Angus is snoring in our bedroom, on the large, old, wooden-sided bed he calls the Admiral’s Bed. I’ve no idea why it has that name. My daughter is likewise asleep in her room, beside her precious nightlight, at the other end of the house.

  The fire spits a huge spark onto the Turkish rug. I do not move because I know the Turkish rug is too damp to take flame. I am looking at a To Do list jotted on the notepad on my lap. It is sappingly long – and yet I am still writing in the semi-dark.

  We must get a boat. Angus is negotiating every day with potential sellers – but boats are unnervingly expensive. Yet we can’t risk buying something cheaper that might sink.

  We also need the phone fixed: the ancient, black, 1960s Bakelite phone, that sits on the side-table in the chilly dining room, is freckled with hard drops of old paint, and is mysteriously singed on the bottom. Someone must once have put it on a hot stove, I think. Perhaps they were blind drunk from whisky, as they tried to keep out the cold, and not think about the rats.

  Whatever the explanation, the phone-line pops and crackles so loudly, any voice on the other end is barely distinguishable; and I fear this is because the line is corrupted – rotted by seawater; which means that just buying a new receiver will not give us reception. There is of course no internet access, and no cell phone coverage. The isolation is intense.

  But what can I do?

  Finish the list.

  I listen to the creak of the old house, bending in the low Sleat wind. I listen to the gristly noise of the woodfire, its salt-watered logs reluctantly burning. All my clothes smell of woodsmoke.

  What else? We have yet to unpack all our crockery and glassware: they’re all in the boxes laboriously ferried across, by Josh and Angus and the removal men. We’re still drinking red wine out of jam jars.

  Underlining the word boxes, I stare around.

  Some of the walls have strange, unsettling paintings of dancers, and mermaids, and Scottish warriors: probably the work of returning squatters, over the years. They will have to go, they are a little eerie. The lumber-room at the back of the kitchen is even worse – a centuries-old mess; I’ll leave that to Gus. Beyond that, the big shed outside is dilapidated, and filthy with gull feathers. And the walled garden is weedy, rocky, and will take years to redeem.

  And then there’s the toilet, by the bathroom, which actually has a cardboard sign on the cistern, written in Angus’s grandmother’s elderly hand: Please leave the stone on the seat, it is to keep out the mink.

  I write: Fix Toilet on my To Do list. Then I write Kill Mink.

  And then I stop, and half smile.

  Despite it all, I can still find satisfaction here, a glimpse of future contentment, even. This is a proper project, and it is enormous, and daunting, yet I like the way this huge undertaking encompasses me, and commands me. I know for sure what I will be doing for thirty months: turning this beautiful horrible house into a lovely home. Bringing the dead back to life.

  There it is. I have no choice. I just have to get on with it. And I am eager to obey.

  There are also some serious pluses. The two larger bedrooms and this living room are habitable spaces; they have plastered walls, and functional radiators. The potential of the other bedrooms, and the dining room, and scullery, is obvious. This place is big.

  I also like the lighthouse, especially at night. It flashes every nine seconds, I reckon. Not so brightly that it keeps me awake; in fact it helps me sleep, like a metronome, like a very, very slow maternal heartbeat.

  And, lastly but most importantly, I adore the views. Even though I expected this scenery, it still amazes me. Every day.

  Sometimes I find myself standing, paintbrush in hand, bucket of white spirit by my feet, open-mouthed – and then I come to, and realize that I’ve spent twenty minutes in silence, watching the rays of sunlight spear the tawny mountains, goring the darkened rocks with gold; watching the white clouds drift languidly, over the snow-chafed hills of Knoydart: Sgurr nan Eugallt, Sgurr a’Choire-Bheithe, Fraoch Bheinn.

  Pen in hand, pad on lap, I write down these words.

  Sgurr nan Eugallt, Sgurr a’Choire-Bheithe, Fraoch Bheinn.

  Angus is teaching me these words. These beautiful, liquid, salt-soaked Gaelic names, that stream into the culture, like the burns from the Cuillins tumbling into Coruisk. We drink whisky at night, together, and he shows me the Gaelic names on the map: and I repeat these mysterious vowels and consonants. Laughing, lightly but contentedly. Snuggled under the rug. Tender and together. With my husband.

  Now Angus is asleep in our bed, and I am keen to join him. But for the last time today, I write down the names of the hills: as if they are an incantation that will protect this little family. The Moorcrofts. Alone on their very own island, with its little silver beaches, and its inquisitive seals.

  The pen is almost dropping from my hand. I can feel myself nodding towards sleep; I have the deep satisfying tiredness, born of hard physical labour.

  But I am woken.

  ‘Mummy, Mummy …??’

  A voice calls me. Muffled by doors and distance.

  ‘Mummy!? Mama?!’

  It must be another nightmare? Dropping my pad, I pick up a torch, turn it on – and walk the dark cold hallway to her room. Her door is shut. Is she talking in her sleep?

/>   ‘Mummy …’

  Her voice sounds odd. For a moment I am ridiculously paralysed at the door. I don’t want to go in.

  I am scared.

  This is absurd, but my heart flutters with sudden panic. I can’t go into my own daughter’s room? Something unexpected holds me back, as if there is an evil beyond, a silly, childish, horror-film fear of ghosts is fluxing through me. Monsters under the bed, monsters behind the door. My daughter might be in there, smiling at me, in that way. The way she did in the car. Trying to confuse me, to punish me. You let my sister die. You weren’t there.

  But this is nonsense. This is just memories of my father shouting at me. He always shouted so much, as his career faded. Shouted at my cowering mother. I would hear the shouting behind doors like monsters, or thunder, and closed doors agitate me.

  So. No. I am a better mother than this.

  Suppressing my nerves, I twist the knob. And step over the threshold, and peer into the gloom within.

  At once my anxiety flees: and I am suffused with concern – Kirstie is sitting up in her bed, and she is certainly not smiling: tears are streaming down her face. What is wrong? Her nightlight is still on, though its illumination is feeble. What has happened?

  ‘Baby baby – what’s wrong what’s wrong, what is it?’

  I swoop to her side and embrace her, and she cries, quietly, for several minutes, as I rock her from side to side, tight in my arms. She is wordless and harrowed.

  It must surely be another nightmare. Slowly she sobs, and sobs. And the sea accompanies her grief, I can hear the waves outside, yearning and restless. Inhaling and exhaling. I wonder who left the window open? Maybe Angus. He has a thing about fresh air.

  Gradually my little girl whimpers into silence. And I hold her face between two hands, feeling the warm damp tears on my fingers:

  ‘Come on, darling. What is it? Was it another bad dream?’

  My little girl shakes her head. She emits a stifled sob. Then she shakes her head again, and lifts a finger and points.

  A big printed photograph lies on her bed. I pick it up – and feel the instant pain it evokes. The quality of the photo is poor – printed out from a computer – but the image is nonetheless stark. It is a cheery photo of Lydia and Kirstie on holiday in Devon, maybe a year before the accident; they are on the beach at Instow, smiling in their twin pink Duplo Valley hoodies from Legoland, holding buckets and spades, slightly squinting in the sun: but smiling happily at me, and my cameraphone.

  The grief tumbles, like a ceaseless waterfall, stained brown by peat.

  ‘Kirstie, where did you get this?’

  She says nothing. I am bewildered. Angus and I long ago decided to keep most photos – all photos, if possible – hidden from our daughter, to ward off the memories. Perhaps she found it in one of the unsorted packing cases?

  I gaze at the picture again, trying to ignore my own storms of sadness. But it is so hard. The twins look desolatingly happy. Sistered in the sun, and each other’s closest relative. In a way, I suddenly, realize, my surviving daughter is now orphaned.

  Kirstie leans away from me, in her soft pink pyjamas, and she plucks the photo from my hand and then she turns it, and she shows it to me in the quarter-light and says:

  ‘Which one is me, Mummy?’

  ‘Darling?’

  ‘Which one is me? Mummy? Which one?’

  Oh, help. Oh, God. This is unbearable: because I have no answer. The truth is, I do not know. I literally cannot distinguish between them; in this photo, there are no visual clues. Should I lie? What if I get it wrong?

  Kirstie waits. I say nothing: I mumble nonsense words, comforting noises, trying to work out what lie to tell. But the lack of a proper answer is making things worse.

  For a tight little second she stares at me, and then Kirstie starts howling: she falls back onto the bed, flailing her arms, tantruming like a two-year-old. Her scream is terrible and rending, her wails are desperate; but I can distinctly hear the words:

  ‘Mummy? Mummy? Mummy? Who am I?’

  7

  It takes an hour to calm my daughter all over again, to pacify her enough so that she finally goes to sleep – clutching Leopardy so tight, it’s as if she is actively trying to strangle him. But then I am unable to sleep. For six dusty hours, next to snoring Angus, I lie there, eyes bright and fierce and upset, and I turn over her words in my mind.

  Who am I?

  What must that be like, to not know who you are, to not know which one of ‘me’ is dead?

  At seven a.m. I rise, urgent and desperate, from the tousled bed and I call Josh on the crackly phone and he yawningly agrees to give me a dawnlit boat-ride to our car, parked by the Selkie, as the tides are against us. Of course, Angus is all questions as he ambles sleepily into the dining room; as I put the phone down. Why are you phoning Josh? Where are you going so early? What is going on? Yawn.

  Words stop in my mouth even as I try to reply. I don’t want to tell him the truth, not yet; not unless I have to, it’s too bizarre and frightening – I’d much rather lie. Maybe I should have done more lying, in the past. Maybe I should have lied about that affair, all those years ago; perhaps the damage was done, by me, to our marriage, and we never quite recovered. But I do not have time for guilt: and so I explain that I have to leave early, to drive to Glasgow, to research an article, because I have a commission from Imogen, and I need the work because we need the money. I tell him Kirstie had another nightmare, so she needs a lot of comfort while I’m gone.

  A nightmare. Just a nightmare.

  The lie is feeble; yet he seems to accept it.

  Then Josh arrives in the boat, scratching the sleep from his eyes, and we steer around Salmadair to Ornsay and I run up the steps of the pier and I jump in the car and I drive madly down to Glasgow – from Kyle to Fort William to the centre of the city, calling in a favour from Imogen as I go. She knows one of Scotland’s best child psychiatrists. Malcolm Kellaway. And I know this because I read some of Imogen’s articles months back, where she’d praised him in a piece about modern motherhood. Now I demand her help.

  ‘Can you get me an appointment? Right now?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Immy. Please.’ I am gazing at the haunted bleakness of Rannoch Moor, simultaneously steering, and phoning. I don’t think there are any police around, to arrest me for careless driving. Little lochs shine dirty silver, in the occasional breaks of sun.

  ‘Please, Immy. I need this.’

  ‘Well. Yes … yes, I could try. He could call you back. But, um, Sarah – are you sure you’re OK?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Sarah – it’s just – you know—’

  ‘Imogen!’

  Like a friend – like the friend who has been with me all the way – she gets the message, and she stops asking questions, and she rings off, to do my bidding. And sure enough: his office calls me as I drive: he has agreed to see me with four hours’ notice.

  Thank you, Imogen.

  And now here I am in Kellaway’s office in George Street. The psychiatrist, Dr Malcolm Kellaway, is sitting on a leather swivel chair behind his slim metal desk. His hands are pressed exactly flat together, as if in the most pious prayer; his twinned fingertips are poised to his chin.

  He asks, for the second time. ‘Do you honestly believe that you might have made a mistake? That evening, in Devon?’

  ‘I don’t know. No. Yes. I don’t know.’

  Silence resumes.

  The Glasgow sky is already blackening outside, and it is barely two-thirty p.m.

  ‘OK, let’s go over the facts again.’

  And so he goes over the facts, again. The facts of the matter; the case in hand; the death of my daughter; the possible breakdown of my surviving child.

  I listen to his recitation, but really I am staring at those dark swirling clouds outside, beyond the square windows with the sooty granite sills. Glasgow. This is such a Satanic city in the winter – Victorian and dour, exultantly fo
rbidding. Why did I come here?

  Kellaway has more questions of his own.

  ‘How much of this have you discussed with your husband, Mrs Moorcroft?

  ‘Not so much.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Just that – I don’t want to make it any worse than it is, I mean, before I know, for sure.’

  Again the doubts assail me: what am I doing here? What is the point? Malcolm Kellaway is easily middle-aged, yet wears jeans which make him seem unconvincing. He has annoyingly effete gestures, a silly roll-neck jumper, and rimless spectacles with two perfectly round lenses that say oo. What does this man know about my daughter that I don’t? What can he tell me that I can’t tell myself?

  Now he gazes at me, from behind those glasses, and he says,

  ‘Mrs Moorcroft. Perhaps it’s time to move on from what we know, to what we don’t know, or can’t know.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘First things first.’ He sits forward. ‘Following your phone call this morning, I have done some research of my own, and I have consulted with colleagues at the Royal Infirmary. And I’m afraid there is, as I suspected, no reliable way of differentiating between monozygotic twins, especially in your pretty unique circumstances.’

  I gaze back at him. ‘DNA?’

  ‘No. Afraid not. Even if we had’ – he winces as he speaks the next words – ‘a large enough sample from your deceased daughter, standard DNA tests could almost certainly not discern any difference. Identical twins are just that: identical – genetically identical as well as facially and physically identical. This is actually a problem for police forces; there have been cases where two twins have escaped conviction for crimes because the police are unable to identify which particular twin did the deed, even when they have DNA samples from the crime scene.’

  ‘What about fingerprints, aren’t they different?’