The Ice Twins

by S. K. Tremayne

  And I want to stay on Torran, so very very much.

  So I open my laptop, and spend two hours sending emails: the accumulated ideas, notions and necessary communications of forty-eight hours. I send a bunch of emails to editors in town: maybe I can write something about Torran and Sleat, about local folklore, the Gaelic revival, anything.

  Sipping my cappuccino, looking at the cars driving in and out of Broadford Co-op, I consider, once more, my growing infatuation with our island. It’s like a teenage crush on an uncaring, hard-to-please boy. The more difficult Torran is, the more I want to own it, to make it mine.

  A few hard hours later and my work is done; I must go back to school to pick up Kirstie. I am going to be late, so I press the pedal, but then I skid over the snow-slicked cattle grid, and almost shunt into a stunted oak, mournfully guarding a farm track to my left.

  Slow down, Sarah, slow down. I need to remember the road is dangerous pretty much all the way, from Broadford to Ardvasar. But then everything is slightly dangerous here.

  A lonely snowflake hits my windscreen, and is exterminated by the wipers. I look at the low balding hills. Shaved by winds and deforestation. I think of the people wrenched from this landscape by poverty and the Highland Clearances. Skye used to be populated by twenty-five thousand people. A century later it is half that. I often consider the scenes of that emigration: the crying farmwives, the sheep-dogs quietly killed, the babies screaming as they quit their beautiful, hostile homeland, and sailed west. And now I think of my daughter.

  Screaming.

  I have decided what to do about my daughter. I don’t want to do this. But I have to. The awfulness this morning clinched it.

  I arrive at the school. With an effort, I flash an unconvincing smile at some of the other mothers, and then I turn and look to the cheery paper sign on the glass door saying Failte and I wonder where is she, where is my daughter?

  All of the other children are pouring out: a cataract of giddy energy and Gaelic chatter and Lego Movie lunchboxes, a mob of small people running into parental arms and then, finally, the last, slow, reluctant child emerges from the door. A little girl with no friends. Talking to no one.

  My daughter. Now an only child. With her sad little rucksack. In her sad uniform. She walks up to me and buries her face in my stomach.

  ‘Hello you,’ I say.

  I put an arm around her, and guide her to the car.

  ‘Hey. How was the first day at school?’

  My cheeriness is absurd. But what else can I do? Be doomy and suicidal? Tell her everything is indeed awful?

  Kirstie straps herself in the child seat, and gazes out the window at the grey tidal waters of the Sound, and the pink and orange lights of Mallaig: with its port and its railway station, and its symbols of escape and civilization and the mainland, now dimming in the distance. The winter darkness is already shrouding, at three-fifteen.

  ‘Sweetie. How did it go at school?’

  She is looking out of the window, still. I persist.

  ‘Moomin?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘No one.’

  ‘Oh, OK.’ What does this mean? Nothing and no one? I turn the radio on and sing along to a happy tune as I have a brief exultant urge to drive the car straight into Loch na Dal.

  But I have a plan and we are going to stick to it. We just need to get to the boat, then get to the island.

  Then I will do what I am so afraid of doing.

  This wretched and terrible thing.

  10

  The boat is there, waiting, lashed to the pier that juts from the car park outside the Selkie. The lighthouse and lighthouse-keeper’s cottage look innocent in the distance, white and lovely, yet humbled by the dark, framing mountains of Knoydart. I stop the Ford and park.

  It takes me four or five tugs of the outboard to get the engine ticking over. It used to take me ten. I am getting used to this, and I am steering the boat better. I can even tie knots.

  Kirstie sits, slightly red-eyed, yet calm, at the other end of the dinghy, looking first at me, then at the rocky beaches of Salmadair, as we putter across in the chilly breeze. Her blonde hair sweetly curls and kicks in the wind. She looks so pretty – her retroussé profile is framed by the waters. I love her so much, my little girl. I love her because she is Kirstie and I love her because she reminds me of Lydia.

  And, of course, part of me wants my little Lydia back. Part of me sings at this idea. I have missed Lydia intensely: the way we would sit and read together for entire afternoons, the way we would sometimes just sit, quiet but happy; Kirstie was always bouncing around, much less patient. The idea that Lydia could have returned, from the dead, is a kind of miracle. Terrifying but a miracle. Maybe all miracles are frightening? But if I get Lydia back, if this really is Lydia here, now – then Kirstie dies.

  What am I thinking? This is Kirstie, as I am about to prove. In the cruellest of ways. If I can find the ruthlessness to see it through.

  Kirstie asks, in the biting sea wind, ‘Why’s it called Salmadair, Mummy?’

  This is good. A normal conversation.

  ‘I think it means island of psalms, darling, there used to be a nunnery here.’

  ‘When, Mummy? What’s nunnery?’

  ‘A nunnery, with people who prayed, they used to pray here, many years ago, a thousand years ago?’

  ‘Before we were a baby?’

  I ignore the troubled syntax, and nod. ‘Yep. Long time before then.’

  ‘Now there’s no nuns there?’

  ‘No. Are you cold?’

  The wind is really kicking at her hair; her pink raincoat is unbuttoned.

  ‘No it’s all right. The wind is making my hair blow all over my face but I like hair in my face.’

  ‘OK. We’re nearly there.’

  A seal rises to the right – bottling – looking at us with those orphaned eyes, sad, and wise; then with an oily, whiskered plop it disappears and Kirstie smiles her gap-toothed smile.

  The Sleat waves are kind, and ferry us onto the beach beneath the lighthouse. I drag the dinghy – which is just light enough – above the tideline, where crabs scuttle, and a dead salmon rots, pecked by herring gulls.

  ‘Pooh,’ says Kirstie, pointing at the smelly fish carcass. Then she runs up to the cottage and pushes the never-locked door and disappears inside. I can hear Beany barking softly in greeting. He used to bark loudly and happily. I knot the boat, and follow. The kitchen is cold. The rats are quiet. The harlequins dance on the stained white wall of the dining room. The stone is kept on the loo seat, so as to keep out the mink.

  Angus is absent, doing his overnight thing in Portree. We are alone on the island and that’s just fine.

  Kirstie pats and strokes Beany then she goes to her room to read, and I prepare supper in the shadows of the kitchen, where the wire baskets swing overhead in the half-light, preserving our food from the rats. I can hear the respiration of the sea, it sounds like someone doing exercises. There is a calmness. Before the storm?

  I gird myself for what I am about to do.

  I should, perhaps, have done this three weeks ago: I am going to do a test on Kirstie, one she cannot fake or fail. The idea half-occurred to me this morning, as I contemplated Lydia, screaming at the school; it only really formed this afternoon.

  My experiment will rely on my daughter’s phobia: her hatred of darkness.

  Whenever this phobia was triggered, both twins screamed: but they screamed in a unique way, they screamed differently. Kirstie would yell, and pant, and shout: making a tremulous version of horrified words. Lydia would go into a simple shriek: very high-pitched. Ice-shattering.

  I’ve only heard this scream a few times. It is different to any other vocalization. Which is probably why I only clearly thought of this today. And one of those occasions was when we had a power cut, in Camden. Two years ago, plunging the twins into total darkness: the blackness they always feared.

  When this happe
ned, they both had that phobic, instant reaction. But Kirstie panted and yelled; Lydia emitted that piercing shriek.

  And now I am going to trigger this phobia deliberately. By jailing her in sudden dark. Her reaction will be instinctive, and reflexive, she won’t be able to fake or fabricate it; so it will tell me the truth. My plan is cruel, it makes me faint with guilt, but I see no alternative. Allowing this confusion to go on is crueller.

  I have to do it now or I will lose myself in doubt, and self-hatred.

  Kirstie gazes up at me as I enter her bedroom. She looks very sad. She has made this bare room a little more homely, with her books on a shelf and her pictures of pirates on the wall. But it is still a spare, lonely room, bereft of her twin. Her radio is playing Kids Pop. One Direction. There is a wicker basket full of toys. But she hasn’t moved them much. Only Leopardy is huddled into her bed. Both twins loved Leopardy. Maybe Lydia loved Leopardy a little bit more?

  Her sad eyes are unbearable.

  ‘Darling,’ I say, tentatively. ‘Tell me what happened today at school.’

  Silence.

  I try again: ‘Did you have a good day? Your first day? Tell me about your teachers.’

  More silence, more One Direction. She closes her eyes and I wait and I wait and I can sense she is going to tell me; then, yes, she slowly leans in to me, and she says, in a very tiny voice,

  ‘No one wanted to play with me, Mummy.’

  My heart breaks open.

  ‘Oh. I see.’

  ‘I kept asking people, but no one would play with me.’

  The pain in me is burning, I want to cuddle my daughter, protect her.

  ‘OK, sweetie, it’s just your first day, darling, that happens.’

  ‘So I played with Kirstie.’

  I stroke her hair, gently, as my heart races.

  ‘Kirstie?’

  ‘She played with me, like we always play.’

  ‘OK.’

  What do I do? Get angry? Cry? Shout? Explain that Lydia is dead and she is Kirstie? Maybe I don’t even know myself, which one is dead.

  ‘But then, when I was playing with Kirstie-koo …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Everyone laughed at me, Mummy. It was … It made me cry, they were all laughing.’

  ‘Because you were really alone?’

  ‘No! Kirstie was there! She was there! She’s here! She’s here!’

  ‘Darling, she’s not here, she’s—’

  ‘She’s what?’

  ‘Kirstie, your sister – she – she—’

  ‘Just say it, Mummy, just say it, I know she’s dead you told me she’s dead.’

  ‘Sweetheart—’

  ‘You keep saying she’s dead but she comes back to play with me, she was here, she was at school, she plays with me, she is my sister, it doesn’t matter if she’s dead, she’s still here, still here, I’m here, we are here – why do you keep saying we’re dead, when we’re not we’re not we’re not.’

  This howling speech ends in angry, noisy tears: Kirstie flings herself away from me and she crawls to the end of the bed and she buries her hot flushed face in the pillow and – I am helpless. I sit here, pathetic, the Terrible Mother. What have I done to my daughter? What am I still doing? What am I about to inflict?

  Should I have ignored her confusion in the first place, in London? If I had never entertained any suspicion, if I had insisted she was Kirstie, she might have stayed Kirstie. But now I have to do this.

  Bad mother. Evil mother.

  I wait a few minutes for her anger to subside. The radio plays more tinny pop music: ‘The Best Song Ever’. Then Britney Spears.

  At last, I put a hand on Kirstie’s ankle. ‘Moomin.’

  She turns. Red-eyed, but calmer. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Kirstie?’

  She does not flinch at the name. I am sure now that she is Kirstie. My Lydia is dead.

  ‘Kirstie, I’m just going into the kitchen for a second to get a hot drink. Do you want something? Something to drink?’

  She eyes me. Blank-faced. ‘Fruit Shoot.’

  ‘OK. You read a book and I’ll get us a drink.’

  Kirstie seems to accept this. She reaches out for Wimpy Kid, and as she does I quietly close the curtains. So that not a chink of light can get through: it’s not difficult, the moon is clouded, and there are no streetlights on Torran.

  Then, as discreetly as I can, I bend to the floor, as if I am picking up toys. But I am secretly unplugging her nightlight.

  Kirstie does not notice. She reads on, her lips slightly moving. Lydia used to do that.

  Now I have one final task: turn off the main light and shut the door. Kirstie will be slammed into total darkness; engulfed in the worst of her fears. There are tears not far from my own eyes, as I walk to the door.

  Can I do this? How can I not do this?

  Quickly I slap the light off, then I step outside Kirstie’s bedroom and shut the door. The hall beyond is also gloomy, barely lit by the light from the living room down the way. Kirstie’s bedroom will be immersed in total dark.

  I wait. There is a fierce burn of guilt in my chest. Oh, baby. Kirstie. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.

  How long will it take for her to scream?

  Not long.

  Not long at all.

  Three seconds after I shut the door she screams: and it is a high, piercing, shrill distinctive scream, like something thin and metallic being sheared in two. It is unmistakable and horrible; it is piercing and unique.

  Opening the door I snap on the light and rush to my bewildered and horrified daughter, wailing in her bed.

  ‘Mummy Mummy Mummy—!’

  I am cradling her in my arms; crushing her to myself.

  ‘Sorry, darling. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I forgot, I forgot about the light, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m so so so sorry.’

  But in the middle of my stabbing guilt there is just one appalling thought.

  It was Kirstie that died.

  This is Lydia sitting here.

  We got it wrong, fourteen months ago.

  11

  Angus calls me on the phone next morning. It is a Saturday. He wants me to come over and pick him up from the Selkie pier at five p.m.

  ‘It will be dark.’

  He can barely hear me over the popping static of our sea-chewed landline.

  ‘What? Sarah? What?’

  ‘Won’t it be dark? Angus?’

  ‘Full moon—’ he says; I think.

  The line frazzles into nothingness. I check my watch: eleven a.m. In six hours I will have to meet my husband in Ornsay, and then tell my husband that we made the most grievous error, that Kirstie is dead and Lydia is alive. How will he react? Will he even believe me?

  I step out of the kitchen onto the cracked paving stones and look east, at the chalky pillar of the lighthouse, with the sea, and the snow-talced Knoydart mountains beyond. For some reason the sight – the mere existence – of the lighthouse always comforts and soothes me. A calming beacon, serene and aloof. Flickering every nine seconds at night, signalling the world: here we are. Angus, Sarah and Lydia Moorcroft. We three.

  I can see Lydia, she is solitary, playing down there in her new blue wellingtons, wading in the rock pools, looking for little fish and pulsing urchins. It seems so easy to call her Lydia. She is Lydia. Lydia is back. Kirstie has gone. I am mourning for the second time, yet quietly and guiltily jubilant. Lydia has returned from the crematorium. My second daughter, the one who loves rock pools, the one who loves staring at the sea urchins, watching their delicate contracting softness, is alive, once again.

  Lydia turns and looks at me, then she runs up the incline of salty grass to the kitchen, to show me some shells she has collected.

  ‘Hey, very nice.’

  ‘Can I show them to Dada?’

  ‘Of course you can, Lydia. Of course.’

  The shells are wet and sandy and graciously freckled with blue striations, fading to yellow and cr
eam. I wash the grit from them, under the uncertain spatter of the tap, and hand them back.

  ‘Keep them safe, Daddy is coming home later.’

  When I have changed her boots for trainers, she disappears happily to her room. In the silence, I make soup to dispel my anxious thoughts: we eat a lot of soup, it’s easy to reheat in this nightmare of a kitchen. I can freeze and microwave it back to life when the prospect of real cooking defeats.

  The time passes without terrors. It’s four-thirty p.m, and dusk is upon us when I peer my head around Lydia’s door and ask her to come and get Dad at the Selkie.

  She stands there, in her pink leggings, and her pink trainers with the glowing lights in the heel, in her draughty bedroom. Shaking her head.

  ‘But Daddy wants to see you.’

  ‘Nn. Don’t want to.’

  ‘Lydie-lo. Why not?’

  ‘Just not. Just not. Not now.’

  ‘Lydia, you’ll be alone on the island.’

  It seems so easy to call her Lydia. Maybe I knew, subconsciously, she was Lydia all along.

  Lydia shakes her head. ‘Don’t mind!’

  I have no desire to fight my daughter this afternoon, I’ve too much to worry about confronting Angus. And there is no reason why Lydia won’t be safe on Torran, as long as she doesn’t stray. It’s an island. The tide is out. I’ll be gone for thirty minutes. She is seven and she can sit safely in a house on her own. We don’t have balconies.

  ‘OK, then come here. Just promise to stay in your room, OK?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Giving her a hug, I button her blue cardy. Then I kiss her shampoo-scented hair and she retreats, obediently, to her room.

  The dark has gathered itself, and surrounds the island. I grab a torch to follow the path, down to the shingled beach by the lighthouse, where I drag the boat off the grassy rocks. Unslipping the ropes, I haul the deadweight of the anchor aboard, as if it is a small body I am hoping to jettison, into the concealing waters of the Sound.