And she’s signed it with love. And added three kisses? To a famous novel about adultery?
Imogen Evertsen?
My breath is a faint vapour in the freezing bedroom. I urgently want to search the rest of the drawer, but I can’t. I am halted by a noise, once again. And that sound is unmistakable.
There is someone else in the cottage. A door has slammed shut. I can hear footsteps.
18
Is this Angus? What do I do? What if he catches me sneaking through his stuff? The threat of his violence is suddenly very real.
Gathering all the letters I hastily shove them in the drawer, desperate, frantic, yet trying to do this in silence. The final letter is crammed into place, and I turn.
Numbering my own heartbeats.
The footsteps have ceased; I can hear a rattle. Someone is definitely in the kitchen: and they surely came in through the back door, knowing it would be unlocked.
So this must be Angus?
I urgently need to close the two drawers, gently, gently. The first drawer shuts – but with a squeak. Far too loud. I hesitate, wholly tensed.
Footsteps rattle, again. Is that a voice? A small, high, girlish voice? Could Angus be with Lydia? Why would he have collected her from school early? If not Lydia, then who?
Silence resumes. If they were voices: they have stopped. But as I push the second drawer shut, I hear the tread of footsteps, again. They are slow. And painstaking. I get the terrifying sense that someone is stealthily crossing the floor: that whoever else is in the house is trying to be as quiet as possible, as they approach me. Why?
Now a door creaks, almost imperceptibly: and that’s the dining-room door, I recognize the sound. So the person, the intruder, whoever it might be – surely Angus? – is slowly approaching me, in this bedroom. I have to speed up: fervently I lock the middle drawer, then I go to lock the top drawer, but the key slips through my perspiring fingers and I fumble, desperate, flailing, on the floorboards – the room is now dark, as the winter light falls outside – so where, where is the key? I am kneeling in my jeans in the dust like a burglar, this is pathetic, and wrong. But I must find the key.
Here. Biting back my panic, I lock the top drawer, slip the key in its hiding place and then I stand up, turn around, and smooth down my shirt and try to look normal as the footsteps come right to the doorway, and the bedroom door swings slowly open.
Nothing.
I stare at the empty rectangle, that gives on to the hall. A bad painting of a Scottish dancer stares at me. In the silence.
‘Hello?’
Silence.
‘Hello??’
Silence like a howl, like a shriek. My heart is the noisiest thing in the house. Thumping. Who is in the building, and how are they playing this game? Why would they want to scare me? I definitely heard footsteps, this was no illusion. Someone is in here.
‘Hello? Who is it? Who is there? Who is it?’
Nothing.
‘Stop this! Angus? Lydia? Stop it.’
The darkness intensifies; the wintry afternoon light fades so quickly on cloudy days. Why didn’t I turn on the lights before I began? The house is shrouded. The sea breathes in and out, exhausted. Very slowly I walk to the door, and peer out. The hall waits for me. Empty. I can see the shapes of furniture in the living room. The light is so murky. And it is so unbelievably cold. Torran Cottage is always chilly but this is exceptional. I realize I am shivering.
I lean and switch on the bedroom light, but it is feeble, sixty watts. Not much better than a yellow moon.
‘My Bonnie lies over the ocean,’
It’s a girl’s voice. Coming from Lydia’s bedroom.
‘My Bonnie lies over the sea –’
But it’s Kirstie’s voice. Because I know that tune: it’s Kirstie’s favourite tune. The Scottish ballad her father loved to sing to her. Kirstie’s voice is muffled and distant, yet lilting and happy.
‘Bring back, bring back, O bring back my Bonnie to me …’
I grip myself. It cannot be Kirstie, of course. She is dead.
So this must be Lydia, in her room, pretending to be Kirstie. But how did she get in her room? Why is she here? Did Angus bring her over early? Why is she singing like Kirstie?
‘Lydia! Lydia!’ I am running to the bedroom, the door is shut; I press the door, and turn the knob, and I painfully hesitate at the last moment – filled with the obscene fear that I am going to see Kirstie in here. In her blue bobble hat. Buoyant, joking, bouncy. Alive. Or maybe she will be broken on the bed, bleeding and dying, as she was in Devon, after the fall. A blooded body, singing.
My daydreams are nightmares.
Taking a hold of myself, I push open the door and I scan the room and there’s Lydia, in her school uniform, under her thick pink anorak, staring soulfully out of the window, at the sea, and the coast down to Ardvasar, gathering its darkness, under the starless sky. Her room is weirdly cold.
‘But, Lydia, darling – why?’
She turns and smiles sadly at me. Her school uniform is still too big, she looks lonely as I have ever seen her; my heart throbs with sympathy.
‘Were you singing?’
‘Kirstie was singing,’ she says, simply. ‘Like she used to. I was listening and playing. She’s gone now.’
I ignore this announcement. Because I can’t bear the implications. My daughter really is going mad. So I ask questions, instead.
‘What are you doing here? Lydia?’ I look at my watch, its only three p.m.: her school will only just be emptying. ‘Lydia? Lyddie-lo? What happened? How did— I don’t— Why?’
‘It was me. I brought her over.’
Angus’s dark baritone breaks the spell. He is standing in the doorway, tall and looming.
‘I got a call from the school.’ My husband eyes me, significantly. His brown V-neck jumper is dusty. ‘Called me about Lydia. Wanted me to pick her up.’ He looks around Lydia’s spartan bedroom, the cuddly toy giraffe toppled on the bed, the Charlie and Lola book on the floor.
‘Christ,’ he says. ‘Why is it so cold in here? We have to fix the heating.’
He is frowning at me, in a meaningful way. I give Lydia a little hug and she smiles blankly, again, and then we, the caring parents, step outside. Angus and I close the door and we are standing next to each other, in the hall, and I feel as if I want to back away from him, he is too near, too tall, too male.
Angus says, ‘The school secretary called me, they couldn’t reach you, they said Lydia was very unhappy. Totally freaking. Because Emily Durrant refused to sit in the same class as her, and then lots of other kids did the same. They asked me to pick her up early.’
‘But, why—’
‘They want us to keep her out of school for a week.’ He sighs, in a firm way; and rubs his stubbled chin. He looks older. Tired. His brown eyes seek mine. ‘I’ve tried to get her to talk about it. But you know what she’s like, Lydia, she can be so bloody silent.’ He pauses, just enough to insult.
I want to hit him. I haven’t forgotten the book. Imogen Evertsen? But my overriding thought is Lydia.
‘Why a week? What’s going to happen then?’
He shrugs. ‘Don’t know. They just said they want things to calm down. Anyway, I picked her up and brought her home.’
‘Did you sneak into the house – I just – you gave me the fright—’
‘Didn’t realize anyone was here, to be honest. Lights were all out.’
He is lying. Again. I know it. He is lying. His eyes fix on mine. Maybe he knows I was looking in the chest. And perhaps he knows that I found the book, and he doesn’t care. But what about Lydia? What must she be feeling now?
‘I have to talk to her.’
‘No, I’m not sure that—’
Pushing his big, controlling hand away, I creak open Lydia’s door. She is sitting on her bed, her eyes glassy, reading the Charlie and Lola book again. As she used to do, years back. It must be like comfort food. She wants something reassuring. I wish
her room had more light; and more heat. This cold is abominable.
‘Lydia, what happened at school?’
She stays quiet, reading.
‘Darling, I need to know if anyone did anything bad to you.’
Only the sea is talking, whispering to the sands and the rocks.
‘Lydia …’ I sit down on the side of the bed, and stroke her arm. ‘Lydia. Please talk to me.’
‘Nothing.’
There it is. Again. The discernible voice of her mother.
‘Lydie-lo, please—’
‘Nothing.’ Her face lifts and her eyes burn. ‘Nothing! Nothing happened!’
I stroke her arm again, but she reacts with greater fury.
‘Go away!’
Lydia is screaming at me. Her pale, pretty face is pink with anger, and scrunched with loathing. ‘Go away, I hate you, I hate you—’
‘Lyd—’
I reach out another hand but Lydia slaps it, hard, much harder than I knew she could: the pain is quite stinging.
‘GO AWAYYYYYY!’
‘OK.’ I stand. ‘OK.’
‘GO AWAYYYY!’
‘OK, I’m going.’
And I am, I am retreating. Pitiful and defeated, the worst of mothers. I go to the door, and open it, and shut it behind me, leaving my daughter alone in her room. I can hear her sobbing like the sea, keening like the seagulls on Camuscross; there is nothing I can do.
I look at the door, it says Lydia Lives HERE and Keep Out in golden spangled letters. I resist the urge for tears. What’s my crying going to do? How can my emotions help? A deep, quiet voice intrudes.
‘I heard.’
Angus is standing three yards down the hall, at the open door to the living room. I can hear a woodfire crackling, and see warming lights.
‘Hey.’
His arms are open. He wants to hug me. I want to slap him. Very hard. And yet, a part of me wants his hugs.
Because I still want sex.
If anything, I want sex more. I do. I think this is probably jealousy sex. It’s that book signed by Imogen. It’s made me jealous, but more desirous. I want to possess him, mark him, prove that he’s still mine. The way he once repossessed me.
I also just want sex. We never have enough.
He comes close.
‘There’s nothing we can do, you’re doing your best.’ He comes closer still. ‘She’s confused, of course. But she will get better. She will. But maybe she needs help. Maybe we all need help. Perhaps you ought to speak to that guy again, the one in Glasgow. What was it? Kellaway?’
His hand is reaching for mine, I can see that he wants it as well.
Softening my gaze, I open my lips, and I lift my face to his; and he sinks his mouth onto mine. And we are kissing as we have not kissed in a month. Perhaps three months.
And now we are stripping. Feverishly. Teenagerishly. I rip his jumper up, and off; he is unbuttoning the studs of my jeans. We topple, giddily, into the living room, he is picking me up, carrying me, and I want to be carried. Just do it, Angus Moorcroft. Fuck me.
He fucks me. This is good. This is what I want. Him taking me, like it was, like we used to. I don’t want foreplay, I don’t want fooling around; I want him inside me, resolving any doubts, just for a few minutes.
His kisses are strong and deep. He bites my shoulder as he turns me over, and fucks me again; I grasp at the pillows. Listening to him kissing me, biting me.
‘I love you, Sarah.’
‘Fuck you—’
‘Sarah.’
I gasp into the pillow. ‘Harder.’
‘Ah.’
He has a hand around my neck, pressing my head into the pillow, as if he is going to break it, with one snap, I look around, and I can see the angry glitter in his eyes; so I push up, and push back, push him out of me; I turn over. I am hot and shining with sweat, and bruised, and ready to come, I take his hand and put it round my slender neck again.
‘Fuck me like you fucked Imogen.’
He says nothing. He does not even blink. His thumb is light yet firm on the narrowness of my throat. My windpipe. He could press. He is strong enough. Instead he looks hard and furious into my eyes, and he rises up and pushes me back and he enters me again, and I say:
‘Did she come? Did she come when you fucked her? Was it like this?’
He fucks me, his strong hand on my white neck, and I imagine him fucking her, fucking my best friend, and I want to hate him, and I hate him. But even as I hate him the orgasm comes, my orgasm, dizzying and irresistible.
As my own orgasm pulses away, ripples into nothing, he comes too: slumping forward, then not breathing, then breathing hard. Then receding. He slumps to my side. Two hearts beating, and the sea outside the window.
‘I never had an affair with Imogen,’ he says.
19
‘There’s a book, in your chest of drawers. Signed by her.’
We are both lying back, naked, perspiring, under the duvet, facing the ceiling. With that huge patch of damp, which looks bigger in the feeble light from the bedside lamp.
The twilight has turned to darkness; the window is open to the starlit sea.
‘You looked?’ he says.
‘It was signed. It said Love, Immy. Kiss kiss kiss.’
He says nothing.
I turn, briefly, and glance at him, his handsome profile, silent, and staring upwards, like one of those knights on tombs in churches, carved in stone. Then I lie back, too, and gaze up.
‘She gave you a novel. About adultery? You never read novels. She signed it with love and kisses. Now tell me you’re not fucking her.’
‘I’m not,’ he says. ‘Not sleeping with her. Not having an affair with her.’
And yet there is a pause here. Fatal, and revealing. He sighs, and goes on: ‘But we did sleep together once.’
The cold breeze kicks at the half-drawn curtains.
I control myself. And ask the obvious question: ‘When was this, Angus? Was it that night?’
‘The night of the accident?’ I sense him turn, towards me, across the pillow. ‘No, Sarah. Jesus. No!! Everything I said back then was true. I just stopped by, I was just coming back from work. You have to believe me.’
I hesitate. Maybe I do believe him, on this point. He sounds halfway convincing.
But …
‘But you said you did. With her?’
He sighs, again. ‘It was afterwards, Sarah, after Kirstie fell. You were so, you know, so wrapped in your grief – mad with grief.’
‘And you weren’t?’
‘No. Not saying that, course not. God. I was just as bad, I know, in my own way, all the booze. But you were untouchable. Wouldn’t let me near you.’
I don’t remember this. Don’t remember being untouchable. But I will let it go, for now.
‘So you turned to Imogen? My best friend? For someone to cuddle?’
‘I just needed a female friend. You were out of reach. And we were always close, Immy and me, always got on. I mean – she was there the night we met, remember?’
I refuse to look at him. I gaze at the ceiling. I can hear a solitary bird outside. Piping and skirling. I see now why Imogen Evertsen stuck with me, when so many other friends fell away. She felt guilty. But her guilt made our friendship awkward: and for ever different.
‘I still need to know.’ Half turning. ‘Tell me, Angus. When you slept with her.’
He takes a long breath.
‘It was … I was in pieces, maybe a month after the accident. We’d had a few bottles. We were talking. And she started … she leaned over and she kissed me. She was the one who, y’know, did that. And yes, I responded, but … But then I didn’t, Sarah. I stopped her after the first night. I said no.’
‘And the book?’
‘She sent it a week after. Don’t know why.’
I muse. So Angus stopped her. So what? At what point did he call a halt? Did they do it all night? A weekend? Did they kiss and laugh in the morning? Do I care
? I am less vengeful than expected; more indifferent. This is just so weak. I have gone from fearing to despising my husband. And yet even now, as I want him away from me, I wonder what I would do without him: as we are stuck on this island.
I still need him, practically, even as I revile him.
‘Sarah, I wanted a friend. To talk about the accident. Listen. Believe me. But Imogen got confused. Afterwards, she was wracked with guilt. Really truly.’
‘How jolly fucking nice of her. To feel guilty. For screwing my husband.’
‘I didn’t want an affair. What else can I say?’
‘Why did you keep the book?’
‘Can’t remember. Just did. Sarah, this is the truth. I never wanted anything serious and when she got romantic I said it wasn’t going to happen and since then, she and me, we’ve just been friends, and she still loves you, she really does, she feels terrible that it even got that far.’
‘Must send her a thank you card. Maybe give her a book?’
He is gazing away from me, now, gazing at the sea through the window. I can sense this. Corner of my eyes. He speaks,
‘You seem to forget. I once forgave you.’
My anger is instant.
‘You mean my so-called “affair”? Really?’
‘Sarah—’
‘After the birth?? After you ignored me for a year, when you just pissed off and left me surrounded by nappies, by two screaming twins? Totally alone?’
‘I still forgave you.’
‘But that wasn’t your best friend I fucked. Was it, Angus? Did I fuck your best friend? Did I? Did I fuck your best friend right after your child died?’
He is silent, and then he says,
‘OK. You think this is different. I get it.’
‘Well done you.’
‘But please, maybe get some perspective.’
‘What?’
‘Nothing really happened, anyway, Sarah. Nothing emotional. So you can hate me, and you can hate Imogen – but hate us for what we actually did – not what you think we did.’
The Ice Twins Page 19