The Ice Twins

by S. K. Tremayne

‘I think I’ll work out who to hate, all by myself.’

  ‘Sarah!’

  Ignoring him, I rise from the bed and slip on my thick woollen dressing gown. The floorboards are scratchy and cold on my bare feet. I walk to the window. The moon is high over the Small Isles. A cloudless night in early winter. It should be beautiful. And it is beautiful. This place is so relentlessly fucking beautiful, it never stops. Whatever else is happening, the beauty goes on, like a terrible nightmare.

  Angus makes more excuses, but I am barely listening.

  For the first time, I see Angus as something truly inferior to what he was. Less masculine, less of a man, less of a husband, just so much less. I would probably walk out the door, right now, with Lydia, if I could. But I cannot. I have nowhere to go: my best friend Imogen is no longer my best friend; my parents’ house has too many memories.

  We are trapped on Torran, financially, for now. I am trapped with my adulterous husband. Maybe in time I will forgive him. Perhaps three decades will do it.

  ‘Sarah,’ he says, again, like he will never stop saying it. But I walk out of the bedroom and into the kitchen, because I am hungry.

  I make myself toast. And sit at the dining table. Munching mechanically, fuelling myself. Staring at the telephone. Thinking about Lydia.

  I know I’ve got to call Kellaway: on that subject Angus is quite correct. I need to speak to Kellaway. I need to speak to him as soon as possible. I need his expert opinion on the strangeness. What is happening to my daughter? Maybe he could help with my so-called marriage. Is my lying husband still concealing something else?

  Angus and I have one more confrontation in the evening. I am sitting in the living room, looking out at the rain. I used to like this rain sweeping up the Sound from the Point of Sleat. It made everything, somehow, into a sad Gaelic song: liquid and soft, lyrical yet indecipherable; the landscape was like a beautiful, disappearing language.

  Now the rain just irks me.

  Angus comes into the living room, a glass of Scotch in his hand. He’s been taking the dog for a walk. Beany slumps by the fire, chewing his favourite bone-toy, and Angus falls into the armchair.

  ‘Beany caught a rat,’ he says.

  ‘Only three thousand to go then.’

  He smiles, briefly, but I do not smile. His smile disappears.

  The fire crackles. The wind laments the state of the roof.

  ‘Listen,’ he says – leaning forward, annoyingly.

  ‘I don’t want to listen.’

  ‘Imogen. And me. It was just one night. Really. Just a drunken mistake.’

  ‘But you had sex. With my best friend. A month after our daughter died.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Angus, there are no buts. You betrayed me.’

  A dark flash of anger crosses his face. ‘I betrayed you?’

  ‘Yes. In the worst possible way. As I was grieving.’

  ‘Look—’

  ‘It was a betrayal. Wasn’t it? Or would you call it something else? What would that be, Angus? How would you phrase it? “Building my support network”?’

  He says nothing, though he looks as if he wants to say a lot. The teeth are grinding in his mouth, I can see the muscles moving.

  ‘Gus, I want you to sleep in the spare bed.’

  He slugs whisky, wholesale. And shrugs. ‘Sure. Why the fuck not? We’ve got lots of spare beds.’

  ‘Don’t give me that self-pitying shit. Not now.’

  He laughs. With deep bitterness, and gazes at me, directly. ‘Did you read all of Anna Karenina? You read everything you found?’

  ‘I saw the inscription, Angus. Why? Did she put love-hearts halfway through?’

  He exhales – and shakes his head. He looks very sad. He leans and morosely tickles the ear of his much-loved dog. I resist the urge to feel sorry for him.

  Angus sleeps, as ordered, in one of the spare beds. In the morning I lie under the duvet and listen to him bathing and dressing, then gathering paperwork, plans for his precious house in Ord; I wait for the low churning sound of the outboard motor, indicating his departure. Then I rise, make breakfast for Lydia, get dressed, and prepare myself.

  Lydia is on the sofa reading Wimpy Kid. She is off school, of course. Until things calm down. The idea of things ever being calm seems pitiable in its absurdity.

  Closing the door that divides the living room from the dining room, I pick up the big clunky old phone. I dial Kellaway’s office – but he is not there. His secretary tells me he’s working from home this week. She won’t, of course, give me his home number. Give us your number and he will call back in a few days.

  But I’m not waiting for a few days. I need to talk to him right now. So I dial Directory Enquiries.

  Who knows. I might get lucky, I deserve some luck.

  I have a vague sense where Kellaway lives, an upmarket part of Glasgow. Imogen mentioned it; she visited him there, when she interviewed him.

  Imogen. My ex-friend. Bitch.

  My call gets through: I ask for a Dr M. Kellaway, in Glasgow. How many can there be? Surely only one, or two. It just depends whether he is ex-directory.

  And my luck, it seems, pays out.

  ‘M. Kellaway, Doctor, 49 Glasnevin Street; 0141 4339 7398.’

  I scribble the number; the phone line hisses.

  It’s a cold Tuesday afternoon in December. He could be Christmas shopping with his wife. He could be skiing in the Cairngorms. I have no idea.

  ‘Hello. Malcolm Kellaway?’

  More luck. He is at home.

  Now I have to ride this luck: I just have to dive straight in.

  ‘Hi, Dr Kellaway. I’m so sorry to bother you at home but it is rather urgent and – well – I’m desperate, really desperate and I need your help.’

  A long, static-filled pause. Then: ‘Is that Mrs Moorcroft? Sarah Moorcroft?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘I see.’ His voice-tone is mildly tetchy. ‘How can I help?’

  I have already asked myself the same: how is he going to help? And my answer is: by listening. I need to share this frightening drama. I want him to listen to everything that has happened since I last saw him.

  And so, like a woman on her deathbed urgently dictating her will, I stand by the dining-room window, watching the ravens flustering above the shell-sands of Salmadair – and I tell him the lot: the scream, the tantrum with Sally Ferguson, the bloody smashed window, the fact Angus knew. The hysterical reaction from Emily Durrant. The horrors of the school. Even ‘My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean’. I tell him everything.

  I expect him to be astonished. Maybe he is astonished. But his voice remains cool, and professorial.

  ‘I see. Yes.’

  ‘So what’s your advice, Dr Kellaway? Please tell me. We’re desperate here, Lydia is breaking up, in front of me, my family is falling apart, everything is falling apart.’

  ‘Ideally we need a consultation, a discussion of therapies, we must go over things properly, Mrs Moorcroft.’

  ‘Yes, but what advice can you give me now, here, right here, right now, PLEASE.’

  ‘Please be calm.’

  I’m not calm. I can hear the waves, outside. What would it be like, if one day they just stopped?

  Kellaway goes on, ‘Whether your daughter is Lydia, or Kirstie, I, of course, cannot say, if you believe that she is Lydia, and she accepts that, and you’ve been through all these adjustments – then yes, it is probably best to persist with that assumption, now, whatever the truth.’

  ‘But what do we do about the strangeness, the singing, the mirrors, the – the – the—’

  ‘You really want my opinion now, this way? Over the phone?

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Very well. Here is one possibility. Sometimes the loss of a twin in childhood can produce in the surviving twin a kind of, ah, hatred of the parents – this is because the child implicitly trusts her parents, believing in their capacity to take care of her. So you see? When a twin dies, this parental abili
ty to keep the child safe appears to fail, catastrophically, and this can be perceived, by the surviving twin, as something the parent should have prevented. This is true of all siblings, but extremely true of monozygotic twins.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Lydia may be retreating from you because she blames you and mistrusts you. She may even be punishing you.’

  ‘You’re saying – she could be making stuff up to scare us? To trouble us? Because she thinks we are to blame for her sister’s death?’

  ‘Yes and no. These are just possibilities. You asked me for my opinion, and these are just that: opinions. Ideas. And … well …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We really need to talk face to face.’

  ‘No. Please. Tell me now. What about all this stuff, stuff about reflections, and photos?’

  ‘Mirrors are known to be extremely perplexing for twins, at any time, likewise photos, as we have already discussed. But there are other factors to consider.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Let me look at my notes, on my computer. I made them after your last visit.’

  I wait. I am staring out to the Sound. I can see a crab boat puttering up the way to Loch na Dal, towards that white-painted hunting lodge: Kinloch. Where the Macdonalds live: the Macdonalds of Macdonald, Lords of the Isles since AD 1200. There is so much history here; there is too much history here. I am starting to hate it. I wanted a clean slate. A new break. This isn’t it.

  Too much history.

  ‘Yes,’ says Kellaway. ‘Here we are. A surviving twin may also feel guilty after the death – guilty that he or, of course, she, was chosen to live. This much is self-evident. But this guilt is made worse if the parents seemed to have preferred the other child to live. It is all too easy for parents to idealize the dead child, especially if, in reality, they did prefer the dead child. So I have to ask, did either you or Angus have a favourite? Was there some preference for one daughter over another, did, for instance, her father prefer Kirstie?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. Numbed.

  ‘Then …’ Kellaway falls uncharacte‌ristically quiet. ‘In that case, we must also look at other concerns.’ He sighs. The dodgy phone line flares with white noise. Then he goes on, ‘Of course depression is heightened in fathers and mothers of twins compared to singletons, and this is terribly compounded if one twin dies. Especially if the parents themselves feel guilty. And then there’s, well …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We know the rate of suicide is elevated in co-twins who lose a twin.’

  ‘You’re saying Lydia could kill herself?’

  The boat has disappeared, the herring gulls cry and complain.

  ‘Well, it is possible. And there are other possibilities. Robert Samuels, the child psychiatrist, his theories are also relevant. But—’

  ‘Sorry? Who? What?’

  ‘No.’ His voice is firm now. ‘Mrs Moorcroft, I absolutely have to stop here. Samuels is it. I’ve really gone as far as I can over the phone. I’m sorry. I cannot go any further, professionally, in this ad hoc way. You really do need to come in to see me. Quite urgently. These things are far too delicate and complex to talk about, so casually, on the phone. Please call me when I am back at work, next Monday, and arrange a consultation, as soon as possible. Mrs Moorcroft? Will you do that? I will clear my diary for you next week. It is imperative you come and see me very soon. And bring Lydia.’

  ‘OK, OK, yes. Thank you.’

  ‘Very good. Now please stay calm. Keep your daughter calm, keep everything civil in your domestic situation, wait until you see me. Next week.’

  What is he saying? He thinks I am panicking? – that I am losing control?

  I am not losing control: I am angry.

  Muttering a Yes and a Thanks, I put the phone down and gaze out at the Sound. Thinking hard.

  So what did all that other stuff mean? Favourite kids? Preferred children? Suicide??

  I go back into the living room. Lydia is asleep on the sofa, the book has fallen from her hands. She looks exhausted, and unhappy, even in her sleep. Fetching a blanket from a cupboard, I lay it over her, and kiss her frowning, unconscious forehead.

  Her blonde hair is tousled; I prefer her hair like this, slightly wild. It offsets the formal, symmetric prettiness of her face. She and Kirstie were always pretty. Angus and I would revel in it. Everyone adored the pretty Moorcroft twins. Back in the day.

  The fire needs banking up: I take some logs from the basket and lodge them in the flames. As I watch the flames grow, and regain, licking and spitting, the thoughts churn in my mind. Angus and Kirstie, Angus and Kirstie.

  We still have to endure Kirstie’s funeral. On Friday. She was his favourite.

  20

  ‘We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away.’

  I do not believe any of this. But then, I cannot believe reality: that I am in another church having a different funeral for the daughter who really died. I cannot believe my family has collapsed. That everything has turned to ashes.

  The vicar intones. I gaze around. Helpless now.

  The church is Kilmore, half a mile down the coast from Lydia’s primary. It is Victorian: dour and plain in the Scottish way, with an austere nave, bare oak pews, and three tall arched windows letting in a strained, meagre sunlight.

  There are about twenty people inside, locals and family gathered with the dead, sitting in the uncomfortable pews, under the metal memorials to the sons of Lord and Lady Macdonald of Sleat: killed in Ypres and Gallipoli, South Africa and at sea; four sons of the British Empire, slain but not forgotten.

  All the dead children.

  ‘Lord, let me know mine end, and the number of my days.’

  Angus told me – before we essentially stopped talking – that he’d had trouble finding a priest to do this job. The local vicar, or reverend, or preceptor, or whatever they term him, was apparently unkeen. It was all too strange and unsettling; maybe improper. Two funerals for one dead child?

  But a friendly priest from Broadford was persuaded by Josh and Molly, and this church was the obvious choice – sad, but nobly situated, looking out to the waves, staring across the graveyard towards distant Mallaig, and wistful Moidart.

  I Googled it a little. It has a history of druidic worship, and clannish violence. A previous church stands in the damp green precinct outside, but it is eroded by the Hebridean wind and rain into a ruin.

  Now we stand in the last, Victorian church, my mother next to Lydia, just down the pew, with Angus, tall in his dark London suit, between us. His tie is not quite black. It has tiny red polka dots. I hate them. I hate him. Or at least, I no longer love him. He is sleeping permanently in another bedroom.

  Lydia is dressed entirely in black. Black dress, black socks, black shoes. Black sets off her blonde hair and pale skin. Black and ice. She seems calm for the moment. Unruffled. Yet the trouble is still there, a sparkle of sadness in her eyes, like the promise of snow on a clear winter’s day.

  My mother has her arm draped protectively across Lydia’s shoulders. I look down the pew to my surviving daughter, to smile at her, encouragingly. But she does not notice me: she is gazing at the bible in front of her, flicking its pages with her small hands, which still show the tiny complex scars from when she smashed the Freedlands’ window. She is engrossed.

  Lydia is such a reader.

  The priest continues, saying his special words:

  ‘O spare me a little, that I may recover my strength, before I go hence, and be no more seen.’

  This sentence makes me want to cry; my tears have been brimming since the service began and they are now close to breaking, to overtipping me. To trick myself into not crying, I pick up a copy of the same bible Lydia is holding, and read what she is reading.

  Am Bioball Gaidhlig.

  The bible is in Gaelic.

  Is Lydia really reading this? How can she understand Gaelic?
Her school is bilingual but she has, of course, only been there a couple of weeks, and she is off school at the moment. Yet as I stare down the pew there she is: reading, absorbed, eyes flickering left to right, apparently reading Gaelic.

  Perhaps she is just pretending to read, perhaps like me she is trying to distract herself, so she doesn’t have to think about this funeral. And why not? Arguably, she shouldn’t even be here: I wondered about keeping her away from the ceremony, to save her the distress; but then that seemed even more wrong than her being present: for the funeral of her twin sister.

  ‘Lord, thou hast been our refuge, from one generation to another.’

  I close my eyes for a second.

  ‘Thou turnest man to destruction; again thou sayest, Come again, ye children of men.’

  How long can I stall the tears?

  I see Angus glancing across at me. Disapprovingly. He never really wanted this funeral. Yet, despite his reluctance, I let him organize pretty much everything to do with the service: I let Angus organize the priest, and sort out the death certificates, and notify the authorities of The Confusion. But I chose the liturgy. It is the same liturgy we had at Lydia’s funeral – Lydia who is now standing under my mother’s arm, two yards away, in this cold grey Victorian Gothic church that stares down the Sound towards Ardnamurchan.

  The strangeness is immersive. It is as if we have all fallen into the cold deep waters of Lochalsh, where the eerie seaweeds dance and sway: languid, and bewitched.

  ‘Out of the deep have I called unto thee, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice.’

  Hear my voice? Whose voice? Lydia’s? Kirstie’s? I look around the church at the congregation. There are voices here I barely know: locals I have hardly spoken to. Molly and Josh gathered them, I think, to make up the numbers. They are here out of distant sympathy. Oh, that poor couple, with the twins, the terrible mistake, we have to go, we can have lunch at the Duisdale afterwards, they do the scallops.

  There is my dad at the end of the pew, in his dusty black suit, which he wears these days only for funerals. He looks old and jowly, his once dark lustrous hair is now completely white, and sparse. His watery blue eyes still have a glint, though, and when he sees me looking across, he gives me a weak yet hopeful smile, trying to reassure, to comfort. He also looks guilty.