The Ice Twins

by S. K. Tremayne

  I am fighting my fears. I spoon some soup in my mouth and point at her soup. ‘Please eat some more, two more spoonfuls, for Mummy.’

  ‘OK,’ she says. ‘Yes, Mummy.’

  Obediently she eats two spoonfuls of soup then she drops the spoon and she runs out of the room and I hear her in her bedroom. The iPad clicks and whirrs. Yes. Let her play with that. Let her do what she likes.

  For the next hour or two I divert my thoughts by planning our escape: sitting at the table with papers and laptop. We can’t afford to go back to London. I don’t want to go back to London. Maybe I could take Lydia and me to stay with Mum and Dad, just for a few weeks? But Instow is also haunted by memories.

  My mind strays back to this afternoon. The screaming of the children.

  Bogan bogan bogan bogan. Ghost Ghost Ghost Ghost.

  Why would they shout that?

  I cannot think about it. I mustn’t think about it.

  So what do I do? Plan The Future.

  I would quite like to stay in Skye, if not on Torran. I’ve grown closer to Molly, so perhaps I could rent a cottage near Ornsay, to be near her. Then again, perhaps this is madness. Perhaps it is ridiculous to consider lingering here.

  The fact is, I have no idea what to do, how to get out of this. What’s worse, I will have to talk to Angus. Do we sell Torran, rent it out, or what? Lydia and I could do with the money from Torran Restored. But are we entitled to that cash? Why should he get anything, after what he did?

  He should be in prison.

  Dropping my pen, I rub my tired eyes. I need to lie down. Shutting the notebook, I walk into the bedroom I once shared with Angus. There is a mirror here: the last big mirror in the house. We have hidden all the others because they upset Lydia.

  I stare at my image in the mirror. The afternoon light is wintry and feeble. I look wintry and feeble. Thin, and maybe even gaunt. I need to take better care of myself.

  I gaze at my reflection. Lydia is standing there, in my reflection, Leopardy in her hand. She must have wandered into my bedroom. She is smiling. She has cheered up. Her smile is pert, serene, chirpy.

  I turn and look at my daughter, for real. Standing there in my room. Quiet and alone.

  ‘Hello, you. Feeling better?’

  But she has stopped smiling. This is quick. Her expression has changed very quickly.

  Then I realize she is not carrying Leopardy.

  24

  I gaze at my daughter. She looks right back at me, silent and questioning and younger than ever: as if she is going back in time, to when both twins were alive, six years old, five, four, down down down. I remember them playing bumps on the beach in Devon, banging their hips together; the memories swirl. I feel frightened and giddy: staring down at the past.

  They are both here. They cannot both be here.

  ‘Lydia.’

  ‘Yes, Mummy?’

  ‘Are you playing a funny game?’

  ‘I don’t understand, Mummy.’

  ‘With Leopardy, darling, with Leopardy, are you playing a silly game?’

  I swivel and check the mirror once more: there we are, mother and daughter, Sarah Moorcroft and her surviving daughter, Lydia Moorcroft. A little girl in bright yellow leggings, and a denim skirt with a cheery red bird embroidered on the front.

  She carries no Leopardy. Yet she was carrying Leopardy in the mirror: I’m sure I saw it. Didn’t I? And she was wearing Kirstie’s perkier, happier smile. It was Kirstie I saw reflected. They both loved Leopardy, they would fight over him. Maybe they are fighting now. As they fought in my womb. As they fought for my milk.

  They are both here in the cold white room, with the cold grey sky outside, fighting to see which one of them lives and which one of them dies, all over again.

  I lean to the bed. I am unsteady.

  ‘What’s wrong, Mummy?’

  ‘Nothing, darling, nothing. Mummy is just a bit tired.’

  ‘You look different.’

  Why is this bedroom so cold? The house, the cottage, is always cold, it always feels like the icy relentless sea has eaten into the bones of the place; but this is a new and different cold: my breath is misting before my mouth.

  ‘It’s freezing in here,’ says Kirstie.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, and I stand. ‘Yes, let’s go into the living room and get the fire going properly.’

  I take her little hand and it too is cold, like the hand of a corpse; I remember holding Kirstie’s still-warm hand, desperately searching for her pulse, when I ran down the stairs at Devon to see if she was dead.

  Is Kirstie really in this room now? The doubts engulf me. I look around the room at the white walls, at the crucifix next to the Scottish chieftain, at the old sash windows showing wet green heather and dark blue sea; a wind is truly picking up. Torran’s few stunted trees are bending.

  ‘Come on, Moomin.’

  My voice is scratchy. I am trying not to show Lydia how scared I am: scared of this house. Scared of the island. Scared of what is happening to us. And scared of my daughter.

  Lydia looks unfussed, and when we retreat to the living room she sits on the sofa, quite calm now, despite the trauma at school.

  But as I kneel and stuff logs into the never-satisfied woodfire, I am not calm. The urgent wind is rattling the crappy window frames of Torran cottage and all those strange moments begin to coalesce. I stare into the flames as I feed the fire. What did I just see then? What happened with Emily Durrant, she was screaming something about a mirror?

  And the incident today at the school. Bogan, bogan, bogan. Ghost, ghost, ghost.

  Could we truly be haunted? I don’t believe in ghosts. But it was Kirstie in that mirror. Yet Kirstie was and is identical to Lydia. So it was Lydia too; they are the ghosts of each other, Lydia is already the living ghost of Kirstie. I am living with a ghost as it is; why can’t I believe in ghosts?

  Because they do not exist.

  Yet it was Kirstie in that mirror. Come back to say hello. Come back to talk to Mummy.

  You let me jump, Mummy. It was your fault.

  And it was my fault. Why wasn’t I there? Why wasn’t I looking after my daughters? I was the parent in charge. Angus was in London. I should have been there. I should have been there long before: stopping him from doing what he did. I should have seen the signs. Elevated Levels of Paternal Abuse.

  Why didn’t you stop him, Mummy?

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ says Lydia, out loud, and I am so startled I drop a chunk of damp log onto the scruffy rug.

  I stare at my daughter.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The school thing,’ Lydia says. ‘That wasn’t your fault. It was Kirstie’s fault. She keeps coming back, doesn’t she? She frightens me.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Lydie.’ I pick up the log and install it in the flames; the heat raves and crackles, and it does not touch the cold. If I walk four yards from the fire my breath will be misting again. This fucking house.

  ‘Anyway, Lydia, we’re going to be leaving soon, so there’s no need to worry about any of that any more.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’re moving, darling. Leaving. Moving on.’

  ‘Leaving the island behind?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Her face twists into a frown: maybe a panicked sadness.

  ‘But you wanted us to come here, Mummy, and you said it was going to be better than before.’

  ‘I know. But—’

  ‘What about Kirstie? Kirstie is here. And Beany is here, we can’t leave them behind, can we? And what about Daddy—’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I don’t want to go anywhere – ’less Daddy comes too!’

  Her anxiety is rising again, far too quickly. Everything disturbs her now; she is unapproachably fragile. What do I say?

  ‘Oh, we’ll see Daddy, too, sweetie, I promise. We just need to find a new house, with a road, and a TV – won’t that be good? The next place will have a TV and heating and everything.’


  Lydia says nothing. She stares at the blazing woodfire. I can see the faint glow of the flames on her anxious little face, reflected, as the darkness gathers. A raven’s wing sweeping across the world. The windows are agitated by the wind. This is beyond Torran’s normal brutal breezes. I can hear moaning from the pines on Salmadair as the wind races towards us, from Eisort and Tokavaig, from Ord and Sgurr Alasdair.

  ‘She’s in here now, isn’t she?’ says Lydia, very quietly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Kirstie. Here.’

  ‘What?’

  My blood is tingling cold in my hands.

  Lydia gazes at me, her expression a strange mixture of passivity and fear. ‘She is here now, Mummy. Here. In this room. Look!’

  I stare around the room, feeling something close to terror. Expecting my dead daughter to emerge from the frigid gloom of the hallway. But there is nothing. Just shadows of the furniture, dancing on the walls, enraged by the roaring flames of the woodfire.

  ‘Nonsense, Lydia, we just need to get away. I’m going to make us some—’

  A terrible noise interrupts me: I am so frightened, I laugh, nervously, when I realize it is the telephone. Just the phone? I am so alarmed and nervous, the old-fashioned bell of the phone is freaking me out.

  Brought to my senses, I give Lydia a hug and a kiss then I run into the dining room, eager to hear a human voice, an adult voice, someone from out there, the place of sanity, the normal mainland where people live, and work, and watch TV; I hope it’s Molly, maybe Josh, my folks, I wouldn’t even mind if it was Imogen.

  It’s Angus.

  The only person I don’t want to talk to in the world is the only one who calls me. His sombre voice fills me with a yearning and bitter sadness. I can barely stop myself slamming the phone down. And he is talking about the weather.

  The fucking weather?

  ‘Seriously, Sarah, they say it’s going to be, ach, terrible. Big big storm. Think you should come off the island. I can come over in Josh’s boat.’

  ‘What? And stay with you, Gus? That will be so nice.’

  ‘Really. Look at the wind, Sarah – look, and it’s only just picking up. Just beginning. Remember I told you, these storms can last for days.’

  ‘Yes. I get it.’

  ‘And Torran is famous for it. Torran. Eilean Torran. Thunder Island. Remember? Sarah? Remember?’

  I stare out of the window at the wintry darkness, as he talks. The last daylight has fled away to the west, I can see the final dim whiteness above Tokavaig. But the sky is clearing and a full moon is out. And if anything, the sea appears calmer than before, the trees have stopped that awful moaning. The only odd thing is those high, fragmented clouds: they are racing across the blue-black sky, silently and very fast.

  ‘Looks fine to me, the wind has dropped. Gus, please stop ringing us, stop bothering us, you know, I, I, you know why—’ I have to say it, I have to, I am going to say it. ‘You know what you did. I’ve had enough of the lies. You know what happened. I know what happened. Let’s stop lying, here and now.’

  The phone line is dead quiet. As if it has finally failed. Then Angus says: ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

  ‘You. Angus. You. You and Kirstie.’

  ‘What??’

  ‘You know what you did. I’ve worked it out. Lydia told me. About you touching Kirstie. Kissing her. Scaring her. And Dr Kellaway confirmed it, basically.’

  ‘What? Sarah? This is drivel. What the fuck are you talking about?’

  ‘You abused her. You were abusing her. Abusing Kirstie. Sexually. Touching her, that’s what you did, you bastard, that’s what you were doing, for months, for years – how long? The way she’d sit on your lap, the way you fucking hugged her – you were touching her, weren’t you? Don’t fucking deny it, that’s why she jumped, she was scared of you, she jumped, didn’t she, jumped, fucking jumped. She killed herself, and it was ’cause of you, her own father. Did you rape her? How far did it go? And now Lydia is screwed up, too, she doesn’t know what to do, you’ve broken us, you’ve broken this family, you did this, you, and and—’

  I’ve run out of hatred. The words fail in my mouth. I am trembling as I hold the phone. Angus is saying nothing. I’m not sure how I expect him to react. With anger? With flaming denial?

  His answering voice is quiet: there is anger there, but he is calm.

  ‘This is untrue, Sarah, all of it. Entirely untrue.’

  ‘Oh yes? So—’

  ‘I never touched Kirstie. Not like THAT. How could you think this?’

  ‘Lydia told me.’

  ‘I was tactile with Kirstie. I gave her hugs. Kisses. That’s all. I tried to cheer her up. Be affectionate. And why? ’Cause you weren’t, that’s why.’

  ‘You scared her.’

  ‘I snapped at her. Once. Sarah, this is crazy. You are fucking crazy.’

  ‘Don’t you dare make this about me, don’t you—’

  ‘Shut up,’ he says. ‘Shut. The. Fuck. Up.’

  Like a commanded child, I am silenced. He can still somehow do this. Because when he does it I am seven years old again: and my dad is shouting. But Angus is not shouting, he goes on, very slowly and precisely:

  ‘If you want the real truth, ask your daughter what really happened. Ask her to tell you what she told me, six months ago.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ask her, if you must. And have a look in the kist. Did you ever reach the bottom drawer, hmm? No?’ His voice spits with anger. ‘Then batten down the hatches, Sarah. This storm is coming. If you want to sit it out on Torran then – then there’s nothing I can do. Fuck you. But keep our daughter indoors. Keep her safe.’

  He has confused me. But maybe he is trying to confuse me. The anger rises again, inside me:

  ‘Don’t come near us, Angus. Don’t come near us, don’t speak to us, just – don’t.’

  I drop the phone.

  ‘Mummy?’

  It’s Lydia. She is in the dining room: I didn’t hear her come in. Because I was yelling at Angus.

  ‘Mummy? What’s happening?’

  The realization is sickening. How much of that conversation did she witness? I just got carried away. I did not think. Did she hear me accuse her father of raping Kirstie? What have I done? Am I making it all worse?

  My only choice is to pretend I said none of this, and act normal. I can hardly lean down to her and ask her whether she heard me accuse Daddy of rape.

  ‘Nothing’s happening, sweetness. Mummy and Daddy were just talking.’

  ‘No you weren’t, you were shouting.’

  What did she hear? I force a smile. She is not smiling.

  ‘What’s wrong, Mummy? Why are you shouting at Daddy? Is it because of Kirstie, because she keeps coming back, because he wants her back?’

  I want to say Yes.

  But I control myself and I place a protective arm over Lydia’s shoulder, and I guide her away from all this: into the kitchen. The kitchen feels like the kitchen in a drama, in a TV play. A stage set. A simulacrum of normality. But the walls are fake and the brightness is unreal and there is a strange darkness beyond, and there are people watching. A silent crowd, watching us onstage in the lights.

  ‘Shall we have some tea? What do you want for tea?’

  Lydia gazes, at me, then at the fridge. ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Anything you like, Moomin. Anything in the fridge.’

  ‘Um … Cheese toastie.’

  ‘Good idea! I’ll make some cheese on toast, it won’t take long. Why don’t you go and play in the living room, let me know if the fire is doing OK.’

  Lydia looks at me with a hint of suspicion – or wariness – then, to my intense relief, she slopes out. Now I can pretend that she didn’t hear any of that chat with Angus.

  Carefully, I take the bread from the wire basket above my head, then the Cheddar from the fridge. I glance out of the window: the strange grey clouds are racing again: very fast, across the appalled white face of th
e moon. The trees have begun to moan, once more, as the wind kicks up. Was Angus right about the storm?

  I need to feed my daughter.

  When the toasted cheese is melting and popping I slide it out from under the grill, then I serve it on a plate, and cut it into special bite-size pieces, and I take it into the dining room, where Lydia sits, patiently. At the dining-room table. She is wearing blue socks now. She must have put them on just this moment. Leopardy has reappeared and sits on the table next to her: his inert, cuddly-toy smile is aimed directly at me.

  Lydia picks up her little orange plastic-handled kids’ knife and fork and she eats the cheese on toast placidly enough. She has a book by her plate. Usually I don’t like her reading as she eats, but I am not going to stop her today. She seems remarkably and strangely contented, considering the terrors she has endured.

  I look out of the window. The moon has disappeared behind bigger clouds; the trees are moaning much louder. Rain is hitting the windows. Angry and contemptuous. Lydia is eating and reading and humming a little tune: ‘My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean’.

  Kirstie’s nursery rhyme. She is humming it here.

  O bring back, bring back, bring back my Bonnie to me.

  I try to stay calm. But I have the intense, abrupt and overwhelming sense that this is Kirstie, sitting right here in front of me. Sitting in the semi-dark of the dining room, with the island cowering before an approaching storm, with the lighthouse flicking, desperately, urgently, signalling every nine seconds across the dark waters of the Sound: Help, Help, Help.

  ‘Lydia,’ I say.

  She does not turn.

  ‘Lydia.’

  She does not turn. She eats and hums. Leopardy smiles at me: sitting on the table. I have to fight my way back to logic: this is Lydia, sitting here. I am letting the stress delude me.

  Leaning back, I take deep breaths. Calming myself. Regarding my daughter. Trying to be objective. Now I remember what Angus said: Ask her about what really happened, ask her what she told me six months ago. Something in these words is quite piercing: and his denial of child abuse was halfway convincing. I don’t believe him, and yet: I do have troubling doubts. Have I leapt to some terrible false conclusion?