by Nina Manning
I opened the first notebook and stared at the blank page for a long time before I finally took the lid off the pen and wrote the date: 28 October 1998.
Then I wrote the first and only thing I would write in those diaries for the next three weeks until they were almost full.
I took the pen, pressed it onto the paper and wrote 2, 4, 6, 1 over and over.
57
Now
I took my phone and clutched it to my chest, walking slowly back up the stairs and into my bedroom. I put it down on the bedside table and then stood for a moment, my mind reaching for something it couldn’t quite get to. Something wasn’t right downstairs. I walked back the front door. To the left of the door was a small alcove where we put post. On top of the letters, placed clearly and obviously where I could see it, but where I had definitely not left it, was the toy Mini Cooper.
58
October 1998
I lay on top of the hospital bed on the final day, waiting for Mum and Dad to come and collect me. They had had so many other practicalities to deal with over Kiefer’s death that they weren’t able to stay with me all the time. They were there for most of the visiting hours and Nancy was also there when she could be.
As I lay there I recognised the voice of the lady who had given me the notebooks, I knew it was her because I will always remember it as the kindest voice I had ever heard.
I sat up and looked at her as she walked past.
‘Oh, hi,’ she stopped at the end of my bed, ‘You’re still here?’
‘Yes. Going home today.’
‘How are you getting on with your notebooks?’
‘Good,’ I lied. Thinking of the number I had written over and over. Hoping she wouldn’t make me open them and show her.
The woman was clutching more notebooks.
‘Who are they for?’ I asked.
‘A woman in the next ward. She has a lot of feelings bottled up. She’s already filled one book. Maybe you two could talk?’
‘Maybe.’
‘She lost someone too.’ She said solemnly and walked away.
There were twenty more minutes until my mum and dad would arrive to collect me and take me home to our empty house without my brother, so I got up and walked to the next ward. I peered round the door and saw the woman from the charity sat in a chair with her back to me handing over the notebooks to a young woman lying in a bed. Her face was covered in a sort of thin mesh, with bits cut out for her eyes, nose and mouth. Her short dark hair was messy and greasy. I watched them from the doorway for a moment then skulked away.
59
Now
I hurried back upstairs, then went back into my bedroom and gasped when I saw that every single one of the diaries were back on my bed and open. Did I leave them like that before I fell asleep? I was sure I had put them on the bedside table. Perhaps I hadn’t? Perhaps I had left them on the end of the bed like I did sometimes with the kids’ books or a magazine. Come to think of it, I was sure I had put them back in the safe and locked it.
I could feel a scream building up inside me. I tried to swallow it down but I felt as though I was going to choke. I scanned the room, looking for the children, looking for Damian, trying to find a plausible explanation.
I looked back down at the open pages. The numbers went on for five diaries, all except the final page of the last diary which back then I had left blank for some unknown reason. But I had written in it just the other day. And I could see from where I was standing; I had written just six words with bold print in capitals.
IT IS TIME TO FORGIVE YOURSELF.
I heard a rustle from the walk-in wardrobe. I thought it was one of the kids and expected to see Pixie or Maddox step forward, but instead it was someone else and I almost keeled over backwards. The wall saved my fall as I saw who stepped out of the shadows and into the room.
60
October 1998
Mum and Dad came to pick me up. They barely spoke a word, there was a small gesture of a hug from Mum, and Dad shakily nodded at me a lot; a tight sympathetic smile etched across his lips. Dad picked up my overnight bag and we walked through wards and corridors towards the exit.
‘What’s that you got there?’ Mum said slowly. I knew she had already started taking some tablets for the shock and her speech sounded slurred as she gestured to the pile of notebooks in my hand. I looked at them and did a quick count. I realised there were only five in my hand. The red one I had written in first was missing. I must have left it back in the ward. I turned and looked back along the long corridor we had just come down.
Mum stopped and looked at me. The walk back to the ward was too far. I began walking again and so did Mum.
‘A lady from a charity gave them to me, she told me write in them, to help me deal with the shock and grief,’ I said, looking down at the five remaining notebooks.
Mum nodded.
‘There’s a girl in the other ward, too, she’s a bit older than me, she had burns on her face. She got some notebooks too.’ I carried on giving my mum seemingly insignificant information.
‘That’s the girl from the other crash,’ Mum said, no emotion to her tone.
‘What other crash?’ I asked.
‘There were two accidents that night. Yours and Kiefer’s. Then when the ambulance came to get you it crashed into a car, damaged that girl’s face and killed her twin sister.’ Mum stopped walking and looked ahead of her at nothing. ‘Such a lot of death, so many young lives ruined.’
I thought she might cry but she just carried on walking.
I wasn’t sure if it was the tablets or if she had seen something beyond that but as she looked into the distance, her stare was as cold as ice.
61
Now
‘What the hell!’ I screamed, and before I knew what had happened, she was next to me with a knife held near to my throat. She closed the door and told me to move over to my dressing table chair and sit down.
I went to grab my phone but she stuck her leg out. I tripped and fell, hitting my head on the dressing table. I was stunned for a few seconds but then I realised my hands were being tied. I tried to struggle but it was too late, her leg was in the back of my knees. She was too fast. I lay on my side, thinking of the kids. What would happen to them.
I knew, as I lay there hearing her panting, the exertion of what had just happened had tired her and she was taking a moment to regain her strength, maybe suss her next move. But surely she had it all worked out? This had already all been so calculated. Little bits of information filtered through and I tried to piece them together like a jigsaw. Everything that had happened in the last few weeks, none of it had made any sense. I had doubted so many people. But this person was here for me.
I lay on my side, too terrified to try to turn my head. I could hear her breathing. She reached an arm over me to pull me more onto my back so she could see me, and more importantly, so that I could see her. And as she did I saw the scars on her arms.
I squeezed my eyes tight as she moved me to an upright position, leaning against the dressing table leg. Then I slowly opened one eye and then the other until she was framed fully in front of me.
‘Hello, Frankie,’ Penelope said.
62
Now
‘Was it you?’ I asked her as she stood over me, beads of sweat clinging to her forehead. Her black hair was scraped back into a tight high ponytail. She was wearing a pale pink sweatshirt, the sleeves rolled up, and grey sweatpants. The knife in her hand hung by her side. A strange rational part of my brain was trying to work out where she got it from and whether it was one of mine from the kitchen.
‘It depends what you are referring to, Frankie.’ Penelope was shaking, she looked weak. I noticed she wasn’t wearing any shoes. So many thoughts were rushing through my head. Mainly I needed to know the children would be safe. I needed to get to them.
‘How did you get in my house? I had the locks changed, I locked all the doors and windows.’
‘Y
ou left your keys at reception, Frankie, it isn’t hard to get one copied.’
I shook my head in bewilderment. ‘But I had the locks changed!’ I said, my voice high with anxiety.
‘Well, it’s a good job I got my copy done and made use of your spare facilities before your locksmith showed up.’
‘Meaning?’
‘You have a very nice attic.’
I felt my blood run cold as I took in what Penelope was saying and then it all made some sense. That short gap after dropping off the key at reception had obviously been enough time for her to take it and then replace it before Damian collected it.
‘I managed to get it cut, get in your house and, let’s say… ummm, meddle a little, before I left again.’
‘You! You did that to my daughter’s bed?’
‘Just a little preview of what was to come,’ Penelope sneered at me. Beads of sweat clung to her face. There was a pungent smell coming from her. Was it possible she was in the attic all this time?
My heart pounded in my chest.
‘You don’t get to touch my kids, you hear me?’ I shouted. I didn’t care what she did to me.
‘But I never even got the chance to have kids, did I? There was never going to be any kids. These,’ Penelope pointed to the scars, ‘these are the visible scars from that night, but my insides were crushed when that ambulance, the one sent out for you, hit my sister’s car and killed her.’
I looked blankly at Penelope and realised they weren’t self-inflicted wounds. They were wounds from shards of glass that splintered from the windscreen when her sister’s car collided with an ambulance.
I wanted to know everything. If this was it, if Penelope was going to kill me for what happened to her, then I needed to somehow make sense of the last few weeks.
‘There was never a man, was there? In the pub after work that night.’
‘As soon as I saw you following Mason’s Instagram account, I knew it was you. When I looked you up properly, I saw you had plenty of marketing experience. So I made sure you saw the job for New Product Developer. I too, was preparing for the twentieth anniversary of my sister’s death. It wouldn’t have mattered how drunk you were at the pub. I already knew.’
‘I didn’t kill your sister, Penelope. It was an accident. My brother wasn’t drunk. He crashed the car on a dodgy road. Why were you out at that time of night?’ I asked with contempt.
Penelope paced up and down the bedroom like a caged animal.
‘I shouldn’t have been in that car. I shouldn’t have called my sister out. I had gone back to someone’s house, I didn’t know his name. I had been trying to become independent from her. People always thought we were supposed to be together all the time because we were twins. I only wanted one night out away from her. Just one! But I couldn’t do it! She was always the wiser one, older by three minutes, for fuck’s sake. When things turned sour with the guy, I knew I didn’t have anyone else to turn to. I made my sister drive out and get me.’
Penelope stopped pacing and turned to face me. ‘And she should have been able to drive safely there to come and get me without that ambulance that was there because of your stupid brother, running her off the road! It was your fault, Frankie. He drove out to collect you because it was an illegal rave. It was all over the papers. I sat in the goddamn inquest and watched you churn out all your sorrow. Pathetic! You didn’t care about anyone but yourself!’
‘I was sixteen,’ I said as the tears fell down my cheeks. Fear penetrated my every fibre. She was a woman possessed. I now knew what she had been capable of. ‘I was a child. I didn’t know what I was doing.’
Penelope launched herself at me and stopped right in front of my face. The knife hung precariously close to my leg as it dangled from her hand.
‘You had a choice. You could have not gone to that party!’
She rubbed her hand over her face.
‘And you had a choice not to get drunk and go back to that guy’s house. Alone!’ I sobbed and Penelope stared through me as the weight of my words rang true.
We stayed there for a few minutes, me sitting on the floor and Penelope pacing. I started to think about all the ways I could coax Penelope out of her mindset. I had to keep the kids safe.
‘It seems you’ve been a little busy entertaining, these last few days,’ Penelope said spitefully. ‘Quite the hostess, aren’t you?’
I thought back to when Todd was here. I had bought myself a few extra days by having someone in the house, but why hadn’t she struck last night? Why wait until now?
‘You could have done this last night, surely? Why wait?’
‘It was quite nice to have the peace and quiet, if I’m honest.’ Penelope looked wide-eyed and wired as though she hadn’t slept properly for days. ‘I had a chance to write a few things down in my diary. I hadn’t written in it for years. It was a good bit of reflection time.’
I suddenly thought of Todd, who I had blamed for all of this.
‘And that phone, it was in Todd’s belongings?’
‘Planting a phone on an unconscious hobo isn’t as difficult as you might think, Frankie.’ I saw a small smirk appear across Penelope’s face. ‘I followed you out of the office many times. You would never have seen me, you were always so focused on your own dilemmas. He had been lying there for ages, unconscious. How could you just think that chucking some money at him would solve the problem?’
‘I had to think about it before I brought him here. I have my kids to think about.’ I paused.
‘And my hotel room,’ I said flatly as it all seemed so obvious. ‘You knew about the number.’
Penelope stopped pacing and looked at me. ‘I came to see you after the accident, at your bed, because that interfering woman from the charity told me I should. She told me you were in an accident and we might get on.’
Penelope stopped and did a loud snort, the same as I had heard her do in the office. ‘What a joke that was! Of course, she didn’t know who you were. That you and your stupid brother had killed my sister. She was just trying to be nice. But I heard the nurses discussing it one night as I passed their office. So I passed your bed on the way back to mine, saw you were sleeping and you had left your notebook open. It was just like mine only you had filled it up already with the same number over and over: 2461. And I knew the number must have some significance, otherwise why would you write it down so many times?
‘When you were discharged, you left one behind. I kept it as a reminder to myself that one day I would find you and I would make you pay for what happened to my sister.’
‘What was your sister’s name?’ My question was met with silence. Penelope sat down on the end of the bed, the knife dangling next to her leg. She seemed to be somewhere else in her mind.
I stayed quiet. I listened for the children.
‘And it was you who booked the hotel rooms, and made sure I got that room number.’
‘Yes, and it took a huge amount of my time up as well. Do you know how many hotels there are with rooms that have four numbers? Turns out not as many as you would think.’
I was listening to everything that Penelope was telling me, but I was also trying to think quickly and to shift ever so slightly, half an inch at a time. I wanted to aim to get my legs out to the side; I could lift myself to standing without the use of my arms. I tensed the muscles in my stomach and tried to subtly pull my legs towards my chest, all the while my ears pricked for the slightest sound from the children. I needed to get to them before all of this commotion woke one of them. And I knew it would be Pixie. She was the lighter sleeper. Maddox would sleep through every thunderstorm. I stole a glance at Penelope; her eyes were wide as though she were looking at something that wasn’t there. I nudged my legs up a little more but the noise of my feet against the carpet brought Penelope’s attention back into the room.
She jumped up and she was next to me. Her sour breath on my skin.
‘What would you do, Frankie? Tell me? If you were me, what would you
do?’
I thought quickly. This was my opportunity to say something that might have an impact on Penelope. I could change things; I could make this stop. All I could visualise were Pixie and Maddox in the next rooms and that either of them could wake at any moment.
‘I would talk to someone, maybe get some help, maybe we could go together? Counselling?’
‘I’ve had counselling,’ Penelope snapped and stepped backwards. ‘Loads of it and it hasn’t changed anything. I still feel all this…’ Penelope stopped and gestured up and down her body, ‘this raging anger, it’s there every day. It will never go away. I think the only way I can deal with it is by dealing with you! You were the one who did it. For years I wanted to hurt someone, your brother, but I knew he was dead. I knew your name but I would have thought after what happened you would have left town? But you stayed, all this time you were here and finally we are brought together by Mason Valentine. As soon as I saw you follow him on Instagram I knew it was you. I contacted the recruitment agency and gave them your details, and then you just came running. It was too easy really.’ Penelope laughed loudly.
‘Mummy,’ came a voice from the doorway and my heart leapt into my throat. No, no, no. Penelope stood between me and Pixie in the doorway, her head darted towards me and then Pixie. She didn’t know what to do.
‘Go back to bed, sweetheart,’ I said, my voice wobbling but it was too late, Penelope was at the doorway and had grabbed Pixie and was dragging her into the room.
‘Owww, Mummy,’ Pixie moaned.