The Sisters

by Claire Douglas

  Why would you write that, Lucy? I think, before checking myself, tears stinging my eyes as it sinks in that, of course, Lucy didn’t write it. How could she? She’s dead. She’s fucking dead! I take deep breaths, try to concentrate on my breathing. I slam the lid of my MacBook, telling myself that it’s a mistake, that it doesn’t mean anything. That it’s not at all weird, eerie, sick that a message has appeared on my sister’s wall nearly two years after she died.

  When I check again later, the message has disappeared, leaving me doubting whether it was ever there in the first place.

  It’s dark when Ben’s little Fiat finally turns into the street. I watch from my bedroom window as he pulls up outside the house. I run downstairs, throwing open the front door as he’s stepping on to the pavement. He’s dressed in a moss green corduroy jacket that I haven’t seen before, and a woolly beanie hat pulled down over his head, hiding his hair. Although it’s only the end of August the weather has taken a turn for the worse so it seems more autumnal. I’ve missed him so much. I rush towards him but something about his demeanour makes me hesitate by the wrought-iron gate. He looks tired, the tan he acquired over the summer has faded and his shoulders are slumped. I call out to him and he glances up; his smile, when he realizes it’s me, transforms his face. I open the gate and fall into his arms and he drops his suitcase on to the pavement to hug me. ‘Oh, I’ve missed you,’ he says into my hair as he squeezes me tightly, urgently. ‘It’s been a hideous few weeks.’ I nod sympathetically, remembering his late-night phone calls bemoaning his boss, the ridiculous long hours, ‘the shambolic company’ that he’s working for.

  He picks up his suitcase and we go into the house. ‘Where’s Bea?’ he asks. ‘How have the two of you been getting on?’ I assure him that Beatrice has been great, that the four of us have muddled along together quite nicely for the last ten days. And even though Cass is still an enigma to me, I’m used to her quiet ways now, her slinking about the house like a cat; the only person she seems comfortable with is Beatrice. As we go into the kitchen, he asks me if I’ve seen much of Niall and I can tell by his faux air of nonchalance that he is trying to quash his feelings of jealousy, that it bothers him to know he’s not the only man in his sister’s life any more.

  As I reheat some of Eva’s chicken casserole for his dinner I tell him that Beatrice isn’t home, that she’s gone to some art gallery with Niall. His face falls and I pretend not to notice, disliking the way it makes me feel. I put the plate of food in front of him and go to the larder to retrieve a bottle of wine. ‘Something tells me you need this,’ I say as I pour him a glass of Chablis. He smiles gratefully, his eyes shaded with fatigue. I pull out a chair opposite him and pour myself a glass too. It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell him about the cryptic message on Lucy’s Facebook page, but he looks so tired, so fed-up that I can’t bring myself to worry him.

  Later, when we’re in his bedroom, I go to his Bang and Olufsen music system and I’m about to turn it on when Ben shouts at me, causing me to jump.

  ‘Don’t touch that,’ he snaps, coming to me and pushing my hand away. ‘It’s expensive.’

  I experience a stab of hurt but remind myself that he’s had a long journey, a stressful ten days at a job he hated. He’s just tired, frustrated. It’s become obvious that he’s a little pedantic about certain things; he hates me washing or ironing his precious designer shirts, or touching any of his expensive gadgets. And that’s fine. It’s one of his quirks. It doesn’t mean anything. So I step away and get into bed. When he joins me I go to remove his boxer shorts. ‘Not tonight, Abi,’ he says, shuffling his body to the other side of the mattress. ‘My mind is all over the place. I need to sleep.’ He turns over so that I have no choice but to stare at his back, at the mole in the shape of a four-leaf clover on his right shoulder, and his words send a chill through me.

  I leave Ben sleeping the next morning and take the bus into town.

  It’s a crisp day, the sky a vivid blue that borders on violet, and the clouds float past a little too fast, suggesting rain is on its way. I wrap my chiffon scarf higher up my neck as I get off at Bath Spa bus station and head towards Milsom Street. I’ve seen a pair of ankle boots that I want to try on; now that I’m earning more money, I can afford to buy them. I’m walking with my head down, hands thrust into the pockets of my parka, my mind full of Ben and what could be troubling him, and I don’t see the woman heading towards me until I almost bump into her.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, looking up. Jodie is standing in front of me, dressed in a puffa jacket and grey skinny jeans, a smile on her usual sulky mouth. ‘Jodie, how are you?’ She’s carrying a leather rucksack on her back that looks like a large beetle.

  She stares at me and I can see that she’s trying to place me, working out where she knows me from, and then her eyes light up as it finally dawns on her who I am. ‘Abi, isn’t it? How’s it going, living with the freaky twins?’

  I’m irritated at her disloyalty. ‘They’re not freaky.’

  She laughs but it sounds hollow, insincere. A woman tries to step past us on the narrow pavement and tuts. I apologize and move aside, Jodie follows suit. The faint spittle of rain kisses my cheek. Even though I don’t warm to Jodie, I ask her if she’s got time for a quick coffee, that I would like to ask her some questions. She ponders my offer, and I can see her weighing up what to do. I can tell that part of her would love a good gossip about the ‘freaky twins’ as she calls them, but the other part is wary about getting involved, about saying something that could get back to them. In the end she agrees and we head into a coffee shop near the Roman Baths.

  We grab the only empty table left upstairs, sinking into the chairs in relief. Jodie removes her backpack and shrugs off her Michelin Man coat. By now the rain is thrashing against the windows in a fury, the café is packed and the shared breath of strangers and steam from hot drinks has caused condensation to smear the windows.

  ‘It always seems to rain in Bath,’ says Jodie, surveying the downpour. ‘Anyway,’ she takes a sip of her caramel latte, cursing that it’s too hot. ‘What did you want to talk to me about?’

  ‘Look,’ I say, leaning forward conspiratorially. ‘Do you remember what you said to me? That day in your bedroom? You warned me to “watch my back”.’

  She shrugs. ‘Yeah. So what?’

  ‘What did you mean?’

  She narrows her blue eyes. ‘Why do you want to know? Has something happened?’

  ‘You’re still friends with Cass, right?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says haltingly. ‘What’s all this about?’

  ‘But you fell out with Beatrice?’ I ask, ignoring her question.

  She sighs and she looks young to me then; she can’t be much more than twenty. ‘When everyone first meets Beatrice they fall under her spell. She’s beautiful, funny, talented, smart.’ She could be talking about Lucy. I nod encouragingly, sensing that there’s more she wants to say. I’m right. ‘But she picks people up and drops them when she’s bored of them. Have you not found that out by now?’ I can sense in her an unspoken hurt at being left out in the cold.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I admit. ‘My feelings for Beatrice are complicated.’

  ‘Are you in love with her?’

  I almost spit out my coffee in shock. ‘Of course not. Why do you say that?’

  ‘Oh, everyone falls in love with Beatrice. Cass is absolutely smitten.’

  ‘Cass?’

  ‘She’s gay. Didn’t you know? She’s totally in love with Bea, follows her everywhere, won’t hear a bad word about her.’

  Now it all makes sense. How could I have been so blind?

  She takes a noisy slurp of her coffee. She’s wearing a baggy black T-shirt of a band I don’t recognize and, as I assess her from across the table, I think that she has a pinched kind of face as if she’s always cross, even when she’s smiling. ‘I fell out with Cass when I left. But we’re friends again now. She can’t help her infatuation, can she?’

 
‘Do you think Beatrice is that way inclined?’

  ‘They did have a thing a while back. They thought nobody knew, but I did.’ Something tells me that not much gets past Jodie. I feel a twinge of … what? Excitement at the thought of the two of them together? Regret that it was never me? ‘But Beatrice is messed up. She told Cass that some guy broke her heart when she was at university, that she’s never gotten over it. And the way she is with Ben, so possessive, it’s weird.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I’m still reeling about the lesbian revelation.

  ‘Come on,’ she scoffs. ‘I don’t know exactly what’s going on there, but something isn’t quite right. She has a hold over him, I know that much.’

  I sit up straighter, expectantly. I long to tell her what’s been happening since I moved in, how I believe that Beatrice is probably behind it, that it’s all stopped now she’s met Niall – until yesterday. But I keep my mouth shut. I don’t trust that Jodie won’t go blabbing to Cass. ‘What makes you say that?’

  And then she tells me.

  A couple of weeks before she moved out she overhead them talking – ‘I wasn’t eavesdropping,’ she insists, although I suspect she probably was. She was coming down the stairs when she heard raised voices from the drawing room. Ben was agitated, she could hear him pacing. Beatrice was stretched out on the sofa. She could see her bare legs, crossed at the knee, and her hands clamped around a glass of wine, through the half-opened door. ‘He was shouting at her, telling her that nobody could ever find out, that she had to promise not to say anything to “her”. I’ve no idea who the “her” was. He alluded to some crime, something from their past. I was scared, Ben sounded out of his mind with worry. And Beatrice … Well, she just sat there, almost teasing him, as if she enjoyed having this secret with him. I got the sense that he was a lot more worried about it getting out than she was.’ Jodie pauses, making sure she’s got my undivided attention. She has. ‘But the weirdest thing was, I’m sure he called her Daisy. If it wasn’t for the fact I recognized her voice, saw those legs and that tattoo around her ankle, I would have assumed he was talking to someone else.’

  ‘Daisy?’ I frown, remembering. ‘That was their mother’s name.’

  Jodie shrugs. ‘I dunno. Anyway, I must have made a noise on the stairs because Ben threw the door open and caught me listening, his face …’ She gives a theatrical shudder. ‘He was furious. He snarled at me, insisting I tell him what I’d overheard. He didn’t believe me when I played the innocent. After that, Beatrice made it difficult for me to stay.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Oh, I expect you’ve had the cold-shoulder treatment. I imagine you know what that’s like.’

  I smile tightly, suddenly feeling an affinity with Jodie because she’s right: I know exactly what that’s like.

  When I get back the house is empty. I run up to my room and start up my laptop, logging on to Facebook and go straight to Lucy’s page.

  There are no new words on her timeline but there is a link to a photograph. I click on to it and gasp as her face comes into focus, filling up the screen. It’s the black-and-white, head-and-shoulders shot of Beatrice wearing her own jewellery. The photo that Cass took for the website. I remember the words from yesterday, I’ve been replaced. I never knew what that meant before but now, alongside the photograph, I understand. I laugh, relieved. I’m not going mad. My illness hasn’t returned.

  Somebody has been playing with my mind on and off since I moved in. Now I know who.

  It’s always the quiet ones.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Beatrice swears under her breath as the garnet she’s trying to set into a silver ring clatters on to the oak desk. Her fingers are too thick, ungainly. She flexes them, clicking her knuckles and causing Cass, who is lying on the leather sofa with her legs draped over the arm, to look up from her book. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I keep dropping this bloody stone,’ she snaps, picking it up and trying again. Her stomach aches with the beginnings of PMT. She’s got more work than she can handle now that her website has gone live, and it is overwhelming her.

  ‘Do you want me to help?’ asks Cass. Beatrice shakes her head, wishing she would go away. Cass has become very clingy of late, and she suspects it has something to do with her new relationship with Niall. Not that she can actually call it a relationship. Even though he’s ludicrously good looking she’s beginning to find him boring; they haven’t got much of a connection. She knows he’s dead wood, that she’s going to have to cast him adrift.

  The sky turns grey, darkening the room. Without taking her eyes from her book, Cass automatically reaches behind her to switch on the lamp. She is beautiful, Beatrice thinks as she surveys her friend, with her small button nose, her elongated, intense dark eyes, her platinum blonde crop. And she would do anything for me.

  She places the ring on to her desk with the stone next to it where it glints red and orange in the lamplight. She’s not in the right frame of mind to concentrate on this today. Ben is back. She hasn’t seen him for nearly two weeks and she was out with Niall when he returned last night. She had rushed home but was surprised to hear from Pam that he was in bed. She had gone to his bedroom, pushing his door ajar gently to see if he was still awake, and had been shocked to see Abi sleeping next to him, her head on his chest.

  He might tell her otherwise, but she can sense it. Her grip on him is loosening.

  She’s really missed Ben. It’s the longest they have spent apart in years. She understands why he had to rush off and why he had to stay there as long as he did, but it irks her that he hasn’t come to see her yet, that he went straight to Abi first. This is all her fault. She was distracted by Niall, had allowed herself to believe that she might have actually found someone worth losing Ben for. But she has now seen past Niall’s pretty insubstantial face to the nothingness beneath it. How can she ever begin to connect with someone else when she’s always comparing every relationship she has to the one with her twin? How can she ever better their bond?

  ‘Hi.’

  She turns to see Ben standing in the doorway, his hair stuck up in peaks, a tired smile on his face.

  She rushes over to him and throws her arms around him. ‘I’ve missed you. Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m exhausted, it’s been an emotional ten days,’ he says. Then he notices Cass on the sofa. She’s sitting up now, book on her lap, eyeing them inquisitively. He doesn’t have to say it, she knows what he’s thinking, that they can’t talk here in front of Cass. She gently pushes him out the door, calling to Cass that they will see her later.

  ‘Let’s go for a walk,’ she mouths once they are in the hallway. He nods. They pull on raincoats and Beatrice grabs an umbrella as they hurry out the door and head towards Alexandra Park.

  ‘Where’s Abi?’ she asks, linking her arm through his. A weak sun filters through the clouds and she wishes she was wearing trousers instead of a dress. Her feet are cold in her leopard-print pumps.

  He shrugs. ‘I haven’t seen her yet this morning.’

  Beatrice is tempted to tell him she knows Abi is sharing his bed, but she doesn’t want it to escalate into an argument. He’s a man who has needs. Could she prevent him from having sex, from getting close to someone else? It was naïve of her to think she could. Since Abi’s birthday, Beatrice has tried to make an effort to keep things on an even keel, for Ben’s sake.

  Instead she listens as he tells her about London, how strange it was for him, being there after all these years. That tiny house, so dark and dingy, smelling of boiled cabbage and Paul’s dirty socks. The life he was so desperate to escape from. She squeezes his hand in sympathy when he describes all that went on there.

  ‘So Paul still lives there?’ she asks when he’s finished.

  He nods. ‘Yep, and he still hates me. But he’s jealous. I’ve got the life he wants.’

  They fall silent. The only sounds to be heard are the squeak of their footsteps on wet tarmac and the faraway yap of
a dog. It begins to rain again and Beatrice stops to put up her blue spotty umbrella. Ben takes it from her as he usually does, just as she knew he would, and holds it up over the both of them.

  ‘Have you told Abi about London?’ she asks.

  ‘She thinks I went to Scotland for work. I can’t tell her, Bea, you know that.’

  She chews the inside of her mouth as they reach the top of the street, turning left into the park. So many lies, she thinks.

  Due to the cold, wet day, it’s deserted; it’s how Beatrice prefers it. She shivers in her thin scarlet mackintosh and Ben stops to put his arm around her.

  ‘Are you cold? Do you want to go home?’

  She shakes her head, she wants to keep him talking, she wants to hear about Abi, because it’s obvious to her that their relationship can never work, not when he’s keeping so much from her. I know all your secrets Ben. I know them all yet I still love you, am still here for you. Always.

  She searches her mind for the right words to bring Abi back into the conversation. ‘I think Abi has missed you a lot.’ Ben steers them toward a large oak tree as the rain gets heavier.

  ‘I missed her too. I missed you both.’ He still has his arm slung over her shoulder and she snuggles her head into the crook of his armpit. They stand and watch the rain running off the leaves and plopping on to the grass that is turning muddy. Neither is inclined to move on. ‘She says the two of you are getting on better,’ he says. He’s still holding the umbrella over the both of them.

  ‘I’m doing it for you, Ben. I know she means a lot to you, but I still think she’s cuckoo.’

  His body tenses up. Eventually, ‘What makes you say that?’