The Slaughter Man

by Cassandra Parkin

  Then why did you stop talking to Joe? Willow hadn’t cared about this for years, but now it seems all-consuming. But even if she could ask, would either her mother or Joe tell her the answer?

  “I mean, I know no one could ever replace Laurel,” her mother continues. “She was irreplaceable. People are irreplaceable. You can’t swap one for another. And I don’t ever want you to think you’re not enough. If we’d looked at that ultrasound screen and seen just you, we’d have been so proud, so thrilled. And if you’d been the only child we’d been lucky enough to have, we’d have been the proudest, happiest parents on Earth.”

  There is a curious intensity to her mother’s words, as if she’s arguing with herself. Willow pushes herself upright, sitting forward and frowning with concentration, as if her mother’s in the chair on the other side of the fireplace.

  “But,” her mother continues, “I am so, so sorry you’ve ended up with this. Being the only child, I mean. It’s too much, to go through this life as one on your own. No one should have to do it.”

  Her mother’s words drive a thin sharp hole into her. This is exactly how she’s felt since Laurel left them. Unbalanced. As if there’s too much weight on her shoulders, as if she has to carry a burden meant for two to share. She presses her hand tight against her chest, half-expecting to find some physical wound.

  “Willow? Sweetie? Are you still there?”

  She manages a deep noisy sigh.

  Her mother begins speaking again, telling Willow about a rainbow she saw over the garden that afternoon, how rainbows have always been a symbol of hope and renewal, but Willow is lost in her own thoughts. How will she make it through all the months and years that lie ahead? How will any of them survive now it’s her by herself, and if she fails, at something big or small, there will be no Oh well, at least Laurel’s fine, I’m sure Willow will be too soon, no Never mind, remember that time Laurel did that awful thing at the pub, and now look at her?

  And even if she does well, her parents will still be looking at her, because there’ll be nowhere else to look. She’ll be the only one who can deliver the things all parents want: a wedding, grandchildren, a parade of work and leisure accomplishments to trade with their friends. Their attention will beat down on her like the noonday sun. She has no idea how she will survive.

  PART THREE

  NOVEMBER

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  She’s standing in the doorway that leads to the outside stairs, and she knows she’s asleep because when she walks, her feet take her right off the edge of the landing and into the air. It’s thick enough to support her, and when she stretches her arms up, she finds she can swim through it, up and up until the world lies below her like a miniature model.

  We’re safe up here. It’s not her thought, but Laurel’s. Laurel is pale, as she always is, but tonight her nightdress is stained, and there’s something else about her that is different; when Laurel turns over in the air and propels herself earthwards, Willow can see the outline of the buildings through her sister’s shape.

  I’m dissolving, Laurel explains. The words come to Willow as a thought rather than a sound. Laurel’s lips blue and still. It’s because I’ve been left on my own for too long.

  Willow reaches out a hand to catch Laurel’s. The flesh feels spongy and yielding, and Willow is afraid that she’s breaking Laurel just by touching her.

  It’s what happens to us when someone we love dies, Laurel says without words. I’m falling apart. It’s not my fault. I want to stop it, I want to be how I was, but I miss you so much.

  But that’s what I feel, Willow replies, pressing her hand against her own pounding heart.

  I know. Because I’m you. And you’re me.

  Does that mean I’m dead?

  Of course you’re dead. Laurel rolls her eyes.

  No. That’s not right. I’m not—

  You died that day in the gym. Don’t you remember? You were doing circuit training. You always hated it but you were doing it anyway because you wanted to get fit. Then your heart started beating really fast and everything went black. They said you were unconscious, but you weren’t. You could feel and hear everything that happened. They crowded round you and the teacher was pushing on your chest and you could feel your ribs breaking. You could hear them snapping, and it hurt so much, and you wanted to beg him to stop, but you couldn’t. And you wanted me to be with you, but I wasn’t. I was somewhere else. You had to go through all of that, all by yourself, all the hurting and the terror, all by yourself. Laurel is crying, fat thick tears tinged faintly with pink, as if her eyes are bleeding a little. And I didn’t know. I should have known but I didn’t. It was happening to you and I didn’t realise. I’ll never forgive myself for not being there at the end. Never.

  No, Willow says, desperate. It was you. You died in the gym. That happened to you. I’m the one who can’t ever be forgiven. I’m me and you’re you. You’re dead and I’m alive.

  What does it matter? Laurel presses her fingers to her cheeks and the tears soak into them like sponges. When she lets her hands fall, there are finger-shaped indents in the skin. No one can tell the difference anyway. Maybe it was you who died, and they thought it was me. Maybe we swapped.

  We haven’t done that for years, it never worked anyway. People can always tell which is which, because we’re different people.

  No, says Laurel, we’re not. We never were. They tried to tell us we were different people, but we both knew better. We’re the same. We have one heart between us. And that’s why we’re both broken. We only have one heart, and you’ve got it. She tears at the front of her nightgown. Look.

  Willow doesn’t want to look, but this is a dream and she can’t make herself turn away. The incision marches from each shoulder, two lines kissing in the middle of Laurel’s breastbone and becoming one, held together with fat black staples that bite into her flesh.

  That’s why I need you to come and be with me, Laurel explains. I need our heart back. But you’re trying to give it away to someone else.

  What are you talking about?

  You know, says Laurel, and turns her face away.

  If the air really was water and they really were swimming, it would take them hours to get anywhere, but this is a dream, and they can move at whatever speed is necessary for its message to unfold. They soar and swoop, pushing themselves higher to escape the clutch of the trees that reach greedily for their ankles. In a minute, they’re over the farmhouse, which sprawls out more expansively than in the waking world, all its windows aglow and welcoming.

  There’s a boy in there, Laurel says. And you like him.

  No I don’t. Not like that.

  Don’t be stupid. I know you better than anyone. Have you kissed him yet?

  Has she kissed him? Trapped in the fiction of her dream, she can’t remember. When she thinks about Luca, she can only find the feelings he summons in her: a tension that might be fear or excitement, a racing in her pulse, a feeling that something is about to change, for better or for worse.

  You’re remembering what it’s like to die, Laurel tells her. That’s how I felt, right before it happened. I remember looking around the gym and thinking, This is it, this is where it’s going to happen. I knew something big was coming, but I didn’t know what. It felt like someone had sewed a bird in my chest. And now, when you think about Luca, you’re thinking about death. That’s how it feels to die.

  I thought you said it was me who died in the gym, Willow says, not because she wants to argue but because she doesn’t want to discuss Luca. He’s the first one who has only known her in her single state. The first person who looked at her and saw her without seeing Laurel’s shadow.

  Laurel rolls her eyes. Her eyeballs seem too small for their sockets and the surface looks dull and shrivelled.

  It doesn’t matter which of us it was. The point is, they separated us. You can’t fall in love with him, it’s too dangerous.

  I don’t know what you mean, Willow says. I don�
��t even know if I like him. He’s just a boy I hang around with sometimes because there’s literally nobody else around here to talk to.

  He’s afraid of you, says Laurel, and as she says this they’re outside one of the bedroom windows, looking in through the gap in the curtains. He’s afraid of you because you’re dead. You fooled him for a while, you made him think you were still alive, but he knows the truth really. That’s why he stopped kissing you. Because he’s terrified.

  He isn’t scared of me, Willow protests.

  Of course he is, says Laurel. She takes Willow’s hand and they melt through the wall and into Luca’s bedroom. Luca is fast asleep, curled on his side with his hair sticking out at foolish angles.

  Wake him up, then, says Laurel.

  All right, Willow says, and reaches out a hand to touch Luca’s shoulder.

  But then she sees that Laurel’s wearing Willow’s pyjamas, her skin smooth and firm, her eyes bright. And now Willow feels the pain in her chest, feels the slow black ooze of fluid from the scar that splits her open.

  Luca opens his eyes, and the look of utter terror on his face as he scrabbles to get away from her is almost enough to stop her heart. But her heart has already stopped. It stopped that day in the gym, and now she’s simply a dead girl walking, waiting for her twin to come and join her.

  She wakes to find herself standing on the stone landing outside her room. The slight breeze makes the door creak and the curtain whisper. She thinks she ought to feel cold, but she can’t feel much of anything.

  Maybe I’m still asleep, she thinks. Maybe this is one of those dreams you keep trying to wake up from but you’re so deep under you can’t quite manage it. Maybe I can still fly.

  She creeps forward towards the edge of the landing and holds out one leg over the void below, testing the air with her foot to see if it might be thick and strong enough to hold her weight and allow her to soar into the sky.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Willow is supposed to be analysing poetry. She has all the requirements for this to happen: she is sitting at her desk, she has her set-text book open alongside her study guide notes, she has the worksheet her tutor sent through to her, she has two different colours of pen to annotate the text, a clean new sheet of lined paper to capture her observations. She has everything she needs, except the will to make a start.

  What’s the point of doing this, anyway? These words were written down hundreds of years ago, back when everyone believed in God rather than evolution and there were whole swathes of the globe that no one from the poet’s country had even been to yet. What’s she doing, reading about his nice boring walk in the hills and how happy the daffodils made him? What could a man who thought other people wanted to hear his views about daffodils possibly have to say to someone like her?

  Joe is rattling around the kitchen. He’s probably cooking. He likes to cook; great elaborate meals that generate mountains of leftovers, which she’d happily eat for lunch the next day, but somehow he disappears them into the freezer and replaces them with something new and exciting that makes her forget the dazzling tastes of the day before. She could be downstairs learning to cook, instead of up here with this useless essay. That would be far more worthwhile than taking poems to pieces to find out what makes them tick. No, she’s got to try. This is the bargain she made with her parents, and she has to stick to it.

  She drags her attention back to the page, but her thoughts are in rebellion. Who cares if this man likes daffodils? Everyone likes daffodils. What’s not to like? They’re pretty, they’re cheap, they grow everywhere. This is a poem about privilege, is what it is. The privilege to go off into the Lake District and look at the view and think, Wow, very nice, and then come home and scribble some thoughts about it and mess around with them until they’re nice and rhymey, and then go down to eat a dinner cooked by someone else and pretend you’d done a day’s work. No, she can’t put that, it’s not the right answer. She stares at her study guide. If she learns this by heart instead, will she pass her exam? Is that what her teachers want her to do? What will she have proved when she’s done it? She turns the pages impatiently, looking for something that might inspire her to do some work:

  When we two parted

  In silence and tears

  Half broken-hearted

  To sever for years,

  Pale grew thy cheek and cold,

  Colder thy kiss—

  She throws the book to the floor and scoots backwards off the bed, as if the problem is with the words on the page rather than the feelings in her head. Why didn’t she stick to the daffodils, to the stupid self-indulgent daffodils and the man who thought everyone wanted to hear about them? Is that what the daffodils poem is for? To fill everyone’s heads up with smooth sweet bland niceness, drowning out the horrors of their lives? If she had her voice she’d be whimpering and maybe even screaming, and then Joe would come up the stairs two at a time to see what was wrong. But she knows by now that even terror isn’t enough to call her voice back out, and Joe continues to potter around, accompanied by a faint murmur that could be him singing to himself or could be him talking to the kitten.

  It’s all right, she tells herself, it’s only a poem. You don’t have to read it again. You could tear the page out maybe, then you know it’s gone for ever. She doesn’t want to touch the book, but she makes herself do it, trying to see and not see the words so she can take out the right page. A quick rip and it’s done, the page is gone and crumpled in her hand and all that remains is a thin raggedy edge of paper.

  She stares at the space she’s created, shocked and disbelieving. She’s vandalised a book. She’s never torn a book up, never.

  You know better than this! You both do! The words come to her in her mother’s voice, and she’s very small, sitting on the floor beside Laurel and the tattered remnants of a book they were squabbling over. You know better than to rip your books! What’s the matter with you both, tearing it all to pieces like that? Books are precious. Now which one of you was it? She can remember their joint puzzlement, their sense that neither of them had done it, and the book had somehow come undone through some process of its own. And the way their mother’s rage melted into tears as she picked up the pages. I bought you this for your first birthday. She can’t remember the book, she can’t remember even if it was hers or Laurel’s. She can only remember the shame, and the knowledge that neither of them would ever damage a book again.

  And now she’s broken their promise. Another step away from the person Laurel knew. But it’s just one page. She won’t do it again. She puts the crumpled page in the bin in the corner, balancing it precariously on the top, but she can feel it staring at her over the rim of the basket.

  What she really wants to do is burn it, but she doesn’t have any matches. She’ll have to think of something else instead.

  In the bathroom, she tears the paper into scraps and drops them into the toilet. They float, take on water, then finally slip beneath the surface. She takes her time, adding more pieces gradually, hoping they won’t clog in the pipe. There’s far more paper than seems feasible for a single page. Eventually, she flushes, holding her breath. Will the water keep rising? No, it’s sinking, and the wad of paper’s disappeared like magic. It’s as if she never did anything wrong. She can pretend the book was always missing the page. If anyone asks, she can say it was like that when she got it.

  She’s feeling so good, so relieved and free, that she forgets to be careful of the mirror. Her reflection snags her as she passes. Before she can stop it, she’s caught.

  There it is, that face she used to share but that now belongs to her alone. She wants to look away, but the face in the mirror has her gaze now, and all she can do is stare into the frightened eyes that look back at hers. Once she knew the million small differences that made this face hers and not Laurel’s: the blemishes that came up at the same time of the month but in different places, the freckles that emerged in slightly different patterns under the almost-identical r
ays of sunshine, the small hair and make-up choices that marked them out as individuals. Now, all she can see is her sister, as if Laurel’s fighting Willow for possession of their single remaining body. Her face is white, the skin under her eyes bluish, her lips are dry. When did she turn into her sister’s ghost?

  She raises a hand to her face, and then lets it fall. She’s afraid to touch her own skin, afraid it will feel spongy and yielding, and her finger will leave a permanent indent. She’s a walking corpse, she’s dead and doesn’t know it yet, this body died that day in the gym and now the only decent thing to do is—

  What happens next is a mystery. Her hand’s raised; Laurel disappears; there’s a crash; the floor fills with bright splinters. She’s sure she must have had something to do with it, but she can’t make herself believe that she’s taken her uncle’s mirror, his beautiful silver-framed antique mirror, and deliberately smashed it on the floor of the bathroom. She stares at the spines of glass, the exposed wood where the silver veneer has split, and feels only confusion. She can hear Joe’s shout of alarm, asking if she’s all right. She could go and meet him, save him a few seconds of panic, but the mirror’s spread across the floor in a glorious silver starburst, and she isn’t sure if it’s safe to move.

  “Willow?” Joe knocks on the door. “Willow, I’m going to open the door, okay? If you’re in the shower or something I promise I won’t look.” The door peels open slowly, and Joe glances cautiously in, trying to see as little as possible while still trying to see what’s happened. “Oh no, not the mirror…”