by Sibel Hodge
‘I’d love a pad thai for dinner tonight, Max!’ Excited. Girlish.
‘Fancy a fuck, Max?’ Rampant. Slutty.
‘I want you right now, Mr Burbeck.’ Seductive. Pleasing. Playful.
Was she slutty? Experienced in sex? Did she give blow jobs? Like head? Like it fast and hard? Was she a pleaser? Into something kinky? She seemed more vanilla to me.
I’d learn it all as I went along. If I was ever questioned, I’d say, ‘Just trying out some new things, Max. Max. Max. Maaaaax.’ I rolled his name over my tongue several different ways. ‘I want to keep our sex life interesting, darling.’ She called him darling a lot. Blah. It was so vomit-inducing. Still, he was OK to look at. I could easily manage to fuck him. And anyway, hopefully it wouldn’t be for that long. How much time had to pass before your new husband could die? Six months? A year? Maybe I’d make it look like an accident. Maybe not.
I examined the selfie I’d taken of Alissa and me on the beach with my phone and studied her eyebrows. Hers were plucked slightly thinner than mine. I got out my tweezers and stared into the mirror before plucking away a little at a time.
More of an arch there. Yes. That’s it. I sat back and surveyed my face. No more sun for me until Alissa’s tan caught up. I definitely had a more golden colour than her right now.
What about her writing? She was left-handed and I was right-handed. Still, people didn’t write much these days, did they? They typed into apps on their phones and sent emails. The only thing that might trip me up was her signature, which I’d thought of. I’d downloaded the DNA request form from the lab’s website so we could fill it in before we went there, and I’d accidentally on purpose noticed that I’d made an error after I’d got her to sign it. Oops, sorry about that, I’ll throw it away and we can do another one quickly!
I took it out of my drawer and practised her swirling A at the beginning of her name, the loops of the s’s as they ran together without her taking the pen from the page, the slightly more heavy indentation of the k in her new surname. I practised with my right hand first until it was near perfect. Then I tried with my left.
Hmmm. Messy. I’d never used my left hand to write with. Never experimented. Never had a broken arm that would’ve forced me to have to try.
Alissa Burbeck.
Alissa Burbeck.
Alissa Burbeck.
Shit. It looked terrible. I filled a page with her signature, scrunched it up and threw it on my bedroom floor.
But I was an artist. I could mimic and copy the brush strokes of other people’s pictures. I could do anything.
Could I make myself eat meat though? I thought about Dad forcing me to and pushed the exploding red swirling anger back inside. How was it possible they’d chosen me instead of her? I’d been so close to being her in the first place. It was a cruel twist of fate that she’d got the loving, kind parents and I’d got the insane ones. How could they have let a monster adopt a baby? Things would’ve been so different if it had been the other way around. I’d been cheated out of everything that should’ve been mine, and it was only right that I took back the life I should’ve had. It was only fair.
I straightened up as I looked in the mirror, biting my lip like she did. I could force myself to do anything, to be ‘Alissa Burbeck’.
THE OTHER ONE
Chapter 27
‘I can’t believe we’ve only got a week left together,’ Alissa said to me as all three of us sat in a restaurant.
‘It’s going too quickly!’ I replied, with just the right amount of sadness.
‘Have you thought about what you’re going to do after we go back?’ Max fussed with the napkin on his lap before leaning back and taking a sip of the champagne he’d ordered.
2003 Dom Perignon rosé at five hundred Australian dollars a bottle, don’t you know! Lucky Alissa. Or, rather, lucky me!
‘Who are you talking to?’ Alissa laughed. ‘Me or Sam?’
‘Well, both of you.’ He spread his manicured, now tanned hands on the crisp white tablecloth.
‘I’m going to miss you so much. You have to come and stay with us really soon,’ Alissa said to me.
I bit my lip and inhaled a deep breath. ‘I’d love that, but how would I explain going to England to my parents without telling them what was going on?’
‘But I really want us to spend more time with each other.’ Alissa pouted, like a sad little girl. ‘Max and I have been talking and we’d pay for your flights, and you could stay with us. The house is huge, so there’s lots of space.’ She glanced at Max, as if silently asking him to come up with a suggestion for how to fix things. She’d already told me he was her little fixer. He organised everything for them so she didn’t have to worry about a thing. He sounded like a bit of a control freak to me, but whatever.
‘How would you explain a twin popping up if you don’t want your mum to know?’ Max asked Alissa.
‘Exactly,’ I jumped in, willing my heartbeat to slow down. ‘And I can’t leave my parents just yet, with both of them so ill.’
Panic! No one can know! For my plan to work, NO ONE can know!
‘You haven’t told anyone about us, have you?’ I asked them both.
‘My lips are sealed. It’s not my decision to make,’ Max said. ‘Whatever you ladies decide is fine with me.’
‘No, of course I haven’t told anyone,’ Alissa said. ‘I really want to wait until after my mum’s passed away. She can’t speak now and she’s very confused, but even so, I know she must’ve had good reasons for not telling me I was adopted. I don’t want our last memories together to be . . . spoiled, if she finds out somehow that I know about it all. I really don’t want her upset. I want her to go peacefully.’
‘I agree,’ I said, not too hastily, demurely looking down at the tablecloth.
‘But Alissa can always come out here again to see you so you can spend more time together,’ Max suggested. ‘No one has to know. We can just say she loved it so much she wanted to come back for a holiday. Or I’m sure we can both come out again soon if things go according to plan with the potential development sites here.’
She threaded her fingers through Max’s and leaned her head against his shoulder. ‘This is why I love you, darling. You always come up with great ideas. Yes, I’ll come out again soon and see you.’
‘Brilliant,’ I enthused. ‘I can’t wait!’
‘There, all sorted,’ Max said as the waiter came to take our order.
I sat back and took a sip of champagne. Every night I’d had dinner with Alissa and Max (with champagne, oh, la di da!), and every night they’d picked up the tab, even though I’d offered several times. We want to do it! If you can’t treat your sister, who can you treat? I could get used to this. Oh, yeah, I would get used to it! Ha, ha, ha!
It was hard enough concentrating on Alissa, but I had to study Max, too, and exactly how they both interacted with each other.
Still, it was all paying off. Every day I was getting a bit closer to what was truly mine.
Alissa took my hand in hers. ‘So it’s our secret for now.’
I smiled and squeezed her hand. ‘Our secret.’
THE OTHER ONE
Chapter 28
Max was at another business meeting with a local developer he wanted to entice into some kind of partnership. No wonder Alissa didn’t ask him much about his business. He’d talked to me about it, and it sounded boring, boring, boring. I’d asked him lots of questions, of course, a faux enraptured smile on my face. Not once did he mention The Goldings development, which made me wonder if he was trying to hide it from Alissa. Anyway, if he was going to cheat those poor homeowners, then really, he deserved everything he got.
Alissa and I wandered through a local flea market, browsing stalls. I picked up some items – scarves, earrings, hats, dresses – holding them up to her and saying how they suited her. That brought on a discussion about fashion, and her likes and dislikes. I mentally noted everything down, as usual. Most of her clothes wer
e designer. Mine were more hippie, arty-farty things.
We were grabbing a smoothie at a health-food stall when her phone pinged with a text. She took the phone from her bag, frowned at it, and sighed.
I watched her carefully. ‘Is everything OK?’
She rolled her eyes as she picked up her drink from the counter, and we meandered over to a table. ‘It’s my ex, Russell. We’re still friends, but . . . I think maybe we shouldn’t be right now, and I don’t know how to tell him.’
‘He keeps texting you?’
She sighed. ‘Yeah. I’ve been really polite about it. I don’t want to hurt his feelings, you know, but he keeps telling me I’ve made a mistake with Max and that he wants me back.’
I raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh? Is he still in love with you?’
‘Yeah. We went out for about four years, and then I met Max, like I told you before, and . . . well, the short story is I finished things with Russell.’
I leaned my elbow on the table, rested my chin in my hand. ‘What’s the long story?’
‘Russell wouldn’t take no for an answer. I mean, nothing happened with Max at first. He’d send me flowers and stuff and . . . well, I’d grown apart from Russell, fallen out of love with him, and—’ She shrugged. ‘Max stole my heart. I didn’t want to hurt Russell, but I guess you can’t help who you fall in love with, can you?’
‘So, what happened when Russell knew you were seeing Max?’
‘I was a bit worried about how he’d react because Russell could get a bit overprotective sometimes.’
‘Really? So, is he a bit of a tough guy?’
‘No! Not really. He was always really nice to me. He’d never do anything to hurt me, but he could get a bit jealous, I suppose.’ She tucked her hair behind her right ear. ‘But I was worried that he might attack Max when he knew we were together, so I thought it was only right to tell him before something happened between Max and me, because I knew it was heading that way.’
‘Why would he attack Max?’
She glanced down at the floor. ‘Well, one night I was in a pub with Russell and this guy was at the bar, really drunk, and he kept making horrible comments about me. How he’d like to fuck me. It was awful. The guy was disgusting. Russell told him to shut up and apologise, and when the guy didn’t, Russell smacked him in the face.’
I leaned forward, elbows on knees. ‘Wow! So how did Russell take it when you told him you’d started seeing Max?’
‘I felt terrible. He was devastated. I can’t blame him, really. He thought we would settle down with each other, have kids, the whole thing.’ She rubbed her thumb over the phone’s screen in her hand. ‘Russell wouldn’t let it go. Sent me loads of pleading texts. Phoned me late at night when he was drunk. He said he just wanted to be friends. Said he missed chatting to me. So I let it carry on for a while, but I just kept it friendly, Hi, how’s your day? What have you been up to? How’s work? That kind of thing. But then he started turning up places where Max and I were. If we went to the pub in the village we live in, somehow Russell found out and he’d walk in. Or if I went shopping with my mates, he’d bump into me.’
‘He was stalking you?’ Oh, this keeps getting better and better!
She gasped a little. ‘No. No, I don’t think so.’ Then her eyebrows furrowed with concern. ‘Well, maybe. I told Max about it and he said we should report him to the police and get an injunction out on him, but I said no. I mean, it wasn’t like Russell was actually doing anything horrible. And I still felt guilty about everything that happened, so I played down a lot of it to Max.’ She leaned forward conspiratorially.
‘Are you scared of Russell?’
‘No!’ She waved a hand around. ‘He’d never hurt me or do anything. He’s just . . .’
‘Still in love with you?’
‘Mmm. Anyway, then he decided to go travelling for a while. He backpacked round Australia for a year, which I was kind of glad about, really. When he came back to the UK, he rented a house in the same village as us, but nothing else happened again until recently. I was dreading him finding out I was getting married, and I wanted to send him a text so he’d hear it from me first. It was only fair.’ She tucked her hair behind her ear in two quick movements.
‘Was he OK about it?’
‘Not really. Now he keeps texting again, asking if I’m OK, and if I’m sure I’m doing the right thing, and that he would always have me back if I changed my mind. I’m a bit worried he might find out about our wedding reception when we get back and turn up to cause a scene.’
‘That would be awkward.’ Or quite fortuitous! ‘What makes you think he will?’
She shrugged. ‘Just a feeling. The texts are getting more frequent and insistent.’
I quizzed her more about Russell, then steered the conversation back round to the wedding reception. ‘So, how many people have you got going?’
She clasped her hands together, her face lighting up. ‘We’ve invited a hundred, but some can’t make it, obviously. Max usually arranges everything – he’s got to-do lists for his to-do lists.’ She laughed. Yes, definitely throaty. ‘So I said I wanted to arrange the reception and show him just how organised I can be when I put my mind to it. I drew up this list of party guests on my laptop, lists of food the caterer is providing, lists of music Max wants playing, that kind of thing.’ She said it proudly, as if she’d accomplished something amazing, like bringing about world peace or diffusing a nuclear warhead single-handedly.
‘It’s so exciting! I wish I could be there.’
‘I do, too.’ She pouted. ‘And I’d love to have you in the reception photos with us. Something I could keep forever and look back on as the time I finally found you after all these years.’
Oh, hell, no!
‘But you’ll have all your good friends there, won’t you? What were their names again?’ I asked, even though I’d memorised them already in great detail. Practice makes perfect.
‘There’s Vicky Saunders, my best friend. We’ve known each other since primary school. She’s really sweet. She’s a hairdresser. I was bullied a bit at school and she was always really protective of me. She’s always been more like a sister than a friend.’ She smiled happily at me. ‘But now I have a real sister! And I can’t wait for you to meet her. You’re going to love each other. Then there’s Sasha Smithers, who’s the sister of Leo, Max’s best friend. They’re the ones I hang out with the most.’
‘Yeah, I remember you told me a lot about Vicky.’ She sounded really clingy to me, always wanting to spend time with Alissa and do things together. It was an alien concept. And they spoke almost every day on the phone. What on earth could they find to talk about all the time? ‘What’s Sasha like, then?’
‘Um . . .’ She did that lip-biting thing again. ‘I hate gossiping about people, but Sasha can be a bit . . . well, strange. She likes to be outrageous, and it’s as if she does it for attention. She says things sometimes that are a bit rude and hurtful. Like she picks up on your insecurities and homes in on them, bringing them up at every chance she gets, having little digs. Vicky doesn’t really like her, and calls her up on it when she says stuff, but then Sasha pretends it’s all a bit of fun. I think Sasha just does it because she’s insecure herself, so I feel a bit sorry for her, really.’
‘Or she’s jealous?’
‘Maybe. I think she’s had a thing for Max for a long time.’
‘She fancies him?’
‘I don’t know.’ She shrugged. ‘I think it’s possible.’
‘She doesn’t sound much like a friend, then.’
She scrunched her nose up. ‘Well, she was friends with Max before we met, so I really make an effort with her for Max’s sake.’
I patiently took mental notes in my head as she prattled on about Sasha, wondering if I’d have to watch Sasha carefully. She sounded like a right fucking bitch. This is why it didn’t pay to have friends. You either had annoying ones like Vicky who wanted to see you all the time and smothered you, o
r jealous cows like Sasha. It was much better without all those attachments. No one to annoy you then. A little while later, I said, ‘I’m still thirsty, do you want another drink?’
‘You got the last one; I’ll get these. Same again?’ She delved into her bag and retrieved her purse.
‘Lovely, thanks.’ I watched as she threaded her way through the crowd of people and queued up at the smoothie stall. Then I checked that my phone was still recording.
THE OTHER ONE
Chapter 29
I thought about making it look like a suicide, but, practically, that could be quite tricky. It didn’t matter if they knew it was murder. I’d be long gone, anyway, by the time her body was discovered. And technically, I was her.
Of course, my fingerprints were all over the apartment. I’d never had mine taken by the police, so they had nothing to compare them to, and hers would also be there, from all the time she’d spent in the apartment over the last two weeks. Nevertheless, I still thoroughly wiped and cleaned the surfaces to get rid of mine. I couldn’t leave any trace of me there.
It was their second-to-last day in Australia, and Max had a business meeting in the afternoon, so I invited Alissa over to the apartment. She arrived in a D&G denim mini-skirt (worth $800!) and an Armani top ($420), her bag tucked in the crook of her arm, as usual. The bag alone was worth $450 – I’d googled everything. WTF! That was obscene! I bet she’d never had to walk around with her toes poking out of her shoes as a kid.
We hugged at the door and she kicked off her flip-flops (worth $60 – double WTF!).
‘I’m so sorry I’m a bit late,’ she said. ‘I fell asleep in the bath. I’m always doing that.’
‘Really? Me too.’ It was a luxurious habit I’d got into when I finally escaped the psycho parents. Just languishing in silence on my own was something I’d never known before. I wondered briefly if it was nature or nurture that made us individuals. Was Alissa more like me than I realised? I flicked the thought away as she curled up on the sofa and prattled on about her bath routine while I took mental notes and sorted out drinks.