The Missing Twin

by Alex Day

  She continued her stumbling progress, the twins beside her. Somewhere here should have been their house with its courtyard and lemon tree, its almond orchard and its years of family history.

  The house was gone.

  In its place was a body. Its clothes were ripped to rags by the force of the bomb blast but it looked surprisingly intact, no injury visible. It was a body so familiar that Fatima knew instantly who it was.

  Fayed.

  Her husband; her children’s father.

  She sank to her knees and vomited, retching so violently it felt as if her stomach would burst apart. The girls were becoming hysterical, screaming and sobbing and Fatima didn’t stop them, couldn’t stop them. Violently, she pushed them away to prevent them from seeing what she had seen. But, terrified as they were, they wouldn’t go, instead clinging desperately onto her, burrowing into her back as she crouched down, hiding their faces in the folds of her scarf. Their weight took her by surprise and she lost her balance, falling forward and instinctively putting out her hands to save herself only to find herself pressing down on Fayed’s stomach. The disgust of making contact with his dead flesh made her throw up again and again, her throat raw and burning, her mouth filled with the foul taste of bile.

  Despite the warmth of the day and the heat from the fires that burnt amidst the remains, his body was already cold. Soon rigor mortis would set in and then, if the corpse were not buried, the flies would come, followed by the maggots. Fatima forced herself up and lurched away from what had once been her husband. The girls, clinging to her clothing, dragged behind her. They had seen the body, for certain, but Fatima didn’t know if they had recognised their papa. Please God that they hadn’t. They were screaming, and Fatima wanted to join them, wanted to howl at the dust-shrouded sky, wanted to make it all go away and not be true. But a mother’s instinct to protect her young kicked in. She must get away. She wrenched the twins after her, speeding up to a hobbling, stumbling, wreckage-impeded attempt at a run. With no idea where she was going or how she would get there, she knew only that she must flee, must escape these killing fields and arrive somewhere that still had a pretence of normality. Run. All she had to do was run.

  Running, barely feasible for an adult, was almost impossible for a child. Marwa’s tiny legs could not navigate the treacherous terrain and she fell, banging her knee on the sharp protruding edge of a bent and contorted piece of metal that sliced into her flesh with the ease of a knife. There was a long pause before the first bellowing screech exploded out of her, far too loud for such small lungs, a yell laden with fear and pain and uncontainable panic. Fatima had no words with which to console her, nothing to say that would make it any better, no will in her body to tend to her daughter’s injury, the seeping gash in her baby-soft skin. Marwa howled and sobbed without cease, on and on, whilst Maryam whimpered and Fatima’s tears erupted from her eyes and poured unstoppably down her cheeks. She hauled herself and her children onwards.

  A single gunshot rang out, close by, coming from behind one of the half-standing buildings of what had, until so very recently, been a peaceful and affluent middle-class street. Wiping snot from her nose with a filthy hand, Fatima’s legs froze, paralysed by terror. Her gaze darted from side to side. The sniper fire had prompted forth shadowy figures from other nooks and crannies, creeping, scuttling creatures, the undead, fleeing like prey escaping an unseen enemy.

  What have they done to us, Fatima’s soul cried out. What have we become?

  ‘Run,’ a voice, dust-coarsened and gravelly, urged. ‘Run, now.’

  Swept up in his wake, driven by the urgency in his voice, Fatima grabbed up Marwa and placed her on her hip, took Maryam’s hand in a vice-like grip and ran. She did not falter when the second shot came and her companion stopped in his tracks and languidly, as if in slow-motion, fell to the ground.

  She just ran, on and on, through the dirt and destruction, between the mountainous heaps of boulders and rubble, iron and steel, traversing every obstacle, as if it were possible to ever truly get away.

  Edie

  Ripping off her pyjamas, Edie pulled on her bikini, then tied a sarong around her waist. She needed to think clearly, banish the fug that was clouding her mind. Grabbing a towel from the pile of stuff on the floor, she left the room, quelling the need to be sick; her temples pounding afresh from the sudden activity. She marched through the olive grove, where people were stirring, coming out of their cabanas in search of breakfast or, for those with children, heading for the beach even at this early hour. She should be at work already, collecting the cleaning equipment from the store and starting to scrub however many effing cabins Vlad had assigned to her. Sod that.

  Veering off the path, she took a short cut that skirted through the trees and close to one of the plunge pools. A man stood there, casting a long shadow over the water, his net extended, capturing the silver-grey leaves that had fallen in the night. Zayn. Why couldn’t it be Vuk? The trips he ran constantly denied them the time together that Edie yearned for. She waggled her fingers towards Zayn in a half-hearted wave. He made as if to say something but stopped as he noticed that her pace did not falter. His gaze followed her as she passed, fixated, Edie was sure, on her breasts that were only just contained by her tiny bikini top. She sighed to herself. Poor Zayn. She turned and gave him another, more enthusiastic wave. She didn’t want to be cruel, but he simply couldn’t hold a candle to Vuk.

  Zayn had been the first person she’d got to know when she arrived on the site, basically because he’d hung around her like a moth around a flame. They’d had a fleeting dalliance but he’d got too keen and she’d had to cool the whole thing down, which was lucky as the next thing that had happened was that Vuk had shown up, back from a sailing trip and Edie had fallen for him, hook, line and sinker. He was more suitable in every way, apart from anything else because he was only a few years older than Edie, whereas Zayn was about thirty-five, Edie reckoned. Way too ancient to be taken seriously.

  There was something intriguing about him, though. He was pale-skinned, paler than the local people, with heavy-lidded, dark eyes that were soft and forgiving. He wasn’t from here, he came from somewhere else; he’d told Edie a bit about himself but she hadn’t really been listening and now it slipped her mind, but she knew the place he was from he could never go back to for all sorts of complicated reasons from blood feuds to civil war. He had numerous ideological opinions that he liked to air, despite the fact that Edie had made it quite clear that she didn’t do international politics; in fact didn’t do politics at all. She left causes to Laura, who was always marching or fasting or writing letters for something.

  Edie reached the tree-shaded concrete path that skirted the beach and headed for her favourite swimming spot. Come to think of it, she pondered as she meandered along, doing her best to avoid a pair of butterflies involved in an elaborate mating ritual, Zayn and Laura would probably get on like a house on fire and he could be a useful diversion, steering Laura well away from Vuk. She happily skipped a few paces off the back of this thought, threw off her sarong and, balancing on a protruding rock that just had room for her size 5 feet, dived into the cool, clear water. Laura might fancy Zayn, she always had a soft spot for the underdog, and she liked older men, viz the Slovenian guy – and if she did, that would kill two birds with one stone; provide a girlfriend for Zayn, who clearly really wanted one, and also ensure Laura would not be making eyes at Vuk. A marvellous solution, though Edie said it herself. Sorted – or it would be if Laura were here.

  It was just so typical of Laura to disappear at precisely the moment that Edie had everything worked out and under control. She was, quite simply, the most unpredictable person on the planet. Once they’d left school and home and supposedly become independent adults, Laura had developed a habit of sauntering in and out of Edie’s life – although Edie couldn’t help but admit that it was a tad unusual that on this occasion, Laura had said absolutely nothing at all about her plans. She would probably material
ise in a few hours and come over all affronted if Edie pulled her up on her unexplained desertion.

  Coursing through the water, Edie concentrated on her breathing and then dived down, deeper and deeper. The underwater world was blue and green and grey, fish flitting between clumps of seaweed and submerged rocks, the occasional bright glint of some sunken litter the only discordant note. She relaxed her body, shut off her mind. She had spent some time with free-divers in Greece and tried to learn their techniques. Although she’d only managed to hold her breath for just over three and a half minutes so far, she was constantly working on it. Swimming was her passion – she’d been in a squad in her school days, won tournaments and medals. At one point it had been thought that she might compete nationally, perhaps even internationally. But then she’d become a teenager, discovered boys, got ill … and those ideas had faded away into the distance. She was still a better swimmer than Laura, though. That was one thing – the only thing – she’d always been best at, and what better place to show off her prowess than here at this idyllic seaside resort?

  Now all she had to do was sodding find Laura.

  FIVE

  Fatima

  Distant relatives in a nearby town that had so far avoided attack took them in. Fatima and the children, together with Ehsan, Fatima’s dead husband’s younger brother and his son Youssef, who had been at a football match when the bombs hit the house and so survived. Ehsan’s wife Noor had died of breast cancer eighteen months ago, about the same time Fatima’s own parents had been killed in a car accident, and he and Youssef had lived with Fatima and Fayed from then on, along with Fayed and Ehsan’s parents. Death had seemed to surround them for a few awful months, but they had got through it, she and Fayed, because of the strength of their love. Missing her parents and Noor, who she had been close to, had diminished over time. Now death was back with a vengeance, claiming Fayed and so many others.

  Fatima had not imagined that they would be subsumed by such loss again and had not contemplated having to pull through once more. At times, her grief was like being in an earthquake, nothing secure, nothing to hold on to; everything shaking and rocking out of control. She longed for her husband and soulmate and knew the longing would never end. But she had two children to care for and had no choice but to do so. In this terrible war, which had seemed to come out of nowhere and to grow and grow until it engulfed them all, like being sucked inside the rapacious mouth of a giant monster, the only way to survive was to concentrate solely on the here and now, on how to get through each day and night and make it to the next sunrise.

  Fatima knew she should be thankful that she was not entirely alone, that she still had her brother-in-law Ehsan. But she had always felt a little uneasy around him. He seemed to be constantly looking at her, observing and appraising her, following her with his eyes, noticing parts of her body that he should not. She’d never mentioned it to Fayed; he had a terrible temper that, when provoked, made him irrational and unpredictable and she didn’t want to bring his wrath down on either herself or Ehsan, because she had no reason to cast aspersions against him. All she had were feelings and feelings were not enough to accuse anyone of anything.

  Ehsan was a weak man, though, she knew that for sure. A few months ago Fayed had beaten Youssef for bringing a magazine into the house. It contained pictures of scantily-dressed women, as far as Fatima had gathered, although she hadn’t seen it herself and couldn’t imagine where a thirteen-year-old could have procured such a thing. Ehsan hadn’t joined in the beating but he hadn’t stopped it either. That just made him even more unappealing in Fatima’s eyes – Youssef was his son and he should have taken the lead in disciplining him, not cowered in a corner whilst Fayed thrashed the boy.

  Despite this, there was one undeniable fact to contend with. She was a widow now, a woman with neither father, husband, brother nor son to take care of her and protect her. That was not a good position to be in at the best of times, and these were the worst of times. Ehsan, whatever his failings, was a necessary evil. She would just have to put up with him, as with everything else that had befallen them. In thinking this, tears flooded her eyes and the grief clenched at her heart once more. Her anguish and misery were more than she could bear; she could not live without Fayed who had always led and guided and protected. She wanted to shout out at his ghost, release her fury that he had not, as he had suggested he would, gone to the office that afternoon but instead had stayed at home and been pulverised by the falling bombs. Why had he betrayed her like this?

  But then the tears fell with renewed intensity, as if desperate for release, as she railed with herself for her disloyalty and evil thoughts. Fayed had not meant to die. He had not wanted to leave them. And now that he had, she must somehow and some way, find the inner resources to keep going.

  A test of her resolve came from the rightful demands of Safa, the matriarch of the family with whom they had found shelter.

  ‘We need food – bread and rice, and lots of other things that are nearly finished,’ Safa declared bluntly to Fatima, a few days after they had arrived. She and Marwa were sitting in an armchair. Fatima was trying to read the little girl a story but she kept losing her place on the page, her thoughts drifting away, her voice falling silent. She swallowed hard and fiddled with Marwa’s hair to cover her embarrassment. She should have thought of the need to contribute without having to be asked. Of course the family couldn’t afford to keep them; everyone was struggling enough as it was.

  The shock of losing everything had temporarily eclipsed all else from her mind and then the trauma of arranging a funeral for Fayed, once she had managed to get his body recovered, had also taken its toll. It had all been overwhelming and she hadn’t been thinking straight but now that must change. Money must be procured to give to Safa, Fatima understood, immediately the demand had been made. She had not left Safa’s house since they had arrived there so she had had no opportunity to get cash. She had told herself that she was not going out because there was no reason to and she was tired but she knew that really she was scared. Scared to leave the house and not know if it would still be there when she returned. So she and the girls had stayed at home, if you could call it that, but now she had to pull herself together and pull her weight.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised to Safa. ‘I’ll go to the bank and withdraw some money.’ As she spoke, it occurred to her what Safa probably really wanted. ‘And – I can do the shopping on my way back. Tell me what I should get.’

  ‘Bread, rice, as I already mentioned,’ replied Safa, disappearing into the kitchen to check the cupboards. ‘Salt, meat, flour–,’ she continued, reeling off a seemingly endless list of the household’s requirements. Fatima wrote it all down on a scrap of paper.

  Armed with the list and a veneer of bravado, Fatima left the girls drawing pictures in Safa’s kitchen. The queue at the bank stretched all the way out of the door but Fatima only needed to use the cash machine so she didn’t join it. Putting her card into the slot, she marvelled at how ordinary life continued amidst the mayhem, or at least the approximation of ordinary life. She could still shop. She could still go to the cinema or to a restaurant if she wished. Not that she could imagine doing either of those two things, but it was somehow unbelievable that such diversions still existed.

  The machine bleeped and rejected her card. ‘Transaction not possible’ flashed up on the screen. Fatima frowned at the message. She reinserted her card and tried again. A line was forming behind her, of people anxiously shifting from one foot to the other, looking around them and up at the sky. Air strikes had become more frequent recently.

  Once more, Fatima’s card was spat back out at her, emphatically. Puzzled, and with a knot of anxiety forming in her belly, she joined the queue which was only fractionally shorter now than it had been when she arrived. She had never taken much notice of their financial position before; she hadn’t had to. Fayed, older than her by ten years, already had a well-established business when they had met, fallen in
love and got married. Fatima had been happy to take care of the children whilst he made the money. They were well off and she was able to continue studying English in her spare time, with the goal of going to university to do a degree in English literature when the girls got a bit older. She had plenty of time – she was only twenty-three.

  Reaching the front of the queue, she handed her card to the cashier.

  ‘I don’t know why the machine wouldn’t process my request,’ she said, feeling the need to explain herself. The man tapped numbers into his screen and then looked at her incredulously. He had small, narrow eyes and a mean mouth.

  ‘It’s nothing to do with the machine,’ he explained, speaking very slowly as if she were extremely stupid. ‘It won’t give you any money because you haven’t got any.’

  SIX

  Edie

  The mop handle clanged angrily and water sloshed onto her bare feet as Edie lugged the bucket into the cabin and began to clean, making wide, bad-tempered arcs across the tiles. Three cabins in two-and-a-half hours was too much, especially when so many of the guests were absolute slobs, leaving dirty dishes in the sink that she had to wash up and making sure that they’d messed up all the beds so that she still had to make them again even if they hadn’t actually been slept in.

  She snatched a clean sheet from the pile she had dumped on the sofa and snapped it out across the double bed in the main bedroom, tucking it in haphazardly. Really, if anyone thought they were paying for hospital corners, they had another think coming. Pillowcases next, then the same to the single beds in the twin room. She swept the floor, whisking the grains of sand swiftly across the tiles so that they flew and caught the light like mini crystals. Slowly, she backed towards the door, dragging the bucket with her and cleaning right to the threshold. She paused to flick the air-conditioning off and stepped outside into the broiling heat. Fumbling for the key in her pocket, she could feel sweat gathering on her forehead and trickling down her back and legs, running from the nape of her neck to her shoulder blades. The door slammed as she pulled it closed.