The Missing Twin

by Alex Day

  She went back inside, sat down on her bed and pulled a notebook out of her bag. ‘PLAN TO FIND LAURA’ she wrote in pencil. Her handwriting was large and shapeless, another thing she had never managed to accomplish the way Laura had, whose cursive script was impossibly lovely and perfectly formed, just like her.

  1. Go to police.

  Sod Vuk and his work permits and corruption rubbish blah, blah, blah … if she wanted to seek help from the forces of law and order she would, and let him try to stop her. And anyway, as he’d disappeared yet again for some so-called ‘job’ he was out of the picture right now which gave him no right to lord it over her and her actions. Wouldn’t he try to find his identical twin if he’d gone AWOL? If, on his return, he objected, a blow-job would probably sort him out. Sex was always a reliable tool when there was a tricky bit of fixing to do.

  2. Make ‘missing’ posters.

  It had occurred to her that she should stick notices up around the resort and along the road into town, alerting everyone who saw them to the fact of a missing person. Someone might have seen Laura, and if they had they would definitely have noticed and almost certainly remembered her. She was hard to ignore.

  3. Search the resort.

  Surely somewhere there would be a clue as to where Laura was or where she had gone. Laura was impulsive and did crazy things; this wasn’t the first time she had vanished into thin air. Once, at university, she had told Edie she was going out for a quick drink. The next time Edie had heard from her, she was in France. She’d met a bloke in the pub who suggested spending the weekend in Paris and off they’d gone, passing by Laura’s student house to pick up her passport on the way. They’d ended up in a boutique hotel in the Marais where they had drunk champagne and shagged practically non-stop for forty-eight hours. Laura had dropped him once they got back to the UK because he had a hairy back and held his knife sideways between his thumb and forefinger, which was too vulgar for her to bear. Edie wasn’t sure that either of these things were sin enough to dump someone, especially someone stinking rich and adoring, but Laura could pick and choose and so she did.

  In the same way, when she’d met the Slovenian guy she had simply evaporated like a vapour trail and it had taken days for her to get round to emailing Edie with pictures of their sylvan love-nest and an – in Edie’s opinion, unsatisfactory – explanation of her sudden disappearance. And there had been other times, of shorter and longer durations, a few hours to a few days, when Laura was simply off radar to everyone. In so many ways there was nothing unusual in her having melted away – and yet … and yet Edie couldn’t quite explain, even to herself, her increasing sense of unease. The Russian blokes were at the end of their holiday when they had met them and must surely have departed by now, which scuppered them as an explanation. And who else would Laura have had a chance to get to know and bed down with other than them?

  For a while, Edie sat chewing the end of the pencil, the metallic taste of the paint contrasting with the dry earthiness of the wood. When she looked back at the list she realised that she’d run out of ideas after number three. Reluctantly, she pulled on shorts and a T-shirt. She had cabanas to clean and the sooner she got them done, the sooner she’d be on her way to town to see the police. There was no point in phoning, it would be even harder to explain what she was calling about. Better to do it in person and hope to find someone who spoke English.

  Even racing through her cleaning schedule at top speed didn’t see her finished, showered and dressed in something vaguely respectable until just before midday. She grabbed the scooter key from the nail she’d bashed into her bedroom wall and let her door bang shut behind her. As she was pulling back the scooter support, Zayn appeared at her side, his soft eyes with their cow lashes fixed on hers.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he asked.

  ‘Into town.’ Edie bit her lip and forced back tears that suddenly prickled at the back of her eyes. ‘I’m going to speak to the police about Laura.’ She swung her leg across the scooter and put the key in the ignition. Despite what Vuk said, she thought but didn’t say.

  Zayn made as if to reply, stopped and then blurted out, ‘You want me to come with you?’

  ‘No, you’re all right, Zayn.’ It was sweet of him to offer but getting him involved would only complicate matters. And she might have more chance of a sympathetic hearing if she cut a helpless damsel-in-distress figure. ‘I’ll go on my own.’

  Edie turned the key, the engine sputtered into life and she pushed the scooter forward, the wheels spinning in the sandy ground for a moment before gaining purchase. Speeding away, she glanced over her shoulder to see Zayn staring after her, a forlorn figure with drooping shoulders. Shit, Edie thought to herself, filled with momentary regret. Poor lonely Zayn. Evil, cruel Edie, spurning his obvious devotion. She would definitely get him and Laura together when Laura reappeared.

  In her impatience, she cursed every bend and turn in the narrow, single track road that led towards the town, the high rocky banks on each side sometimes falling away to reveal the cerulean sea below, flat, calm and limpid under the broiling sun. Wild hollyhocks in every shade of pink grew tall and proud all around. Ferns nestled beside ancient grey boulders that jutted forth here and there, and butterflies flitted between staging posts. Seen out of the corner of Edie’s eye as she rode like the wind they seemed to be drifting streamers of colour, ephemeral and dreamy, never resting, always moving on.

  ***

  At the police station, she was greeted in a perfunctory manner by the duty officer, who was almost certainly expecting a report of a lost camera or some car insurance document that needed a signature. Tourists were welcomed here and crime against them was rare; nobody wanted to scare them, and the cash that they brought, away. Edie asked if he spoke English. He shook his head dolefully. Why should he, thought Edie? How many foreigners pitching up at a police station in England would find that the local bobby was conversant in another tongue?

  He disappeared into a back room and after some minutes, came back with a female police officer whose dyed blonde hair was tied into a tight ponytail.

  ‘What do you need? I help if I can. My English is not so good.’

  Edie shook her head graciously in denial. ‘It seems excellent to me,’ she replied and then, having got the niceties out of the way, she explained that she had a missing person to report and could they please go somewhere quiet to discuss it.

  The woman, whose name was Lucia Simovic, led her in the opposite direction from which she had come, down a long corridor and into a suspect interview room. It was a surprise to Edie to enter such a room, not just because she’d never done so before, but also because the room’s very existence seemed incongruous in this place that was synonymous with sunshine and holidays. There must be a hidden underbelly of lawlessness that she had yet to encounter. She remembered what Vuk had said about drug wars. A sudden knot of fear formed in her stomach. Where there were drugs there were other underhand goings-on. Could that include abduction? Kidnapping? Edie forced such preposterous notions from her mind.

  Lucia made notes in a spiral bound pad as Edie explained what had happened, hedging around the topic of what she herself was doing at the resort because of Vuk’s warning that her position was not legal. She wasn’t sure it was true and even less sure that anyone would care enough to do anything about it – but still, best not to take risks. It was disappointing to see how little Lucia wrote down, how sparse the information Edie had to offer her. Lucia asked a few questions and then, tapping her pen against her teeth, silently contemplated the white lined page of her notebook for a few moments.

  ‘I will file report and,’ she paused, resuming the teeth tapping again, ‘to be very honest with you, Miss Edie,’ she continued, speaking very slowly, as if Edie were a child or intellectually deficient, ‘I do not think we can do very much. Your sister is adult and there is no evidence that points to anything suspicious. It seems most likely that she left of her own free will.’

  L
ucia smiled a smile that was clearly intended to be comforting. It was more genuine and effective than Edie had anticipated.

  ‘OK,’ she nodded, pursing her lips thoughtfully in the way she imagined very intelligent people did when mulling over a problem. ‘I guess you’re right. There’s no need to do anything.’

  Edie thought of her parents as she spoke. Would they buy this explanation? Or would it make them think she was even more incompetent than they did already?

  Add ‘losing sister’ to the long list of all her other failings: screwing up GCSEs and having to retake, dropping out of university, being a crap model in ill-advised knitwear.

  Lucia closed her notepad. ‘If there is anything we should do, we do it.’

  Edie shrugged. What could she do against such a shutdown? ‘You’ll let me know, though – if anything crops up?’

  Lucia stood up. ‘Of course. But in the meantime, try not to worry. There is no law against people coming and going, no law that says they have to tell anyone their plans or explain themselves. You know yourself that Laura has done this before, that she comes and goes as she pleases. In all my years as a police officer in this town, we have never … a foreign girl like your sister has never been the victim of murder, abduction, rape or any such attack. There is absolutely no evidence of a crime.’

  Edie laid her hands on the table, fingers splayed like starfish, her skin a strange reddish-brown under the fluorescent light. She had bitten her nails to the quick over the last few days, a terrible habit she seemed powerless to stop.

  ‘Okay. I guess that’s it then.’ She got up and stood, waiting for Lucia to move.

  ‘Do you have photo of your sister?’ asked Lucia. ‘To keep in file.’

  Edie pulled her phone out of her bag and then stopped short. ‘I don’t think I do. I cleared them all ages ago and I didn’t take any the night Laura arrived.’ She bit her lip, trying to remember why not. ‘I thought we had loads of time and so I didn’t bother.’

  ‘So if you find one bring it in to us, please.’ Lucia walked towards the door, indicating to Edie to follow her.

  ‘No, wait.’ Edie remained motionless. ‘Can’t you use one of me? We are identical – most people can’t tell us apart at all.’

  Lucia’s eyes widened as she halted and looked doubtfully back at Edie. ‘I’m not sure if we can do that. It might be considered fraudulent or unethical in some way. I’ve never encountered this particular situation before.’

  Edie folded her arms and stared at Lucia. ‘It seems like a good idea to me.’

  Lucia opened the door and ushered Edie through. ‘Okay. I will take photo but we will replace if you find one of your sister.’

  Edie skimmed through the photos on her phone to find something suitable to give to Lucia. She stopped at one, taken by Zayn soon after she had started work at the resort, and was taken aback by how different she looked then. She was pale from the winter and thin, her cheeks drawn and her eyes dull. As time had gone by, she had filled out a bit and her tan, together with her sun-lightened hair and newly alive eyes, made her appear thriving and vibrant. The modelling, with the dieting and indoor lifestyle it necessitated, had not been good for her, she could see that clearly now. And there was something about the air here, its purity as it rolled down from the mountains or in from the Adriatic, that seemed to impart health and vitality. If it hadn’t been for Laura, and the situation now, she would be entirely happy with her decision to come here, and to stay.

  Eventually she found a photo that she was happy with and gave it to Lucia to download and print out. She didn’t bother to ask whether it would be distributed to other parts of the police network as it was clear that it wouldn’t be, given the aforementioned lack of evidence of a crime.

  Stepping out of the police station onto the sun-soaked cobbles she found the old town crowded with swarms of tourists just arrived off one of the cruise ships. Cameras ever ready, they followed their cardboard-lollipop wielding guides, their carefully chosen casual clothing in linen and cotton drooping in the sweltering heat. Weaving her way through the hordes and out of the main gate, Edie made her way back to where she’d left the scooter, shoved up under a bush in an attempt to ensure that the handlebars didn’t get too hot to hold. The old ladies in the market tried to tempt her with their garden produce; heaps of sumptuous home-grown cherries and strawberries piled upon torn up cardboard boxes, enormous tomatoes with splits like crevasses built into pyramids alongside luscious bunches of fresh herbs.

  Edie ignored them all. She wanted to get back to tick off number one on her plan, and to start on numbers two and three. She’d use the same photo she’d given Lucia to make the ‘missing’ poster but she needed to create it and then ask Vuk to write the wording in the utterly incomprehensible local language, made even more complicated than any language needed to be by virtue of the fact that there were two alphabets to choose from. Latin or Cyrillic, take your pick … what was that all about? Surely one set of letters was enough? Whatever, it would be an opportunity for Vuk to show how much he cared, which if he had any sense he’d grab with both hands. And at least she’d still be doing something, so she wouldn’t look as if she didn’t care about Laura or anything like that.

  Gripping the handlebars tightly, Edie lent forward into the wind her speed created and hurtled back to the resort.

  TWELVE

  Fatima

  Ehsan found a man with a car to take them to the border. They divided the cost between them, him and Fatima. Ehsan said that as the two girls were so small, they were equivalent to his one son, so they could just halve everything. Fatima counted out the notes and gave them to him before they even left Safa’s house. The fewer people who knew where her money was kept and how much there was of it, the better. Ehsan pocketed it and left to make the arrangements with the driver. The first bit of our cash gone, thought Fatima. The first step of our journey paid for.

  Before the first light of dawn they set off in the ancient car, its seats so sagged and worn it felt as if they were touching the ground beneath. It seemed as if every other vehicle on the road was heading the same way, but Fatima was sure they couldn’t be. Not everyone was leaving. Nearly everyone, but not all.

  ‘My leg hurts,’ pronounced Marwa. And then when Fatima did not instantly react, said it again. ‘It really hurts, Mummy. I need medicine to make it all right.’

  It was what Fayed had always said if the girls had a pain or a cold or a fever. ‘You need medicine. Then you’ll be all right.’

  The cold lurch of fear, combined with a vicious stab of grief at the memory of Fayed, stirred in Fatima’s stomach. She couldn’t think of him, could not put herself face to face with her loss. If she did, she would crumble and give up. She swallowed down her despair.

  ‘Later, sweetheart,’ she said, kissing Marwa’s dark curls. ‘I’ll give you some medicine later.’

  ‘Where is Daddy?’ Perhaps her sister’s words had reminded Maryam of their father because there was her tiny, high-pitched voice ringing out above the clanking rumble of the car engine, asking the worst question, the one most guaranteed to compound Fatima’s torment. She rubbed her hands across her eyes and took a deep breath.

  ‘Daddy is in heaven, watching over us, like I told you,’ she stated, definitively. ‘Remember?’

  Unbelievably, both girls seemed to accept this apology for an explanation. Perhaps it was something in Fatima’s tone of voice that precluded further enquiry. Marwa didn’t ask about medicine again, either. This was fortunate because Fatima didn’t have any. She had not even thought about trying to procure any, had been so preoccupied with making the momentous decision to go that she’d neglected the small details that were so important when travelling with children.

  Perhaps they would be there, later. In that other country where there was no war and no bombs and no blood-chilling, heart-stopping, gut-wrenching terror. The most up-to-date information was that the border crossings were closed and being steadily fortified with hastily erec
ted razor wire and fences. As the car bounced over potholes on its shot suspension, Fatima began to feel hot and nauseous, covering her mouth with the loose end of her headscarf as if that would stop her vomiting.

  ‘We’ll get across somehow,’ Ehsan muttered, staring out of the window at the barren landscape of untended fields and desolate, bombed-out villages. Travelling anywhere these days was to run the gamut of sniper fire and air strikes, of gangs of armed bandits and religiously motivated militias. Black smoke was rising from a town in the far distance. ‘There’s always a way,’ continued Ehsan before pausing; his confidence, such as it was, faltering. ‘If only we had documents, it would be easier.’

  If only, Fatima wanted to shout out. If only! But we don’t.

  Edie

  The afternoon bar shift was tedium itself; nothing but families and screeching kids with their impatient demands for ketchup or a spare plate or whatever it was that she’d forgotten to take to their table. Edie got out of the restaurant as soon as she could, escaping before Stefan could corner her to refill the bar fridges or the beachside vending machines. Her beaten up old laptop was just up to the job of creating a template for the poster and once that was done she took it to the office to beg a favour from Ivana, to whose name Edie had added the prefix ‘evil’.

  When Edie had first arrived at the resort, Ivana had immediately made her feel small by telling her about her travel and tourism degree from some unpronounceable university in the back end of nowhere and had been disparaging to say the least about Edie’s lack of language – or any other – skills. Ivana was, of course, fluent in English, German and Russian as well as her mother tongue. Today, however, Ivana surprised Edie by being friendly and helpful; she printed off a copy of the poster in between dealing with a flurry of guest enquiries and wished her a nice day when she left. Grudgingly, Edie had to concede that she wasn’t all that bad, even if she did dress as if she were twenty-seven going on seventy.