Too Close: A twisted psychological thriller that's not for the faint-hearted!

by Gayle Curtis

  ‘You’re up late.’ She sniffed through her tears.

  ‘Night owl, always have been.’

  Caroline nodded, tears beginning to streak her face.

  ‘What’s wrong, beautiful?’

  ‘It’s my grandmother’s funeral tomorrow and I didn’t even know her. I feel sad about that.’

  Sebastian clenched his jaw and started rolling himself a cigarette.

  ‘You need to understand that your mother is ill . . . she always has been . . .’ He took a deep breath, feeling the draught lift. ‘A bit highly strung.’

  ‘Is that why you don’t get on anymore? Mum keeps telling me you’re both very different people.’

  ‘We’re not different at all. Underneath it all, we’re the same. Where she’s highly strung, I have accentuated emotions in another area. I wouldn’t call that different; I just pour my passions into my art. We think and feel the same, it’s just that sometimes your mum likes to convince herself she’s an individual . . . and she’s not. It’s not possible to be when you’re a twin . . . you know that.’ He offered her a cigarette.

  ‘Yes . . . yes, I do. I miss her terribly. No one understands, they just say that time will heal and I’ll come to terms with it. But I won’t. I don’t think I’ll ever feel the same again. I don’t think I want to.’ Caroline tapped her forefinger on the table and Sebastian noticed her shift in her chair and lay the cigarette she was holding down on the table and repeat the action with the other hand – an obsession with symmetry that they shared.

  ‘How long have you been doing that?’ He nodded to her hands.

  ‘What?’ She quickly pulled them from the table, hiding her embarrassment.

  ‘I just watched you tap both hands on the table.’

  She sipped the tea he’d poured and he could see she was wondering whether to confide in him or not.

  ‘I’ve always done it . . . more so when I’m anxious. Lydia was the same.’

  ‘Me too. It must run in the family.’

  ‘Really?!’

  He nodded. Caroline’s eyes lit up, the beautiful green eyes he so desperately wanted to draw as he had done only earlier that day.

  ‘Do you have to do everything twice, so it’s equal? Like when you scratch, say . . . your ear, you have to do the other one?’

  ‘Yes! And then sometimes again with the opposite hands.’

  ‘Ah, a kindred spirit.’ Sebastian lit his cigarette.

  ‘Does it really run in the family? Me and Lydia thought it was normal until we realised our friends didn’t do it.’

  He laughed. ‘You don’t want to be like everyone else, do you, Caroline?’

  ‘No.’ She looked down at her lap.

  ‘Come on, time for bed. We’ve got a long day tomorrow.’

  ‘Thanks for letting me stay. Where am I going to sleep?’

  ‘You can have my bed and I’ll sleep on a sofa in one of the other rooms.’ He could have slept in Yvonne’s bed but that felt strange to him so soon after her death and he wanted to be as close to Caroline as he possibly could.

  ‘Oh, no, I couldn’t do that.’

  ‘It’s clean, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

  ‘No! I just don’t want to throw you out of your bed, that’s all.’

  ‘Conceited little thing, aren’t you? I often sleep in other rooms of the house, sometimes down here in the chair. Us creatives don’t need much rest.’ He reached across to the desk drawer behind him, rummaging for his sleeping tablets.

  ‘Here, take one of these, it’ll help you sleep.’

  Caroline hesitated. He could see she was still unsure whether she could trust him, balancing on the tight rope of Cecelia’s opinions.

  ‘I’m not going to poison you. The doctor gives them to me for my insomnia.’ The contradiction in what he’d just said was lost on her. ‘They’ll calm you and give you a good night’s rest. You’ll feel better, I promise.’

  Caroline took one and drank it down with her tea.

  ‘Keep it to yourself though. I shouldn’t share my prescriptions with anyone.’

  She nodded at him and he held her gaze for a brief moment. Flashes of times with Cecelia scorched through his mind, memories of when they’d been children and just like Caroline and Lydia.

  ‘Right, come on, I’ll show you where to go. Do you want one of my T-shirts to sleep in?’

  ‘Oh . . . yes please, I didn’t bring anything with me.’

  Sebastian checked his watch. Caroline would be asleep in approximately fifteen minutes.

  Once she was in bed, he sat with her, holding her hand, offering her comfort in the dead man’s hour. This was the time Sebastian enjoyed the most – when he could feel the stillness and the full force of the low ebb. A strange period during the night, where the frail didn’t survive and the insomniacs couldn’t relax, he would allow himself to slip beneath the miasma and watch Caroline as she slept, becoming his sea horse, his beautiful, symmetrical other.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Freshly showered, Cecelia sat in the garden room, a cold cup of tea welded to her hands, she’d held it for so long. Even the hot water hadn’t warmed her perished skin and as well as looking pale, she felt it too, a diluted version of her original self.

  Through the long glass door, she could see Samuel in the distance under the pergola, resurrecting their daughter’s grave. She uncurled her hands from the cup and placed it down on the coffee table. The noise seemed to be far louder than necessary and she flinched. Examining her hands now, she tried desperately to remember digging at the grave, but nothing came to mind. In her head were only images of Sebastian and Yvonne, but her hands were scratched and sore and her fingernails still held remnants of mud. Picking at them so hard she made them bleed and at one point she thought she’d lift the nails off, so desperate was she to erase the traces.

  The decision to have Lydia buried in the garden had been solely hers – Samuel had been too grief stricken to give much input. She had to be close to her, know she was near her in the garden.

  There was a circular patch of flowers in the spot where Lydia had liked to sit cross-legged, reading a book. For some reason, daisies had always grown there spontaneously and Cecelia had told Lydia that it was because they liked the special little girl who sat there. But one day Cecelia had come home from work to find Samuel filling up a large swimming pool he’d had delivered, covering the beautiful grass where the daisies had grown. Once the girls had grown bored with the pool and Cecelia had convinced Samuel to dismantle and sell the damn thing, the grass had rejuvenated, but the flowers had never grown back. After Lydia had died, Cecelia had dug out a circular patch and planted all types of daisies on it, imagining Lydia sitting there as she always had done, lost in a story.

  Samuel had added a bench as a memorial, an idea Cecelia had found abhorrent at the time. But now, it mostly offered her great comfort, except today.

  The high-sided blue pool loomed in her memory. There had always been too many children in there. Too many legs and arms flailing around, little people squealing – she’d been constantly petrified something would happen to one of them. How ironic it was that she’d never thought of losing her daughter in the way she had done.

  It was her fault. She knew that. She’d been unable to explain to the rest of her family what had happened that day outside the school, the shock temporarily erasing her voice. When it did return, she repeated the events over and over again, as if saying it out loud would reverse what had happened. They’d promised one another they’d always watch their precious girls, never take their eyes off them, make sure they were safe at all times. And yet, through all this worry, Cecelia had managed to kill one of them.

  And still, all these years on she couldn’t bear to talk of Lydia in the past tense. Everyone had said to keep her memory alive and that’s exactly what Cecelia was doing. She continued to talk of Caroline and Lydia as she’d always done, watching her grow in her imagination as Caro
line was doing in reality. She’d even altered her bedroom in accordance with her age. But her little spirit pulled her back, constantly haunted her, looking exactly the same as she had that day, undeveloped since her ninth birthday. The memory of her lying in the road was constantly there, picture perfect in her mind; hitting the bonnet, the ground, the sound of the brakes screeching. Lydia was pulling her back, wanting Cecelia to see her as she was when she left. Cecelia realised that now. And she could also see how Caroline had suffered, Samuel too, but she’d been blanketed in her own grief, selfishly wrapping herself in its shroud.

  Parents had stopped their children coming to play at Cecelia’s house and they hardly ever had visitors. Cecelia had thought at first that it was because they were embarrassed, lost for words. Then she realised they were frightened, scared their own children would meet a nasty fate. You can’t go to the undertaker’s house – they’re cursed, it’s a dangerous place. All sorts of cruel words bounced around her house at that time. That Cecelia had been drinking, that she hadn’t been paying attention to the road, talking on her phone. None of these rumours had been true; she just hadn’t seen her daughter run out in front of her. She didn’t even register it was her until she stepped out of the car.

  Cecelia had been caught up in these cruel words as though she was entangled in a large fishing net, so much so that she couldn’t see, hadn’t seen that there was another little sea horse sinking towards the sand at the bottom of the ocean.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  It was the knocking at the front door that stirred Sebastian from the chair where he was sleeping lightly. He hadn’t left Caroline’s side and had watched her sleeping for most of the night.

  Running down the steep staircase in just his shorts, he wrenched the door open to Ava. He didn’t want to see her and the draught reached his throat before he could control it.

  ‘It’s not a good day to call.’ He pushed the door to close it but her hand stopped his efforts.

  ‘I know what day it is – you told me last night, remember? I wanted you to have these.’ She handed him a bunch of cream roses. ‘You went out late last night, everything OK?’

  ‘Just fancied a walk, I needed to clear my head.’

  The draught was accelerating and a vision of her hanging from a noose, a wooden chair lying on its side beneath her slowly swaying body clouded his vision. It wasn’t beyond his grasp to make the image reality.

  ‘Look Ava, I like you a lot but I don’t need someone questioning my movements every minute of the day.’

  She held up her hand to silence him.

  ‘Please don’t. I understand, you don’t need to explain, I get it . . . I wasn’t checking up on you, I was concerned, that’s all. You’re right, it is none of my business what you do. I was just trying to be a friend.’

  Sebastian nodded and closed the door. He just wanted her to leave him alone today. When she showed concern, it irritated him. He knew that was why relationships went wrong, when one felt they had a claim over the other. He wanted her to accept what they had instead of trying to push things all the time, sending them back to the start. He needed to concentrate on Caroline for the time being. His beautiful, symmetrical, utterly perfect Caroline.

  Laying the flowers on the table in the sitting room, he made a pot of tea and took two cups up to the bedroom; he wanted to be there when Caroline woke up.

  Unfortunately, Ava had ruined that moment for him because she was already awake.

  Leaning over her, he straightened her ruffled hair and then kissed her on each cheek; her eyes were squinting, heavy with sleep, showing two slithers of green crystal.

  ‘I feel dreadful, not sure sleeping tablets agree with me.’

  ‘Takes a while to get used to them and your body probably needs more rest. You slept well though.’

  He sat down in the chair as she tried to pull herself up in the bed.

  ‘Did you stay there all night?’

  ‘Yes. I wanted to make sure you were all right.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Caroline reached for the tea cup he’d placed on the small table beside her.

  ‘Once you’ve had some breakfast, I’ll take you back so you can get ready for the funeral.’

  ‘I don’t really want to go back.’ Her voice was croaky, still cranking itself forward.

  ‘Well, you don’t have any clothes here, so you have to.’

  ‘If I did have my stuff here, would you let me stay?’

  Sebastian rested an elbow on each knee and clasped his hands together.

  ‘Is it really that bad at home?’ he asked, already knowing the answer.

  Caroline clasped her tea cup even harder and blew on the steaming hot drink. He could watch her for hours, every movement she made, like a never-ending film. All the years he’d missed with Cecelia were rushing up to greet him now that he was with Caroline.

  ‘It’s never been OK really. I used to think it all went wrong after Lydia died but now, when I look back, I can see things weren’t right way before then. Mum was always preoccupied; do you know what I mean?’

  He nodded, lifting the heels of his feet onto the chair, wrapping his arms around his legs, childlike, as he always did when there was any talk of Cecelia.

  ‘Sounds exactly like my mother . . .’

  ‘She’s always called that house her sanctuary, but it was more like a prison. We weren’t allowed to go out anywhere – not to friends’ houses, the park, anything like that. We had to stay in the garden and friends had to come to us.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because she was frightened something would happen to us. She was always taking us to the doctors as well, demanding we have tests, although I’ve never worked out why. I used to think it was normal until I realised my friends weren’t up the doctor’s every five minutes. Madness, when you think about what happened to Lydia . . . her involvement in it.’

  ‘I guess some of that is to do with everything that happened.’

  ‘I can see that now she’s told me. But we didn’t know any of it at the time. Didn’t know we had an uncle or another set of grandparents – we didn’t think to ask. I didn’t even know what happened to her mother until she told me about you . . . I kind of remember her from when I was younger when we stayed here for a bit, but she never told us who Yvonne was.’

  ‘Do you know why you came to stay here back then?’

  ‘Mum and Dad needed a break from one another, that’s all I know. They’ve never really got on, not that I remember anyway. We were pleased to have Eleanor, Dad’s mum, with us.’

  ‘I don’t think a relationship with anyone was ever going to work for Cecelia.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Caroline frowned, causing Sebastian to reach forward and iron out the crevices with his thumb.

  ‘Don’t spoil your beautiful face.’ He relaxed back in the chair, crossing his legs. There was no need to throw her any bait, he already had her. ‘Your mum never really talked about Roger’s death, didn’t seem to grieve over him. I think it affected her much more than she let on and she couldn’t really interact properly with anyone except me afterwards.’

  ‘She hated him, didn’t she? Roger, I mean. And Yvonne left too – it must have been hard.’

  ‘I think your mum was convinced Yvonne would take us with her and when she didn’t, well . . . she couldn’t cope with it. The truth that she’d left her behind was too much to bear.’

  Caroline raised her head as if in agreement.

  ‘To be honest, I don’t take too much notice of what she says . . . Mum hasn’t been able to work out what’s real and what’s imaginary for quite some time.’

  Sebastian held his breath, willing her to go on, but she just stared into her cup.

  ‘It must have been really difficult after Lydia died?’

  Tears became visible on the rims of her eyes and he felt the draught stirring, a desire to hold her so tightly she might stop breathing gripped him, but he stayed where he was.

&nb
sp; ‘I went to live with Eleanor, in her side of the house for a while – Dad was struggling with Lydia’s death, and he and Mum just weren’t getting on. It affected Mum badly. She ended up on heavy medication and I didn’t go back to stay with them for over three years. Sounds silly because it was only the other side of the house but it felt like I was somewhere completely different. I think that’s why Mum and I don’t get on now.’ She put her cup down on the bedside table, breathing out deeply, as though she was cooling her face, causing her fringe to flicker as she desperately tried to hold back the tears. ‘She was like a stranger to me and we never got our relationship back. It was like going to stay with a foster parent . . . not that I know what that’s like but I can imagine. It was just weird . . . all weird . . . we had to pretend Lydia was still alive, like it had never happened.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Oh, you know, making birthday cakes for her, decorating her room when mine was changed . . . that kind of thing.’ She sighed. ‘Have you got anything I can take? I feel dreadful.’

  Sebastian looked at her enquiringly.

  ‘Something to pick me up?’

  Sebastian breathed in deeply through his nose and turned to look out of the window, giving himself time to think.

  ‘I’ve done it before.’

  ‘Done what before?’

  ‘You know . . . a line.’ A small smile lifted her symmetrical lips. ‘Come on Uncle Sebastian, I know you do it, I’ve seen inside that box you have on the table in your bedroom. I looked when you were running your bath yesterday.’

  ‘It’s one thing me doing it, quite another for you.’

  ‘I won’t tell anyone. Come on, it’ll make me better. I can’t go to my grandmother’s funeral feeling like this. It’s probably just what you need as well.’ She stretched her arms above her head and leant one way, then the other.