Two Little Girls: A totally gripping psychological thriller with a twist

by Frances Vick

  ‘Here? In this house?’ Kirsty blurted.

  Angela nodded. ‘Mum sometimes told me she wasn’t. She’d say it was a dream I had, or a lie I was telling, but I always knew she was here. I knew it then and I know it now.’ She got up slowly. ‘I want to show you something. It might not still be there, but if it is…’ She walked towards the door, slow and heavy as a somnambulist. Then she was on her hands and knees, tearing up the linoleum by the door, levering up layers of it like flayed skin, until she reached the final layer – a pale patterned pink, stuck to the concrete floor – and what was there was obvious, even to Kirsty.

  A long, dragged rusty scar, one small, smudged handprint, and drops of splashed red, faint but horribly vivid. With a grunt of effort Angela pulled the lino back even further to reveal more – an oval of deeper red, almost black at the centre, a human shadow, etched in blood.

  ‘She didn’t even get rid of it,’ Angela managed.

  ‘Oh Jesus…’

  ‘Just covered it over. Layers and layers of covering up. That’s a neat metaphor, isn’t it? Can’t change anything, she has to keep it all. Mum told me she’d never been at the house, that I was making things up or forgetting things… Sometimes she told me I’d hurt her, killed her, and sometimes, even though I knew it couldn’t be true, I thought it was. That’s why I ran away from her and never came back, do you understand? But I was five!’ She looked at Kirsty, her face stained. ‘I was only five, how could I have done anything to a big girl?’ She patted the floor awkwardly, crying now. ‘And I liked her! She was nice to me. She was so nice she even gave me this ring and she told me I could keep it.’ From around her neck, she pulled out a thin silver chain, and there it was.

  ‘The snake ring…’ Kirsty whispered.

  ‘Yes! With real ruby eyes!’ Angela eyes were wet in red-rimmed sockets now. ‘I didn’t hurt her, I know I didn’t, I know it!’

  ‘Why was she here?’ Kirsty crouched down now, too, placed her own adult palm next to Lisa’s little handprint. ‘What happened to her?’

  Thirty-Two

  Marie thinks big girls are fascinating. They’re like home-grown angels. This girl smells of smoke and orange chapstick. Her cheeks are pink and her laugh is loud. She’s standing in a ring of sitting boys, and she turns, revolves slowly, wobbling like the ballerina in Marie’s musical jewellery box. From far away she’s shining, but closer you can see that she’s a bit grubby. There’s a twig in her hair and mud on her socks. The boys laugh, and it isn’t a nice laugh. Marie can tell it isn’t, but the girl doesn’t seem to notice. That’s disturbing; big girls should know more than little ones – it’s the natural order of things. The girl arouses a sense of awe tinged with protectiveness. Marie edges closer.

  The girl laughs. Shrill. One of the boys mutters, ‘Someone needs to shut that bint up, I tell you.’

  What’s a bint? Is it like the c-word? Is it as bad as that? Marie wants to ask, but at the same time doesn’t want the answer. She doesn’t want the big girl to be the c-word. Marie remembers her from the few months she went to school because she was the best skipper, and she won nearly all the races in Sports Day apart from Egg and Spoon. She has pretty hair, shiny. Marie bets it would be soft to touch, all lovely like fur.

  Some of the Bad Lot Boys who hang around the youth club don’t like her. What’s she doing here? They chase her, and say mean things but it doesn’t work. The girl stays. The boys are drinking lager from big gold cans, and the more they drink the less they chase her away. They laugh when the girl asks for a sip, laugh when she coughs and chokes, laugh while they pound her on the back and offer her more. She twirls and dances and asks for another sip and Marie notices, with relief, that they aren’t mean-laughing any more, and that means they like her. Marie feels very strongly that the big girl must be liked because she’s tried so hard and deserves to be rewarded.

  Marie is in the park today because Uncle Mervyn is away. He won’t be back for a while. How long? Just a while, I said! Mum answers. Will he be back for EastEnders? If it’s still on in eight months, maybe. She’s angry with Uncle Mervyn and says it’s not fair that she has to pick up the pieces just ’cause Mervyn can’t keep his mouth shut and Marie doesn’t know what this means, but it’s best not to ask. All she knows is that, since Mervyn’s been away, Mum has had to spend a lot of time dragging things out of the youth club and taking them back home. She needs to sell them, she says. Marie can come too so long as she doesn’t-make-a-nuisance-of-herself, and stays-out-of-the-way. She makes sure she follows these stern instructions because she likes being in the park because she gets to see people, listen to them, and that’s good, better than being in the house alone because the house is scary when you’re alone.

  The big girl sips sips sips out of the golden cans like a little hummingbird, and the boys are getting rowdier. They ask her to strip. It’s a joke, Marie can tell, because they laugh, but the girl doesn’t laugh, instead she starts taking her skirt off. Marie knows this is a Bad Thing to Do, and she almost runs forward to say so, but then one of the Bad Lot Boys says, ‘She’s Bryan’s sister, though. Fucking be careful, ’cause she’s Bryan’s sister.’ And they tell her to put her skirt back on. The Bad Lot Boys seem scared of this boy Bryan, and this pleases Marie because it means that the big girl has Someone to Protect Her. Over the last hour it’s become clear to Marie that the big girl shouldn’t be here, and that she isn’t actually that big. With every sip from the gold cans, she looks younger and younger. But that’s all right, because when Bryan gets there, he’ll take her home and tell her off in a fierce protective way before giving her a rough hug and vowing to Find Those Boys and Make Them Pay. Marie knows that’s what big brothers do because she’s seen it on telly.

  But Bryan turns out to be a very disappointing big brother. He’s not even that big. Marie notes with disdain his narrow shoulders, his little caved-in chest; she winces when he says bad words. Really bad words – even the Bad Lot Boys seem a bit shocked. He’s angry with the big girl, but not because he’s protective but because he wants her to go away. She’s embarrassing, he says, but Marie hears something else underneath his words too – he’s showing off in front of the others, and she gets a sudden, unwelcome, flash of adult comprehension; she sees that Bryan is a fool and always will be, that the big girl isn’t afraid of him even though she pretends to be, that she pretends to be because she thinks they like it… What did that mean?… Marie can almost hear her thoughts, smell them, taste them, and when she closes her eyes, the vast swarm of drunken, scribbly little-girl ideas invades her.

  The big girl is little… little like Marie but Marie knows that she will get larger, that her thoughts will expand, while the big girl will stay just like this forever and ever. Marie gropes along the edges of the feeling, looking for a trap door, a future for the girl. Her head feels hot and full and… she doesn’t have the words to explain it, even to herself. Mum hates her being like this – she says she looks gormless and floppy, like someone turned her off at the mains, but it doesn’t feel like that at all. It feels like the opposite – that every fibre, nerve and synapse inside her has been plugged into the mains and this energy, all the energy in the world it seems, has to somehow be contained in her small, fragile form.

  This has been happening more and more recently, and when it does she sleeps for a long time afterwards, still as a carved thing on a tomb, and when she wakes she – mercifully – remembers very little.

  Marie is called into the club then, and Mum gives her a bag of crisps and lets her watch the little black and white portable telly in the back room while she goes back home for the truck.

  ‘And don’t give me that look either!’ she tells Marie. ‘I can drive perfectly well without a licence, and how else am I meant to get these things back home?’

  Should she answer? Is it the kind of question that needs an answer? Marie is still half in the fog of the big girl’s mind, so she might have missed the cues… but Mum leaves without scolding her.


  ‘You can have another bag of crisps if you want and there’s a can of pop in the fridge. I won’t be long.’

  But she’s gone for a long time, long enough to watch The Muppet Show all the way through and have three bags of crisps, long enough to get scared and cold. When she hears the little scrabbling knock on the door, she feels relief. But it isn’t Mum. It’s the big girl.

  Thirty-Three

  ‘She felt sick,’ Angela said. They were sitting in the little dining room now, the same room where Sylvia had read Kirsty’s cards that first time. ‘And she was sick. All that Special Brew. I held her hair away from her face.’

  ‘Was she hurt? Scared? Was Bryan still there?’

  ‘She wasn’t hurt or scared. After she’d been sick I gave her some lemonade and a bag of crisps.’ Angela smiled to herself. Her face was losing years, by the minute. Kirsty had the strange sensation that she was simultaneously both here and then in some trance-like no-man’s land of present memory. She closed her eyes. ‘She asked me something that I didn’t know how to answer. I’d never thought of it before.’

  ‘What did she ask?’

  ‘She asked me if I had a best friend.’

  Marie almost says No. Then she remembers her sisters. ‘Four of them,’ she says. ‘Ruby, Jade, Sophie and Lily. But they’re all angels now.’

  The big girl nods sagely. ‘I believe in angels, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘Like that song? That old Abba song?’

  ‘I don’t know that song.’

  ‘Everyone knows that song! Come here, I’ll sing it for you!’ And the big girl puts her arms around Marie, pats her head, and they rock gently from side to side and the big girl hums and sings half-remembered lyrics in a cracked falsetto and Marie is… Marie is so…

  ‘Happy,’ Angela breathes. ‘I wasn’t scared any more. And what was in her head didn’t scare me any more. She was like my sister, or an angel. She was someone who wasn’t meant to be here for long. She was like a gift.’

  ‘Here’s what we’re going to be called. Lisa – that’s me – and Kirsty – that’s my best friend. Angels Times Two. Angels Times Two, get it? ’Cause there’s two of us? And here’s our song words…’ Lisa’s fingers are moving quickly over the book, flipping pages, scurrying down lines. ‘And, look! Here’s our logo – see? Two angels—’

  ‘You’re kissing.’

  ‘When angels kiss it’s not like proper kissing though,’ Lisa explains. ‘It’s more… Have you ever kissed a boy?’

  Marie almost laughs. ‘No!’

  Lisa opens her mouth, closes it, then cocks her head to the side, as if listening to some internal voice.

  ‘Me neither,’ she says. Then she gives a little flustered laugh, and Marie feels her emotions – embarrassment, fear, shame. ‘Do you think lying is wrong?’

  ‘Yes.’ This is one of the very few things in life Marie is absolutely sure of. ‘Telling lies is bad.’

  ‘I told my best friend a lie,’ Lisa confides after a pause. ‘I told her I kissed a boy and did other things with him. A man really. And I said I was married.’

  Marie can’t help laughing. It was so silly! It was such a delightfully silly thing for a big girl to do! ‘What did you do that for?’

  Lisa looks taken aback, then she starts laughing too. ‘I don’t know! I thought it was fun, and then I just carried on!’

  ‘You can’t be married!’ Marie tells her sensibly. ‘You’re a kid!’

  ‘I know!’ Lisa, still laughing, frowns. ‘I don’t know why I said it! I told her I was a princess and this was my engagement ring, look.’ She thrusts her index finger out. ‘I said it was from Oman but really I got it on the market.’

  ‘Where’s Oman?’

  ‘I don’t know! I just said it and then I carried on saying it.’ She isn’t laughing any more. ‘And now my friend’s mad with me ’cause she knows I lied.’

  Marie’s mind gropes for something helpful, finds it in Lisa’s own mind. ‘But you’re Best Friends Forever. I know you are.’

  Lisa looks at her sharply and Marie knows that she’s scared her… I’ve scared her because I knew what to say and now she’ll hate me and…

  ‘You’re right. We are Best Friends Forever,’ Lisa says. ‘We are, aren’t we? And I mean, she already knows I’ve lied, doesn’t she? What if I just went to see her now and explained it and promised not to do it again? That’d make it all right again, wouldn’t it?’

  And it should be simple to answer; one pert little nod and that would be it, but Marie can’t because Lisa’s words aren’t like normal words that unspool in the crowded present and run towards the empty future in a straight line. With words like that, all you had to do was follow the thread to see the results, but… but… it wasn’t like that this time. There was nothing to follow, nothing to pull on. The words were going nowhere. What did that mean? Where was her future? Marie shivers then, as if the cold dark from outside was inside and the dark would take her new friend and take her soon. The idea is so huge, so inevitable that Marie begins to shake. Lisa takes off her jacket, puts it around Marie’s shoulders, and leads her into the back room, back to the TV and the half-eaten bags of crisps, and she fusses around, playing the role of Nurse, and Marie wants to tell her to stop acting now, because now is the time to be serious, now is the time to take care and watch out and keep her wits about her, keep safe, be careful.

  ‘Look what I found!’ Lisa pulls a bottle of brown liquid out of a cupboard. There are cobwebs in her hair. ‘Brandy! Brandy’s good when you’re poorly. Have some brandy!’ And she pours a little into the screw cap and passes it to Marie.

  It’s sour fire and it makes her gag. It makes Lisa gag too, but she manages a bigger swig from the bottle itself, and then another. Then she takes her ring off with a wobbly flourish. ‘You can have this.’

  Marie’s head is fuzzy. It seems like a very bad idea to take the ring. She doesn’t want the ring. ‘No thank you.’

  Lisa is hurt. ‘Why not? Go on, take it.’

  And Marie doesn’t like to hurt people’s feelings, and so she does take it, but it feels nasty in her hand, heavy and hot, a burden. Her mind, so young, struggles to understand itself, until a voice – a feeling really – tells her not to worry, that someday she’ll understand what this means and how things came to be. She thinks of this voice as Lily’s. Lily is stronger than her.

  ‘I’m going to go to Kirsty’s now.’ Lisa takes the coat back, puts the notebook in the pocket. Then she picks up the bottle. ‘Can I take this too?’

  ‘It’s Uncle Mervyn’s though.’

  ‘He’s locked up in prison! He won’t miss it. And I did give you my ring… It’s got real rubies for eyes!’

  ‘He’s not in prison!’ Marie feels scalding humiliation.

  Lisa hesitates then and frowns, as if she, too, is consulting the advice of some inner older sister. ‘No. You’re right, he’s not. I’m thinking of someone else,’ she says kindly.

  ‘He’s on holiday!’ Marie whispers, knowing it isn’t true.

  ‘And he’ll be having a lovely time too, I bet,’ Lisa tells her. ‘Maybe he’s swimming with dolphins? I’ve heard of people doing that. Maybe he’s riding on their backs!’

  Marie giggles, imagining Uncle Mervyn with his long sloping belly and his skinny little arms, hanging onto a dolphin for dear life. ‘That’s silly!’

  ‘Or maybe he’s riding camels in the desert. Camels fart all the time!’ Lisa waves her hand under her nose.

  ‘Ew!’ Marie is delighted now. She kicks her legs and wraps her arms around herself happily. ‘Where else could he be?’

  ‘A gold mine in America? Maybe for a present he’ll bring you back a nugget of gold.’

  ‘What’s a nugget?’

  ‘It’s like a brick. I think.’ Lisa puts the bottle in her school bag. ‘Where’s your mum anyway?’

  ‘Home?’

  Lisa looks around the darkened club. ‘I don’t like leaving y
ou here by yourself. You should phone her.’

  ‘We don’t have a phone at home.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure she’ll be back soon—’

  ‘I don’t want you to go,’ Marie tells her suddenly, desperately. I’m not afraid of being alone, she wants to say, I’m always alone; I just don’t want you to be alone! I have to stay with you, to protect you. Out loud she says, ‘Can I come with you?’

  ‘Won’t your mum be back soon?’

  ‘Please let me come with you?’

  And Lisa puts out one hand. ‘OK. We’ll go to Kirsty’s. They have a car and they’ll drive you home. Kirsty’s got a baby sister too and maybe you can play with her. But…’ Lisa beckons impishly and Marie leans in, smiling. Lisa’s breath smells of brandy, and up close her face is dirty, and there are spots under her skin and her eyes are a little bit unfocused. ‘She poos her pants all the time!’

  ‘Ew!’ cries Marie delightedly.

  Lisa, equally delighted, nods. ‘I know!’ She takes Marie’s hand then. ‘Ready?’ When their hands touch, Marie tries extra hard not to feel Lisa’s strange emptiness. She holds on tight, as if to squeeze extra life into her. ‘I know a short-cut to Kwik Save, and Kirsty lives close to Kwik Save. We’ll be there in ten minutes,’ Lisa says briskly.