Mum sits at the kitchen table, ignoring Agnes’s Chihuahua yapping at her heels. She doesn’t seem to notice me as I step through the door.
Agnes turns to me. “Would you like a cup of tea?”
“I couldn’t. It’s late, and we’ve already woken you. I’m so sorry to have put you out like this.”
“Sophie, love, I’m eighty-two. I don’t sleep much these days, anyway. In fact, most nights I wake up and end up doing my ironing.” She chuckles. “Have you been okay recently? I don’t want to sound like one of those nosy neighbours, but you don’t seem yourself, and that little nurse hasn’t been round as much.”
“Thank you for asking.” I clear my throat, hoping that the wobble in my voice wasn’t noticeable. “We’re fine, really. Things have been difficult recently. Mum hasn’t been herself. I should get her home and to bed. Thanks again for everything you’ve done. Mum, come on. It’s time to go home.”
But Mum sucks through her teeth to make a tsk sound. “You were always the bad one, Becca. Why can’t you be more like Sophie?”
“I am Sophie, Mum.” I smile at Agnes to try to ease the tension. She glances away, trying to give us space, but before that I spot a glint of pity in her eyes.
“You’re not Sophie,” Mum says.
Reaching the end of my patience, I take hold of Mum’s arm, more roughly than I intended to, and pull her up from the chair. Without saying anything more, I lead my mother out of Agnes’s house and back to ours.
The door is still wide open, and the echo of the shadowy figure seems to fill the entire house. I bolt the door behind me. I think we both feel, in that silence, that the essence of the house has changed irrevocably. I know, deep down, that once I remember it all, we can never go back to how things were. We regard each other and the silent house. This is it.
London, November, 1985
This isn’t our garden. It’s colder here. The grass is soft and spongy under my shoes. I’m waiting for Mum to come back. She’s been in this strange house for a long time.
I’m glad my shadow decided to come along too. I like having the shadow around. It makes me feel better, and I don’t hurt as much as I used to. The only thing I don’t like about the shadow is that it never talks back. I want it to more than anything, but it won’t.
One, two, now you.
Silence.
Oh, well. I suppose I should do it myself.
“I dare you to hold a slug for two seconds. Okay, Sophie, here goes.” I lift the fat, slimy body and place it on my palm. “One, two, now you.” I pass the slug towards my shadow, but it doesn’t hold out its hand. “I’ll be brave for both of us, then. One, two. Now it’s four.” I throw the slug back onto the grass and shake my hand. “Yuk!”
There’s the sound of a door opening behind me.
“Mummy!” I call. “I’m playing dares with my shadow, like I used to with—”
“Stop that.” She strides over towards me in the way I don’t like. “There’s no shadow. Stop doing this.” Her face is red and angry when she leans over and presses it towards mine. I shrink away, wishing I was the slug right now. I want to cry, but I won’t. That only makes her shout more.
“I’ve sorted it,” she says. “We’re leaving.”
“Are we going home now? I’m cold. I like the slugs and my shadow, but I don’t like the cold here.”
“We’re leaving home as well. We’re going someplace new.” She takes hold of my arm and pulls me towards the gate.
“Will it be warmer there?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. You’ll have to wait and see.”
“Is Becca coming with us?”
Mum stops dead. Her face pales and her fingers tighten around my arms. “Becca is dead.”
I don’t like it when she says that. It makes me want to cry.
“Don’t ever talk about Becca again.” Her eyes are so hard that I’m more afraid of her than ever before.
I don’t want to stop talking about Becca. But maybe if I do, Mummy will like me again.
Chapter Twenty
It’s the first time I’ve remembered anything from that far back in a long time. It popped into my mind as I was warming milk on the stove. I glance over at Mum sitting quietly at the table. She has her jigsaw puzzle in front of her again. I moved it from the sofa for her to work on with more space, but she hasn’t made much progress over the last few days. Her eyes are unfocussed as she holds a piece between her fingers.
She will always be the same mother I saw in my memory, at least to me. She will always evoke a certain amount of guilt and fear from me. I can never erase the screaming, the manipulation, and the psychological cruelty that I now recognise for what it is, but she is changing slowly into a child with her illness, and I don’t know which version of her is worse.
“Are you hungry?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer. I pour the milk into a mug and retrieve a pack of chocolate digestive biscuits from the cupboard. I take both to the table and sit down opposite her.
“Mum, I made you warm milk. Let it cool for a few minutes, okay?”
She nods, but I’m not convinced that she registered what I said.
I slam my hand down on the table. “Are you doing all this to drive me insane?” I blurt out. “Is it all you? Is this an act? Did you send that email to Erin? Did you cut up my clothes and drink the bleach on purpose?”
She stares at me again. Her eyes are slowly coming back into focus. Her expression changes from fear to confusion and then slight defiance. That’s when I know she’s coming back from the fogginess of her Alzheimer’s.
“Mum, who is Becca?” I ask.
“I don’t know.” She squares her jaw and folds her arms.
“You’ve called me Becca three or four times now. You can’t keep pretending that you don’t know who she is. She’s someone from your past, isn’t she?”
“Becca is dead.” She turns away, still with her arms folded across her chest.
“Okay, that’s progress. But why do you keep calling me Becca? You know my name. I’m your daughter. I’m Sophie.”
“Sophie is dead.”
I let out a groan in frustration. “No, I am not. I’m right here. I’m Sophie! Look at me, Mum. Tell me what you’re playing at. Is this all to punish me? Haven’t I lived up to whatever ridiculous standard you set for me? Did I frighten away your many boyfriends with my mere existence? Am I too ugly to be your daughter?”
“Stop it! Stop saying these things.”
“Then tell me who Becca is!”
For the first time in a very long time, Mum’s eyes fill with tears. I’ve seen her cry before, but it’s usually in the midst of a guilt trip, when she’s claiming that I want her dead, or I want to leave her. I’ve never seen her cry like this—quietly and reluctantly—as though she’s trying hard not to open a part of her she’s had locked up for years.
“I can’t tell you.”
She’s not going to tell me, at least not like this. I get up from the kitchen table, leaving her to the unfinished jigsaw, and make my way up to her room. Then I open the blanket box at the end of the bed and begin my search.
“What are you doing? That’s private. Those are my private things.”
Mum has followed me up to her room. When she sees that I’m searching through her things, she rushes to stop me. Her fingernails scratch against my arms as she tries to claw me away from the box. I push her aside and continue pulling letters, old documents and biscuit tins out of the box. I open the tins and throw the contents onto the carpet, spreading them out as Mum tries to snatch some of the papers away. She kneels on the floor opposite me, snarling and shouting. But I am a different woman now. I am a woman who needs answers, who is determined to understand what is happening to her—and what happened to her in the past. I will not be bullied. I will not be deterred. I am the immovable object that my mother has never encountered before in her life.
“What’s in this locked box?” I ask, holding it up.
This box provokes an even stronger reaction from her. She flies towards me. Batting away her hand, I throw the box onto the floor with as much force as I can. The flimsy old lock springs open, spilling photographs onto the carpet. Mum lets out a high-pitched noise from her throat and frantically searches through the contents. She snatches up as many of the pictures as she can, but it’s too late. I’ve seen them.
I’ve seen the two children that feature in every single one.
I lift a photo from the floor, and a wave of emotion passes over me. My throat closes with the unspoken scream clogged there.
Now I know.
Now I remember.
London, September, 1985
It’s not too far home. We can walk there in ten minutes. I’m sure of it. At least, I keep telling myself that.
Today, at school, Mrs. Ellis got us mixed up again. But that’s okay; everyone gets us mixed up. Sometimes I feel like I get mixed up, too. I get called Sophie and Becca all the time.
There’s only one person who never gets us mixed up. She always knows who I am. That’s Mum.
Mum forgot to pick us up from school today, but it’s okay. We can walk home.
We managed to sneak out before the teachers held us back. We don’t like waiting in the classroom with the teachers. We know that it gets Mummy in trouble. She’s probably still at work or with Simon, her new boyfriend, who she says is definitely not our new daddy. I keep asking when we’re going to get a proper new daddy, but she says that if we hadn’t driven the other one to his death, we wouldn’t need a new daddy. I suppose she’s right.
It’s colder today. I think Mum forgot to put our warm coats on this morning. She forgot to pack our Penguin biscuits, too. And my sandwich didn’t have butter on. I think Mum is still sad about Dad. She keeps forgetting lots of things. Sometimes she forgets to wake us up for school. Sometimes she forgets to pay the bills as well. There was a man who came to the house and took our television. Mum threw her slippers at him, but he still took the TV, and now we can’t watch Coronation Street.
Even though it’s a bit cold, it’s still quite sunny, and the leaves are going golden. I like it when they fall from the trees and you can throw them at people. My legs are tired, but we only have the park and then the street home.
“Does it look dark?” I whisper.
But she doesn’t hear. She’s leading me, like she always does. She says that I’m her shadow. That makes me feel good and bad. I like being close to her, but I don’t know if I always want to follow her. When we’re together, it feels like we’re one person. SophieBeccaSophieBecca. It’s good-bad. Maybe I need to be alone sometimes.
“Hey, cutie pies.”
She stops before I do. She turns around first. I would have kept walking, but she stops.
“Who are you?” she asks. She’s always the one who talks first. That’s one of the reasons why I get so confused when people mix us up. She’s always the one who talks first.
“I’m a friend of your mum’s. She said she was running late and I was to come pick you up. Look, I brought lollipops. They’re strawberry. Your favourite.”
The man is tall and wide and his eyes are like dirty pebbles. I’ve never seen him before, and I don’t believe he is Mum’s friend, but I can tell Becca wants the lollipop because she’s pulling me towards him…
Chapter Twenty-One
That was the last time I saw my twin sister Becca. The man snatched her, and I tugged and tugged at her hand. When I lost her hand, I tried to grasp her hair, but he pulled her away, shoving his grubby hand over her mouth. I stood there and I watched him run away with her in his arms. The strawberry lollipop fell onto the grass. I carried her hair in my fist all the way home and told Mum what had happened.
“I was her shadow,” I say. The photograph in my hand is of the two of us, arms entwined, sat on the sofa like it was any other day. “I followed her around. She was always the leader.”
“What do you remember?” Mum asks.
“I remember the park. I remember running home in tears. I remember the weeks afterwards with the police tramping through our house with their big boots. I remember crying myself to sleep every night. I remember that after she was snatched, I started talking to my own shadow, because it was the closest thing I had to her. Why did I forget all of this?”
“Because you were so young. It was probably so painful.”
“Is that why we moved? To get away from the memories?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“Is she… is she dead?” I ask.
“I don’t know.”
The room is silent. I begin picking up other photographs of the two of us together. Here are our baby pictures. Here are our toddler photographs. Here we are with Dad. Here we are as a family.
I begin speaking in a hoarse whisper, the words that have been etched on my bones since I was a little girl but have remained unspoken all this time. “I always felt like half a person. I have been missing a part of me since she was snatched from my hand in the park. I blamed myself. I have carried the guilt for a crime I could not remember all these years.”
Mum says nothing, but she reaches across and picks up the jumper I found when I searched the box the first time. She rubs the material across her face, and I shudder at the memory of the itchy fabric.
And then I shoot up onto my feet.
“What is it?” Mum gazes up at me with wide, open eyes.
“You… you made me wear that jumper. You said it was my favourite. But it wasn’t. I hated it.”
Mum shrugs. “So, I got mixed up.”
I shake my head. “No, no, you didn’t.”
Because it’s all starting to make sense. “You made me wear that jumper, and you used to say to me, ‘Becca is gone. Becca is never coming back.’”
“Because she was taken.”
“No,” I say. “That’s not it. When I found you with Mrs Hamilton earlier, you said to me that I was always the bad one, and you asked me why I couldn’t be more like Sophie. Then you called me Becca.”
“Sophie…” Her face pales. In the dim light of her bedroom, she is a ghoul. A ghoul that has taken the form of my mother. Or maybe a mother in the form of a ghoul.
“It wasn’t Becca who was taken.” The words taste sour. I take a step towards her, balling my hands into fists. “You dressed me as her. You called me her name.”
“I… I didn’t…”
“Yes, you did. You always knew which of us was which. Daddy got mixed up sometimes. The teachers at school were hopeless. But even when we tried to play tricks on you, you always knew. I could never fake her confidence, and that’s why you always knew her.”
The truth is so horrifying that I don’t want to say it. I’m not sure I can utter the words.
“I’m not Sophie. I’m Becca. They took your favourite, and you’ve been trying to make me her all these years. But I’ve never lived up to your expectations, have I? Because Sophie was the confident one. She was the leader. I was the shadow because I always followed her. If Sophie had stayed with you, she would have been your match. She would have talked back, rebelled, stood up for herself, and you would have respected that. But I never did. I sought your approval at every turn, and you never respected me. You’ve treated me like a doormat all these years because I let you.”
When I stop speaking, my body trembles. My knees are weak, but I continue to stand. I want her to look up at me for once in her life.
“You’ve always been a victim,” she says. “You can’t blame me for that. At every point in your life you’ve made the decision to be a victim. To be a martyr. You could have left years ago, but you never did. You chose to stay here. You chose Jamie as your only boyfriend. You whine about everything, but you have no one to blame but yourself. And do you know what? I blame you too. I blame you for everything. But most of all, I blame you for Sophie, because they were supposed to take you.”
The room narrows and blurs. When I blink, I see the hatred in her eyes. I see her true f
ace. Then my knees collapse and I sink to the floor. “What?”
“Nothing. I’ve said too much. Put these photographs back in the box. Now.”
I grasp hold of her wrist as she tries to scoop up the pictures from the carpet.
“In the letter to Grandma, you mention doing something unspeakable. Unforgiveable…”
“Get off me, Becca.” She swings her other arm towards me, but I catch her.
“Tell me what you did!”
I’m pushing her down, pressing her down under my weight. I can almost smell the fear emanating from her. Sickly sour-sweet, like day-old sweat. It brings me sick satisfaction to see her frightened. All these years, I’ve been afraid of her, and now I get to inflict that misery back. I press her arms down towards the floor, enjoying her whimpers.
“Tell me!” I demand.
She stares at me like she doesn’t recognise me. Her eyes are wide with incomprehension. But I don’t trust it anymore. I don’t trust a word she says.
“TELL ME!”
“I sold you.”
“What?”
“We were starving, so I sold you.”
I let her go. I stagger back, falling against the bed. This… This, I can’t comprehend. What? What does she mean? I… I can’t.
“Becca. I…” She’s crying. I can hear it in her voice. I can’t see her because I have my face in my hands, but I can hear it. “It was the most difficult decision of my life. Your father had committed suicide, leaving me in debt to loan sharks. We were about to lose the house. I knew we were going to be homeless in a matter of weeks. Your grandparents had cut me off and were refusing to see me or even speak to me.” She pauses, but I can’t bring myself to speak. So she continues. “It was in Geoff’s old boozer that I found out you could do it. I was half-cut, chatting to one of his dodgy mates. He told me about these rich people who couldn’t have kids of their own. He said they’d be willing to pay good money for a child, even more for twins, but I said no, I wouldn’t get rid of my girls.”
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