Tandem

by Alex Morgan

  Before Paula could respond, she caught sight of Sandra and Bovis on the crowded beach, trotting along the water’s edge. She spoke quickly. “It was nice to meet you, but I’ve got to go – I can see someone I need talk to.”

  Paula jogged down the slipway. As she came close to catching up, she called out, “Hang on a minute, Sandra, I want to speak to you.”

  The girl glanced over her shoulder, but instead of stopping, she broke into a run. Soon, she and Bovis were sprinting flat out across the sand towards the row of steps belonging to the houses on Shore Road. Making a sharp right turn, they disappeared through a gap between two garden walls.

  By the time Paula reached the same spot, the narrow alley was empty.

  The kite dipped and soared above little Paula as she skipped along the water’s edge. Giggling, she dodged the foam’s darting encroachments and jinxed around the tangled piles of glossy green, brown and black seaweed. The breeze tugged at the hem of her blue and white pinafore and pulled playfully at the string wrapped around her hand. The seagulls called to each other as they circled effortlessly overhead, buoyed by the warm air currents.

  Suddenly, the girl turned and faced her watching adult self. She took a couple of steps forward and opened her mouth as if to speak again. Then, changing her mind, she swung round and resumed her journey along the beach.

  Paula felt something grip her arm and shake it.

  “PT, wake up.”

  Sanders.

  He shook her again. “Wake up, you were talking to yourself.”

  She forced her eyes open. She was sitting on the top of the beach steps with her head leaning awkwardly against the gate. Sanders stood on the sand beside her.

  “God, no wonder I can’t sleep at night. I’ve got to stop dozing off like this.” She rubbed her neck. “I told you not to call me PT.”

  “You were saying, ‘Talk to me, talk to me’.”

  “Was I?” Paula stretched. “I saw your elusive twin earlier, but she scarpered when I tried to speak to her. I got the distinct feeling she was avoiding me.”

  Sanders sat down beside her. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Go on.”

  “Who do you ride your tandem with?”

  She sat up straight. “Why do you want to know?”

  He stuck out his bottom lip. “No reason. Just you’re always on your own and you need two people and I thought mibby …” His voice trailed off.

  “Have you been spying on me as well?”

  “No, but …”

  “Sanders, what are you trying to ask me?”

  “I thought mibby, if you didn’t have anyone else to ride it with, well, mibby I could.”

  Paula stood up. “I don’t think so,” she said coldly. “I have to go.”

  “Wait.” He wrapped both hands round her calf.

  “Sanders, what are you doing?” She grabbed the top of the gate to stop overbalancing on the rickety step.

  “You must want to or you wouldn’t have brought it.”

  “Sanders, get off my leg.”

  He let go. “Sorry.”

  “I brought the tandem because it’s important to me, but that doesn’t mean I was planning to ride it.”

  “But you could. I could go on the back.”

  Paula shook her head. “Absolutely not.”

  “But why? It’d be fun.”

  “I said no.”

  “I’m big enough.” He jumped up and stood on tiptoe. “See, I’m taller than I look, and Mum says my legs are quite long for my height. It would be great. We could visit the donkeys at Mr Thompson’s farm. You’d enjoy it.”

  “Sanders, no.”

  “But why won’t you give me a chance?” He was almost in tears.

  Paula sat down. “I’ve only ever ridden it with my twin brother,” she said quietly.

  “You’re a twin?” he asked, cheerfulness instantly restored.

  She ran her fingertips over the tattoo on her ankle. “I was.” Her voice was a whisper.

  Sanders climbed the steps and sat beside her. “What do you mean?”

  “He died.”

  “How?”

  “In an accident.”

  “When …”

  Paula held up a hand. “Enough questions.”

  She looked past him. The beach was packed with families enjoying the sunshine. Over by the rubbish bin, Bovis was ripping at a bulging black plastic sack. “You’d better go and deal with your dog before she makes herself sick eating whatever’s in that bag.”

  An only child

  Paula was sitting down to eat a piece of toast, still wearing the pyjama top and knickers she had slept in, when the doorbell rang. She decided it was probably the postman for Mrs McIntyre. When her landlady didn’t come down after the third ring, Paula went to answer it.

  “This had better be good,” she muttered as she unlocked the storm door and peered around it.

  Sanders stood on the step. He held out a carrier bag. “I brought a picnic.”

  “Did I miss something? I don’t remember agreeing to a picnic.”

  “That’s because it’s a surprise.”

  “Okay, I’m surprised.”

  “So can I come in while you get ready?”

  “Hold your horses, cowboy. Where exactly do you think we’re going?”

  He grinned. “To see the donkeys. I’ve made tuna sandwiches and I’ve got some carrots. Donkeys love carrots.”

  “At the farm you were talking about?”

  “Yes.”

  “How far is it?”

  “Dunno. Mibby ten miles.”

  The vestibule tiles were cold under Paula’s bare feet and she shifted her weight between them. “And we’re getting there how?”

  He put his hands together as if he was praying. “Pretty please, on the tandem.”

  “Sanders, I told you, you’re not riding the tandem.”

  “You’re just being mean.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m just being …” Paula paused. What was she being? She had no idea. But she did know one thing: she wasn’t going out on the tandem with him. “Why don’t you go and play with your friends?”

  “I don’t have any.” His lip was trembling. She couldn’t tell if he was genuinely upset or if it was another of his fabrications.

  “Your twin sister then. Go and play with her and leave me in peace.”

  She closed the door and had gone a couple of steps down the hall when the letterbox opened.

  “I don’t have a twin sister,” he yelled.

  The flap snapped shut again.

  Paula made for the door. As she stepped out, one foot caught in the handle of the carrier bag he had left on the step. Next thing she knew, she was on her hands and knees on the path of crushed seashells that led to the front gate. Wincing, she picked herself up. Fragments of shell were pressed into her palms and all the way down her shins. Blood oozed from a particularly large piece just below the right knee. Brushing them off, she hobbled to the gate. She checked the road in both directions but Sanders was gone.

  A man driving past hooted his horn and whistled through his open window. Paula looked down. She was standing in the street in nothing but a pyjama top and a pair of knickers. She went inside, rinsed her bleeding leg, stuck a plaster on it and got back into bed.

  Hi Jen, she typed. Sorry to vanish without saying – I needed to get away from everyone and everything, especially Ollie, poor thing. A friend in need? Not me. Just can’t do it right now. Is that really rubbish of me? Don’t answer that. I’ve run away to the seaside – Craskferry, to be precise, look it up on a map – but please don’t tell him. It’s peaceful, which is exactly what I need, if a bit surreal at times.

  I seem to have been adopted by Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde reincarnated in the body of a twelve-year-old boy. He’s utterly endearing one minute and a total monster the next. I actually feel quite sorry for him. I think he’s lonely and he seems desperate to be liked. We fell out earlier this morning though. My fault. Why am I
such a cow just now? Don’t answer that either.

  I haven’t decided how long I’m staying, but I’d like to get a few more things from the flat – I did a crap job of packing. I want to get my solo bike too – Ollie said he’d finished it. Any chance you could get him to drop it at your place? If I do you a list, could you pick up the other stuff? You’ve still got a key, haven’t you? If that’s okay, I’ll arrange for someone to collect everything. Let me know if there’s any interesting looking post (there won’t be). I’ve done one of those redirection forms, so there shouldn’t be much. Thanks a million, darling. Love you forever! P xxx

  She hit send without bothering to read the message over, grabbed her purse and headed for Main Street.

  Nora’s Ark was packed and she had to wait at the door until a pair of elderly men in tracksuits left so she could take their table. After a couple of minutes, a teenage girl came over.

  “The lunchtime specials are up there.” The girl pointed to a blackboard. “Do you need time to think or can I take your order?”

  Paula ran her eyes down the board. There was watercress soup with a herb scone, baked potatoes with chilli, cheesy baked beans, or hummus and roasted peppers, and a choice of several salads. She ordered a Greek salad with focaccia and a pot of coffee.

  As the waitress turned to go, Paula asked, “Is Nora around?”

  “She’s in the kitchen.”

  “Would you see if I could have a quick word when things die down? Tell her it’s Paula, Mrs McIntyre’s tenant.”

  She had finished her salad and was onto her second cup of coffee when Nora emerged from the kitchen, carrying a mug of her own.

  “Okay if I join you?” she asked. “I haven’t sat down since eight o’clock. It’s been pandemonium today.” She surveyed her domain. “This is the first time since eleven that I’ve seen empty tables. Kylie said you wanted to speak to me.”

  Paula nodded. “Sanders came round this morning. He said something very odd. I thought maybe you could explain it.”

  “Fire away, but I can’t promise to shed much light on anything that charming little horror says. He’s far too bright for his own good and a bit of a Walter Mitty.”

  “His grip on reality does seem a bit tenuous. He told me the other day that he was conceived in a fast-food restaurant.”

  “Ah.” Nora lifted Paula’s milk jug. “May I?”

  “Go ahead.”

  She poured milk into her coffee. “Unlikely as it may sound, that is true. I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but Carole – his mum – had a serious drug problem in those days. She was meeting her dealer and didn’t have the money to pay, so … well, you can imagine the rest.”

  “How dreadful. Does Sanders know that part?”

  “Not about the drugs. I don’t think any of the people who remember would be cruel enough to tell him. He was nagging her about who his father was.”

  “He can be pretty persistent.”

  “He certainly can, so Carole said they met in the queue and that she never saw him again.”

  “That’s nearly as bad. Couldn’t she have made up something a bit nicer?”

  “That’s Carole for you. I’ve known her since we were kids and I’m very fond of her, but she doesn’t always think before she speaks.”

  “I assumed he was talking nonsense.”

  “Understandably. So what did he say today?”

  Paula sipped her coffee. “Well, he was bugging me and I told him to go and play with his twin Sandra. He’d talked about her before and I’ve seen her around the village a couple of times, but suddenly he’s insisting that he doesn’t have a twin sister, and there was something about the way he said it …” Paula shrugged.

  Nora spooned a few grains of sugar from the bowl into her coffee and stirred thoughtfully. Eventually, she said, “You’re going to have to speak to him about Sandra. All I can tell you is that he’s not lying about that either. Sanders doesn’t have a sister, twin or otherwise. He’s an only child.”

  Drowning

  Other than the usual junk, there was only one message in her inbox, a single line from Jen. No probs, toots, just tell me what and when. Paula hit reply and typed in the list she had already put together in her head. She shoved Mrs McIntyre’s bedding in the washing machine, remade the bed with her favourite pink sheets, and gave the flat a cursory tidy.

  Before long she would have to catch up on some work. She had passed her new jobs on to colleagues but she still had several family trees to finish. When Paula had told Sylvia, her boss at Genus Genealogy, about the accident, she had let Paula’s clients know there would be a delay in producing their work. Even so, they would want their reports. Soon, she would deal with them soon.

  She picked up her purse and keys and headed down the garden path. There was no sign of Sanders on the beach, in the bay beyond the harbour or on Main Street. Paula got a takeaway cappuccino from Nora’s Ark and wandered over to a small play park behind the war memorial. Several parents were supervising young children as they scrambled up the steps of the slide, excavated the sandpit and tested their weight on the seesaw.

  She sat down on a bench next to the swings and considered where to try next. Along at the cliffs? His house? Or maybe she should just go back to the flat and tackle one of those reports. After all, why should it matter to her whether Sanders had a sister or not? She had come to Craskferry to get away from other people.

  She watched a father pushing a delighted toddler back and forth on a kiddie swing. A boy of about seven ran in circles round the swing set, inexpertly dribbling a football. She wondered if they had any brothers or sisters. When she was small, she always had someone to play with, to share stories, schemes and jokes, to dress up with and pretend to be pirates or explorers or spacemen. They had pitied all the other kids who weren’t like them, the lonely ones without a twin.

  Paula drained the last of her coffee and dropped the cup into the bin beside the bench. As she stood up, she caught sight of Bovis, weaving across the grass with her nose to the ground in pursuit of some smell.

  “Here, girl,” Paula called.

  Bovis raised her head and, scent trail forgotten, loped over.

  Sanders trotted through the park gate. “Come back here, you bad dog,” he shouted.

  Bovis ignored him. When she reached Paula, she lay down, placed her head on Paula’s foot and let out a long sigh.

  “Get over here, now,” Sanders called, but Bovis didn’t move and he was forced to come across.

  “Hello, Sanders,” Paula said. “I’m sorry if I was mean to you yesterday.”

  Sanders bent down, attached Bovis’s lead to her collar and hauled her to her feet.

  Paula put her hand on his arm. “Please, wait. I really want to talk to you. Will you sit with me for a while? I want to know what you meant yesterday.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” He shook her off and began dragging Bovis towards the gate.

  Paula fell into step beside him. “All right, we won’t, but I thought we were friends,” she pleaded. “If you stayed for a bit, you could tell me some more jokes.”

  “I don’t feel like telling jokes.”

  “We could talk about something else then.”

  He let the lead drop and Bovis romped off towards an Alsatian, trailing the lead behind her. “I haven’t got long,” he said as they walked back to the bench. “We’re having tea at Nan’s at five.”

  Paula looked at her watch. “It’s not four yet so you can keep me company for a while.”

  He eyed her suspiciously. “I thought you liked being on your own.”

  They sat down. “I thought so too but I’m not sure any more.” She fixed her gaze on a clump of trees at the far side of the park. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Mibby.”

  “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

  “Ask and I’ll decide.”

  “Are you an only child?”

  He pulled a splinter of wood o
ff the bench seat. “Why d’you want to know?”

  “Well, if that wasn’t your sister I saw on the beach, who was it? She looked exactly like you.”

  “You said you wouldn’t ask about that.”

  Paula chewed her lip. “I know but I’m trying to understand. Will you please explain to me?”

  “Only if you promise you won’t be horrible to me again.”

  “I promise.”

  He leant forward, cupping his chin in his small hands. The nails were bitten down so far that the sight of them made her wince.

  “There’s just me,” he said quietly. “I don’t have a twin or any other sisters or brothers or anyone.”

  “Who’s Sandra then?”

  “Me. I’m both of us.”

  Paula tried not to let her voice sound shocked. “Sanders and Sandra?”

  “Aye.”

  “That was you watching my flat?” she asked. “With your hair tied up and make-up on?”

  He nodded.

  “You moved the tandem and left Bovis?”

  “Aye.”

  “But why?”

  “I saw a bloke getting the bike out of a van. I liked it because it was for two people and it looked like it’d be fun to ride. When I came past again, you and the man came out. You looked upset, like you’d had a row, and he drove off and left you. When we were on the beach later, I looked over the wall and the bike was there, and I wondered who you were going to ride it with if you’d fallen out with your boyfriend.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  Sanders didn’t give any sign he had heard her. “Then you came out and started running. We waited till you came back to see if you were friendly, but I couldn’t tell, ‘cos you just looked sad and your face was all swollen up like you’d been crying. So we came back really early next morning and I climbed in the garden for a look at the bike. It wasn’t chained up, so I got on to see if I could ride it, but it was too hard on my own.” He spoke without looking at her, words tumbling over each other. “I thought if I left Bovis, I could watch and see what you’d do. I thought if you were nice to her, it might be okay to ask if I could ride it with you, if that man wasn’t going to.”