Shadow Sister (28 page)

‘Great. I just thought I’d come and make sure,’ I say. ‘Raoul will pick her up tomorrow morning.’

‘Fine. Good night!’ Lex raises his hand and closes the door.

I hurry over the street. The whole neighbourhood is still. The car park has made me nervous. As usual, the street seems quiet and safe. And then I hear footsteps behind me. I look back over my shoulder, but don’t see anyone.

The hair on my arms and the back of my neck rises and my heart beats faster as I walk. I study the trees, someone could
easily hide there, but no one jumps out. Of course not, why would they? Yes, Bilal, but I’m not scared of him anymore. Deep down, I’ve never believed that he would really do anything to me. I mean, then he would have done it long ago, right? He’s had opportunity enough.

But there’s still that fear. My mouth becomes dry as I hurry along the pavement. There’s my house, my safe house. Just a few more steps and I’ll be inside. There, in the hall, I’ll hang up my jacket and laugh away my fears.

Again the sound of soft but fast footsteps behind me, as if someone wants to cross over without being seen or heard. I glance back but still don’t see anyone. The dark silhouettes of the trees along the kerb are the only witnesses to my terror.

I walk down the garden path. There’s a cracking sound behind me and I run to the door. The key, quick, quick! Bloody hell, why did Raoul lock the door behind him! He could have left it on the latch.

There’s a noise behind me. The unmistakeable sound of one, two, three footsteps.

I don’t look back, but panic builds up inside me. I scrape the key over the lock with jerky movements, not able to find the slot, and then finally it slides in and I can turn it. But I don’t get that far.

I hear the crunch of the gravel and I know. I turn around. Someone is on our garden path, a few metres away, but I can’t make them out. The moon is shining, but the trees cast shadow over the path.

‘Yes?’ My voice sounds high-pitched with fear. I see something glittering. I take a step backwards, so that I’m standing with my back to the door.

‘What…’ I stammer and try to make out the object that’s pointing at me. It’s a gun.

‘Hello, Lydia,’ a familiar voice says.

My astonishment is complete. It’s as if my blood has stopped
circulating. I can’t believe this is happening, that the person facing me is really going to murder me. Impossible – we know each other too well.

I fiddle helplessly with the lock. The lock is obstinate and my trembling fingers can’t get the key to budge.

Again the gravel crunches, my attacker comes closer. There’s no point fleeing anymore, the best thing I can do is try to start up a conversation.

I turn back around, with legs of jelly, and lean my back against the front door.

‘What is all this?’ I rasp. ‘You’ve got to be joking, right?’

We stand a few steps away from each other. Moonlight falls onto the face before me.

‘Far from it,’ a soft voice says.

How strange to hear my death sentence announced in such a friendly manner. I inch along the door, think about jumping into the bushes and hear the click of the trigger.

‘No,’ I say. ‘Please!’

I raise my hands, as if they might protect me. But I see the finger pressed against the trigger, I see a squinted eye focusing and a body that prepares itself for the recoil.

I stare into the black circle in front of me and plead, ‘Please, I don’t understand why. What have I done? Please, don’t do this! I don’t want to die!’

But the shot still comes.

‘So you’ve moved in with Raoul,’ Thomas says. He’s standing in my bedroom with his hands in his pockets. I’m throwing the contents of my wardrobe into my suitcases.

‘For now,’ I make the distinction. ‘As long as Sylvie is still free, all three of us are in danger.’

‘Do you really believe that?’ Thomas picks up a jumper that has fallen from a pile and lays it in the suitcase. ‘Sylvie might have lost it once but that doesn’t mean she’s a serial killer. She didn’t do anything to Valerie.’

‘She should never have taken her.’ I put some summer shoes in. ‘What kind of person does that?’

‘Well…’ Thomas frowns at the way I’m packing my cases. ‘Why are you packing everything so messily? It’ll crumple.’

I look at him in surprise. ‘I’m in a hurry.’

‘To get back to Raoul.’

‘To get away from here. I’m scared of being at home on my own.’

This was also the reason I asked Thomas to come with me. Although I can hardly believe that Sylvie would do anything to me, I’m not taking any risks.

‘Elisa,’ Thomas begins.

I wipe a lock of hair away from my burning forehead and look at him.

‘Is there any chance…I mean, do you think that we ever.’ He breaks off his sentence, pushes his hands deeper into his pockets and stares at his shoes.

I straighten up and drop a few bras into my case. ‘You’re my best friend, Thomas,’ I say. ‘Always have been, and always will be.’

Of course, I understand that that’s not what he means, but to avoid the sensitive subject, I carry one of the packed cases out of the bedroom. The doorbell goes downstairs and Thomas goes past me to open up. I return to the bedroom, add a couple of nightdresses to a suitcase and click it shut.

Thomas has opened the front door. I hear him talking for a while and then closing it again.

‘Who was that?’ I call down the stairs.

‘Someone asking for directions,’ Thomas says.

He rummages around in the kitchen while I wait for him to come back upstairs. Soon I hear his heavy footsteps mounting the stairs and through the bedroom door I see him picking up the case I’ve left on the landing.

‘That’s heavy,’ he grumbles. ‘Did you put bricks in it?’

‘No, my shoes. Here’s another one.’ I take the second case from my bed and push it across the landing to the edge of the stairs. Thomas has gone outside and is putting the case in the boot of his car. I begin to drag a load down the stairs, but when I’ve got as far as the second step I realise I should have left this to Thomas.

‘Thomas!’ I call out.

No reply. He’s probably still at the car. I wait a while, but he
doesn’t come back in. I sink down onto the top step, hold the case by its handle and wait for him to reappear. I think I hear him walking around in the kitchen and I lean forwards. ‘Thomas!’

He comes into the hall, sees the problem and runs up the stairs to take the suitcase from me. ‘That’s much too heavy for you. You could have fallen down the stairs,’ he says. ‘I’ve made coffee. Shall we have a quick cup before I drop you off?’

I don’t feel like coffee and certainly not the disgusting stuff he makes, but I can hardly say no now that he’s gone to the trouble of helping me pack and is giving me a lift to Raoul’s. Not something he’s pleased about. I would never have asked him if Raoul hadn’t been in meetings all afternoon.

‘Okay,’ I say, following him downstairs. Thomas sets the case down in the hall, goes into the kitchen and pours out two large mugs of coffee.

It’s hot inside the house, so we go and sit in the garden under the pear tree. The sunlight plays through the foliage. Thomas sits there staring at me with sad eyes.

I avoid his gaze and sip my undrinkable coffee. It’s hard to relax around him.

‘Is the coffee nice?’ Thomas asks.

‘Lovely.’ I take a sip.

‘Not too strong?’

‘A little,’ I admit.

‘I’ll get some sugar.’ Thomas gets up and returns with the sugar pot. He scoops a couple of spoonfuls into my mug. I smile at him and stir my coffee.

‘Elisa,’ Thomas says as he sits down. ‘I want to talk to you.’

‘You say that so seriously.’

‘I am serious. I’ve been trying to talk to you for ages, but you keep avoiding me.’

I stare at the dark contents of my mug. ‘If I’m avoiding you, it might be that I have a reason to.’

‘Maybe, but it seems better to talk about it than to keep silent.’

‘Let’s not do this. It just makes everything more…difficult.’

‘It’s difficult already,’ Thomas says. ‘At least for me it is. I know that there can never be anything between us, that you only consider me a good friend, but I want to tell you how I feel, just once.’

I look at him helplessly, incapable of diverting the course of this conversation. I’m on the point of losing a very good friend.

‘Say it then.’

Thomas is sitting on the edge of his chair. He bends forwards so that his long dark hair falls in front of his face. I allow him to take my hand and give it a kiss.

‘Ever since we got to know each other when we were students, you’ve been my best friend,’ he says. ‘While everyone else ridiculed me and laughed behind my back, you offered me friendship, you gave me confidence. Without you, art college would have been hell. That’s why you have the right to be happy too, even if that’s not with me. But if it’s not with me, I don’t want to stick around.’

I look at him in alarm. ‘What do you mean? Where are you going?’

‘I’m going away.’ Thomas lets go of my hand and stares at the ground.

‘Where? Oh no, Thomas, don’t go away! First I lose Lydia, then Sylvie and now you as well! You can’t do this to me!’ As I’m saying it, I realise how selfish it sounds.

‘You’ve got Raoul,’ Thomas reminds me. ‘And as far as Sylvie is concerned, you haven’t lost her. Really, you haven’t lost her,’ Thomas says. ‘I’ve sent a letter to the police saying that she’s innocent. They won’t believe it straight away, but eventually they’ll realise that I’m telling the truth.’

Goose bumps spread over my arms and legs.

‘What do you mean? How do you know that?’

The expression on Thomas’s face changes. A hard glint appears in his eyes.

‘Your sister wasn’t a nice person,’ he says. ‘She got in your way, she didn’t let you make any decisions of your own, live your own life. She decided what was good for you, who your friends should be.’

‘Why on earth do you think that? Lydia didn’t do that at all. She interfered with my life a bit too much, but it wasn’t as bad as that.’

‘She didn’t like me.’ Thomas’s eyes sparkle strangely. ‘She thought I was a loser, not fit to be your friend.’

‘Did she say that?’ I cry out.

‘She didn’t have to. You must have felt it too – as soon as Lydia got to know me, you started being distant,’ Thomas accuses. ‘Maybe you didn’t realise it, but Lydia had enormous influence over you. You took her into account in every decision you ever made in your life. We might have had a relationship if she hadn’t stood in the way. Really, Elisa, you’re so much better off without her.’

It’s as if I’m sitting next to a stranger.

There’s no point arguing, he’s too convinced that he’s right. I begin to feel scared. Thomas has always been different, but I liked that, it was artistic. But now he’s frightening me. He must see that I don’t quite understand.

‘I did it for you,’ he says. ‘You understand that, don’t you? You weren’t getting any space to develop, to form your own opinions, to live a life like Lydia had. You were being suffocated. I had to intervene.’

He is begging for understanding, but the meaning of his words barely sinks in. I sit on the edge of my chair, straight-backed and cold, while my brain disassembles everything I thought I knew.

‘I know that deep in your heart, you can’t live without me,’ Thomas continues, emotionlessly. ‘Raoul is just a whim of yours.
Sooner or later he’ll meet another Sylvie and he’ll cheat on you. Why would you put yourself through that when you know that I’d never, ever hurt you? Don’t look so frightened! I love you!’

‘Sylvie,’ I say with difficulty. ‘Where’s Sylvie?’

‘How should I know? She’s on the run, but they’ll find her. And then they’ll let her go again. Sylvie’s a good girl. I’ve got nothing against her and she’s always been kind to me. She has no idea that I found the gun in her drawer. I put it back again. I’ve sent a letter to the police so they’ll have to let her go. I don’t want her to pay for something she hasn’t done.’

‘You…’ I whisper. ‘You murdered my sister? And that letter? Did you send that to her?’ I don’t have to ask the question. I bury my face in my hands and mutter, ‘Oh my god, so Noorda was right. He said that it was quite possible that someone else was taking advantage of the situation with Bilal. But you. Why? Why, Thomas?’

Thomas takes my hands away from my face. ‘I did it for you, Elisa. I’ve explained that, haven’t I? Lydia had to die so that you could live. That happens sometimes with embryos, one survives at the other’s cost. It’s as a kind of law of nature.’

I try to speak, but my throat produces only a few unintelligible sounds. I feel dizzy. My head has suddenly become too heavy to hold upright.

When I look up, Thomas touches my cheek tenderly.

‘It doesn’t take long,’ he says. ‘And it doesn’t hurt either. It’s awful that I have to do this to you, but there’s no other way. We simply had to talk this through.’

I look at him, confused, and watch his eyes travel down to the mug on the ground. There’s a layer of sediment in it. Oh my god, what was in the coffee? And I drank all of it, every last drop.

He sits there, with a concerned look on his face, his hands ready to catch me as I fall.

I shake my head slowly. The garden spins around me. If I
stood up now, I wouldn’t get far. A leaden feeling spreads over me and stops me from thinking clearly. I rub my forehead and eyes with my fingertips. Don’t fall asleep, keep your eyes open! What did he put in the coffee?

I get up to keep moving, intending to splash cold water on my face but I’m completely disorientated. I bump into the garden table, of which there are suddenly two, fall to the ground and have trouble getting up again. And then I see four legs and four black boots standing in front of me. Two Thomases peer down.

‘Let me help you up,’ he says. ‘You’ll hurt yourself.’

Strong arms pull me up and guide me into the house. What is he going to do now? No, I beg silently. Please not.

I fight to keep hold of my senses, but I feel myself losing the battle. I’m being sucked into a whirlpool, deeper and deeper. I gravitate towards passiveness. There’s no way to fight this. I feel like I haven’t slept for days. Lie down, I want to lie down. I don’t want to be dragged upstairs to my bedroom, that’s too far. Thomas picks me up and carries me upstairs, but I’m gone before we reach the landing. Halfway up the stairs I feel a long, damp kiss on my mouth before my vision fades and I surrender.