The Ice Twins (24 page)

And the Durrants will loathe me in so many ways: for making their daughter play computer games, for making their daughter miserable and terrified.

We are doomed. Maybe it was a tragic error, moving here.

‘Where is she?’ says Angus, as he pushes into the kitchen and looks at Emily, standing at the furthest corner of the kitchen. ‘Where is Lydia?’

I whisper back. ‘She’s in the living room, she’s OK, considering.’

‘Hm.’ He is glaring at me. The play date has failed, catastrophically, and this is my fault. I arranged this, and it has gone horribly wrong.

‘Please, Angus, just take Emily home.’

‘I will.’

He goes over to Emily and, quite bluntly, he seizes her by the hand and leads her out into the dying light of the afternoon. I give him Emily’s bag with her toy inside. The two of them traipse down to the boat and the motor starts; I turn in despair, and go back into the house.

It’s just me and Lydia. Alone. Here.

I peer my head around the door of the living room – she is still reading but not really reading.

‘Sweetie.’

She doesn’t even look at me. Her white face is streaked by tears. The house is so quiet. Just the hymning of the wind and waves and the crackle of the hungry woodfire. I wish for a TV. I wish we had a hundred televisions. I wish we were back in London. I can’t believe I want this, but I think I do.

Yet we can’t go back. We are trapped here. On an island.

We have very little money.
I
have no money. We are putting everything into Torran, we have just enough for a basic renovation; but if we sell it now, barely developed, just half a shell, we will make nothing. We might even make a loss, and go bankrupt.

The night passes in frightened quietness, Sunday is listless and subdued; our daughter loiters in her room. I sense that if I try to console her, I might make things worse. But what else should I do? Angus is no help: by Monday morning he is barely speaking to me: there is rage in his movements, he cannot hide it. He clenches his fist at the breakfast table. It seems as if he is inches from punching me.

And I am beginning to feel genuine fear of this anger: the repressed violence it implies. Angus, after all, hit his boss. And Angus’s drunken dad beat Angus’s mum half to death. Is Angus that different? He certainly drinks, and he is angry all the time. I don’t think he would ever touch Lydia, but I no longer feel entirely safe with him next to me. So close.

He gets up, wordless, and ferries his breakfast dishes to the sink. And then I shrug, and I let him take Lydia to school. Because I cannot face the mums and dads at the gate; especially not Emily Durrant’s mum. Lydia is also silent. Everyone has been silenced.

When I am properly alone, I take the phone off the hook. I want to be undisturbed, I want time to think.

Then I go back to our bedroom and lie there, for five or six bleak, silent hours, staring at the ceiling and its stains of dampness. I consider my mother’s words. About Kirstie’s strange behaviour just before the accident. The way Angus was delayed that night, with Imogen.

There
is
some pattern here. What is it? I feel as if I am staring at one of those 3D puzzle-pictures and I have to let my eyes relax, and the reality will come into view.

Resting my face piously on my hands, my eyes slowly unfocus, and I gaze vacantly across the room. Then I realize I am staring at Angus’s cherished chest of drawers. One of those items of furniture that
had
to come here from London.

It’s been his since before we were married. A present from his grandmother: an old Victorian Scottish ‘kist’. The drawers are lockable. And he keeps them locked.

But I know where he stores the key. I’ve seen him casually reach for it, half a dozen times; after all, we’ve been married ten years. You see things in ten years. He probably doesn’t know that I know, but I know.

Crossing the room I reach behind the kist: and here it is. Lodged in a slot, at the back of the chest.

I pause. What am I doing?

The key slots in the first lock, and turns with antique and well-oiled ease. I grasp the brass handles, and pull the top drawer out. The house is very cold. I can hear seagulls swooping on the Torran winds, calling in that annoying way – needy, yet critical.

The drawer is full of documents. Career stuff. Architecture journals, some of them signed by stars of the trade. Richard Rogers, Renzo Piano, other people I don’t know. Then a folder of CVs. Photos of buildings. Plans and projects.

The next drawer unlocks, and slides out. This looks more promising; though I’m not sure what the promise might be. There are letters and books. I lift one letter up to see, properly, in the ageing afternoon light.

The letter is from his grandmother.

My darling Angus, I’m writing from Torran to tell you we have a pair of otters breeding! You must come and see them, they play all day by the lighthouse beach, it’s lovely to—

I feel the sense of wrongness, as I read this. What am I doing? Sleuthing my husband? Yet I don’t trust him, because he’s told too many shifting lies: about the toy, about the identity change. I am also increasingly scared of him. So I want to know. I want to understand the pattern. Dropping this letter, I reach for another.

A noise stiffens the air. That was a definite creak in the floorboards. Is that
Angus
coming back? So early? It’s nearly three p.m., and low tide. He could have crossed the mudflats on foot. But why?

The creak repeats. The terror is like a cold injection, intramuscular.

Why was Kirstie frightened of Angus the day she died? Had she seen his violence? Did he slap her?

The creaking stops. It must have been the back door of the kitchen, swinging on a hinge. I didn’t shut it properly.

The relief surges and I plunge into the second drawer again. Letters spill onto the floor. One is from his granny, again, another one is from his mum, a third from his brother, written in a bad schoolboy hand. I also find two typed letters about his dad; plus his father’s death certificate. And then – my fingers tingle with unexplained anxiety – I see it.

A copy of
Anna Karenina
.

Anna Karenina
?

Angus is not a reader of novels. He devours newspapers and architectural journals, he can be easily diverted by a volume of military history, like most men.

But novels? Never.

Why would he have a copy of
Anna Karenina
? And why would it be hidden?

I pluck it up, and flick the first few pages. And my fingertips go cold as they rest on the third page.

There is a brief, handwritten inscription, under the title.

For us, then … Love, Immy, xxx

I know that handwriting from Christmas cards, and birthday cards, and witty sarcastic postcards from Umbria, and the Loire, every summer. I’ve known this handwriting for all my adult life.

It’s from Imogen Evertsen.

My best friend Immy.

And she’s signed it with love. And added three kisses? To a famous novel about adultery?

Imogen Evertsen?

My breath is a faint vapour in the freezing bedroom. I urgently want to search the rest of the drawer, but I can’t. I am halted by a noise, once again. And that sound is unmistakable.

There is someone else in the cottage. A door has slammed shut. I can hear footsteps.

18

Is this Angus? What do I do? What if he catches me sneaking through his stuff? The threat of his violence is suddenly very real.

Gathering all the letters I hastily shove them in the drawer, desperate, frantic, yet trying to do this in silence. The final letter is crammed into place, and I turn.

Numbering my own heartbeats.

The footsteps have ceased; I can hear a rattle. Someone is definitely in the kitchen: and they surely came in through the back door, knowing it would be unlocked.

So this must be Angus?

I urgently need to close the two drawers, gently, gently. The first drawer shuts – but with a squeak. Far too loud. I hesitate, wholly tensed.

Footsteps rattle, again. Is that a voice? A small, high, girlish voice? Could Angus be with Lydia? Why would he have collected her from school early? If not Lydia, then who?

Silence resumes. If they were voices: they have stopped. But as I push the second drawer shut, I hear the tread of footsteps, again. They are slow. And painstaking. I get the terrifying sense that someone is stealthily crossing the floor: that whoever else is in the house is trying to be as quiet as possible, as they approach me. Why?

Now a door creaks, almost imperceptibly: and that’s the dining-room door, I recognize the sound. So the person, the intruder, whoever it might be – surely Angus? – is slowly approaching me, in this bedroom. I have to speed up: fervently I lock the middle drawer, then I go to lock the top drawer, but the key slips through my perspiring fingers and I fumble, desperate, flailing, on the floorboards – the room is now dark, as the winter light falls outside – so where, where is the key? I am kneeling in my jeans in the dust like a burglar, this is pathetic, and wrong. But I must find the key.

Here
. Biting back my panic, I lock the top drawer, slip the key in its hiding place and then I stand up, turn around, and smooth down my shirt and try to look normal
as the footsteps come right to the doorway, and the bedroom door swings slowly open.

Nothing.

I stare at the empty rectangle, that gives on to the hall. A bad painting of a Scottish dancer stares at me. In the silence.

‘Hello?’

Silence.

‘Hello??’

Silence like a howl, like a shriek. My heart is the noisiest thing in the house. Thumping. Who is in the building, and how are they playing this game? Why would they want to scare me? I definitely heard footsteps, this was no illusion. Someone is in here.

‘Hello? Who is it? Who is there? Who is it?’

Nothing.

‘Stop this! Angus? Lydia? Stop it.’

The darkness intensifies; the wintry afternoon light fades so quickly on cloudy days. Why didn’t I turn on the lights before I began? The house is shrouded. The sea breathes in and out, exhausted. Very slowly I walk to the door, and peer out. The hall waits for me. Empty. I can see the shapes of furniture in the living room. The light is so murky. And it is so unbelievably cold. Torran Cottage is always chilly but this is exceptional. I realize I am shivering.

I lean and switch on the bedroom light, but it is feeble, sixty watts. Not much better than a yellow moon.

‘My Bonnie lies over the ocean,’

It’s a girl’s voice. Coming from Lydia’s bedroom.

‘My Bonnie lies over the sea –’

But it’s Kirstie’s voice. Because I know that tune: it’s Kirstie’s favourite tune. The Scottish ballad her father loved to sing to her. Kirstie’s voice is muffled and distant, yet lilting and happy.

‘Bring back, bring back, O bring back my Bonnie to me …’

I grip myself. It cannot be Kirstie, of course. She is dead.

So this must be Lydia, in her room, pretending to be Kirstie. But how did she get in her room? Why is she here? Did Angus bring her over early? Why is she singing like Kirstie?

‘Lydia! Lydia!’ I am running to the bedroom, the door is shut; I press the door, and turn the knob, and I painfully hesitate at the last moment – filled with the obscene fear that I am going to see Kirstie in here. In her blue bobble hat. Buoyant, joking, bouncy. Alive. Or maybe she will be broken on the bed, bleeding and dying, as she was in Devon, after the fall.
A blooded body, singing
.

My daydreams are nightmares.

Taking a hold of myself, I push open the door and I scan the room and there’s Lydia, in her school uniform, under her thick pink anorak, staring soulfully out of the window, at the sea, and the coast down to Ardvasar, gathering its darkness, under the starless sky. Her room is weirdly cold.

‘But, Lydia, darling – why?’

She turns and smiles sadly at me. Her school uniform is still too big, she looks lonely as I have ever seen her; my heart throbs with sympathy.

‘Were you singing?’

‘Kirstie was singing,’ she says, simply. ‘Like she used to. I was listening and playing. She’s gone now.’

I ignore this announcement. Because I can’t bear the implications. My daughter really is going mad. So I ask questions, instead.

‘What are you doing here? Lydia?’ I look at my watch, its only three p.m.: her school will only just be emptying. ‘Lydia? Lyddie-lo? What happened? How did— I don’t— Why?’

‘It was me. I brought her over.’

Angus’s dark baritone breaks the spell. He is standing in the doorway, tall and looming.

‘I got a call from the school.’ My husband eyes me, significantly. His brown V-neck jumper is dusty. ‘Called me about Lydia. Wanted me to pick her up.’ He looks around Lydia’s spartan bedroom, the cuddly toy giraffe toppled on the bed, the Charlie and Lola book on the floor.

‘Christ,’ he says. ‘Why is it so cold in here? We have to fix the heating.’

He is frowning at me, in a meaningful way. I give Lydia a little hug and she smiles blankly, again, and then we, the caring parents, step outside. Angus and I close the door and we are standing next to each other, in the hall, and I feel as if I want to back away from him, he is too near, too tall, too male.

Angus says, ‘The school secretary called me, they couldn’t reach you, they said Lydia was very unhappy. Totally freaking. Because Emily Durrant refused to sit in the same class as her, and then lots of other kids did the same. They asked me to pick her up early.’

‘But, why—’

‘They want us to keep her out of school for a week.’ He sighs, in a firm way; and rubs his stubbled chin. He looks older. Tired. His brown eyes seek mine. ‘I’ve tried to get her to talk about it. But you know what she’s like, Lydia, she can be so bloody silent.’ He pauses, just enough to insult.

I want to hit him. I haven’t forgotten the book.
Imogen Evertsen?
But my overriding thought is Lydia.

‘Why a week? What’s going to happen then?’