The Twins

Chapter 11

‘Where’s Susan?’ My voice is weak. It’s hard to talk. Pain is throbbing in my jaw, lips and teeth and around my eyes. Uncle Harry’s big fist had set fireworks off in my head and they are still exploding; every pulse of pain sets more flashes off, lighting up my brain. My whole body aches. It feels as if every brick in the house fell on top of me, not one man.

The doctors say I have concussion and they need to monitor me.

‘Safe,’ Mum says, answering my question with the word she has spoken ten times. Impatience and annoyance give her voice a sharp sound. She hasn’t looked up from the crumpled magazine she found in the waiting room. The pages flick over. She doesn’t care. She is angry at us for ‘causing this mess’. She is angry because we made Uncle Harry angry and ‘put social services on her back.’

It’s late, and dark outside. I was asleep, but the nurses wake me every hour to shine a little torch into my eyes, take my temperature, and blow up an armband that squeezes and pinches my arm.

Someone has drawn the curtains over the windows since I last woke. They have pulled across the curtains between the beds too so I can’t see the other children. But the lamps above some of the beds are on and the light shining through the thin yellow cotton with giraffe patterns turns the other children and their mums into shadow puppets.

The voices of other mothers travel through and around the curtains. They speak in soft, concerned, caring voices. Whispering, ‘how do you feel,’ ‘do you want anything’, ‘I love you’.

Without Susan to be my other voice, there’s a devil and an angel in my head. They talk at me like they do in Tom and Jerry cartoons. I imagine them sitting on my shoulders. The little devil speaks like Susan, telling me we shouldn’t care about Mum being so useless and loveless. We don’t need her. We don’t need anyone else. We are wolves. Wolf cubs don’t need mums. Wolves howl; they don’t whisper I love you. The angel speaks my thoughts and feelings. She says, I need Mum today. It’s okay to need her. Mums should worry and fuss when their child is hurt. Every other mum in this ward is worried about their child.

Our mum let Susan go. We don’t even know where she is. Mum said, ‘I don’t need to know. She’s with social services so she’s safe.’ But I think all these other mothers would know. No, they would not have let her go.

My stomach rumbles and growls. I’m not hungry. My tummy has turned somersaults all day, while the large black and white clock on the wall ticks away each minute. I want Susan to walk into the ward every time the clock ticks onto the next minute.

Where is she sleeping? I can’t imagine it. I’ve asked the nurses, but they just say, ‘Ask your mum.’ Don’t they see that mum doesn’t care?

A policeman told me Uncle Harry won’t come to our house again. But he won. He cut us in half. All I did was cut his hair.

‘Why can’t Susan sleep here, Mum?’ If Susan and I are together, I won’t care about the pain.

‘Because she’s safer where she is. I told you. You don’t need to worry about her.’

But I am worried. Why aren’t you?

I sit up, my head thumping as if Uncle Harry’s fist is inside my skull, and slide off the bed. The hard tiled floor is cold under my bare feet. The hospital gown I’m wearing catches on the bed and pulls open at the back.

‘Get back into bed,’ Mum complains.

‘No. I’m going to find her.’

‘You’re not. You won’t be able to. She’s in a foster home tonight and I don’t even know where it is.’

‘What’s going on? Are you all right, Sarah?’ A nurse in a pale blue uniform and tabard covered in pink cats walks over to me. She’d been looking at the notes at the end of a bed on the other side of the room. ‘Can I help? Do you need the toilet? I can walk with you.’

‘No. I want my sister.’

She looks at Mum, as if Mum will give me an answer.

‘She’s in foster care because I had to come in here.’ She looks at the nurse. ‘I told her, her sister is safe.’

The nurse makes a little sighing sound. It’s not an angry sigh like Mum makes when she’s annoyed, it’s a nice sigh. Her sigh says she cares. It sounds as gentle as one of the other mums saying I love you. ‘Well then, Sarah, I would say the quickest way to bring your sister home is to climb back into bed and get some sleep so your body can heal quickly. Did you know all the healing magic in your body happens when you’re sleeping? If you’re feeling well enough tomorrow, you can go home and then you’ll see your sister. I’m sure she’s missing you too.’

‘I know she’s missing me.’

‘Then get back into bed and go to sleep so you can both get back home tomorrow.’

I nod at the nurse with the kind voice, agreeing, but the room becomes a blur of giraffe curtains and soft lights. The tears trickle from my eyes onto my cheeks. I sniff them back and swallow but they roll down my cheeks and drip from my chin.

‘Here.’ The nurse walks around me and pulls a tissue out from a box on the cabinet next to my bed. She holds the tissue out towards me. I take it and use it to wipe my cheeks.

‘If your sister is in a foster home then your mum is right, she’s safe,’ the nurse says, as she leans over me. ‘Come on, back into bed.’ She lifts the sheet and blanket.

I climb up onto the bed and slide down to lie on the sheet.

‘And straight to sleep,’ the nurse says as she draws the top sheet and blanket over me. When she straightens up she looks at the watch on her wrist. ‘I have to wake you again in thirty minutes to do your observations; you want to get as much sleep as you can in between.’

The soles of the nurse’s trainers squeak on the floor as she walks back over to the boy’s bed on the other side of the room.

I look at the clock and watch the third thin red hand tick, the one that moves the fastest. The one that counts the seconds. How many places has that got to move around the clock before I see Susan again?

A page of the magazine Mum is looking at turns over.

Chapter 12

I’m dressed in clothes that Mum brought in this morning.

All the other children’s mums stayed the night here, sleeping, some snoring, in the chairs beside the beds. But Mum said she couldn’t sleep in a chair and she went home.

I think she went to the pub. She always goes to the pub. She could have gone to fetch Susan. She came back at 11am this morning and she didn’t bring Susan.

The nurse at the desk by the ward’s door told Mum off for being late. They want to discharge me. They didn’t know I could hear but I’d been to the toilet so I was close to the desk and I heard.

A man from social services had come in with a policewoman to speak to her but they had gone away because Mum wasn’t here. They’ve come back now. The nurse rang them. Mum is not allowed to take me home unless they agree, the nurse told Mum. ‘Your daughter will be taken into care if you do not act responsibly.’ The nurse spoke in the voice our teacher uses when Susan and I do something wrong.

I can’t wait to tell Susan that Mum was told off. I start to smile every time I think about it, but I can’t smile because my face hurts.

I went back to the toilet so they wouldn’t see me and guess that I’d heard. I stood in there for a few minutes, staring at the strange bruised face in the mirror, a rainbow of purple, blue, red, black and yellow on her cheeks and chin, on our face.

‘You’ll feel better in a week or two,’ a nurse had said to me last night after Mum had gone, when she’d come to look in my eyes. She had seen the tears on my cheeks. I think she thought I was crying because it hurt. She didn’t know I was crying for Susan. I liked her, the nurse. I like all the nurses. But I want Susan here with the nice nurses. She would have had fun here if she had slept in a chair.

I asked the policewoman and the social services man if I can see Susan. The man just said, ‘We’ll see what we can do when I’ve talked to your mum.’

They’re talking to Mum now.

I’m sitting on the hospital bed, my feet crossed and my legs swinging. Waiting. Watching through the window into the small room near the nurses’ desk, where they are. I can see Mum through a long narrow window in the door.

She was crying and then shouting at them. I think, when she comes out of the room, she will be angry with me. I don’t care as long as she says the right things so they let Susan come back to us.

It feels as if they’ve stolen Susan. Child thieves. Child catchers. Like dog wardens, rounding up stray dogs, stray wolves. In my mind I see Susan in a kennel somewhere.

My legs keep swinging. I stare at Mum through the window and try to send Susan a message in my mind. I’m going to find you.

It’s ages before Mum comes out of the room.

Nurses in brown uniforms are handing out sandwiches for lunch.

The social services man holds the door open for Mum as she walks out. He talks over her head to the policewoman.

Mum looks at me. She doesn’t smile.

I slide off the bed and run to her. it’s only a few steps. My legs don’t hurt, but my head hurts when I run.

‘Sarah, no running,’ a nurse calls.

‘Mum. Are we going to get Susan?’ I hold her hand. I’m holding on because I want to control her, like a ventriloquist puppet, make her say yes and take me to Sarah.

‘Yes,’ the man behind her answers. ‘We’re all going to collect Susan now.’

I look at Mum, not him. ‘Thank you.’ Thank you for saying the right things.

***

We are sitting in the back of the police car, silent, our hands clasped tightly on the black leather in between us. Sarah and I don’t need words; we just know things about each other. We just know how much we need each other. That we can never be separated. I knew she would make them come for me as soon as she could. I waited as patiently as I could this morning, ignoring the conversation of the family I was with, just waiting for Sarah so we could be us again.

Her face is covered in vivid mingling colours, as though someone painted her face and let the colours run into one another.

We hate Uncle Harry. It’s the first time we’ve hated anyone. We don’t like most of our uncles, but we’ve never hated them so much that it hurts like a fist clasped in our stomachs.

The car pulls up outside our house. The policewoman gets out of the car and holds the door so we can climb out from the back. The man who came to collect me with Sarah and Mum leads the way to the door, and after Mum has unlocked it the man and the policewoman step into the house behind us.

‘The housing association have changed the locks,’ Mum says, as she closes the door, shutting the man and the policewoman in the house with us.

‘Good,’ the man says. He looks at us. ‘So then, girls. You will be safe here with your mother.’

We nod. Our palms are hot and sticky; we have been holding onto each other for an hour now. We won’t ever let each other go.

The policewoman’s eyes look all over the place, as if she expects to find something specific. But it’s just our house with bits and pieces everywhere. Dirty plates and mugs in the kitchen. Our sofa with the big dip in one seat where we broke the springs because we jumped on it like a trampoline. Our small TV. Our curtains hanging on a bit of string. But there’s one thing that’s different: a brick-red stain in the middle of the beige carpet. Sarah’s blood. The carpet has not been cleaned properly.

The policewoman’s eyes catch me staring at her. She stops looking around and smiles, with a smile that shines in her eyes. She wants us to like her. That’s what her smile says. I’ve seen some of our uncles smile like that.

‘You have my number, Jackie,’ the man says to Mum. ‘If you need me, call. But I’ll be back tomorrow.’ He glances at the policewoman and they share a look that we don’t understand. But Mum nods agreement.

‘And call 999 if there’s any trouble,’ the policewoman says as if she thinks there will be trouble. We don’t have a phone, though. The nearest phone box is at the end of the road.

‘Goodbye, then.’ The man looks from Mum to us. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, girls.’

We don’t answer; we just watch as he turns to the door and the policewoman follows him. Mum stands behind them as he opens the door, and then they both leave. She shuts the door then turns around and looks at Sarah.

We expect her to shout. She doesn’t. ‘Sit down on the sofa,’ she says. ‘You need to look after yourself.’

We sit down together. Close. Pressed together.

‘Do you want a drink?’

We shake our heads.

‘I was talking to Sarah, Susan.’ Sarah’s bruises mean Mum knows who is who. She turns away. ‘Social services left some food for you. Do you want a bag of crisps? Or chocolate might be easier to eat.’

‘Chocolate,’ I say for us.

‘I was speaking to Sarah.’

I want Sarah to look like me again. I don’t like her looking different. We are still one person, even though we look different. Us. Sarah and Susan, not Sarah or Susan. I don’t like Mum looking at us differently. We are the same.

Chapter 13

2018

‘The man from social services, Dave, came back every day for three weeks to sit on the sofa and drink a cup of tea, asking us what we had done at school that day, and watching Mum. She would lean against the wall of the archway into the kitchen drinking her tea and suffering his presence.

There were no uncles in those three weeks.

But two days after Dave said he would visit just once a week, Mum went out when we were in bed and came back with Uncle William.’ I laugh in a self-mocking tone. It is not a humorous laugh; it’s a dismissive laugh that belittles our past.

‘No.’ Lucy’s blue eyes pop out of her head on long stalks as she leans across the café’s dark wood table, nursing a cup of hot chocolate between her hands. She lives in Keswick, not far from the flat I rent. I’d sent her a message and asked her if she wanted to meet. She’d messaged back with a smiling face and a yes.

She had asked me to continue my story as soon as we’d sat down at the table. It was interrupted twice by the server asking us what we wanted and then bringing our drinks.

‘I didn’t know any of that happened in Mum’s childhood,’ Lucy says. ‘Why did you fall out if you were so close?’

‘I’ll get to it,’ I smile. ‘But you want to know it all, don’t you?’ I can’t wait until she tells her mum I’ve promised to tell her everything.

‘You’re as bad as Mum. You sound like her, you know? I mean your voice sounds just like hers.’

‘I know.’

She leans back in her chair. ‘Dad told her she should trust you.’

‘Did he?’ My heart leaps at the thought of Jonny saying something on my behalf.

‘Yes. You should go to the café and see her there. She won’t be able to whip herself up into a temper there. That’s what I do when I know she’ll be upset about something: tell her in public.’

She makes me smile, this beautiful woman who could be my daughter as easily as she is Sarah’s. There’s a little jitter of excitement in my chest when I breathe in. This is everything I’ve wanted it to be. I want to walk right into the middle of their lives. Their café is as at the heart of it as much as their daughter is.

‘Your mother and I were different after that incident with Uncle Harry …’ I say, continuing my story. It makes me laugh inside knowing that Sarah hasn’t told her any of these things. She’s washed her past away so she can turn herself into someone else. I don’t believe she can’t remember. I think she deliberately doesn’t remember.

Chapter 14

1983

Uncle Harry’s violence changed Sarah and me, but it didn’t make us afraid. It made us tougher. It made us stronger. We could cope with anything and survive. We learned to attack before we are hurt. We are often in trouble at school for fighting, but the children we fight with are the bullies.

Mum likes violence now too. She fights with Uncle William. She hits him and he hits her back. I’ve seen her slap him and he pinches her arm and wraps his hand around her neck and squeezes. She’s nicer to him after they’ve had a fight. He’s never nice to her.

We haven’t tried to get rid of him. He ignores us and we stay out of the house, avoiding him.

When Dave from social services visits, Uncle William goes out, and Mum says we mustn’t mention him to Dave.

We haven’t.

But today Mum has a bruise around her eye and Dave can see it’s from a punch. We didn’t see it happen, but we know Uncle William hit her. It’s blood-red not dark purple, like Sarah’s bruises from Uncle Harry.

‘Go upstairs for a minute, girls,’ Dave says. ‘I want to speak to your mum.’

As we walk upstairs, Dave shuts the living room door. Sarah is first. She looks back at me, and we agree silently that we won’t go to our room, that we will sit at the top of the stairs and listen.

‘What happened, Jackie?’ The walls are thin; we can hear his voice easily even though he’s shut the door.

‘Nothing. Do you want tea?’

‘Nothing is not an acceptable answer. You know that. If you stick with “nothing” I will have to call the police and take the girls. Yes, I’d like tea, but while we drink it you can tell me what happened.’

Mum sighs loudly in her dramatic, attention-seeking way. From the position of the sound I think she has turned away from him to make the tea.

They don’t talk while the water runs into the kettle; the kettle clicks and gradually increases in heating sounds to a steaming boil.

I imagine Dave sitting at the other end of the sofa from the big dip, where he always sits. He is patient. Dave can sit quietly for ages waiting to hear what you will say. It’s like the who-blinks-first game. Who speaks first loses. He always wins when we play that game, because we forget we aren’t supposed to speak first.

‘Thank you.’ Mum must have handed him the mug of tea.

The sofa creaks, which means Mum has sat on the arm at the dip end. When she sits there, she turns sideways and puts her feet in the dip.

‘So …’ Dave pokes at her. ‘Was it a man?’

I smile at Sarah. Her hand wraps around my hand, and she pulls my hand onto her lap, squeezing it.

‘Yes,’ Mum answers.

‘Is he here often?’ There’s another period of silence. ‘Remember, this is about the girls too.’

‘I know.’

‘How much time does he spend here? I can, and will, check what you say with your neighbours.’

‘He lives with me.’

‘Has he hit you before?’

There’s another silence.

I look at Sarah. Should we go down and tell him?

‘Yes,’ Mum says. The word is said quietly but it’s quick and angry. Just like the way she slaps us.

Sarah’s lips pull up into a smile as mine do the same. This will be goodbye Uncle William.

Dave sighs. He sighs when he’s thinking about something, when he’s working out what he thinks about what you said.

‘Then what are you going to do? I can’t leave the girls here if you let him stay.’

Sarah’s fingers lace us together.

If we go anywhere we will go together, even if we have to run away.

‘He wouldn’t go if I ask him. He won’t leave.’

‘Have you asked him?’

‘Twice. The second time he gave me this black eye.’

‘The rental agreement for the house is in your name. I can ask the police to remove him and you can get a solicitor to help you with a court order that would stop him coming back.’

‘He’d still come back. He’s been in prison, he was fed and warm, and he had a roof over his head. He doesn’t care what the police threaten him with. He’ll come back.’

‘Then do you want me to contact a refuge and see if they have space for you and the girls?’

‘A refuge?’

‘If you want to keep the girls with you, that’s your only option.’

There’s another gap in the conversation. I imagine Dave sipping his tea.

The grating sound of the wheel of a cigarette lighter spins. I picture Mum sucking through the end of a skinny, hand-rolled cigarette.

‘Jackie …’ Dave pushes.

‘Yes. Okay then.’

‘All right. I’ll need to go back to the office to make the call.’

Everything will move quickly now. Like it did when Uncle Harry hit Sarah. We will be taken away. Dave makes things happen. He makes promises and he keeps them. He promised we would never see Uncle Harry again and we haven’t.

The front door thumps shut behind him and the letterbox rattles, telling us he’s gone outside. We stand and walk downstairs.

The living room door opens. ‘I suppose you two were listening and you’re happy about it.’ Mum stands there holding the door with the cigarette hanging between her lips, sending up a thin spiralling smoke signal, asking for pity.

‘What’s a refuge?’ Sarah asks.

The cigarette lifts in Mum’s lips. It glows the colour of fire at the end as she sucks on it. Then her fingers take it out of her mouth. ‘Somewhere women go to hide,’ she says. ‘You better pack what you want to take. There’s some bags under the sink.’

We left the house an hour later with Dave and five old supermarket shopping bags full of what would become all we had. We got into a taxi, that Dave paid for, and it drove us away from the place where we were born. It drove us out of Swindon and all the way to Gloucester.

Chapter 15

2018

The old-fashioned bell that dangles above the café door chimes, welcoming another customer with its merry jingle.