I’m cleaning off a table, wiping over the pine top, having moved the used crockery onto the tray. I glance over my shoulder, the instinct to respond and present a welcoming smile kicking in.
‘Hello,’ Jonny calls in a tone that questions as much as greets before I see her too.
An adrenal surge urges fight or flight. But appeasement is the third part of a human’s instinctive defence mechanism … That’s what Jonny wants me to do. To wave a white flag and talk to her. But he doesn’t know all the details. He can’t understand what he’s asking me to do. I may not remember everything, but I remember enough to know she’s trouble.
‘Hello,’ Susan answers Jonny, looking at him. She hasn’t looked at me yet. His eyes direct hers to me.
I’m frozen into stone, caught in her Medusa stare again. Is it really only me who can see the snakes she has in her hair?
‘What are you doing here?’ I ask.
‘That’s not a very nice welcome.’ Her voice is jovial. Happy. Everything in her body language and her voice suggests she is not a threat and pleased to be here.
Is she pleased to be with me, though, or pleased to torment me? Is it all pretence?
Was she happy in the years we were apart? The question flies into my mind and lands sharply and heavily like the point of a dart. Like thinking of her dead. I’m not sure I can imagine her really miserable and be happy myself. But I don’t want her to make me miserable either.
She looks at Jonny again. ‘I saw your advert for a part-time waitress in the window. Any chance?’
He looks at me again, directing her eyes back to me, smiling in a way that makes a statement.
She’d assumed Jonny was the one to ask. He is the one wearing a striped blue and white shirt while I’m wearing a sleeveless, loose summer dress over a T-shirt and black leggings but we’re equal partners in this café. The lease and loan that set this place on its feet are in both names.
‘I’d suggest you two talk a bit more before you make any commitments. You need to be sure you can endure each other’s company. Shall I make you some coffee and you can sit down for a few minutes?’ His gaze holds mine, looking for anything I might say through silence. Susan is probably still able to read those sorts of interactions too.
Susan. It’s still weird to hear that name aloud, or in my head. I had banished it.
We only have four customers. The Easter holidays are over and it will be a month before the Summer tourists arrive. In the height of summer the café is full nearly every hour of every day. But today, the people scattered around the tables are regulars from the village. People who just want to get out of their houses for an hour. They are looking, though; it’s not every day someone’s clone turns up.
‘We’ll sit outside,’ I say, untying the bow securing the pinafore that’s wrapped around my middle. I don’t want the regulars, or even Jonny, to hear this conversation. ‘Come on,’ I say to her, leading the way and throwing my apron at Jonny.
I pass her and open the door.
The bell rings again.
I hold the door, letting her walk out first then follow her, as Jonny goes behind the counter to make the coffee himself. He smiles at Marie who is making up a sandwich order. She raises her eyebrows at him, and I see his skin redden.
The door swings shut behind us as if it is closing on the life I have today and leaving me in the past.
‘What are you doing here?’ I turn to one of the tables in the shade of the awning and pull out a chair from a small round two-seater table.
‘Finding you.’
‘Why?’ The metal seat is cold.
‘Because you’re my sister,’ she says as she pulls out the chair on the other side of the table and sits down facing me. ‘My twin sister.’
I wait for more. Expect more. Nothing more is said. ‘That doesn’t mean anything special anymore. It’s just genetics.’
The lake water laps at the pebbles on the narrow shoreline in front of the café. The gentle sound and the calls of the birds in the wood behind the café deny the intensity that crackles across the table like a forest fire.
‘It means something to me, and I came because I want you to admit that it still means something to you. Don’t worry, I won’t say anything to Jonny. I’ve accepted everything as it is.’ Her elbows rest on the table and she leans in to make the conversation more intimate, my blue eyes staring back at me, promising to tell the truth, the pupils glowing with what looks like a real desire to be forgiven. Her posture is subtly threatening though.
‘Are you waving a white flag or a skull and cross bones?’
It’s strange looking at her. She is the me I see in pictures. And the me I see in the memories of my childhood. She’s like a shadow of me. The evil half of me. Not a separate person.
‘I’m sorry.’ She says without prompting. I see a very good impression of sincerity in her eyes.
Crocodile. I don’t trust her. Why would she come here and say sorry to me now?
‘I’m not.’ I lean back in the chair, moving as far away from her as I can without getting up and walking away.
‘I want us to be close again. I want to forget everything too.’
‘And if I don’t want us to be close …?’ I sound like Lucy at her most belligerent. But I have a good reason to be confrontational. Why should I trust her Trojan horse of an apology?
She sighs in the dramatic way that mum used to and her eyes glisten with a sheen of moisture that implies sadness. ‘Then I’ll go away.’
‘Is that a promise?’ Does she feel as strange as I do, looking at her exact resemblance. We still look absolutely identical, weight, height, hairstyle, everything.
‘If you want it to be?’
‘I do.’ She was always a good liar; I suddenly remember that. What is she really thinking? Years ago, I always thought I knew what was in her head.
‘Then I promise to go if you want me to,’ she answers. ‘If you promise to try to get to know me again for six months before you decide.’ Her ransom demand is thrown across the table like the perfect poker hand, with an indifferent expression.
Six months.
Is she lying?
My fingers pick a packet of mayonnaise out of the condiment holder on the table and I squeeze it in the middle, squishing the sauce inside the plastic.
‘Six months,’ she repeats. ‘We need to spend time together to get to know each other.’
‘Why?’ I ask again, remembering Lucy as a child of five. Every question was followed with three more whys. Why? Why? Why? ‘What is the point?’
‘You have a husband and a daughter. I don’t have anyone. I want my sister back.’
I don’t answer.
The café’s doorbell rings.
‘Here you are,’ Jonny comes out carrying a mug of coffee in either hand.
He smiles at me, a smile just for me, his hazel eyes offering understanding and support.
I love you. The words slip through my thoughts. When Susan has gone I will hug him and say the words aloud. ‘Thank you,’ I say as he puts a mug of foamy cappuccino down in front of me.
‘Thank you,’ Susan says when he puts the other mug down in front of her.
It’s like a perfect echo. Our faces are the same, our bodies are the same, and our voices are the same.
‘Do you want to talk about the past?’ She asks as Jonny walks away.
I lean forward to drink the coffee. ‘No.’ I’m looking at the heart Jonny has drawn with milk foam on the top of my coffee, not at her. I lift the mug and sip the coffee, breaking the heart.
‘Then tell me about your life. Tell me what Lucy was like while she was growing up.’
I don’t want her to know about Lucy. I just want her to leave us alone. Me, Jonny, and Lucy.
‘I like going to watch films at the cinema,’ she says. ‘We were never able to go as children, were we? Did you go with Lucy when she was growing up?’
‘Sometimes. She didn’t like the noise from the surround sound until she was about ten. How did you find us?’
‘Through the café. Someone mentioned Jonny’s name on Twitter, with a link to the café information. They recommended it. They’d come here every day on their holiday. Neither of you are on social media. There isn’t even a proper webpage for the café. It was just a Google link.’
I know. It’s deliberate. My hands embrace the warm coffee mug. I look at her, telling her to take our lack of online presence as a hint. But I know now that she had never really been able to read my thoughts.
‘Do you remember leaving London?’ she asks.
I shake my head. ‘I know we lived there. I met Jonny there. But I don’t know what happened. I don’t want to.’ A shiver of distaste trembles through my shoulders as my mind shakes, warning of an earthquake and a Tsunami if I touch those memories. I look down, shaking my head again, seeking comfort in the warmth from the coffee cup. ‘I just know that it was a horrible time.’ I look back up at her. ‘And it was your fault. You always got us into trouble, Susan. Did you stay there?’
She stares at me, not responding for ages, then she says, ‘For a while.’
‘But you’ve been somewhere else since …’
‘Obviously.’
I can still spot her tells, even if I can’t read what’s in her brain. She’s omitting important things. She’s looking at me too directly. Hiding behind a solid mirror that she’s cast across her eyes. I don’t want to remember the things that will be behind that mirror anyway. But if I can spot her tells, she can see mine too. She is just choosing to ignore my leaking body language telling her to go away.
‘Where was somewhere else?’ I ask.
‘I don’t want to recall that. I haven’t had the happily-ever-after ending you have. You should think yourself lucky.’
‘I do. Is that why you’re here? To muscle in on my happiness?’
Her body jerks back slightly. It’s a tiny movement that no one else would probably have noticed. But I notice because I know her better than anyone else. I am her.
The years between us break apart, disappearing, exploding in a dynamite blast. She is in my head, another me. I know her mannerisms, her body language. I can read so many things through the way she moves and looks at me. That is what I had thought was our special sixth sense when we were children.
‘Yes,’ she admits. ‘I want to be happy. I’ve never had a chance to be really happy.’ Her gaze holds mine for a moment, then drops, and she drinks from her coffee. Which is strange because the action does not seem the right movement, it doesn’t match her words. If she thinks I can make her happy, why not look at me when she says that.
I drink too. But I don’t take my eyes off her. ‘Are you asking for pity?’
Her gaze rushes back to me. ‘No. I’ve never needed pity.’ There’s an accusation in her eyes, something that I am being accused of. Words hover on her tongue but she is hanging onto them behind her lips.
‘I said we won’t speak about it. I won’t say anything, if you don’t,’ she says.
If she is speaking about things that happened in London, I have nothing I can remember to speak about anyway. But if she is speaking about the years before London, then there are things I don’t want Lucy to know. I nod, agreeing. ‘I won’t say anything about the past. Your secrets are my secrets.’
Chapter 16
1985
‘Girls! Girls!’ The copper’s shouts punch through the air with a pitch that says, stay where you are.
Susan looks at me, smiles, and then she says, ‘Run.’
She laughs as we launch into the race. Our legs pump hard, our trainers with the holes in the seams of the canvas pounding on the pavement.
We have a head-start of a few metres on PC Merry. Uncle Charlie calls PC Merry the laughable policeman. The copper doesn’t know we know him. He doesn’t know us. But he knows Uncle Charlie.
‘Girls! Stop!’
He should know we aren’t going to stop. If we stop we’ll be in trouble for not being in school. That’s all he thinks we’ve done – skipped school. But that’s not all that we’ve done.
We run across the uneven pavements of Cirencester town centre then dodge into an alley between the shops, the muscles in our legs burning.
Susan stops. As she breathes, her breaths pull at the buttons of her blouse. ‘Put the stuff in this bin,’ she orders lifting the blue lid of an industrial recycling bin. It’s packed with cardboard. She tips goodies out from the sleeves of her cardigan and unloads the pockets of her skirt.
I pull the stolen goods out of my pockets and throw them in.
‘Come on.’ Susan lets the bin lid fall with a plastic clatter, clasps my wrist and pulls me on.
There’s a bench at the end of the alley, a bench that we can climb onto and use to get over the fence into the park beyond.
I hear PC Merry coming, his shoes slapping rhythmically on the pavement. In a couple of minutes, he will reach the end of the alley and see us.
Susan lets go of me and climbs. I climb too. She flops over the top of the fence, falling onto the grass on the other side. I tumble over a moment behind her.
We stay still, huddled together on the ground, listening and waiting. If he looks over the fence and doesn’t look down he won’t see us but if we start running he will.
His footsteps run into the alley and along it, getting closer and closer, then he runs past us, out of the far end of the alley and into another street.
I look at Susan and press a hand over my mouth to stop a laugh erupting.
‘Do you want a cigarette?’ Susan pulls a packet out from her skirt pocket.
I do laugh, quietly, because she’d dared to keep a packet. I’m usually the daredevil. I had been the one who had pulled the packets off the shelves in the shop. But she told me to. It was easy, though; Mr Jankowski is always leaving the shop unattended. He goes out the back to talk to his wife and we take advantage.
Uncle Charlie says, ‘If people give you an opportunity then it’s only polite you take it.’
He makes us laugh and he likes making us laugh. He says things just because he knows we will laugh.
Susan unravels the plastic, opens the packet, pulls out the foil, and throws it aside then takes out two cigarettes. She holds them in her lips, puts the packet back in her pocket and pulls out a pink plastic lighter that had been in the cardboard holder near the till. She lights both cigarettes, sucking on the filter ends as she holds them in the lighter’s flame. Then she holds a cigarette out for me to take.
‘Thanks.’
We sit with our backs against the fence, our legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, and blow smoke circles up towards the blue sky. The nicotine slides from my lungs into my blood.
We can’t go home for a while. We have to hide until the end of the school day.
We never go to school. We don’t fit in there. We can read and write. One of our primary school teachers said we were exceptionally bright. We don’t need to know anything else from teachers. We taught ourselves how to steal and we are good at that.
The head teacher told Mum we’re feral.
We looked that word up. It means wild. Untamed.
We like being called feral. It reminds us of when we used to imagine that we were wolf cubs.
The day is hot, and the grass is dry, so we don’t get up. There’s nowhere else to go to anyway.
We strip off our cardigans, pull the hems of our grey school-uniform skirts to the top of our thighs and turn our faces up to the sun, like sunflowers. We close our eyes and let the sunshine warm us from the outside to the inside, letting the sun tan the skin on our faces, arms, and legs.
We open our eyes as a cold shadow sweeps across our legs, as if the sun has been covered over by a cloud.
‘Hello. What are you two up to?’ Three boys are looking down at us, their shadows stretching over us. The tallest and best looking was the one who’d spoken. He has amazing gold eyes.
‘Nothing that’s any of your business,’ I say. We are tall, for our age, but if we stand up these boys will tower over us by inches. They look like teenagers.
They make us wary, but we aren’t afraid. We aren’t afraid of anyone. My heartbeat is racing, though, like it was before when PC Merry was chasing us.
‘I saw you had cigarettes. Let us have one.’ It’s not a request; it’s an order made by a ginger-haired boy.
It would be better if we were on our feet. We would be less vulnerable, more able to fight. But if we get up they will think we feel threatened. In an unspoken agreement we stay in our casual position on the floor, neither of us moving a muscle. But I feel awkward just sitting here.
‘Go on then …’ The tallest and the best looking holds out a hand towards Susan, asking verbally and physically, not telling.
‘What are you going to give me in exchange?’ Susan asks him. She’s smiling at him. Flirting. Mocking the size and the threat of him.
‘I’ll pay you back for it later.’ He smiles. He has a charmer’s smile. Uncle Charlie smiles like that when he’s sober.
I like a smile like that. It says, like me. I can make you laugh.
Susan takes the cigarette packet out from her skirt, opens it, and takes out one cigarette. She holds it out to him. ‘Here you are.’ When he bends down reaching for it, she pulls it back smiling.
He nearly loses his balance and tumbles on top of her, but his black friend with short black hair grabs the back of his T-shirt.
I think he’ll be angry. I see his anger bursting open in my mind. He isn’t. He laughs. ‘Bitch.’ The insult is said in the lightest, least offensive way possible. He holds out a hand, his palm open and facing up. Offering to help Susan stand, not asking for the cigarette. ‘If you give me one, we can sit in the playground and share it.’
‘What about us?’ His black friend protests.
‘You’ll have to convince her to give you one yourselves.’
Susan reaches out and holds his hand. He pulls her to her feet, leaving me alone on the grass.
His mates don’t offer me a hand but then I don’t have the cigarettes. There’s a hoard of goodies in the rubbish bin on the other side of the fence, though. There are more cigarette packets and some chocolate bars.
I don’t tell them. I don’t want to share with them. I can get up on my own.
Susan walks off, still holding the boy’s hand. She doesn’t even know his name. But he’s a charmer.
Are we like Mum? Because … I fancy him too. If she hadn’t taken his hand I would have reached out. Smiles like that boy’s are like the music of a snake charmer. He is the Pied Piper for girls.
I glance down at the watch Uncle Charlie picked out from a bargain bin in the newsagent and stuffed into his coat, then gave to me. In the time it had taken the long second hand to tick over one minute we had learned to fancy boys.
Just looking at him had made my stomach tumble over in a roly-poly. I held my breath when he held out his hand, my heart leaping around on a pogo stick because I knew something momentous was going to happen. It had happened to Susan.
The ginger-haired boy’s eyes are leery. He’s watching me in a way that makes an unpleasant tingle run up my back.
‘You got any cigarettes?’ he says.
‘No.’ I don’t like him. He’s ugly and rude. He’s not even trying to be charming to persuade me to give him a cigarette. He would try to bully me into giving him a cigarette if I had any.
‘Are you coming with us, or are you just going to sit there?’ The black kid’s eyebrows lift as he asks me. Then he holds out a hand.
I scrabble up without accepting his hand. Probably flashing the crotch of my knickers because my skirt is pulled so high. I pull the hem down, wrap my cardigan around my waist and tie it at the front, then pick Susan’s cardigan up off the grass.
‘Why are you in the park?’ I ask the black boy, my eyes on Susan and the tallest boy, walking ahead, talking to each other, still holding hands. She doesn’t seem to care that I’m not behind her.
Why did he pick Susan to hold hands with? Just because she has the cigarettes. That’s the only difference between us today.
How can anyone pick between her and me? We are the same. I’ve never thought about boys before. But how will boys choose one identical twin? By a packet of cigarettes.
***
I spend my afternoon sitting on one of the eight sections of the witches-hat roundabout, with the black and the ginger boys in the sections either side of me, watching Susan kiss the tall boy sprawled across a section of the roundabout. The other boys and I just sit there smoking. They talk, while I listen.
I learn their names. Jonny is the tallest one, the black guy is called Wayne and the ginger creepy one is called Jay.
‘Shall we get something to eat?’ Susan is looking at Jonny and only talking to Jonny, who is reaching for another cigarette.
Jonny’s other hand slides down from a position where it had been on her chest over the top of her school blouse.
I look at my watch. It’s nearly five.
‘I have money for a burger.’ Susan says. Stolen money.
Jonny sits up, his long legs dangling over the side of the roundabout as he takes another cigarette from our packet and uses our lighter to light it.
His gaze catches mine.
I think he’s looking for the differences. There aren’t any. If I met him and she wasn’t there, I could pretend to be her, and he wouldn’t know.
‘I don’t have any money.’ Jonny says to Susan his gaze moving off me to her. Then he looks at his mates. ‘Do you?’
Shaking heads are his answer.
‘We have enough money for everyone.’ Susan says.
She’s going to give them our money.
‘Sarah has it.’
We took the money from Uncle Charlie’s wallet this morning when he and Mum were in bed. We took it to buy cigarettes but then Mr Jankowski hadn’t been behind the counter so we’d just taken what we wanted.
The notes are still folded and hidden in my skirt pocket.
Jonny, Wayne, and Jay look at me.
What will they do if I refuse to pay for them?
‘You’ll have to earn your burgers,’ I say, taking control, my chin tipping up as I look them in the eyes, one at a time, desperately trying to think of a good, grown-up dare.
I will ask them to steal something else for us.
Chapter 17
2018
A laugh, a sharp, high sound, pulls my attention across the room to the café’s counter where the selection of cakes, salads, and pastries are displayed in the chiller cabinet. Marie is placing the freshly baked scones that have been flooding the café with a delicious smell for the last ten minutes onto the cream-tea plates. Jonny is standing beside her. But Susan is there too, this side of the counter, looking over at Jonny. The laughter came from Susan.
Her hands are on her hips in a posture that makes her breasts more prominent. They push against the white blouse she is wearing, stretching the buttons at the front so there is a flash of bright scarlet bra. Although, her bra is clearly visible through the white cotton anyway. Sometimes she looks more like a striper than a waitress.
I can always tell the two of us apart, now, when I catch sight of us in the mirrors we have on the walls to make the café seem bigger because she wears in-your-face clothes. There’s always something prominent about what she’s wearing. It’s sexual. Slutty. And it’s Jonny’s face she shoves herself in.
Other than that, though, generally, she wears her hair in a pony-tail, while mine is down and that is the only way strangers know which waitress has arrived at their table – the owner or the summer-temp – and sometimes, despite her choice of clothes, when she wears her hair down regulars ask her questions about my life.
Even Jonny mistakes her for me when he’s not concentrating and just turns to ask something quickly. Until he remembers what I wore to work.
I have thought about cutting my hair short, just so there will always be something that easily distinguishes me, but that feels like giving in to her. I don’t want short hair, so I’m not going to let her force me into cutting it. I like it like this.
