The Other Twin Read online

  People on board the 20:12 to London Victoria report hearing ‘a loud bang’, though no one saw the young woman fall. The train driver is being treated for shock. British Transport Police are appealing for witnesses.

  I read and re-read the report, my brain refusing to take the details in at first. I look at my watch and note the date again: 23rd December.

  India’s birthday.

  Earlier this week – in my Before life – I’d posted a card. I’d chosen it without care, grabbing it from a newsagent’s near the school where I was working. I’d not wanted to give India any more ammunition. I wanted to show her – and my parents – I can be the ‘good’ sister. For once.

  It’s India’s birthday, yet she’s dead.

  I’m six, nearly seven. The Christmas holidays are forgotten this year, because my sister is born two weeks early. There is no Christmas tree, no presents under it. My mother has been completely caught out by the new arrival.

  The baby comes home from the hospital trussed up in a car seat. My sister is wearing a pink knitted bonnet and a baby-gro with embroidered strawberries on. I am dressed nicely too: my hair is plaited, my puppy fat forced into a dress a little on the small side. It pinches under the arms.

  I am sidelined as relatives, friends and random associates take turns to look at my replacement. Still in that car seat, my new sister is placed on the polished coffee table. The best china, cups and saucers and shining silver teaspoons, are placed next to her. Adults coo, exclaiming how good, how tiny or how cute this baby is, bringing cards and presents with them.

  None are for me. I grow bored waiting for the adults to say how nice I look, or ask how I am getting on at big school.

  So I drift closer to them. But their attention is still solely on the new kid, the one who only yesterday was still in my mum’s belly. Just twenty-four hours ago I heard only bad things about this baby: how she gave Mum indigestion, or heartburn or an aching back. My mum had put her bloated ankles up on the pouf in the living room. She’d eaten chocolate spread straight out of the jar. She’d complained about being pregnant and how it lasted forever. But today, all is different: the baby is here and all is forgiven. India is only good.

  I join two women on the floor. They sit on their heels next to the coffee table. One is the tall, thin woman across the road who’s always in a rush and pushing a pram, her face set in a grim line. But not today; she is all smiles.

  The other is the classroom assistant at my school: Miss Macey. She has big hands and a big gap between her two front teeth. She reads storybooks in silly voices, but not today.

  Both are enchanted by my sister. I want them to look up, smile at me.

  I lean on the coffee table. My weight makes it rear up. Two of its stubby legs leave the floor. There’s a clash of china as cups and saucers slide. The car seat rocks perilously backwards. Multiple female cries of alarm fill the air, as if sound alone can cushion the baby’s fall.

  But the baby does not fall.

  Miss Macey grabs the car seat handle with her big hands. A collective sigh resounds from the adults, like the hiss of air brakes on a double-decker bus. My mother stares at me with shiny eyes, as if she hates me.

  ‘What have you done!’

  I stand there, my six-year-old brain unable to process my mum’s anger. Delayed embarrassment lands its black butterfly wings on my face, bringing with it red cheeks. I take in the adults’ wide eyes, frozen where they stand or sit between my mother and me.

  The moment melts just as rapidly. I’m able to move. I flee to the stairwell, too-jolly adult voices behind me, covering up their own anxiety.

  An hour or so later, I see the grown-ups leave at last, shuffling through the hall. All of them pretend not to see me, morose on the bottom step.

  Most people go without fuss, without bother. But not India. She goes out with a bang. Literally. And this time, I’m not there.

  Sister. What have you done?

  Five

  My train finally arrives at Brighton station.

  I look up and see the large clock suspended from the criss-cross slats of the station roof. The stars in the dark sky above contrast with the neon lamps that light the station with their sickly glow. The closest coffee shop is closed, its doors locked. The ticket barriers are open.

  A young couple with a sleeping child follow me off our train, the father effortlessly hoisting the little girl over his shoulder. He links his other arm with his partner’s; she stares up at him with starry eyes. She is younger than me. India’s age.

  I watch them as they disappear through the ticket barrier into the brightly lit concourse and onto the street. I shift my rucksack on my shoulder, shivering now with the cold. The mild December weather has transformed abruptly. Beyond the ticket barriers, the doors of the station stand open. As I draw closer, I can see a night bus and the taxi rank, a light dusting of snow on the pavement and on the closed food carts. Dirty-grey grit on the ground. Slushy footprints amble downhill, into the town beyond.

  Outside the station, I catch sight of the Transport Police poster mounted on a stand labelled ‘INCIDENT’. I know what will be under that word, along with an appeal for witnesses and information.

  Suicide.

  Did you know? Suicide on the railways kills nearly three hundred people a year. That’s 4.5 percent of suicides every single year. It says so – right there on the Network rail posters and on Samaritans banners on buses, so it must be true.

  (Suicide, noun. 1. The act of killing oneself intentionally. 2.

  An efficient and simple way of dealing with life’s shit. 3. The very last item on your ‘to do’ list. Related words: kill, die, stupid, selfish.)

  These aren’t just my words, but the words of hundreds of thousands of others left to pick up the pieces (another cliché). Except we’re not picking the pieces up. We’re shovelling them, our arms heavy with the weight of dirt and rocks, as well as a side helping of that other related word, ‘guilt’. We have to live every day with the label of being the one whose mother, father or sibling killed themselves. We’re left with endless questions, which are branded forever on our skin: Could I have stopped it? Did I miss the signs? How can this have happened? Why wasn’t I enough?

  But I’ve barely spoken to India in four years. The last proper conversation we had, she stood on the front doorstep of the house I am returning to now. She was dressed in another of her hoodies, thrown on over a pair of pyjama trousers. She was watching me leave home again, her bare feet pale pink on the concrete step.

  ‘Running away,’ she’d sneered that morning, blocking my bedroom doorway as I shoved clothes and toiletries into my case.

  ‘Hardly,’ I’d retorted, her words making me prickle. ‘London’s an hour away; if that.’

  India folded her arms. ‘So stay.’

  I faltered. It was the closest to an apology I would get from my sister. But then I remembered why I was going. ‘You know I can’t.’

  India’s top lip curled. ‘You won’t, you mean.’

  What do you care? I wanted to scream at her, back then. My leaving had nothing to do with her, not really. But my younger sister had to get involved, had to meddle … as usual. I didn’t want to argue with her, but she’d picked a side and it wasn’t mine. She’d drawn a line between us.

  I turned as I reached the corner. From the doorstep, India gave me a sarcastic little wave, her lip pulled back in that perpetual sneer of hers. I almost returned it with The Finger, but didn’t.

  If I’d known that was the last time I would see my sister breathing, would I have done things differently? Perhaps I would have raced back, thrown my arms around her. But after all that had happened between us, I know she’d have flinched away. A simple hug would have been misconstrued, examined for ulterior motives.

  I wander the way the young family went moments before. My breath comes out in trails. I can no longer feel the soles of my feet. I slip through the ticket barriers and towards the taxi rank, though I have no money left.
I could get in one of those vehicles, direct it to my parents’ house and get them to pay the bill, but I don’t want to arrive to more rolled eyes, just like when I left. Not now. Not After.

  So I set off along the pavement, moving down the hill from the station, cutting through to the red-brick labyrinth that is The Lanes. It won’t take me long to walk, perhaps forty minutes. Maybe I can even wake up my frozen limbs along the way.

  Bare branches reach up into the inky sky in Whitehawk as I turn onto the grimy street I left four years ago. Our old Coach House looks exactly like I left it. No one has painted it in the time I’ve been away, so its white render is a dingy grey. Someone has tagged a cryptic message with spray paint on the garage door.

  I can see the doorstep, but no India stands there now. It is empty but for a small, ginger cat sitting patiently on the frosty handkerchief of a front lawn, washing its paws. It looks young, barely out of kittenhood. Is it ours? I have no idea. In the past four years, I’ve only met my parents in London when they have come up for dinner and a show. I realise, too late, that I’ve avoided India, just as she’s avoided me.

  My freezing finger presses the doorbell. I have no key. It’s only as the porch light goes on and Tim’s worried face swims into view through the frosted glass that it hits me how late it is, how a caller would ordinarily worry my parents at this hour. But the worst has already happened. No other bad news can match it.

  ‘Poppy!’

  There is a rattle of the security chain and my stepfather opens the door. Shorter than me by a full half a foot, Tim still wafts that musky smell of secret cigarettes he thinks my mother does not know about. His widow’s peak creates a ‘w’ on the top of his round, broad head.

  I attempt an incongruous smile, as if this is a normal reunion. Then I’m suddenly hot and I disconnect from reality, like someone has turned off a switch.

  I lurch towards him. I feel Tim’s meaty hands under my armpits, holding me up. He yells something I don’t understand. Perhaps my mother’s name, because she comes running down the stairs from the living room above, her bare feet thwacking on the tiles. Her hair is unbrushed and she has her dressing gown on over her rumpled clothes.

  ‘Poppy, Poppy…’ she coos, smoothing a hand over her hair, helping my stepfather hold me up.

  It takes both of them to manhandle me through the doorway. I am not overweight, but like Tim, Mum is much smaller than I am.

  Like an automaton I move forwards and without knowing how I got there, I am in my old bedroom: I know it from the smell, rather than its décor, because it has all changed. The once-green walls are now yellow. It is bare, devoid of personal touches, not even a vase of flowers on the nightstand. New, starched curtains are open, a chasm of black night yawns beyond.

  I don’t care. I collapse, face first onto the bed. I just lay there, breathing in the scent of fabric conditioner: jojoba. India reappears in my mind, twisting her mouth with a smile, correcting Tim’s pronunciation – ‘No, Dad. Ho-hoba!’ – before dissolving into a fit of giggles.

  I am only just aware of my parents’ hushed voices, muttering between themselves. One of them places another duvet over the top of me, followed by a thick fleece blanket. I want to say something, even if it’s only ‘thanks’, but I cannot. I am immobile.

  When the overhead light turns off, I pass out.

  Six

  He grips the handlebars of the exercise bike. He feels the burn in his thighs, knees and core. An involuntary grunt escapes the back of his throat. Not that anyone can hear it: dance music pounds through the speakers, in time with a set of three-coloured disco lights that flash sporadically in his eyes. Fuck’s sake.

  The dungeon-like spin studio is dark, no mirrors. It’s the only one in use in daylight hours: the yummy mummies and night-shift girls don’t like seeing their flabby arses hanging off the bike seats, or their cellulite shaking as they pedal. He averts his eyes from flesh bulging out the backs of too-tight leggings and the armpits of sagging sports bras.

  He could pick any of the women in the room and know their story. So. Predictable. On young, chubby left hands, there are shiny new rocks: they’re trying to slim down for a wedding dress. On older female hands: a mark where a band had been, as women past their prime attempt to slim back down after the comfort blanket of marriage. Women are so obvious in their crusades to find a man, mould him and call it ‘true love’.

  The spin instructor calls out encouragement in his reedy voice during breaks in the music. He’s a white guy, friendship bracelets on his girlish wrists, another on each one of his ankles. Another shirtlifter, no doubt: they’re bloody everywhere, especially in Brighton. The instructor’s sternum peeks out of his vest, he is all knees and elbows, his skinny legs powering down on the pedals. But he’s probably stronger than he looks; lean and wiry, like his own father.

  Dad was a bare-knuckle fighter in his youth. He liked to boast that he won the stake money for the family business by knocking Frankie ‘The Beast’ Harding out in an illegal, unlicensed fight in the backroom of Joe’s Gym on Carnivale Street. That money enabled him to buy his own van and tools, setting up as self-employed and saying goodbye to casual labouring forever.

  Not long after that he’d met the love of his life. She’d been a salon girl over at her aunt’s. She hadn’t cared much for hair cutting, but she did have a head for business. A few months later, she was ensconced by the phone in a shiny new office, a ring on her finger. The origins of the family empire. The rest, as they say, is history.

  He turns the bike’s resistance up to the top. He can feel the start of a stitch in his side, raw pain stabs the backs of his calves, making him feel light-headed. But it’s a relief to feel something pure – something he doesn’t need to hide. Exercise is his only true release.

  Heat flushes up his neck and face. He can feel sweat shaking from his flesh, like a dog just out of a pond, as he speeds the pedals round and round, teeth clenched.

  He’s almost disappointed when he recognises the opening bars of the warm-down song. The women in the room seem to breathe out a collective sigh of relief as they grab for the resistance handle, taking it down just one or two notches to the beginning, their faces red with exertion.

  He grudgingly follows suit, taking his down from eight, resolving to come in the evening when more men would be there. Maybe then he might have some real competition. Of course, he never airs these opinions. The world’s gone mad for supposed equality, but in real terms it’s special treatment women desire. They want to be in charge, but they want to play the victim, too. None of them can be trusted. As far as women are concerned men are as good as children. If one ever dares to step out of line, he’s a beast.

  He laces his fingers together and stretches out his arms. He can feel himself reconnecting, rebooting. This is state zero, the kickoff, the most at peace he will ever be. He savours the momentary quiet in his head; it won’t be long before the endless cycle of life crap rushes at him again. Drip by drip by drip, it will deplete his reserves of patience and fill him up with what feels like poisonous gas, straining at his skin, no way out.

  Seven

  The next few days pass in a fog. I remember only fragments. I do not cry. Instead I am agitated, moving from room to room, restless yet trapped. I am reminded of a school trip to a farm, seeing ewes and cows doing the same, crashing against the metal barriers that confine them, their eyes wild with fear.

  Christmas has been cancelled again, twenty-five years on from my sister’s birth. India’s gone. Dead. I just can’t reconcile the word with the reality, when she’d been such a vital presence. It seems unthinkable.

  I sit in my sister’s room, hunched on her chair, staring at the things she’s left: sheaves of her beautiful drawings on the desk; notebooks full of her neat, looped handwriting; photos she’s taken on the pinboard – extreme close-ups of flowers; landscapes; sunsets. India had been so artistic, so gifted. I see her everywhere: lying on the bed, her legs propped up on the headboard, painted to
enails in the air.

  What a waste.

  Though I’d been jealous of India when she was born, I fell into the role of big sister with ease. Being six years older, I discovered it was fun to have a younger sibling, especially as India sought to emulate me every chance she got. By the time I hit my late teens, it had been up to me to drop her at school on the way to college, or make her tea. Mum and Tim worked long hours running the arcade down on the pier, so India wanted me to read to her, or to help her with her homework. A deep ache opens up inside my chest; tears threaten, but I blink them back, determined to be doing something. For India.

  I search the desk. There are piles of papers, magazines and letters, some still sealed and discarded. I open the official-looking ones in a bid to gain some insight into my younger sister’s life. A doctor’s letter, inviting India in for a smear test; a fine for an overdue library book; a referral letter to a psychiatrist.

  India was depressed?

  I root through her desk drawers, then her bedside cabinet. Inside, a packet of antidepressants, the blister-pack full. India has not taken any of them.

  I am filled with rage, both at my sister for not taking the pills, then my parents, for not making her. But India was an adult. What could Mum and Tim have done – grounded her? I fold up the psychiatry appointment letter and shove it in my pocket. I don’t know why. All I know is I won’t rest until I discover what really happened to my beautiful, talented little sister.

  A doctor arrives at the Coach House to see me. I don’t remember his name. I recognise him as an old friend of Tim’s. He is a tall, pale man in his late sixties with a perfectly bald, dome-shaped skull. He leans on a cane. Neither has come to him with age; he’s had both since he was a young man.