Shine, page 12
And I also realized that I couldn’t do it alone. I couldn’t fix you all by myself. I needed help.
So I let him in.
And that’s how it began, Kat.
It began with you and it was always about you. Jon and I were just trying to figure you out. We wanted to make YOU happy. You were our project, can you see that? Will you ever understand?
We had to meet secretly to discuss you, to try to find a solution.
And then we found ourselves meeting for no reason other than to see each other again.
Whenever our secret coffees and lunches and meetings in the park came to an end, it was always agony to part.
Suddenly I had insight into your delusion, Kat. Because, like you, I couldn’t get Jon out of my mind. When I was with him, I couldn’t take my eyes off him.
We never meant it to happen. Never. We’d been through months of anxiety and frustration over you . . . and suddenly we found ourselves smiling again, laughing together, happy. It was good. But what a calamity. How could something so good be so bad? Well.
And there you were, continuing to make your mad accusations, continuing to attack, continuing to suspect us. And all the while, Jon and I were making your delusions come true.
28
YOU SENT FATHER a postcard.
It was all I could do to keep my hands from shaking as I signed.
She tilted her head to one side, a quizzical expression on her face.
Father was reading a postcard last night, I signed. It was from you.
‘What postcard?’
I gestured to the torn-up bits on the table.
She stared at the mess, her face uncomprehending. And then slowly she reached for a small strip, picked it up, stared at the bright red of the London bus. Turned it over to reveal a fragment of long, slanted handwriting.
‘It’s . . . it’s all torn up.’
At first her face was blank. And then understanding dawned in her eyes. Her face contorted. Her brows drew together, her mouth twisted.
Suddenly she threw her head back and howled a shrill howl. Desperate, hurt, furious. Inhuman.
I recoiled, frightened.
Her eyes lifted up to mine and her pupils dilated. It was as if she was seeing me for the first time. ‘You! What are you doing here?’ She rose, her fists clenched.
I backed away from her, my throat emitting terrified noises. ‘Ungh ungh ungh!’
‘KARA!’ she cried, lunging forward, her hands clawing for my neck.
Kara? Did she suddenly think I was Mother? I shook my head, throwing myself out the living-room door and scrambling towards the stairs. What was wrong? What had happened? Oh, Yaya, wake up, Yaya. Help! My twisted throat shrilled dumbly, ‘AAAAAAH! AAAAAAH!’
I managed to leap up to the first landing but a hand closed round my ankle. I pitched forward, my head cracking against the banister.
‘KARA!’ she screamed as she tried to drag me down the stairs, her fingers like steel claws. ‘KARA!’ Her face pushed up close to mine. ‘How dare you, Kara?’ she hissed. ‘How dare you take Jon from me?’
I tried to push her off, to pry her claws off me, but she had me pinioned firmly to the stairs.
And then her hands were round my neck, squeezing. Tears were shining on her cheeks. ‘I want you gone! I want you out of my life, you monster!’
I stared at her as she throttled me, those eyes bulging with fury, the whites showing, teeth bared, deep lines creasing the sides of her face, hair wild, veins bulging in her neck. Her fingers were vice-like, unbudgeable, relentlessly squeezing the life out of me.
They say you see your life flashing before your eyes when you die. Well, as life began to leave, that didn’t really happen. Instead, time went into slow mo, my mind calmly observing and thinking as it watched my body slowly fading away.
And all I could think was: God’s made a mistake. This is a terrible design fault. Why do we only breathe through nose and mouth? So easily choked off. Why couldn’t other parts of the body take in air? Why not the fingertips? Why not the knees?
No air. No air.
I stared up at that face. Mother’s eyes. Mother’s lips. Mother’s hair. But no, not Mother. Why did Kat want to murder me?
My vision began to darken. It was like the sun had a dimmer and someone had turned it down low. Mood lighting. Thin glimmers of light spidered around my killer’s face. Perhaps I was dreaming. Perhaps I was going to wake up to find that none of this had ever happened, no beach, no postcard, no Danny, no monster killing me on the stairs?
I tried to gasp, tried to suck in some air, but only a tired little akk! came out of my throat.
Then a weird tingling sensation began to ripple through my body. This was it. The end. What was it going to be like on the other side? Would there be choirs of heavenly angels and gilded, curlicued gates to Heaven with wise Saint Peter nodding wisely at the door in a white nightie? Or was all that religion totally wrong? Was I just going to go pffft like a blown-out flame?
I couldn’t move, couldn’t stir. My muscles had turned into lifeless rubber. I wanted to close my eyes . . . sleep. But something in me struggled. Something in me still wanted to fight.
The face above me was wavering and zigzagging like a bad picture on the television. My vision was doubling.
Except. Over my murderer’s angry grimace was the face of another.
OK, this must be the final hallucination. The other face was a thin gauzy sheen superimposed on my attacker’s. The other face was smiling, the eyes gentle, loving.
My heart leaped. Mother, is that you?
The lips smiled and moved. Ro-sa.
Have you come to take me? Take me now, Mother!
She shook her head. Ro-sa.
Wild joy exploded in my chest, hot and spreading. The last laugh was on Father. There were such things as ghosts. And won’t Yaya be pleased. She wasn’t being so ridiculous after all, insisting on me shoving salt into my pocket.
Salt. In my pocket.
Mother nodded.
I willed energy into the dying muscles of my arm. Pushed my hand into my pocket. There it was, the stupid salt. That grainy stuff rubbing awkwardly inside my pocket since Yaya freaked out over the knock on the door. I closed my fist over it.
And swung it into the eyes of my attacker.
Kat screamed.
And then the world blew itself out.
29
BEING DEAD WAS a bit like drowning in thick syrup. I struggled, swimming slowly up until my head broke the cold, sticky surface, my mouth opening, the air slowly re-inflating my lungs.
My eyes focused slowly and, oh! Mother, you were there, looking down at me, your hair falling over one eye. You smiled and I smiled back.
Mother— I began . . .
You leaned up close and slowly, and you became real. I could feel the solid pillow of your cheek against mine, the flutter of your lashes on my forehead, the cool trace of your fingertips on my face. This was Heaven then, just me and you. And I was glad. Oh, so glad.
‘No, no, no, no . . .’
I started. Sat up. No, not Heaven.
I was on the sofa in the living room. The shutters were shut over the window, but light seeped in along the frame like some kind of holy glow.
Slowly I became aware of myself again. My muscles were soft fatty lumps of jelly, sending crackles of pain all over my body. My throat. Oh, it was so sore! The air moving through my airways had sharp fingernails that caught in the raw red walls.
I smelled the thick noxious odour of cigarette smoke and instinct leaped inside me. Smoking inside the house! Yaya will go berserk!
But Yaya was nowhere to be seen.
It was Kat, of course, smoking in the far corner.
Staring at her, it still took my breath away. What was the word for it? Dopo something . . . no. Doppelgänger. That’s it.
She was Mother’s doppelgänger.
But there was nothing hilarious about this. Doppelgänger Week seemed a million years ago.
The suitcase she had dropped in the doorway was now in the middle of the living-room floor. Between us, like a barrier. She stood against the wall, hair over her face, one shoulder exposed by a long tear in the sleeve of her blouse while one restless hand cradled an elbow gently. Her bare feet worked the floor, shuffling, edgy. She pressed against the wall, pressed and pressed as if she wanted to push herself right into the plaster, push herself away into nothingness.
She sucked nervously on the cigarette stub and I wrinkled my nose at the awful curling stink. I imagined all that smoke filling her lungs, her heart, her arteries, her brain. Fouling everything inside her. Filling her with evil.
She tossed her head, pushed the sheet of straggly hair away from her eyes and I realized that she’d been watching me under all that hair. She was whispering to herself. ‘I didn’t, didn’t, didn’t do it. It wasn’t me. I wouldn’t! I wouldn’t!’
There was something cold on my neck. I touched it. A damp, folded towel. I pressed the skin under the towel and my vision blurred with pain. This was where she’d had me in a death grip.
There was something on my forehead. I raised a leaden arm. It was a bandage. The first-aid pouch that Father had installed in the bathroom was lying unzipped on the table, plasters, ointments, tape and tablets spilt everywhere.
She must have carried me to the sitting room when I passed out. Cooled the injuries on my neck with a wet towel. Found the first-aid kit. Cleaned up the cut on my forehead. Stuck a bandage on it.
But why would she do that? Why would she hurt me and then fix me up?
She was rubbing her face with one hand now, rubbing, rubbing, rubbing, as if she wanted to erase her face.
I was afraid to look away. What if she went crazy again? I managed a glance at the door. Could I make a run for it? Oh! The baseball bat! . . . But I got rid of it, didn’t I? Now I had nothing to defend myself with and it was my own fault.
She looked at me and smiled. I was taken aback. It was such a natural smile, a normal smile.
‘Lovely,’ she whispered. ‘You’re lovely, Rosa.’
Kat said it with such feeling, it made me feel strange: drawn to her and repelled at the same time.
She straightened her back, took a step forward. For a moment, I had the oddest feeling that she was going to run across the room and take me into her arms.
But she didn’t. She turned to the wall, huddling against it, the smoke from her cigarette wrapping around her in a white shroud.
‘Will you ever forgive me?’ She shook her head slowly and great big tears fell from her eyes. She sank down to her haunches, back still pressed against the wall.
Her eyes watched me across the room.
‘The last time I saw Kara, it was a strange day. The rain actually stopped. Imagine that! Who would have thought the rain would actually stop in Mirasol?’
She leaned her head on the wall.
‘That was years ago. I’d come over to Mirasol from London. That’s where I’d been living – where I’ve lived all this time. It was a short holiday, and I just wanted to see if it had changed, just wanted to be home again.’
She laughed.
‘Oh, it hadn’t changed at all! Rain when my plane landed, rain all the way to the hotel, rain when I visited the market near our old home. And I thought, If there’s anything you could count on in Mirasol, it was the weather! And just as the thought popped into my head, the rain stopped.’
She bowed her head.
‘I wandered around the market for a while, looking at all the familiar things. Smelling all the familiar smells. It was great to be home. And then suddenly Kara just appeared out of nowhere. I jumped out of my skin. Thought I was seeing a phantom. Thought I’d gone out of my mind. I hadn’t seen her for . . . what, six years?
She drew deeply from the cigarette, then stubbed it out on the wooden floorboard. Yaya would have been apoplectic. But this was not the time to worry about what Yaya thought.
‘But it was her. Kara hurried up to me as if nothing had ever happened between us. She threw her arms around me and we were so full of joy at seeing each other again that we wept shamelessly.’
The day the sun shone.
The day Mother died.
There I was, remembering, five years old again, standing in the bright sunshine, staring at all the new things, full of wonder and maybe a little bit afraid to be out in the world. And then there I was waving bye-bye as Mother bade me wait by the baskets. Back soon, Mother had signed.
Kat’s hands moved nervously over her eyes, flicking at her hair. ‘We hung onto each other like we would never let go. We were in heaven! Together again!’ Her eyes pleaded with me. ‘Please understand, it was the happiest moment in my life. We’d been apart for so long and I missed Kara so much. I love Kara, you understand? I love her.’
I stared at the woman, wondering. She was Mother’s identical twin. They looked alike, were grown in the same womb, shared the same DNA, the same genes, the same building blocks.
Which meant I shared her DNA too. I shivered. We could be mother and daughter.
‘Kara started to say something,’ Kat continued. ‘She said, “Oh my God, Kat, I have a—” But she never finished the sentence. She just smiled and hugged me again. I realize now she was about to say, “I have a daughter.” But she decided not to.’ Her mouth twisted. ‘And then Kara was chattering away – her hands were everywhere, fluttering like butterflies, telling me that Jon had a job in the hospital and Jon had found a house and Jon . . .’ She grimaced. ‘Jon. Jon. Jon. Jon. Jon. She wanted to tell me about her life, about how things were OK.’
She closed her eyes.
‘That was when it happened.’
She clasped her hands together like she was begging me for something.
‘I . . . I just couldn’t – can’t – stop it. It’s always there. It lives inside me whether I like it or not. It . . . it just takes over and I can’t . . . I can’t . . .’ She shook her head. ‘The demon just came, it . . . it wanted to destroy her. Lashed out at her.’
Demon? Suddenly despite the heat, the noxious clouds of cigarette smoke hanging in the still air, despite the closeness of the shuttered room, I felt cold.
She turned her tortured face to the wall.
‘Suddenly we were struggling. I ripped the scarf from her neck. Screamed to the world. Look! Look! The Calm!’
She whirled towards me, her eyes begging. ‘But it was the demon! It wanted to show the world what she really was. It wanted her destroyed.’
The demon. She was talking as if her will was not her own. As if she was not one person but two.
‘The market went wild.’ Kat’s voice echoed in the living room. ‘It was like . . . like those horror movies when a village takes up pitchforks and sets off to destroy the ogre. They were insatiable, chased her like an animal, hunted her. She ran – and for a while I was part of the hunt, snapping at her heels like the rest of them, howling for her blood. But then I woke up. Heard the screams coming from my throat. I was shocked. Fell back. Hid in a clump of bamboo by the side of the road. But nobody noticed, of course. They could only see her.’
I realized that I’d been holding my breath. I made myself take in air, my chest rising and falling.
‘What they would have done if they’d caught her I never found out. Because suddenly she ran onto the road . . . and then there was a small bus, coming too fast round the corner. And . . .’
Kat shook her head, her face ruined.
‘She was my life, you understand? I loved her more than anything. And yet there was this . . . this thing inside me that just wouldn’t leave her alone. Just wouldn’t stop until . . .’
She buried her face in her knees for a long moment. When she lifted her face up again, a light from the window fell like a spotlight on her face.
‘She lay there, the life spilling out of her onto the road. Her eyes searching everywhere.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘I thought she was looking for me. I was ashamed. So ashamed. I hid from her eyes. But she wasn’t looking for me, was she? She was looking for you!’
Kat’s chin dropped to her chest and her body collapsed, gaunt and listless against the wall.
I found myself on my feet, unsteadily making my way towards her.
She cried out, cowering. ‘Don’t. Don’t come any closer.’
But then her face became alert, her head tilted to one side, listening. There was the sound of keys in the front door and the creak of hinges opening.
Father called from the hall, ‘Yaya! I thought I told you to bolt the door!’
And I saw it. Saw the shivering, cowering, beaten creature huddled across the room suddenly vanish.
And in its place came the thing she feared. She became someone else, eyes big with anticipation, lips parted, rosy and expectant, shoulders thrown back, chin high, skin suddenly glowing.
Ecstatic.
‘Jon!’ she cried. ‘Jon! At last!’
30
I’VE ALWAYS WONDERED, Kat, what would have happened if on that first evening you’d managed to laugh off the mistaken kiss, if you’d simply gone out and had a lovely first date with Jon and nothing but gladness in your heart.
Would it have been you married to Jon years later, a gorgeous baby in your arms? If your morbid delusions had not changed you so, would it have been you and Jon, holding hands and planning your happily ever after?
Would it have been you, guilty about the sister you exchanged for a lifetime of happy families? Guilty about the sister you left behind?
But there’s no point wondering about any of it. You were on a path, Kat, and somehow you lost your way. And I was on that path too. But somehow I found myself with Jon.
Love is strange. It’s an acute kind of loneliness, isn’t it? That constant yearning for the other person. That hunger. I didn’t think it was possible but there it was. It’s not pleasure but pain.
I saw it in your face, felt it in my gut. You loved Jon, but Jon loved me. And as for me? Why, I loved you both. It was a vicious circle. We were all hurting, obsessed.
