The Ice Twins (33 page)

I’ve run out of hatred. The words fail in my mouth. I am trembling as I hold the phone. Angus is saying nothing. I’m not sure how I expect him to react. With anger? With flaming denial?

His answering voice is quiet: there is anger there, but he is calm.

‘This is untrue, Sarah, all of it. Entirely untrue.’

‘Oh yes? So—’

‘I never touched Kirstie. Not like THAT. How could you think this?’

‘Lydia told me.’

‘I was tactile with Kirstie. I gave her hugs. Kisses. That’s all. I tried to cheer her up. Be affectionate. And why? ’Cause you weren’t, that’s why.’

‘You scared her.’

‘I snapped at her. Once. Sarah, this is crazy. You are fucking crazy.’

‘Don’t you dare make this about me, don’t you—’

‘Shut up,’ he says. ‘Shut. The. Fuck. Up.’

Like a commanded child, I am silenced. He can still somehow do this. Because when he does it I am seven years old again: and my dad is shouting. But Angus is not shouting, he goes on, very slowly and precisely:

‘If you want the real truth, ask your daughter what really happened. Ask her to tell you what she told me, six months ago.’

‘What?’

‘Ask her, if you must. And have a look in the kist. Did you ever reach the bottom drawer, hmm? No?’ His voice spits with anger. ‘Then batten down the hatches, Sarah. This storm is coming. If you want to sit it out on Torran then – then there’s nothing I can do. Fuck you. But keep our daughter indoors. Keep her safe.’

He has confused me. But maybe he is trying to confuse me. The anger rises again, inside me:

‘Don’t come near us, Angus. Don’t come near us, don’t speak to us, just – don’t.’

I drop the phone.

‘Mummy?’

It’s Lydia. She is in the dining room: I didn’t hear her come in. Because I was yelling at Angus.

‘Mummy? What’s happening?’

The realization is sickening. How much of that conversation did she witness? I just got carried away. I did not think. Did she hear me accuse her father of raping Kirstie? What have I done? Am I making it all worse?

My only choice is to pretend I said none of this, and act normal. I can hardly lean down to her and ask her whether she heard me accuse Daddy of rape.

‘Nothing’s happening, sweetness. Mummy and Daddy were just talking.’

‘No you weren’t, you were shouting.’

What did she hear? I force a smile. She is not smiling.

‘What’s wrong, Mummy? Why are you shouting at Daddy? Is it because of Kirstie, because she keeps coming back, because he wants her back?’

I want to say Yes.

But I control myself and I place a protective arm over Lydia’s shoulder, and I guide her away from all this: into the kitchen. The kitchen feels like the kitchen in a drama, in a TV play. A stage set. A simulacrum of normality. But the walls are fake and the brightness is unreal and there is a strange darkness beyond, and there are people watching. A silent crowd, watching us onstage in the lights.

‘Shall we have some tea? What do you want for tea?’

Lydia gazes, at me, then at the fridge. ‘Dunno.’

‘Anything you like, Moomin. Anything in the fridge.’

‘Um … Cheese toastie.’

‘Good idea! I’ll make some cheese on toast, it won’t take long. Why don’t you go and play in the living room, let me know if the fire is doing OK.’

Lydia looks at me with a hint of suspicion – or wariness – then, to my intense relief, she slopes out. Now I can pretend that she didn’t hear any of that
chat
with Angus.

Carefully, I take the bread from the wire basket above my head, then the Cheddar from the fridge. I glance out of the window: the strange grey clouds are racing again: very fast, across the appalled white face of the moon. The trees have begun to moan, once more, as the wind kicks up. Was Angus right about the storm?

I need to feed my daughter.

When the toasted cheese is melting and popping I slide it out from under the grill, then I serve it on a plate, and cut it into special bite-size pieces, and I take it into the dining room, where Lydia sits, patiently. At the dining-room table. She is wearing blue socks now. She must have put them on just this moment. Leopardy has reappeared and sits on the table next to her: his inert, cuddly-toy smile is aimed directly at me.

Lydia picks up her little orange plastic-handled kids’ knife and fork and she eats the cheese on toast placidly enough. She has a book by her plate. Usually I don’t like her reading as she eats, but I am not going to stop her today. She seems remarkably and strangely contented, considering the terrors she has endured.

I look out of the window. The moon has disappeared behind bigger clouds; the trees are moaning much louder. Rain is hitting the windows. Angry and contemptuous. Lydia is eating and reading and humming a little tune: ‘My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean’.

Kirstie’s nursery rhyme. She is humming it here.

O bring back, bring back, bring back my Bonnie to me.

I try to stay calm. But I have the intense, abrupt and overwhelming sense that this is
Kirstie
, sitting right here in front of me. Sitting in the semi-dark of the dining room, with the island cowering before an approaching storm, with the lighthouse flicking, desperately, urgently, signalling every nine seconds across the dark waters of the Sound:
Help, Help, Help.

‘Lydia,’ I say.

She does not turn.

‘Lydia.’

She does not turn. She eats and hums. Leopardy smiles at me: sitting on the table. I have to fight my way back to logic: this is Lydia, sitting here. I am letting the stress delude me.

Leaning back, I take deep breaths. Calming myself. Regarding my daughter. Trying to be objective. Now I remember what Angus said:
Ask her about what really happened, ask her what she told me six months ago.
Something in these words is quite piercing: and his denial of child abuse was halfway convincing. I don’t believe him, and yet: I do
have troubling doubts. Have I leapt to some terrible false conclusion?

What to do?

The storm is really picking up. I can hear doors, somewhere, slamming repeatedly, and helplessly. External doors, perhaps the shed. They sound bad: as if they could break. I need to secure everything:
batten down the hatches.

So I don’t have much choice what to do next. The weather is in command. Leaning across the table, I touch Lydia on the hand, to get her attention: she is wrapped up in her book, and she has stopped humming that frightening song.

‘Darling, will you wait here – there’s going to be some really bad weather tonight, and I have to go and check the cottage. Outside.’

She looks up at me, and she shrugs. Passive, distracted.

‘OK, Mummy.’

I stand and step into the bedroom and I refuse to look at the mirror. I put on a thick jumper, then my sturdiest North Face anorak. Back in the kitchen I slip on my wellingtons, then I mentally brace myself, and open the kitchen door.

The wind is ferocious. Dead leaves, slips of seaweed, knots of dead bracken are flying through the cold dark air. The lighthouse looks diminished by the booming noise of the wind. Its flickering light is no longer any comfort.

I have to secure all the external doors. But the wind is so strong it almost tips me to the side, into the slippery grass, as I shuffle around the cottage walls. I have never encountered gales like this: not in soft southern England. Occasionally the wind hurls rain right in my face: it stings like cold grit, as if someone is flinging sharpness in my face. I am being threatened.

The shed door is flapping on its rusty hinges: they sound as if they are about to break. My hands are numb with rain and cold as I close the door and slide the wooden bar across.

I once wondered why all the external doors had these wooden bars. Now I know. For the storms of Thunder Island: Eilean Torran.

My task takes me twenty minutes. The most difficult part is dragging the soggy dinghy as high as I can manage, in the dark, and the screaming gales, and the horrid wetness. As I drag the boat, I almost fall, cracking one knee on the shingles, then righting myself.

‘Jesus,’ I say. ‘Come on, Sarah!’ I am shouting these words out loud, to myself. But my words are stolen by the gale and hurled into the sea.

‘Come on!’

How high does the boat have to go, to be safe? I drag the boat all the way up to the lighthouse steps; then I weight it down with the anchor, and lash it to the lighthouse railings. My fingers are clumsy in the freezing blackness.

But there. Done. I can tie knots, just as Angus taught me.

Now I am running back, heading for the kitchen door, crouching down: tugging one side of my hood against the bitter rain. With an exultation of relief I drag myself into the kitchen, close the door behind me. The kitchen door has an internal wooden bar: I slide this across, too. The horrible moaning and howling is muffled, but still audible.

‘Mummy, I’m frightened.’

Lydia is standing in the kitchen.

‘The wind is so noisy, Mummy.’

‘Hey, it’s only a storm,’ I say, giving her a hug. ‘We’ve just got to sit it out. We’ll be fine. We’ve got food and firewood. It will be like an adventure.’

‘Is Daddy coming here to help?’

‘Not tonight, darling, but maybe tomorrow. We’ll see.’

I’m telling lies. Doesn’t matter. The mention of Angus brings me back to his words: his denial of the abuse. And then that other phrase: Ask Lydia what she told me six months ago
.
I have to go deeper into this: it is going to hurt Lydia, but if I don’t go deeper, her mother will go crazy, which is worse.

‘Let’s go in the living room, sweetie, I want to ask you something.’

Lydia looks up at me. Panicked.

‘Ask me what?’

I lead her into the living room and draw the curtains against the rain and the wind, and the thumps of the wind on the roof – it sounds like slates being torn away – and then in front of the fire, as we sit huddled and cuddled together on the sofa, under a blanket that still smells faintly of Beany, I ask her: ‘You know you said Daddy touched and kissed Kirstie?’

Her eyes flicker. Embarrassed?

‘Yes, Mummy.’

‘What did you mean by that?’

‘What?’

‘When you said it, did you mean—’ I search for the words. ‘Did you mean he touched and kissed her, the way Mummy and Daddy touch and kiss? Do you mean like that?’

She gives me all her attention. And her face is shocked. ‘No. No, Mummy. No! Not like that!’

‘So …’ The darkness opens wide inside me. I might have made an atrocious error. Again.
‘What did you mean, Lydie?’

‘He was just cuddling her, because you wouldn’t, Mummy. And then he shouted. That scared her. I don’t know why he shouted.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Yes, Mummy. Sure. I’m sure. He didn’t kiss her like Mummy and Daddy. No. No! Not like that!’

The darkness turns to blackness.

I take long breaths, with my eyes closed. Then I try again. ‘OK. One more question, darling. What did you tell Daddy six months ago?’

Lydia sits there. Awkward. Stiff. Not quite gazing at me. Her eyes angry and wet, and frightened.

I repeat the question. Nothing.

Just like her mother and her grandmother. Nothing.

But I am determined to do this. I’ve come so far, I must get to the end. Even if it is causing her obvious distress. My rationale is that if I do all this on the same day then maybe it will fade into her memory as just one terrible day, the Day of the Storm.

I ask again. Nothing.

I try once more.

‘Did Daddy ever ask anything about Kirstie, or did you ever tell him something about Kirstie, when he asked?’

She shakes her head. She is backing away from me: extracting herself from my embrace, edging up the sofa. The wind shrieks in the trees outside. This is horrific. I ask again. I have to know.

‘Did you tell Daddy something six months ago?’

No response.

‘Lydia?’

Silence. Then she breaks open.

‘This is what Daddy did, this is what Daddy did, you’re doing what Daddy did: STOP IT!’

What?

I reach out a hand, to calm my agitated daughter. ‘What did you say, darling? What do you mean – this is what Daddy did?’

‘Like you, like THIS, what you are doing
now
.’

‘Lydia, tell me—’

‘I’m not Lydia, I’m Kirstie.’

I have to ignore this.

‘Lydia, what did Daddy say, what did you say?
Tell me.’

The wind throws everything at the walls and doors. It feels as if the house is going to break.

‘He did THIS. He kept asking me QUESTIONS about it, about the accident, so I
told him, Mummy, I told him—’

‘What, darling?’ My blood is thumping even louder in my ears than the booms of the wind outside. ‘Just tell me what you said.’

Lydia looks at me, gravely. She seems suddenly older. A vision of the adult she will become. And now she says, ‘I told Daddy I did it, and I did, I did, I did it – I did something bad.’

‘What? What do you mean? What did you do?’

‘I told Daddy I did something bad. And I DID. Daddy didn’t do anything
.
But I never told him about you, nothing about you, I told him ’bout me not you so he wasn’t angry with YOU—’

‘Lydia?’

‘What??’

‘Lydia. Tell me. Now. Tell me everything.’

‘Tell you everything? But you
know
! You already
know
everything!’ The wind duets with my daughter, screaming and repeating, ‘Mummy, you know what happened. You
know it!
’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Yes you do yes you do.’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Yes you do YES YOU DO!’ My daughter is trembling, and shrieking, ‘It wasn’t just me, it was never just me.’ A sudden silence. Lydia looks straight at me. And then she screams in my face. ‘MUMMY SHE DIED BECAUSE OF YOU!’