The Sisters (33 page)

‘I’m Paul, Ben’s brother. Well, adopted brother.’ He holds out a hand for us to shake. His nails are bitten down to the quick, but we take his proffered hand, not wanting to offend him. ‘I shouldn’t be talking to you, Mum will kill me. Let’s walk to the end of the street, I don’t want her to see us.’

In silence we follow him further down the street. He stops in front of a house covered with scaffolding. It looks empty. He perches on the low brick wall, digging his hands deep into his pockets and retrieving a feeble roll-up. He sticks it between his lips and lights it. We watch him, wondering what he’s going to say.

‘What’s going on? Are Ben and Beatrice adopted? Did they grow up here?’ I fire questions at him without waiting for him to answer.

He assesses me through narrowed eyes and takes a deep drag of his cigarette. ‘Well, I’ll say this much,’ he chuckles, his gaze lingering on my hair. ‘Ben definitely has a type.’ He exhales slowly. ‘You really have no idea, do you? But then I don’t suppose that bastard would have told you anything.’ The venom in his voice shocks me. ‘Yes,’ he says before I can open my mouth. ‘They’re adopted. But Ben didn’t grow up here. We grew up in Glasgow. We moved here about ten years ago.’ He has a strange accent. Scottish mixed with a bit of Mockney.

‘So the twins are adopted?’ I clarify, in order to be sure. ‘And Morag is their adopted mother?’ Now it makes sense, but why did Ben have to hide it from me? Are they embarrassed about their upbringing? And how can they afford their beautiful house if it wasn’t some trust fund from their rich grandparents, as I’ve been led to believe? Where else would they have got all that cash?

Paul shakes his head. ‘Morag is Ben’s adoptive mother.’

‘But not Beatrice’s,’ says Nia quietly by my elbow. I swivel on my heels to gawp at her, thinking she must have got it wrong.

‘I don’t understand,’ I say, glaring first at her and then at Paul. ‘Are you saying they didn’t grow up together?’

His grin is sinister in the growing darkness and, shrouded by shadows and with his hood pulled over his head, he looks as if he’s some type of Grim Reaper. ‘No, they didn’t grow up together. They didn’t even know the other existed until they were nineteen. They were separated as babies, each going to a different family. Beatrice ended up with some toffs in Edinburgh apparently.’

I frown at him. ‘They didn’t grow up together?’ I repeat, gripping on to the wall for support. The bricks are cold and rough under my fingertips. My mind is swimming with fragmented memories, snippets of the different things that they, and Eva, have told me since I moved in. Now that I think about it, I can’t remember them ever saying they grew up together. I assumed that they had. Why would I have ever thought otherwise?

Beside me I hear Nia exhale. ‘There’s more to this, isn’t there?’ she says. Why do I get the sense that she knows something that I don’t?

‘Oh yes.’ He takes another drag, slowly blowing the smoke out through his nostrils, and I think how he looks nothing like Ben, but then he wouldn’t, I suppose, considering they have no shared genes.

‘Why are you telling us this when your mum refuses to?’ says Nia, eyeing him with disdain.

‘Because Ben’s a nasty little prick,’ he says, flicking the remainder of his cigarette over the wall. ‘We haven’t seen him in years, then when he finds out Dad’s on his last legs he’s here, playing the dutiful eldest son, hoping to get a piece of the pie—’

‘You mean money?’ I interject, glancing down the street to their eyesore of a house.

Paul follows my gaze. ‘The house might look a state now, but my dad had money all right. He was a tight-fisted git, he never gave us anything. Said we’d get it all when he died. Ben was worried he’d get written out of the will, so he turns up here to nurse him. Then Dad forgets everything that wanker has put this family through and leaves him some of his hard-earned cash.’

‘How much?’ I say, thinking of their trust fund. It makes no sense if his dad only died a few weeks ago. And surely it wouldn’t be enough to fund the kind of lifestyle that Beatrice and Ben seem to be enjoying.

‘Oh, about twenty grand each.’ He grins, taking another drag. ‘Where there’s money, there’s Ben. He can’t resist, even though his toffee-nosed twin sister is sitting on a small fortune.’

‘You sound as though you hate him,’ I say, amazed. ‘He’s your brother.’

‘Adopted brother. He’s a cruel bastard, Abi. Can’t you see it?’

I think of Ben, of his warm hazel eyes, his strong arms that held me, protected me. I think of the times he stuck up for Beatrice, his twin, even when I was adamant she was in the wrong, I think of the times when he caressed me, loved me. ‘No,’ I answer shortly. ‘I don’t believe you.’

He shakes his head and gives a short, bitter laugh. ‘He can be very charming. He’s never had any problem getting the pretty girls to fall for him. But I know him.’ He glares at me. ‘I know him, Abi. He’s cold, he’s calculating and he’s cruel. And he will stop at nothing to make sure he gets what he wants. It’s usually money, but sometimes it’s a woman too.’

I think of the way he manipulated both me and Beatrice, and my heart sinks as I begin to suspect that Paul could be telling the truth.

Nia grips my hand and I know it’s to prevent me from interrupting. ‘Tell us about him,’ she says gently.

‘Mum and Dad didn’t think they could have kids,’ he says in a low voice. ‘So they adopted Ben as a baby. About two years later out popped Martin and a couple of years after that I came along. Totally unexpected. We’re her real kids, but Ben was always the favourite. I think he felt threatened by us, because he knew he was adopted – Mum never hid it from him. He particularly hated me; being the youngest, I suppose. He was eight when I was born. Even as a toddler I remember him kicking me under the table, or pinching me when nobody was watching. He would play mind games too: hide my toys, make out that I had lost them so I would get into trouble. One time I found some of my cars hidden in his wardrobe; he had peeled all the stickers off of them.’

‘That was just sibling stuff, surely?’ I say scornfully.

Paul ignores me. ‘One time, when I was six years old and walking home from school, I got set upon by a load of teenagers. I looked up to see Ben a little way in the distance. I thought he would come and help me, but he stood there and watched as they kicked the shit out of me. He had a calm, detached look on his face the whole time. I was six years old, for fuck’s sake. Another time I got home from school and my pet goldfish had been flushed down the loo. He told Mum he’d watched me do it, and she believed him. I’d never hurt a pet. When Martin was seventeen he was totally in love with this girl from college, she was beautiful, sweet, kind. Ben stole her away, because he could. The poor girl didn’t stand a chance. Ben was always the good-looking one. He dumped her a fortnight later. He didn’t give a shit about her, all he wanted was to get one over on Martin. Ben’s never loved anything in his whole life. There are so many things that fucker did to me, and to Martin. Nasty, manipulative stuff.’

‘And what did your parents do about it?’ I ask, sick to my stomach.

‘Oh, he always managed to talk his way out of it.’

But not this, I think angrily. He will never be able to talk his way out of what he’s done to me.

‘I was so relieved when he left home,’ Paul continues. ‘Couldn’t wait to see the back of him.’

A chill descends down my spine and I pull my coat tighter around me. The wind has picked up and it’s nearly dark. I look into the sky, expecting to see stars, but I remember we’re in London, the night sky is hardly ever clear, unlike Bath. Before I found that stuff in Ben’s car I would never have believed that he could be nasty and manipulative. But now I see that I fell in love with a monster. ‘So where does Beatrice fit into all this?’

‘That’s where it gets interesting,’ says Paul. ‘He meets Beatrice, his twin sister, for the first time at university. They were drawn to each other – that’s what I heard him telling Mum, anyway, as though that excuses everything. They only went and started a relationship, not knowing they were related.’

Bile washes up my throat and I think I’m going to be sick. ‘A relationship?’

‘That’s right. They were lovers before they found out they were twins. Can you believe it? My brother shagged his own twin sister. When they found out they were related, they freaked out. Didn’t see each other again for years. Then she inherits all this money from her adopted father and Ben manages to worm his way back into her life. I remember seeing him reading the obituary in the newspaper, so he knew she had come into money. Within weeks he had made contact with her again. Three months later, he moved to Bath to live with her.’

I feel a rush of vertigo. Paul’s pale face, with his gleeful yellow-toothed smile, swims in front of me, and I can’t help it. I vomit into the neighbour’s box hedge.

Nia rubs my back and holds my hair away from my face. ‘You had no idea?’ Paul says when I’ve recovered. My whole body is trembling. The smile has slipped off his face now and he looks concerned for me. ‘I’m sorry, but you deserve to know the truth.’

I stand up, staring at him through my blurred vision.

‘He was desperate that you weren’t to find out,’ he says, his voice more serious now. He jumps off the wall and stands before us. He’s as tall as Ben, but thinner. I imagine him as a cute six-year-old kid being beaten up by thugs while his older brother did nothing to protect him and I fight the urge to vomit all over again. How could I have not seen Ben for the person he really is? Why was I so gullible? So desperate?

‘Abi,’ he says intently. ‘Ben went for my mum, the other day. She’s terrified of him now.’

Nia’s voice is sharp. ‘What do you mean?’

I grab hold of Nia for support, my legs still weak. I don’t know if I have the strength to listen to any more horrible revelations about the man I thought I loved, thought I knew.

‘She went to stay with Martin in Bristol last week. The soft mare thought that Ben might actually be mourning for Dad. When she couldn’t get hold of him, she was worried. So she went to Beatrice’s house to look for him. He wasn’t there, so she went back a couple of days later with Martin …’

That must have been the day I saw him go off in the Mondeo, I think. I can still taste acid in my mouth and I hope I’m not going to be sick again.

‘He was furious with her for coming to the house twice,’ Paul continues relentlessly. ‘Martin said when they got to his flat, Ben went mental. Ranted at both of them, before flying at Mum, pushing her to the floor. He actually raised his fist, was going to hit her, Martin was sure of it. Martin wrestled him out of the house and we haven’t seen Ben since. I came out here to warn you, Abi.’ His voice takes on an urgent tone. ‘He’s not only a manipulative liar, but when he’s backed into a corner, he can be dangerous.’

Chapter Thirty-Three

He’s like a caged animal, brimming with barely concealed menace, unable to settle as he prowls around the house. Beatrice has never seen this side of him in all the years that she’s known him, both then and now, and it scares her. She’s unable to find the right thing to say, or do, to make everything better, and she knows she’s lost her power over him, she’s not the one he loves the most any more. Her twin intuition has failed her; maybe it was never there in the first place. Maybe it only works when you’ve grown up with your twin. She envies Abi. She may have lost Lucy, but they shared a childhood, they were proper twins, and that’s something she never got to experience with Ben.

It’s nearly ten o’clock and she is alone in the house with him. Pam and Cass are staying over in Frome with Trudy. They invited her along, but she declined because she was worried about leaving him. Since their argument and the cruel way he spoke to her, she wishes she had gone out with them after all. She knows that Ben will always have the capacity to hurt her because she loves him – has always loved him, more than he has ever loved her.

She can hear him in his bedroom, slamming about the place; a toddler having a tantrum because his playmate has had to go home. She considers going to him but doesn’t know if she can bear to hear any more of his insults, to witness his complete lack of consideration for her. Abi, Abi, Abi. How did she become so easily replaced? She should have noticed, should have realized that Abi is her brother’s obsession, just as he is hers.

Through the walls she hears his mobile trill, followed by his deep muffled voice speaking urgently to someone and she can’t help herself, she throws open her door and rushes into his bedroom. Her first thought is how cold and dark the room is, before she notices that the doors to his balcony are propped open by the stone Egyptian cat he’s so fond of, his curtains billowing in the wind.

‘It’s freezing in here,’ she says. He’s sitting on his bed in the darkness with his head bent, staring at the phone in his hands, and he looks so vulnerable, so sad, that she’s compelled to go to him regardless of how nasty he’s been.

‘That was Abi. She’s on her way home.’

An unexpected surge of relief takes hold of her. ‘That’s great news, isn’t it?’

He tosses the mobile on to the carpet. ‘She’s only coming back to get her stuff, and because I told her I was away with work.’