On the way to the airport, Uncle Colton is his usual boring self. He drones on about what lovely girls Francine is raising and how well Virginia is doing in high school, but I’m only half listening. The way he talks, anyone would think Francine were his wife rather than his brother’s widow. One of the three wives my father left behind.
Alone in the departure lounge, having farewelled my uncle, I indulge in a bit of twinspotting and glimpse several pairs. Most people don’t notice twins, even identical ones, once they’ve grown out of the dress-alike phase. Few sets of twins are as alike as Summer and I, so a haircut and a change of clothes are all it takes to slip out of the public gaze.
But I never miss other twins. I can even spot fraternal twins, because it’s not their looks that give them away.
A brother and sister, young teenagers, walk past, with the same deep, doleful eyes. They are out of sight in seconds, but I know. She’s half a head taller, graceful and womanly, while he’s still a skinny, sandy-haired boy. Most people will think she’s a year or two older, but this doesn’t bother the boy. They laugh about it together and look forward to the day when he’ll tower over her. I can tell these things.
The way they’re whispering as they walk—smiling, leaning their heads together—is the first clue, but the giveaway is that he’s carrying her suitcase as well as his own. What teenage boy carries his sister’s suitcase? A twin, that’s who.
Next, a family settles into the seats opposite me. Mum, Dad, and two girls who share a face. The girls are around ten years old and are mainland Chinese. I’m no good at guessing ethnicity, but you can always tell Chinese twins because their parents have that we-beat-the-one-child-policy smile. That smile seems to last the rest of their lives. If you ask me, they’re barmy. I’ve been planning on a one-child policy since I was fourteen. I would be planning a no-child policy if it weren’t for certain complications. If it weren’t for my father’s will.
The Chinese twins have started refusing to dress the same; their clothing is defiantly different. One is in a dress, the other jeans. One has short hair, even though it doesn’t suit her. She took one for the team.
However different they look, though, they don’t know how to stop behaving like twins. Their mother ferrets out a lunchbox and hands them a couple of hard-boiled eggs—Summer is like this, too, always feeding Tarquin, apparently terrified that he might one day experience a hunger pang. The twins reach for the eggs with one movement. One twin peels her egg while the other waits, then the same twin peels the second egg. She eviscerates them both and hands the yolks to her sister, retaining the whites. Only now do the twins eat, as if responding to an unseen cue. Each pops the contents of her left hand into her mouth, then the right. They chew in unison.
I’ve met twins like this before, of course. Chloë and Zoë, my friends at law school in Melbourne, were this kind of twin. They shared clothes, friends, secrets. They could hardly credit that I had left my twin in a different city—Summer stayed in Wakefield and went to nursing school. Committing to four years apart from my twin seemed both the best and the worst decision of my life. I escaped constant comparisons by others, but my own comparisons after I left Wakefield were with social-media Summer, who was even more glamorous than the real girl.
All I needed to know to understand Chloë and Zoë’s relationship was that each texted the other whenever she got a period. I prefer not to know when Summer’s on the rag. There’s something nauseating about the way she wears white or pastel underwear every single day of the month, like a girl in a tampon commercial. And the thought of Summer’s period always reminds me of the beauty pageant.
Was there a time when Summer and I were like Chloë and Zoë, like these egg-scoffing twins? I honestly can’t remember. Summer would have been the twin who peeled the eggs and then let her sister eat both yolks. Everyone always knew she was the sweetheart. She was kind to the lost and the lame. Identical as we were, Summer was somehow more beautiful. She had inner beauty.
If there ever was such a time, it was my father’s last act to destroy it. Since he died, Summer and I have not been like other twins. Dad taught me that there’s not enough for two. There’s only one life that we have to share.
Ridgeford Carmichael, known as Ridge—although I never had the balls to call him by his first name as I do Annabeth—was your typical Aussie self-made man, proud of all the things that people in other countries are ashamed of: his convict ancestry; his lack of education; his three wives, each younger, blonder, and more fecund than the last.
When I was growing up, I knew that Carmichael Brothers was a construction firm, but Dad seemed to have a few other ventures going on, so I never figured out exactly where all his money came from. He was always embroiled in property investment, always wining and dining politicians, always traveling overseas. Dad was powerfully built, with rugged, sunburned features. Although he was more than a decade older than Annabeth, he didn’t seem it; he was rowdy and vigorous till the day he died.
Dad grew up with no family of his own. His childhood was passed in foster care and a state home. All he seemed to know of his background was that some ancestor had been transported for stealing a beer glass from an English pub.
Perhaps that’s why Dad was so dynastic. By the time he was twenty-two, he had found out that he had a younger brother and gained custody of Colton, who was twelve. Dad sent Colton to the best boarding school in Wakefield. Colton became his protégé, and then his business partner.
Dad put off having kids until he’d made his millions, and by that time his first wife, Margaret, was too old. After he divorced Margaret, Dad didn’t repeat his mistake; Summer and I were conceived on our parents’ honeymoon. When Annabeth called it quits after she produced our younger brother, Dad ran off with Francine, who was fresh out of Catholic school. But I still didn’t realize the extent of his obsession with populating the world.
These are the facts of his life, but they don’t capture what Dad was like. Perhaps all I need to say to describe my father is this: he didn’t like nice people. I found this out the last time I saw him alive.
Our family was gathered at the dinner table in the big house on Beach Parade in early December, shortly after Summer and I had turned fourteen. Annabeth was telling a story about an encounter with a beggar. Earlier that day, she had taken Summer and me to Billabong to choose new beachwear for Christmas; numerous store-wrapped boxes were now sitting under our Christmas tree. On her way into the mall, Annabeth wished the beggar merry Christmas and held out a twenty. He, smelling like a rubbish bin, took the bill clean out of her hand and marched straight into a bottle shop.
“Right in front of me!” Annabeth exclaimed, smashing a generous portion of turkey cannelloni onto Dad’s plate. He tilted the china, inspecting it for damage from the big silver serving spoon.
“So you were outside the bottle shop when you gave this bozo the cash?” Dad asked.
“I’m trying to raise our kids to be nice people, Ridge,” Annabeth said.
“Nice is dumb,” said Dad, and he turned to me and winked.
I lapped it up. Summer was the beauty in our family—even then I knew it—and Ben was the only boy, the heir. But I was the one Dad included in his special joke.