‘I was at Chrissie’s.’ Evie pushed her gently away and got out a tissue, with which she started to wipe Sarah’s face. ‘Rah-Bee, I told you I was going to Chrissie’s.’
It was a cliché that looking at your twin was like looking in the mirror, but in their case it was true. They were mirror twins, as were about quarter of all identical, monozygotic twins. The mirror thing happened when the embryo split late, after it had developed a left and a right side, so Sarah and Evie were mirror images of each other, the small deviations from symmetry replicated in each face, but where Evie’s left earlobe, for instance, was very slightly wider than her right, with Sarah it was the opposite way round. And Sarah was left-handed and Evie right-handed. Mirror twins were meant to be closer than any other kind, because, psychologically, it really was like looking at yourself. It was as if the identical-ness had been designed for the twins themselves, so that when you looked at each other, you saw yourselves as being even more similar than did the rest of the world.
Sarah took Evie’s right hand in her left and squeezed it, and Evie squeezed back. For a moment they just stood there, being together, and then Sarah had opened her mouth to tell her everything, to tell her about Oliver, when:
‘Mummin,’ said a small voice.
Sarah whipped round.
She hadn’t seen the buggy at first because of all the fat nurses standing around it, but now she could see it and she could see him, she could see Oliver, sitting there looking up at her, his honey-coloured hair as unruly as ever in the Tintin quiff it went into no matter what you did, his cherub mouth an O, his little face turned up to her with a half-hopeful, half-worried look of enquiry.
The face that, in her blackest moments, she had thought never to see in this life again.
And the relief of it, the joy of it whooshing through her had her falling to her knees on the hard floor, a supplicant, a penitent, a worshipper, sobbing:
‘Oliver!’
She swooped on him, hands fumbling with the belt of the buggy, and she grabbed him up into her arms, the solid little body pressed into hers, his hands gripping the collar of her pyjamas. ‘Oh darling, my darling, it’s all right, Mummin’s here, my darling!’
The wonderful weight of him! The sweet smell of his skin, the tickle of his fine hair on her cheek, the rise and fall of his little chest…
‘No, ah too!’ he complained – meaning she was holding him too tightly.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ She loosened her grip, laughing and crying all at once, and then he started to cry too, arching back away from her, and suddenly he was gone, the warm weight of him was gone, and Evie was hefting him on her hip and saying, ‘Rah.’
Sarah shook her head; swiped at her face. ‘You took him? You took him to Chrissie’s?’ Chrissie was one of the mums in the baby and toddler group that Evie took Oliver to twice a week. Oliver and Mikey, Chrissie’s little boy, were best friends. ‘Why? Why didn’t you tell me?’
Evie looked at her for a long moment, and then she turned to the nurse hovering a discreet distance away and said, ‘Would you mind taking him while we –’
‘Oh, it would be my pleasure, wouldn’t it, young man?’ She beamed at Oliver and he turned his face away, into Evie’s shoulder.
But Evie lifted him off and the nurse took him and he started to cry again, and Sarah went to go to him but Evie took her arm and drew her away back down the corridor.
‘Vee-Bee, we have to tell them!’ Sarah tugged against her. ‘We have to take him, show him to Dr Laghari!’ She laughed, shakily. ‘I’d like to see him try to claim that Oliver’s a delusion when he can’t hear himself think over that racket!’ She stopped and turned. Poor Oliver was writhing in the nurse’s arms, staring after her. ‘Vee, I have to go to Oliver!’ And: ‘It’s all right, darling!’ she called.
‘No. Sarah.’
Evie spoke so sharply that Sarah was stopped in her tracks.
‘He’s not “Oliver”. His name is James, and he’s my son. You know that. You don’t have a child. You’ve never had one. You have this – this recurring delusion that James is yours, but that’s all it is. It’s a delusion.’ Her face crumpled. ‘I’m so sorry, Rah.’ And she reached for Sarah.
Sarah flinched back. ‘Oh my God!’
‘Sarah – I’m sorry, but he’s… I have to get him out of here…’
Oliver was bawling now, his face red, and Evie ran back to him. She snatched him from the nurse and dumped him down into his buggy and wrenched it round without stopping to do up the straps, and she was pushing him away, back down the corridor, and Sarah was running, running after them, but then hands grabbed her, too many hands, and she struggled, she kicked and she tried to punch and slap and she screamed:
‘Don’t let her take him!’
‘Sarah, you need to calm down.’
‘She’s stealing my baby! My sister’s stealing my baby! Stop her, please stop her! He’s not hers, he’s mine, he’s my son Oliver and she’s stealing him!’
Evie and the buggy whipped round the corner out of sight, and in front of her now there was Carol’s fat mean face, telling her no one was stealing anyone’s baby, and
‘She’s taking my child without my permission! If that’s not fucking stealing him, what is? You need to stop her! She’s getting away!’
‘Calm down and stop shouting!’ shouted Carol.
And now Isla’s voice: ‘We’re going to get you back to your room now, Sarah.’
‘Get your fucking hands off me you fat fucking bitches! Let me go!’
‘Sarah, take a good long breath for me, all right?’
‘Evie!’ she screamed. ‘Evieeee!’
‘We’re going to turn you around, and you’re going to walk nicely back to your –’
‘Like fuck I am! Get your fucking hands off me!’
4
Why?
Why was Evie doing this? Why was she pretending that Oliver was her own child?
But her brain wouldn’t let her do anything more than frame the question; it wouldn’t let her think about it, as if it was desperately trying to protect itself the only way it knew how, like What Happened to Mum and Dad. It wouldn’t let her face it.
It wouldn’t let her find an answer. And she needed an answer!
She curled up on her side under the covers; she curled into the smallest ball she could and howled, not bothering to muffle the sound.
‘Sarah,’ said a voice. ‘Sarah, my love.’ And she felt a pressure on her arm.
‘Such a fucking drama queen,’ said another voice.
And then she was sinking down, and the next thing she knew it was presumably morning – Carol was banging about the room opening the curtains.
‘Toilet,’ said the nurse. ‘Then you can have your breakfast, if you can be trusted not to throw it at me like a two-year-old.’
A two-year-old.
‘My sister,’ Sarah said, her voice a dry croak. She swallowed. ‘Yesterday…’ Had it really happened, or had she just imagined it? ‘Was my sister here? Did she come to see me, with Oliver?’