Marie’s flat is as chaotic and cluttered as her life. Washing-up piled in the sink. Every surface messy. Tubes of half-used make-up litter the small table in the kitchen where she eats her meals for one, a box of L’Oréal hair dye pokes out of the overflowing bin; it’s the complete opposite of my minimalism. Once my twin and I shared everything but now we don’t even look the same, I think, taking in her newly bleached hair, cropped close to her head. I still keep mine long. Although I’m only twenty-eight, threads of grey are weaving into my natural red but I’m determined not to start colouring it. Every few minutes Marie runs her hand over the back of her neck as though reassuring herself that her pigtails are gone. That no one can grab them again. It’s as though she wants to be somebody else – somebody different – and I understand that, I’ve felt it too. But we can’t run away from ourselves, can we? The things we’ve done. Years of therapy have taught me that.
‘Is Archie okay?’ Carly’s face shines as she mentions her nephew. It’s such a shame she’s never allowed anyone to get close to her. She’s never had a family of her own. It’s too much responsibility, she had said once when I’d asked her if she wanted children.
It took her a long time for her to be able to look after Archie. ‘I can’t,’ she had said when we had first discussed the possibility of me going back to work. I had taken her hands in mine.
‘I trust you.’
She had shaken her head. ‘You shouldn’t.’
‘Well, I do. George and I both do and… Carly, I couldn’t trust anyone else.’ There was no way I could leave Archie with a stranger.
‘What if…’ She had squeezed her eyes tightly closed.
‘We can’t live our lives by what-ifs.’
She had looked at me then with such a disbelieving expression on her face.
‘Okay,’ I had conceded. ‘I see the irony in that but I am trying. Try with me. You adore Archie.’ From the second she had first held him at the hospital and he had wrapped his tiny fingers around her thumb she was lost to emotions she just couldn’t fight.
‘It’s because I love him I can’t do it.’
‘It’s because you love him that you can.’
Now, Carly picks Archie up when I’m working at the insurance firm in town, processing policies for the fears that keep people awake at night – theft, death, illness, but I know these things aren’t the worst that can happen. Not by a long way.
‘Archie’s fine,’ I say over the sound of the kettle boiling. ‘I was mortified earlier though because all the other kids were already sitting in a circle when we got there. Sorry we’re late, he shouted. Mummy couldn’t get in the bloody bathroom because Daddy was doing a big poo. That child.’ I shake my head as though I’m despairing but we all know I’m not. Archie is the light of my life. ‘You must come and see him, Marie.’ I try not to sound critical that we see her so infrequently.
‘Yes. Sorry, I’ve been busy.’
‘Doing what?’ Carly asks. Marie was sacked from her last role for turning up drunk five minutes before she was supposed to go on stage. That was six months ago and she hasn’t worked since. She said it was the kick she needed to give up drinking and focus on the future.
‘This and that,’ she says vaguely. Her mouth gapes a yawn. There are dark shadows under her eyes. She’s not sleeping well either.
‘Something keeping you up at night. Or someone?’ Carly asks.
Marie doesn’t answer but her neck flushes red. She’s keeping something from us.
‘Marie, are you seeing someone?’
She doesn’t deny it, instead she busies herself splashing milk into mugs and fishing out teabags with a spoon. I don’t repeat my question. If Marie doesn’t want to tell us something, she won’t. She leads us through to the lounge, sweeping piles of magazines from the sofa onto the threadbare carpet. A stick of incense on a stand on the windowsill billows smoke. The scent is cloying. Momentarily it crosses my mind that she might be masking the smell of booze. I steal a glance around the room, searching for empty bottles stuffed into corners, lipstick-stained tumblers, but there’s nothing. My eyes meet Carly’s and she shrugs. I know she’s thinking the same as me. I set the chipped plate stacked with Tesco basic digestives on the table.
‘So—’ Marie beams a smile that doesn’t reach the rest of her face. Her lipstick has stained a patch of her nicotine-yellow teeth crimson.
‘I can’t do it this year,’ Carly cuts in. ‘I just can’t.’
The atmosphere, already heavy, thickens. I take a sip of my tea, trying to recall whether Marie had rested the teaspoon on the draining board before she fished out my teabag.
‘I know it’s difficult this year—’ Marie’s knee jiggles. She tugs her jumper down over her hands.
‘It’s difficult every bloody year.’ Carly pushes her hair away from her face. Her sleeve rides up, displaying the comma she has tattooed on her wrist.
She’s right.
Each year around the anniversary of our abduction Marie’s always desperate to rake it over. Unwilling to let the dying embers of our trauma crumble to ashes.
It wasn’t as bad as we thought, was it?
It’s made us into the people we are today.
It’s as though she wants to make it into something else, something different.
She can’t.
I don’t know why, perhaps it’s the only way she can handle it. We all cope the best we can, Carly not allowing herself to love anyone new, me with my routines.
‘But…’ Marie continues as though Carly hadn’t spoken. ‘It’s twenty years and I’ve been approached by a journalist—’
‘We’ve all been approached by journalists these past few months.’ That was a given; THE SINCLAIR SISTERS – WHERE ARE THEY NOW? I don’t like the direction the conversation is going in.
‘She wants us to go on TV to mark twenty years. It’d be live, of course, that only gives us a few days to prep—’
‘Absolutely not,’ Carly says firmly.
‘I know you don’t enjoy being in the spotlight, but I’ll take the lead. You don’t have to say much as long as you’re there,’ Marie says matter-of-factly. This would be her starring role, us her supporting cast. ‘Leah?’
‘There’s nothing worse I can think of than going through it all again.’
I can just say no.
‘You said yes last time,’ Marie says.
I shift uncomfortably in my seat. We were offered a book deal around the tenth anniversary. Carly and I weren’t interested but Marie had begged, said the exposure might kick-start her career and we so wanted her to succeed. My therapist at the time thought it might do us good to share our story. Take away the stigma and the shame that we feel; that I feel, at least. She thought if we spoke about it exclusively to one source it would stop the vultures picking over the rest of our lives. We could finally move on. The publisher introduced us to a ghost writer. All we had to do was meet him a few times while he recorded our stories on a dictaphone and that was it. Six figures each. We weren’t expected to write a single word ourselves.