The Ice Twins. S. K. Tremayne
‘I’ll go,’ I say. ‘It’s my turn.’
And it is: the last time Kirstie woke up, after one of her nightmares, was just a few days ago, and Angus had loyally traipsed upstairs to do the comforting.
Setting down my wine glass, I head for the first floor. Beany is following me, eagerly, as if we are going rabbiting; his tail whips against the table legs.
Kirstie is barefoot, at the top of the stairs. She is the image of troubled innocence with her big blue eyes, and with Leopardy pressed to her buttoned pyjama-top.
‘It did it again, Mummy, the dream.’
‘Come on, Moomin. It’s just a bad dream.’
I pick her up – she is almost too heavy, these days – and carry her back into the bedroom. Kirstie is, it seems, not too badly flustered; though I wish this repetitive nightmare would stop. As I tuck her in her bed, again, she is already half-closing her eyes, even as she talks.
‘It was all white, Mummy, all around me, I was stuck in a room, all white, all faces staring at me.’
‘Shhhhh.’
‘It was white and I was scared and I couldn’t move then and then … then …’
‘Shushhh.’
I stroke her faintly fevered, blemishless forehead. Her eyelids flicker towards sleep. But a whimpering, from behind me, stirs her.
The dog has followed me into the bedroom.
Kirstie searches my face for a favour.
‘Can Beany stay with me, Mummy? Can he sleep in my room tonight?’
I don’t normally allow this. But tonight I just want to go back downstairs, and drink another glass, with Immy and Angus.
‘All right, Sawney Bean can stay, just this once.’
‘Beany!’ Kirstie leans up from her pillow, and reaches a little hand and jiggles the dog’s ears.
I stare at my daughter, meaningfully.
‘Thuh?’
‘Thank you, Mummy.’
‘Good. Now you must go back to sleep. School tomorrow.’
She hasn’t called herself ‘we’, she hasn’t called herself ‘Lydia’. This is a serious relief. When she settles her head on the cool pillow I walk to the door.
But as I back away, my eyes fix on the dog.
He is lying by Kirstie’s bed, and his head is meekly tilted, ready for sleep.
And now the sense of dread returns. Because I’ve worked it out: what was troubling me. The dog. The dog is behaving differently.
From the day we bought Beany home to our ecstatic little girls, his relationship with the twins was marked – yet it was, also, differentiated. My twins might have been identical, but Sawney did not love them identically.
With Kirstie, the first twin, the buoyant twin, the surviving twin, the leader of mischief, the girl sleeping in this bed, right now, in this room, Beany is extrovert: jumping up at her when she gets home from school, chasing her playfully down the hall – making her scream in delighted terror.
With Lydia, the quieter twin, the more soulful twin, the twin that used to sit and read with me for hours, the twin that fell to her death last year, our spaniel was always gentle, as if sensing her more vulnerable personality. He would nuzzle her, and press his paws on her lap: amiable and warm.
And Sawney Bean also liked to sleep in Lydia’s room if he could, even though we usually chased him out; and when he did come in to her room, he would lie by her bed at night, and tilt his head, meekly.
As he is doing now, with Kirstie.
I stare at my hands; they have a fine tremor. The anxiety is like pins and needles.
Because Beany is not extrovert with Kirstie any more. He behaves with Kirstie exactly as he used to with Lydia.
Gentle. Nuzzling. Soft.
The self-questioning surges. When did the dog’s behaviour change? Right after Lydia’s death? Later?
I strive, but I cannot remember. The last year has been a blur of grief: so much has altered I have paid no attention to the dog. So what has happened? Is it possible the dog is, somehow, grieving? Can an animal mourn? Or is it something else, something worse?
I have to investigate this: I can’t let it lie. Quickly I exit Kirstie’s room, leaving her to her reassuring nightlight; then I pace five yards to the next door. Lydia’s old room.
We have transformed Lydia’s room into an office space: trying, unsuccessfully, to erase the memories with work. The walls are lined with books, mostly mine. And plenty of them – at least half a shelf – are about twins.
When I was pregnant I read every book I could find on this subject. It’s the way I process things: I read about them. So I read books on the problems of twin prematurity, books on the problems on twin individuation, books that told me how a twin is more closely related, genetically, to her co-twin, to her twin sibling, than she is to her parents, or even her own children.
And I also read something about twins and dogs. I am sure.
Urgently I search the shelves. This one? No. This one? Yes.
Pulling down the book – Multiple Births: A Practical Guide – I flick hurriedly to the index.
Dogs, page 187.
And here it is. This is the paragraph I remembered.
Identical twins can sometimes be difficult to physically differentiate, well into their teenage years – even, on occasion, for their parents. Curiously, however, dogs do not have the same difficulty. Such is the canine sense of smell, a dog – a family pet, for instance – can, after a few weeks, permanently differentiate between one twin and another, by scent alone.
The book rests in my hands; but my eyes are staring into the total blackness of the uncurtained window. Piecing together the evidence.
Kirstie’s personality has become quieter, shyer, more reserved, this last year. More like Lydia’s. Until now I had ascribed this to grief. After all, everyone has changed this last year.
But what if we have made a terrible mistake? The most terrible mistake imaginable? How would we unravel it? What could we do? What would it do to all of us? I know one thing: I cannot tell my fractured husband any of this. I cannot tell anyone. There is no point in dropping this bomb. Not until I am sure. But how do I prove this, one way or another?
Dry-mouthed and anxious, I walk out onto the landing. I stare at the door. And those words written in spangled, cut-out paper letters.
Kirstie Lives Here.
I once read a survey that explained how moving house is as traumatic as a divorce, or as the death of a parent. I feel the opposite: for the two weeks after our meeting with Walker – for the two weeks after Kirstie said what she said – I am fiercely pleased that we are moving house, because it means I am overworked and, at least sometimes, distracted.
I like the thirst-inducing weariness in my arms as I lift cases from lofty cupboards, I like the tang of old dust in my mouth as I empty and scour the endless bookshelves.
But the doubts will not be entirely silenced. At least once a day I compare the history of the twins’ upbringing with the details of Lydia’s death. Is it possible, could it be possible, that we misidentified the daughter we lost?
I don’t know. And so I am stalling. For the last two weeks whenever I’ve dropped Kirstie off