The Stolen Sisters

I look at him across the kitchen, my handsome husband with his mop of dark hair and blue eyes that look permanently worried. He is slipping away from me. For a split second I wonder how much money the journalist had offered Marie. What we would have to say to generate enough interest to rocket our bank account from red to black, but I dismiss it instantly.

There are things I will never tell no matter how high the stakes.

‘How’s your morning been?’ I ask George as I lift the box from the worktop. He puts Archie down.

‘Go upstairs and wash your hands while Mummy and I make you some lunch.’

‘Okay, Daddy. I’ll fly.’ Archie stretches his arms into wings and zooms around the kitchen twice before he thunders upstairs.

George takes the box from me and puts it back down. ‘What the fuck, Leah?’

I swallow hard. ‘You shouldn’t have—’

‘I knew you weren’t coping.’ George tips the box onto its side and out spills bottle after bottle of antibacterial cleaner, hand wash, disinfectant wipes. Disposable gloves.

‘I… I am…’ I’m coping because of the contents of the box, not in spite of them.

‘You’re not. You haven’t got eczema again at all, have you?’

I stare miserably at my gloved hands. ‘No.’

‘You need help.’

‘It’s because of the anniversary.’

‘I know.’ His voice is quiet. His expression despairing. ‘I know how difficult it is for you. All of you. But remember the last time? I can’t go through it again, Leah. I’m not putting Archie through it. If you need to go and stay somewhere—’

‘A psychiatric hospital? I’m not mad.’

‘I’m not saying you are but you need specialist—’

‘I’ll ring Francesca. Make an appointment.’

She had helped before. She was the one who came to the police station and fought for me when they wouldn’t let me go. She explained the truth to them, however implausible it had seemed. My pulse accelerates as I remember the disbelief etched on their faces. The suspicion. She managed to persuade them I was innocent.

That time, I was innocent.

‘George? I said I’ll ring Francesca.’

‘Okay.’ There’s such weariness to that one word. He doesn’t follow it with ‘when?’ or ‘call her now’ and I know what he is thinking.

‘I know she’s expensive but Marie says we’re due some large royalties. I can cover the cost. Soon the anniversary will have been and gone and everything will be back to normal, I promise.’

‘You can’t put a price on mental health,’ he says. ‘Do you want me to come with you?’

‘Thanks. I’ll see what she suggests.’ I flash him a smile that he doesn’t return.

After a silent sandwich – even Archie is subdued, picking up on our tension – George disappears into his study.

‘What shall we play with, Archie?’ I ask.

‘Are your hands too sore to play trains, Mummy?’ He studies my face.

My throat swells as he looks at me with concern. ‘I’m never too sore to play with you, Archie.’ Not a direct lie, but not the truth either.

Archie scampers upstairs, returning minutes later, his thick winter gloves covering his hands.

‘Now we’re the same.’

I blink back tears as I watch him struggle to push the carriages around the track, hating myself, and loving him more.

It is just Archie and me for dinner. George is heading out again. After we’ve eaten, Archie asks if he can go and watch George get ready. He loves it when George smothers his chin in shaving cream, a Father Christmas beard.

I settle myself in front of the TV, channel-hopping, trying to find something upbeat – there are far too many crime series on. Channel 4 is halfway through an episode of Come Dine With Me but I watch it all the same.

My mobile trills its old-fashioned telephone ring. Anxiety cackles in my ear when I see where the call is coming from.

Why is he ringing me? But I know why.

For a split second I think about not answering, but I know if I don’t he won’t stop trying. Each time I change my number I text him my new one but he rarely has cause to use it. Now he must have something important to say and he’ll be determined to say it.

I don’t want to hear it.

My toes scrunch inside of my slippers.

I don’t want to hear it.

The urge to run away is immense.

I don’t want to hear it.

I will myself to think of Archie upstairs.

Calm yourself.

I search the room for three things to ground myself with.

Chocolate-brown cushion with pops of orange flowers.

Green spider-plant on the windowsill.

The side lamp with its warming buttery glow.

Calm.

My phone falls quiet. I stare at my screen, waiting for the voicemail icon to pop up.

It doesn’t.

The ringing starts again, demanding attention. I mute the TV and peel off one of my gloves so I can swipe to accept the call but, rather than imagining germs, it is his words I can feel already crawling over my skin regardless of the fact he hasn’t yet spoken.

‘Yes?’ I don’t bother with hello. This is not a social call.

‘It’s Graham.’ His Scottish accent is broad although he hasn’t lived there for years.

‘I know.’ Although ‘Graham’ still seems too familiar. Chief Inspector McDonald is the name that flashed up on my phone. He’s retired now but I still can’t address him by his Christian name. Whenever I hear his voice I’m that eight-year-old girl once more, frightened and confused. Cowering in the brightness of the police station, the light and noise a stark contrast to the quiet darkness I’d been rescued from. My arms wrapped around my father’s neck – me on one hip, Marie on the other, while Chief Inspector McDonald – Graham – assured us, ‘I’ll find the bastards who did this, I promise,’ and my mother sobbed into a tissue, a bewildered Carly pressed against her side.

‘How are you?’ he asks although he’ll know how I am.

‘Fine,’ I say but we both know that I’m not.

We’re so horribly British, that it comes next, the idle chit-chat about the weather.

‘It’s brass monkeys out there, I can’t feel my hands,’ he says.

‘I know. I couldn’t spread the butter on Archie’s toast this morning because it was solid.’

We play I’m-colder-than-you tag for a few minutes more.

‘Leah.’ I know what’s coming even before he confirms that I am right. There’s no other reason he’d be calling me. Part of me thinks I should say it first, take some control, but my mouth is desert dry, the words stuck to my tongue. I hear his breath in my ear.

Please don’t tell me.

The sound of a chair leg scraping against the floor.

Please don’t tell me.

The spark of a lighter. A draw on a cigarette.

Please don’t tell me.

But then he does. He has to.

‘He’s out. He was released yesterday.’

He doesn’t speak again and I think it’s because I’m screaming but then I realize the sound I’m making is only in my head because I can hear Archie call, ‘Bye Daddy,’ followed by the slam of the front door.

Graham allows the words to settle for a moment more before he says, ‘Time off for good behaviour.’ He makes a noise that could be a laugh or a snort or something in between because we both know there has never been anything good in his behaviour, but still they keep releasing him.

He’s out.

I am gripping the handset so hard my knuckles are white and my fingers ache.

He’s out.

Last time he was released he had ignored the condition of his parole stating he couldn’t come anywhere near me, Marie or Carly. It was such a relief when he was arrested again after the police had uncovered what else he had done while he’d had his freedom restored. He’s been gone for a number of years since and, although I knew he wouldn’t be locked up forever, this still feels like a slap in the face but then it proves I was right, wasn’t I? I had seen him this morning as I’d pulled out of the petrol station.

Twenty years.

Happy anniversary.

Without thinking about how rude I am being, I cut the call. My fingers hover between the contacts in my favourite list. I ring Carly first.

‘Hey, Leah. What’s up?’ Her voice is thick with tears. It’s been a hard day for us all at Marie’s flat. For a moment I hesitate, not wanting to make her feel any worse.

‘He’s out.’ It’s all I need to say.

She sharply draws a breath.

‘Who told you?’ she asks.

‘Graham.’

‘Not Mum?’

‘Of course not.’ Our relationship with our mother is complex. ‘Do you think she knows?’ Would the police be obliged to tell her?

‘Dunno. Should I call her?’

‘Do you want to?’

‘Not really, no.’

‘Then don’t. Anyway, there’s nothing she can do and we need to tell Marie first. Speak to you later.’

I hang up, not waiting to hear her thoughts on his release. Her reaction will be the same as mine: outrage, sadness, fear.

Marie’s phone rings and rings. I will her to hurry up. Her answer service kicks in. I cut the call and try again with no luck.

She definitely said she didn’t have any plans that evening, that she was staying in.

In between bathing Archie and putting him to bed I try her again.

Still, she doesn’t answer.

My stomach churns with worry. When I was young I came down with tonsillitis unbeknown to Marie, who suddenly lost her voice, despite not feeling ill.

Twin instinct, Mum used to call it.

My thoughts cast back to that room – our prison – when I had thought she was going to die. I knew it then and I know it now.

Something is wrong.

Very wrong indeed.

Chapter Eleven

Carly

Then

Leah released another bloodcurdling scream and, before Carly could react, she tore over to the door, rattling the handle with both hands.

‘Come back! Let us out!’

Marie shouted, ‘Stop it, Leah. You’ll make them cross.’

Leah turned to Carly, her eyes wide and disbelieving. ‘They… they’ve left us here.’

‘It’s okay.’ Carly forced out the lie. ‘I’m going to get us out.’

‘How?’ Leah waited for an answer and when she didn’t get one she turned back to the door. Hammering on it with her small fists. ‘Help.’

‘Shh.’ Carly grabbed her wrists. ‘Stop that. Give me a second to think.’

Panic tightened in Carly’s chest, forcing her to draw in deeper breaths. The putrid smell was unbearable. Carly covered her nose with her sleeve while she stalked around the room.

It was small.

Oppressive.

Graffiti scrawled over the walls.

Ten frantic paces long and six paces wide.

One locked door.

One barred window. The tree outside tap-tap-tapping against the metal bars as pain tap-tap-tapped behind Carly’s eyes. She wondered if she had concussion from where she’d banged her head in the van. She’d seen that happen once on Casualty.

What would happen to the twins if she wasn’t here to protect them?

Carly pulled at the bars as hard as she could but they were concreted into place. Oddly they weren’t weatherworn or rusty, but shiny and new. It was a slow dawning. Carly realized with horror that they had been fitted recently, either for them or for someone who had been held here before.

This wasn’t random, it had been planned.

Why?

Had they been kidnapped for a ransom? Her stepdad was always featured in newspaper and magazines with his business. He and Mum were often out at work functions – ‘networking’, he called it. Drumming up business. She didn’t fully understand what he did, despite his patience in explaining it. His clients were all companies with money who paid him to build online campaigns to get the public to contribute to fund the manufacturing of new products. It seemed crazy.

‘Why can’t the companies just pay for their own stuff?’ Carly had asked.

‘Why risk your own money, if someone else is willing to pay? Besides, some of these big names genuinely can’t afford to pay for development in this economy but they can’t admit they’re in the red. If consumers knew there was any sort of risk of the company folding, they’d avoid them like the plague. Too worried about their guarantees being void or not being able to cash in gift vouchers.’

‘So it’s tricking them.’

‘Not tricking them, no. Creating a buzz is a win-win for everyone. The manufacturers get their product launched with minimal risk, and the consumers feel a real part of something. Everyone gets something out of it.’

It was confusing but it paid well. Their house was the nicest in their street. If the men demanded money Carly knew her parents would give it to them. That had to be it, didn’t it? But what if it wasn’t?

The girls had been brought here for a reason.

Carly just didn’t know what.

She closed her eyes.

She didn’t want to know.

Think.

Tap-tap-tap, said the tree.

Hurry-hurry-hurry.

Carly raced back to the door. Twisted the handle.

‘It’s still locked,’ Leah said.

‘I know that.’ What Carly didn’t know was what they – what she – was going to do. Panicked, she ran her fingers down the side of the door, feeling for the bump of the hinges. Could she unscrew them somehow and remove the door? There didn’t seem to be screws visible and Carly wondered if the door needed to be open in order to see them. She rattled the handle again.

Think.

Desperately, she scanned the room. The mattress took up much of the floor space. Broken glass littered the grubby grey floor; the fluorescent tubes had been wrenched from the ceiling and smashed. There was a heap of rubbish that looked like the bonfire her stepdad had mounded in the garden last year. Carly remembered the strike of the match, the flames that licked higher and higher until the guy the girls had made was alight. His legs, his torso. His face.

Was that what the men had planned for them?

She couldn’t breathe. The thought… The thought of being trapped in this room, toxic smoke filling the air, filling their lungs. The relentless heat.

They would burn.

Suffocate.

Die.

Carly stumbled over to the window as though smoke was already seeping into her lungs. She grasped hold of the metal bars, thankfully cool and not scorching hot. Lifted her feet from the ground.

Come on.

She wasn’t heavy enough to yank them from the window.

‘Girls. Come and help me.’

Leah slipped her arms around Carly’s waist, hanging from her like an infant monkey. Carly’s shoulder sockets screamed with pain, her clammy palms slipped, as the sisters tumbled onto the hard concrete ground, into a puddle of stagnant water that had pooled under the window. It stank.

‘I want to go home.’ Leah clung to Carly, the tips of her fingers digging into the already-bruised flesh of Carly’s arm.

‘We’re going to go home.’ Carly stood, and helped Leah up. Both of their skirts were sodden. ‘Why didn’t you help us, Marie?’

‘We can’t get out,’ Marie stated the simple truth.

Leah began to cry.

‘It’s okay, though.’ Marie stroked her twin’s hair, the way she had calmed Bruno the night fireworks lit up the sky behind their garden. ‘It’s a game. Isn’t it?’

Marie’s eyes met Carly’s and there was both question and fear in them.

‘Yes,’ said Carly eventually. Marie had the right idea. Leah was born only twelve minutes after Marie, but she’d always seemed much younger – the one they needed to protect with her endless worries. It was better to lie and calm her. ‘It’s a game.’

‘But I don’t want to play.’ Leah sobbed harder.

‘If we don’t all play, we can’t all stay together,’ Marie said.

‘What do you mean?’ Leah wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

‘I mean…’ Marie hesitated. Indecipherable emotions slid across her face – she had always been so hard to read – before she masked them with a half-hearted attempt at a smile. Forever the fearless one. Always trying to make her twin feel better. ‘We have to be good. Brave. We’re together, that’s the main thing.’

‘Might they split us up? Who are they? Don’t let them take me away.’

‘I won’t,’ Marie said firmly. ‘Cross my heart.’ But Leah still looked terrified until Marie curved her little finger into a hood and offered it to her twin.

‘A pinkie promise can’t be broke

Or you’ll disappear in a puff of smoke

This is my vow to you,

I’ll keep my promise through and through.’

‘See, it’ll be fine!’ Carly took a deep breath to steady her voice. ‘Marie’s right.’ She glanced at Marie. ‘We’ll treat it like a game. A mystery. We’re good at solving those, aren’t we?’ It wasn’t too long ago they’d created invisible ink. If only lemon juice could help them now. ‘Let’s make a plan.’ She crunched over the broken glass and perched on the mattress. It was filthy but safer than the floor. She patted the space either side of her. The twins huddled against her. ‘Right. I don’t know who took us, or why, but there’s two of them. Doc—’

‘A doctor?’ Leah asked.

‘No, but I call him that because of his boots, and Moustache is the other one. They haven’t hurt us yet so I don’t think they will.’ Carly crossed her fingers behind her back.

‘Look.’ Leah pointed with a shaky finger. On the wall, in jet black aerosol, the words, You’re going to die.

‘That isn’t aimed at us,’ Carly said. ‘Look how many other things have been written.’

‘Run.’ Leah read another.

‘I meant names and stuff. It’s vandals. Some of the kids at school have been here. Nobody is going to die.’

Think.

They fell silent.

Think.

Suddenly it came to her.

A plan.

‘Marie, we need you to pretend to be ill.’

‘Why?’ asked Marie.

‘Because you’re the best at acting.’ Marie had a confidence Carly could only wish for. Last Christmas she’d played Annie. Mum had styled her red hair into a mass of ringlets and she’d stood centre stage, belting out ‘Tomorrow’ without a hint of self-consciousness.

‘I know I’m the best. Acting is easy. You just pretend. I meant why should I look ill?’

‘That way I can call the men and they’ll think you’re really sick. If they’re worried you might die they’ll have to take you to hospital. There’ll be police there.’ Carly thought but she didn’t know. There were always policeman chatting up the nurses on Casualty.

‘No,’ said Marie. ‘It’s better we stay together. Besides, they won’t hurt us.’ She tried to form it as a statement. Carly knew she was trying to reassure Leah but there was still a tinge of doubt to her voice. This was the first time in her eight years Marie had caught a glimpse of how harsh the world could be and Carly didn’t blame her for not wanting to accept it. ‘They didn’t mean to scare us, did they, Carly?’ Marie raised her eyebrows and tilted her head towards her twin.

‘Of course not, but—’ Carly began.

‘There you go, then. I won’t leave Leah.’ She linked her fingers through her sister’s. ‘Or you,’ she added as she caught sight of the expression on Carly’s face.

‘Marie—’

‘No, Carly! Besides, they wouldn’t believe it if I was suddenly ill.’

‘It wouldn’t be much of a stretch.’ Carly gestured to the piles of rubbish littering the graffiti-daubed room. ‘It’s filthy here – there’ll be germs crawling all over the place, probably enough to kill us.’ Carly shuddered.

‘We could die of germs?’ Terror was thick in Leah’s voice. Her eyes rapidly scoured the floor as if searching for germs scurrying around.

‘Not really.’ Carly wished she could take back her words. Leah had a tendency to worry about everything.

‘Nobody’s going to die,’ Marie said. ‘It’s a game. That’s all. Pretend. We stay quiet and don’t make a fuss and we’ll be home before we know it. Right, Carly?’

‘Right.’ Carly tried to lift her mouth into a smile but she couldn’t. In truth she didn’t know if they’d ever go home, and even if they did, the thought of what they might have to endure between now and then was utterly horrifying.

Carly felt sick. Dizzy. The lump on her head throbbing.

Think.

She was all out of ideas and worse than that, her bladder was uncomfortably full. Again, her eyes travelled across the room, hopefully looking for a toilet.

‘I need to wee.’ She stood.

‘Are you going to knock on the door and ask?’ Marie said.

‘Don’t go out there without us, Carly,’ Leah begged.

‘I’m not. I’ll…’ She was hot with humiliation. ‘I’ll go over there, by the corner. You two face the wall.’

The twins did as they were told. Carly’s fingers reluctantly hitched up her skirt and dragged down her pants. At first she couldn’t go, too scared the men would come in and see her exposed. She closed her eyes and pictured the waterfall they’d visited a few years ago in Wales. The roar of the water, the surge of the current. Hot splashes splattered her legs as she released a stream of urine.

‘I’ve finished,’ she said quietly.

‘It stinks of wee now,’ Leah said.

‘It stank of wee anyway.’ Carly was horribly embarrassed. She needed to find something to soak it up with. Careful to avoid the broken glass, she crouched down beside the pile of rubbish. There was a large cardboard box she could tear apart. Carly pulled it towards her, expecting it to be light and empty. Instead it was heavy and full. Sealed with brown tape.

Carly felt dread settle heavily in her stomach before she’d even opened the box.

Before she had seen what was inside.

She somehow knew it would be bad.

Very bad.

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