The Ice Twins. S. Tremayne K.

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       1

      Our chairs are placed precisely two yards apart. And they are both facing the big desk, as if we are a couple having marital therapy; a feeling I know too well. Dominating the room is a pair of lofty, uncurtained, eighteenth-century sash windows: twin portraits of a dark and dimming London sky.

      ‘Can we get some light?’ asks my husband, and the young solicitor, Andrew Walker, looks up from his papers, with maybe a tinge of irritation.

      ‘Of course,’ he says. ‘My apologies.’ He leans to a switch behind him, and two tall standing lamps flood the room with a generous yellow light, and those impressive windows go black.

      Now I can see my reflection in the glazing: poised, passive, my knees together. Who is this woman?

      She is not what I used to be. Her eyes are as blue as ever, yet sadder. Her face is slightly round, and pale, and thinner than it was. She is still blonde and tolerably pretty – but also faded, and dwindled; a thirty-three-year-old woman, with all the girlishness long gone.

      And her clothes?

      Jeans that were fashionable a year ago. Boots that were fashionable a year ago. Lilac cashmere jumper, quite nice, but worn: with that bobbling you get, from one too many washes. I wince at my mirrored self. I should have come smarter. But why should I have come smarter? We’re just meeting a lawyer. And changing our lives completely.

      Traffic murmurs outside, like the deep but disturbed breathing of a dreaming partner. I wonder if I’m going to miss London traffic, the constant reassuring white noise: like those apps for your phone that help you sleep – by mimicking the ceaseless rushing sounds of blood in the womb, the mother’s heartbeat throbbing in the distance.

      My twins would have heard that noise, when they were rubbing noses inside me. I remember seeing them on the second sonogram. They looked like two heraldic symbols on a coat of arms, identical and opposed. The unicorn and the unicorn.

       Testator. Executor. Legitim. Probate …

      Andrew Walker is addressing us as if we are a lecture room, and he is a professor who is mildly disappointed with his students.

      Bequeathed. Deceased. Inheritor. Surviving Children.

      My husband Angus sighs, with suppressed impatience; I know that sigh. He is bored, probably irritated. And I understand this; but I also have sympathy for the solicitor. This can’t be easy for Walker. Facing an angry, belligerent father, and a still-grieving mother, while sorting a problematic bequest: we must be tricky. So his careful, slow, precise enunciation is maybe his way of distancing, of handling difficult material. Maybe it is the legal equivalent of medical terminology. Duodenal hematomas and serosal avulsions, leading to fatal infantile peritonitis.

      A sharp voice cuts across.

      ‘We’ve been through all of this.’

      Has Angus had a drink? His tone skirts the vicinity of anger. Angus has been angry since it happened. And he has been drinking a lot, too. But he sounds quite lucid today, and is, presumably, sober.

      ‘We’d like to get this done before climate change really kicks in. You know?’

      ‘Mr Moorcroft, as I have already said, Peter Kenwood is on holiday. We can wait for him to come back if you prefer—’

      Angus shakes his head. ‘No. We want to get it done now.’

      ‘Then I have to go through the documents again, and the pertinent issues – for my own satisfaction. Moreover, Peter feels … well …’

      I watch. The solicitor hesitates, and his next words are tighter, and even more carefully phrased:

      ‘As you are aware, Mr Moorcroft, Peter considers himself a long-standing family friend. Not just a legal advisor. He knows the circumstances. He knew the late Mrs Carnan, your grandmother, very well. He therefore asked me to make sure, once again, that you both know exactly what you are getting into.’

      ‘We know what we are doing.’

      ‘The island is, as you are aware, barely СКАЧАТЬ