The Ice Twins. S. Tremayne K.
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Название: The Ice Twins
Автор: S. Tremayne K.
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Приключения: прочее
isbn: 9780007459247
isbn:
Fresh air, mountains, sea lochs. And a view across the water to Knoydart.
I am hurrying to the door of the big white house we should never have bought; the house in which we can no longer afford to live.
Imogen is at the door. The house smells of kids’ food, new laundry and fresh coffee; it is bright. I am going to miss it. Maybe.
‘Immy, thanks for looking after her.’
‘Oh, please. Come on. Just tell me? Has it all gone through?’
‘Yes, we’ve got it, we’re moving!’
Imogen claps her hands in delight: my clever, dark-haired, elegant friend who’s stuck with me all the way from college; she leans and hugs me, but I push her away, smiling.
‘I have to tell her, she knows nothing.’
Imogen grins. ‘She’s in her room with the Wimpy Kid.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Reading that book!’
Pacing down the hall I climb the stairs and pause at the door that says Kirstie Lives Here and Knock First spelled out in clumsily scissored letters made from glittery paper. I knock, as instructed.
Then I hear a faint mmm-mmm. My daughter’s version of Come in.
I push the door, and there is my seven-year-old girl, cross-legged on the floor in her school uniform – black trousers, white polo shirt – her little freckled nose close to a book: a picture of innocence but also of loneliness. The love and the sadness throbs inside me. I want to make her life better, so much, make her whole again, as best I can.
‘Kirstie …’
She does not respond. Still reading. She sometimes does this. Playing a game, mmmNOT going to talk. It has become more frequent, this last year.
‘Kirstie. Moomin. Kirstie-koo.’
Now she looks up, with those blue eyes she got from me, but bluer. Hebridean blue. Her blonde hair is almost white.
‘Mummy.’
‘I’ve got some news, Kirstie. Good news. Wonderful news.’
Sitting myself on the floor, beside her, surrounded by little toys – by her penguins, and Leopardy the cuddly leopard, and the Doll With One Arm – I tell Kirstie everything. In a rush. How we are moving somewhere special, somewhere new, somewhere we can start again, somewhere beautiful and fresh and sparkling: our own island.
Through it all Kirstie looks at me. Her eyes barely blinking. Taking it all in. Saying nothing, passive, as if entranced, returning my own silences to me. She nods, and half smiles. Puzzled, maybe. The room is quiet. I have run out of words.
‘So,’ I say. ‘What do you think? Moving to our own island? Won’t that be exciting?’
Kirstie nods, gently. She looks down at her book, and closes it, and then she looks up at me again, and says:
‘Mummy, why do you keep calling me Kirstie?’
I say nothing. The silence is ringing. I speak:
‘Sorry, sweetheart. What?’
‘Why do you keep calling me Kirstie, Mummy? Kirstie is dead. It was Kirstie that died. I’m Lydia.’
I stare at Kirstie. Trying to smile. Trying not to show my deep anxiety.
There is surely some latent grief resurfacing here, in Kirstie’s developing mind; some confusion unique to twins who lose a co-twin, and I am used to this – to my daughters – to my daughter – being different.
From the first time my own mother drove from Devon, in the depths of winter, to our little flat in Holloway – from the moment my mum looked at the twins paired in their cot, the two identical tiny babies sucking each other’s thumbs – from the moment my mother burst into a dazzled, amazed, giddy smile, her eyes wide with sincere wonder – I knew then that having twins was something even more impressive than the standard miracle of becoming a parent. With twins – especially identicals – you give birth to genetic celebrities. People who are impressive simply for existing.
Impressive, and very different.
My dad even gave them a nickname: the Ice Twins. Because they were born on the coldest, frostiest day of the year, with ice-blue eyes and snowy-blonde hair. The nickname felt a little melancholy: so I never properly adopted it. Yet I couldn’t deny that, in some ways, the name fitted. It caught their uncanniness.
And that’s how special twins can be: they actually had a special name, shared between them.
In which case, this piercingly calm statement from Kirstie – Mummy, I’m Lydia, it was Kirstie that died – could be just another example of twin-ness, just another symptom of their uniqueness. But even so, I am fighting panic, and the urge to cry. Because she’s reminding me of Lydia. And because I am worried for Kirstie.
What terrible delusion is haunting her thoughts, to make her say these terrible words? Mummy, I’m Lydia, it was Kirstie that died. Why do you keep calling me Kirstie?
‘Sweetheart,’ I say to Kirstie, with a fake and deliberate calmness, ‘it’s time for bed soon.’
She gives me that placid blue gaze, identical to her sister’s. She is missing a milk tooth from the top. Another one is wobbling, on the bottom. This is quite a new thing; until Lydia’s death both twins had perfect smiles: they were similarly late in losing their teeth.
Holding the book a little higher, Kirstie says,
‘But actually the chapter is only three more pages. Did you know that?’
‘Is it really?’
‘Yes, look it actually ends here, Mummy.’
‘OK then, we can read three more pages to the end of the chapter. Why don’t you read them to me?’
Kirstie nods, and turns to her book; she begins to read aloud.
‘I had to wrap myself up in toi-let paper so I didn’t get hypo … hy … po …’
Leaning closer, I point out the word and begin to help. ‘Hypoth—’
‘No, Mummy.’ She laughs, softly. ‘No. I know it. I can say it!’
‘OK.’
Kirstie closes her eyes, which is what she does when she really thinks hard, then she opens her eyes again, and reads: ‘So I didn’t get hy-po-thermia.’
She’s got it. Quite a difficult word. But I am not surprised. There has been СКАЧАТЬ