The poor dear was blind and confused during the whole thing, very vulnerable really. I put on my poshest voice, pretended I had a cold, and would you believe it, she thought I was you. It was so easy.
I won’t tell you the circumstances of the visit or what she said to me because that’s between me and her. But it made me realise what I could have had. How much easier my life would have been if I’d had a doting mother rather than the one I was stuck with.
Shall I tell you about my childhood?
There was a cellar in our house with a lock on the outside. It was freezing cold and full of spiders and woodlice and mildew. When my father was at work, she would take me down there and lock the door so she could go out. I don’t know where she went or what she did. I was always too afraid to ask when she eventually let me out.
I had chores to do most days and she held me back from school if I hadn’t completed them. It was hard to reach her standards. No plate was ever clean enough. No floor scrubbed hard enough. She took pleasure in my failure.
And if I didn’t do it right, she threatened to sell me. What she didn’t realise is that it never sounded like a punishment to be sold away from her. Until she told me the kind of person she would sell me to and what he would do to me. And she warned me that if I tried to get help from my father, she’d immediately get rid of me and tell him I’d run away. This bad man willing to buy me would take me out of the country or lock me in his cellar forever and ever.
Don’t you think it’s strange how one small circumstance can change a life? How it can shape a person?
You had the perfect family. You went to people who actually wanted you.
I did not.
Anyway. As soon as I met my man, I learned to survive. He is the most ruthless person I know, and he would kill for me. He would even kill you, sister, if I asked him to. He’d kill your entire family. And he’d enjoy every second of it.
I’ve read all your books, by the way. They’re darker than other children’s books. You don’t shy away from death, do you? That’s what I like about them.
But the rest of it is cloying. All that rubbish about how sisters are best friends and have a special bond. It isn’t true. You, of all people, should know that. People say the same thing about mums and daughters, that there’s this magical connection between them. Mothers are supposed to be their daughter’s best friend, and no one wants to admit that there are terrible mothers in the world. That they can be negligent and cruel and evil.
Why don’t you write about that?
I can give you a twisted story all about it.
If I visit your mum again, I might even tell her, too.
CHAPTER 27
FAYE
The tears come on the way home. Thicker and faster than ever before, until I have to pull over and let them run. My sobs choke my throat, strangling me as I release decades’ worth of pain wondering who I am and where I came from. Finally, I allow myself to recognise that missing part of myself, the one that all adopted children must feel at some point in their lives. The siblings they imagine. The twins I wrote into my book.
And now, the twin who became real.
Claire.
Did I manifest her?
I start to laugh then. What a fucking mess this all is. Me, with my deteriorating brain function, my two mothers with all of their baggage, and now a twin.
Which means the viral photo might not have been me. I might not have been on Seeley Moor that morning.
And itmusthave been her visiting my mother that day.
Why did she say those cruel things to her? Does she hate me? Is she exactly like the woman in my nightmare?
The questions continue to swirl around my mind as I start the car again and the roads fade around me. I’m zoned out, but luckily, I find my way home with ease. When I get there, Penny is waiting by her car in the driveway.
She walks over before I’ve even got the handbrake on.
“Mum,” she says, “did you forget we were meeting for lunch today?”
I’m all fingers and thumbs exiting the car with my bag and water bottle. “Shit. Sorry, Pen. It’s been a crazy day.”
“Are you all right?” she asks. “Has something happened?”
