I can’t say for sure, but I imagine that was met with another harrumph.
‘That’s just science mumbo jumbo.’
To this day, I can remember Mum’s eyes finding mine across the width of our old kitchen and the warmth of her smile. I was a product of that science ‘mumbo jumbo’ and so too was Amelia, and both of us had been made aware of just how special that made us from a very young age.
My parents had wanted a house full of children, especially Dad, who’d been an only child, adopted as a baby, and had grown up longing for siblings. But Mum had struggled to get pregnant, and Dad – who would have given her the moon on a string if she’d asked for it – had happily agreed to IVF, a procedure that was still relatively new back then. And it had worked for them. Given Mum’s tiny frame, the doctors had decided to implant just a single embryo and freeze the other. It always seemed crazy to me that some unknown embryologist had chosen which sister would come first and which would be frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored away until the time was right for them to be born.
‘You were like Sleeping Beauty,’ my big sister told me when I was old enough to question why my ‘twin’ was actually eight years older than me.
‘So did a handsome prince come along to wake me up?’ I asked.
Amelia had snorted that notion away. Even as a young teenager, she was all about the logic and not the magic. ‘You didn’t need any dumb old hero to save you,’ she said derisively.
Which made it even more confusing that for some reason, from the depths of her subconscious, she’d apparently created one now for herself.
6
I stared into the weekend bag on Amelia’s bed. Should I add one more nightdress to the three I’d already packed? The sides of the holdall were already bulging, largely due to the number ofOh, I’ve just thought of…messages Mum had sent throughout the morning.
‘Toiletries, undies, slippers, dressing gown,’ I murmured, checking the items off the list on my phone. I scanned Amelia’s bedroom one last time and picked up the book from her bedside table and placed it on top of the clothes. Beside it was a dangling charger wire, still plugged into the wall socket. But there was no mobile phone. I’d looked for it everywhere and even tried calling it, only to get an annoying message telling meThis person’s phone is currently unavailable.
‘Oh, I do hope she hasn’t lost it again,’ Mum said, when I called to ask for suggestions of where else to look. ‘She got really upset a couple of weeks ago when she mislaid it.’
Getting upset was the last thing Amelia should be doing in her current condition.
‘I’ll keep looking for it,’ I promised. I was standing beside Amelia’s bedroom window, watching a clutch of seagulls swooping down from the sky to the beach. My fingers suddenly tightened around my own mobile. ‘Do you think her phone might be on the mudflats somewhere? She might have had it with her the other night and dropped it?’
Mum sighed and her voice sounded worryingly old. ‘I don’t know, Lexi. I’m beginning to wonder if we’lleverfind out what happened that night.’
Amelia’s phone wasn’t the only troublesome item on my list. Even though I hadn’t seen it in years, I wasn’t worried about recognising the locket, with its elaborate silver scrollwork. Ten-year-old me had coveted it from the moment our grandmother – the harrumphing one – had given it to Amelia for her eighteenth birthday. I assumed I would find it in the jewellery box on the bedroom dressing table. But the photograph inside it, of a husband who didn’t exist, would be somewhat trickier to locate.
Various faces had graced the inside of the locket over the years: our parents, me, much loved pets, even the odd boyfriend or two. But who would I find inside it now? I was surprised to see my hand was trembling as I lifted the lid of the jewellery box. The locket was right there on the top tray, nestled in a red-velvet-lined compartment. The silver glinted in a watery ray of winter sunlight as I plucked the necklace from the box. It was heavier than I remembered, and my fingers fumbled awkwardly with the clasp before it finally sprang open. I didn’t realise I’d been holding my breath until I let it out now on a long, expelled sigh. There were no photographs in the locket. It was empty.
I’m not sure how long I stood there with the irrefutable proof in my hands that Sam Wilson did not exist. I was usually good at making decisions, but I couldn’t make up my mind which was worse: to present Amelia with the empty locket or lie and say I couldn’t find it.
*
‘What do you mean, you couldn’t find it? Did you look in my jewellery box?’
I shifted uncomfortably beside Amelia’s hospital bed, busying myself with repositioning the jug of water to make room for the belongings Ihadbrought with me.
‘I did,’ I said, unable to meet the disappointment in her eyes. The locket was the first thing she’d asked for as soon as I arrived. I thought the missing phone would bother her far more – it certainly would me – but she was fixated on the locket.
‘I just want to see his face,’ she said, sounding so forlorn that her pain made my own eyes tingle. She brought her hand up to the place where the electrodes were fixed to her chest. ‘I wanted to wear it so I could keep him right here.’
‘Perhaps it’s fallen into a drawer or something. I’m sorry, Amelia. I just ran out of time to search, and I didn’t want to be late for visiting.’
‘Your sister has had a bit of a rough morning,’ the charge nurse had informed me on my way to Amelia’s room. ‘I just wanted to warn you that you might find her a little out of sorts.’ That had to be the understatement of the century. ‘She became quite distressed during her MRI this morning, so much so that they had to abandon it for today. Were you aware that she suffers from claustrophobia?’
I wasn’t. But suddenly the weird feeling I’d experienced a few hours earlier made much more sense. One minute I’d been perfectly fine, working on my laptop, and the next my heart had begun inexplicably to race, and I’d broken out in a cold sweat. It had felt as though the walls of the cottage were closing in on me and I’d thrown open the front door and stood on the beach, gulping in huge lungfuls of salt-tinged air. And then, just as suddenly as it started, the sensation had passed. I’d never had a panic attack in my life, and thatcouldhave been what I’d experienced today. But memories of getting menstrual cramps when I wasn’t the one having a period, or an aching jaw when Amelia visited the dentist with a particularly nasty abscess, made me think there might be another explanation.
The day had clearly left its mark on Amelia. She was still horribly pale, and although I tried very hard not to stare at the monitors she was attached to, it was impossible not to be aware that her heart rate was all over the place – one minute terrifyingly fast and the next desperately low. I’d watched enough episodes ofGrey’s Anatomyto know that couldn’t be good.
‘She didn’t bring the locket in,’ Amelia said disappointedly to a nurse who’d come in to take her blood pressure.
‘Oh, never mind. I’m sure I’ll see that handsome hubby of yours soon,’ she said consolingly, throwing a friendly smile in my direction.
You do know there is no husband, don’t you?my eyes silently quizzed the nurse.We’re just humouring her until she can separate reality from fantasy.
