The Twins (Saskia Sarginson) by Saskia Sarginson

Author:Saskia Sarginson
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Fiction / Family Life, Fiction / Contemporary Women
ISBN: 9780316246194
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2013-07-29T21:00:00+00:00

21

The four of us sat in our garden on the patchy lawn, exactly where John and I had lazed on the rug, drawing pirates and snakes. Sunlight misted the edges of gorse bushes and pine trees. I sat away from John, plucking daisies from the grass, pulling them to bits, one petal at a time, crushing yellow hearts between my fingers. John hovered at the edges of my vision, staring at the ground. I caught him in fleeting glances, watched him worrying the raw skin around his bitten nails, tearing at it with wolfish teeth. When he looked up, I was unable to meet his eyes. He was quiet too. And I was afraid that he was embarrassed by our afternoon, that he regretted keeping it secret from Michael.

The time I’d spent with him pressed into the air like a parallel universe. I thought that Issy and Michael must be able to see it too–it hung so clearly before us: the colours of our drawings, the tickle of the grass against my bare legs, his hand on my arm. How could the others not see it? I’d never concealed anything from Isolte before and it caught like a pain inside me.

‘Let’s go to the tower,’ Michael suggested.

‘We could have a swim,’ Issy said, getting to her feet. ‘I’ll get some towels.’

I heard a sudden clatter of pans from the kitchen. Frank and Polly were coming to supper. Mummy was chopping and mixing already. ‘Be back by five,’ she’d said, slicing skin from a chicken viciously, ‘or else.’

‘We can’t go to the tower. There isn’t time,’ I said blankly, staring hard at my arm as if examining the glinting hairs. I felt I was coming down with flu. And we had to get through an evening with Frank and Polly. I groaned faintly.

Meals that Mummy prepared for Frank and Polly acquired the importance of Christmas dinner. This time Mummy had made elderflower water ice for pudding. The sugary smell remained in the kitchen, a sweet thickness in the air. I’d helped her pick the elderflowers days ago, delicate stems holding sprays of tiny flowers. We’d stuffed them into cheesecloth bundles to steep in sugar water. Dead insects floated on the bubbling scum.

‘Well, what shall we do then?’ Isolte scuffed her heels, looking impatient.

‘Let’s find a dead rabbit,’ John suggested. ‘Make good luck charms. We can wear them in the oak woods.’

‘What’s lucky about a dead rabbit?’ Issy asked.

I blushed and looked down at my dirty toes sticking out of the holes in my plimsolls.

‘It’s their feet that are lucky,’ John explained. ‘Gypsies use them.’

We set off down the sandy track. The pines stood straight and tall, trapping shadows inside a thicket of trunks. I could smell the seep of sticky resin and fermented cuckoo spit. I batted a mosquito away from my neck. Michael had picked a piece of bracken and was tearing away the fronds, his hands stained with green. He whipped the naked stalk around his head.

‘What’s going on with this Frank bloke, anyway?’ Michael said.

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