Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015

Copyright © Claire Douglas 2015

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015

Cover photographs © Andy & Michelle Kerry / Trevillion Images (main image); Jack Cox - Travel Pics Pro / Alamy (white shoes); Vaida Abdul / Arcangel Images (yellow shoes).

Claire Douglas asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007594412

Ebook Edition © August 2015 ISBN: 9780007594429

Version 2015-06-23

Dedication

In memory of my brother, David, and for my sister, Sam

I would like more sisters, that the taking out of one, might not leave such stillness.

Emily Dickinson

… we’re twins, and so we love each other more than other people …

Louisa May Alcott, Little Men

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Acknowledgements

Reading Group Questions

About the Author

About the Publisher

Chapter One

I see her everywhere.

She’s in the window of the Italian restaurant on the corner of my street. She has a glass of wine in her hand, something sparkly like Prosecco, and her head is thrown back in laughter, her blonde bob cupping her heart-shaped face, her emerald eyes crinkling.

She’s trying to cross the road, chewing her bottom lip in concentration as she waits patiently for a pause in the traffic, her trusty brown satchel swinging from the crook of her arm.

She’s running for a bus in black sandals and skinny jeans, wire-framed glasses pushed back on to bedhead hair.

And each time I see her I begin to rush towards her, arm automatically rising to attract her attention. Because in that fraction of a second I forget everything. In that small sliver of time she’s still alive. And then the memory washes over me in a tsunami of emotion so I’m engulfed by it. The realization that it’s not her, that it can never be her.

Lucy is everywhere and she is nowhere. That’s the reality of it.

I will never see her again.

Today, a bustling Friday early evening, she’s standing outside Bath Spa train station handing out flyers.

I catch sight of her as I’m sipping my cappuccino in the café opposite, and even through the rain-spattered window the resemblance to Lucy makes me do a double take. The same petite frame swamped in a scarlet raincoat, pale shoulder-length hair and the too-large mouth that always gave the impression of jollity even when she was anything but happy. She’s holding a spotty umbrella to protect herself from another impromptu spring shower and her smile never fades, not even when she’s ignored by busy shoppers and hostile commuters, or when a passing bendy-bus sends a mini tidal wave in her direction, splashing her bare legs and her dainty leopard-print pumps.

My stomach tightens when a phalanx of businessmen in suits obscure my view for a few long seconds before they move, as one entity, into the train station. The relief is palpable when I see she hasn’t been washed away by the throng but is still standing in the exact same spot, proffering her leaflets to disinterested passers-by. She’s rummaging in an oversized velvet bag while trying to balance the handle of her umbrella in the nook of her arm and I can tell by the hint of weariness behind her cheery smile that it won’t be long before she calls it a day.

I can’t let her go. Gulping back the rest of my coffee and burning the roof of my mouth in the process, I’m out the door and into the rain while shouldering on my parka. I zip it up hurriedly, pull the hood over my hair to guard against the inevitable frizziness and cross the road. As I edge closer I can see there is only a slight resemblance to my sister. This woman’s hair is more auburn than blonde, her eyes a clear Acacia honey, her nose a small upturned ski-slope with a smattering of freckles. And she looks older too, maybe early thirties. But she’s as beautiful as Lucy.

‘Hello,’ she smiles, and I realize I’m standing right next to her and that I’m staring. But she doesn’t look perturbed. She must be used to people gawping at her. If anything, she looks relieved that someone has bothered to stop.

‘Hi,’ I manage as she hands me the leaflet, limp from the rain. I accept it and my eyes scan it quickly. I take in the bright print, the words ‘Bear Flat Artists’ and ‘Open Studio’ and raise my eyes at her questioningly.

‘I’m an artist,’ she explains. By the two red spots that appear at the apples of her cheeks I can tell she’s new to this, that she’s not qualified yet to be calling herself an artist and that she’s probably a mature student. She tells me she has a studio in her house and she’s opening it up to the public as part of the Bear Flat Artists weekend. ‘I make and sell jewellery, but there will be others showing their paintings, or photographs. If you’re interested in coming along then you’re most welcome.’

Now that I’m closer to her I can see she is wearing two different types of coloured earrings in her ears and I wonder if she’s done it on purpose, or if she absent-mindedly put them on this morning without noticing that they don’t match. I admire that about her, Lucy would have too. Lucy was the type of person who didn’t care if her lipstick was a different shade from her top or her bag matched her shoes. If she saw something she liked she wore it regardless.

She notices me assessing her earlobes. ‘I made them myself,’ she says, fingering the left one, the yellow one, delicate and daisy-shaped, self-consciously. ‘I’m Beatrice, by the way.’

‘I’m Abi. Abi Cavendish.’ I wait for a reaction. It’s almost imperceptible but I’m sure I see a flash of recognition in her eyes at the mention of my name, which I know isn’t down to reading my by-line. Then I tell myself I’m being paranoid; it’s still something I’m working on with my psychologist, Janice. Even if Beatrice had read the newspaper reports or watched any of the news coverage about Lucy at the time, she wouldn’t necessarily remember, it was nearly eighteen months ago. Another story, another girl. I should know, I used to write about such things on a daily basis. Now I’m on the other side. I am the news.

Beatrice smiles and I try to push thoughts of my sister from my mind as I turn the leaflet over, pretending to consider such an event while the rain hammers on to Beatrice’s umbrella and on to the back of my coat with a rhythmic thud thud.

‘Sorry it’s so soggy. Not a good idea to be dishing out flyers in the rain, is it?’ She doesn’t wait for me to answer. ‘You don’t have to buy anything, you can come along and browse, bring some friends.’ Her voice is silky, as sunny as her smile. She has a hint of an accent that I can’t quite place. Somewhere up north, maybe Scottish. I’ve never been very good at placing accents.

‘I’m fairly new to Bath so I don’t know many people.’ The words pop out of my mouth before I’ve even considered saying them.

‘Well, now you know me,’ she says kindly. ‘Come along, I can introduce you to some new people. They’re an interesting bunch.’

She leans closer to me in a conspiratorial whisper, ‘And if nothing else it’s a great way to have a nose at other people’s houses.’ She laughs.

Her laugh is high and tinkly. It’s exactly like Lucy’s and I’m sold.

As I meander back through the cobbled side streets I can’t stop my lips curling up at the memory of her smile, her warmth. I already know I’ll be stopping by her house tomorrow.

It doesn’t take me long to reach my one-bedroom flat. It’s in a handsome Georgian building in a cramped side road off the Circus that’s lined with cars parked bumper to bumper. I let myself into the shabby hallway with its grey threadbare carpet and salmon-pink woodchip walls, pausing to peel a brown envelope from the sole of one of my Converse trainers. I look down to see several letters scattered in the hallway and pick them up hopefully when I see they’re addressed to me. They have muddy footprints decorating the front where my neighbours have trodden over them to get to their flat without bothering to pick them up. I flick through them and my heart sinks a little; all bills. Nobody writes letters any more and certainly not to me. Upstairs, in a box on top of my wardrobe I have a stash of letters, notes, museum stubs and other ephemera that was Lucy’s. Rescued from her room after she died. We both kept all our correspondence from over a decade ago when we were at different universities, before we could afford computers and laptops, before we even knew how to email.

I push past the mountain bikes that belong to the sporty couple who live in the basement flat, cursing as my ankle scrapes on one of the pedals, and climb the stairs to the top floor. I’m still clutching the leaflet which has started to disintegrate from the rain.

I unlock my front door and step into the hallway, which is much smarter than the cluttered communal entrance downstairs. I’m only renting it but the landlord decorated the walls a pale French grey and installed an antique oak effect wooden floor before I moved in. Then Mum promptly turned up and swiftly dressed the place with rugs, throws and framed photographs to make the flat look more ‘homely’, to give the only child she has left a reason to live.

As I hang up my wet coat my heart sinks when I notice my mobile phone on the black veneered sideboard. I pick it up with dread, hoping that I don’t have any missed calls, but there are ten. Ten. I scroll through the list. Most are from Mum but a couple are from Nia too, along with messages asking me to give them a call, their voices laced with barely disguised panic. I’ve only been gone two hours but I know they think I’ve tried to do away with myself. It’s been nearly a year since I ended up in that place – I still can’t bear to think of it – but they still believe I’m unstable, psychologically weak, that I shouldn’t be left on my own for too long. I pull the sleeves of my jumper over my wrists, subconsciously hiding the silvery scars that will never fade.

The flat is steeped in dark shadows although it’s only a little after five. Outside it looks as if a giant dirty grey sheet has been thrown over Bath. I switch a lamp on in the living room, instantly warmed by the bright orange glow, and sink on to the sofa, putting off ringing my parents. I’ll have to do it soon otherwise Dad will speed over here in his acid-green Mazda on the pretence that he’s ‘just passing’ when he actually wants to check that I’m not lying unconscious on my bed surrounded by empty bottles of pills.

My mobile punctuates my thoughts with a tinny rendition of ‘Waterloo Sunset’ by The Kinks and I drop it in shock and watch, bewildered, as it body-pops across the floor. Panic rises. I didn’t catch the name flashing up on my phone. I don’t know who’s calling me. My heart starts to race and I feel the familiar clammy palms, the churning in my stomach, my throat constricting. Calm down, remember your breathing exercises. It must be someone you know. That song means something to you. ‘Waterloo Sunset’. London. Nia. Of course.

I almost want to laugh in relief. It’s Nia calling. Only Nia. My heart slows and I bend over to pick up my phone. By now the music has stopped and Nia’s name flashes up under missed calls.

‘For Christ’s sake, Abi, you had me worried. I’ve been trying to get hold of you for hours,’ she snaps when I call her back.

‘I’ve only been gone for two and I forgot my phone.’

‘What have you been doing?’ I detect the thread of doubt in her voice, as though she suspects I’ve been preparing to hang myself in the woods or stick my head in the gas oven. ‘Have you got no work on?’

I suppress a sigh. Work used to be commissioning editor on a glossy magazine. Now it’s the odd bit of freelance when I’m up to it, or usually when I’m running low on cash. I know if I’m not careful I’ll lose all my contacts. I’ve only got a handful of loyal ones left, which isn’t surprising after everything that’s happened over the last year or so.

‘Miranda says there isn’t much work around at the moment,’ I lie. Miranda, my old boss, is one of the loyal ones. I toss the leaflet I’m still holding in the direction of the coffee table; it misses and, weighed down by the rain, sinks to the floor. It’s unreadable now, turned into papier-mâché, but I’ve made a photocopy of it with my retina. I kick off my trainers then put my feet up on to the velvety cushions and stare out of the sash window over the rooftops of Bath, trying to pick out the spire of the Abbey among the mellow brick. The rain abruptly halts and the sun struggles to reveal itself from behind a black cloud.

Her voice softens. ‘Are you okay, Abs? You’re living by yourself now in a place you barely know and …’

‘Mum and Dad live four miles away.’ I force a laugh but the irony isn’t lost on me. I’d been desperate at eighteen to go to university to escape my parents and the small town of Farnham in Surrey where we lived. And now look at me. Nearly thirty years of age and I’ve followed them, like a stalker, to this new city where they’ve come in a bid to try and rebuild their fractured lives. Not much chance of that with me hanging around, reminding them of what they’ve lost.

I can’t bring myself to tell Nia about Beatrice. Not yet. Not after last time. She’ll only worry.

‘I’m honestly fine, Nia. I was walking around Bath and then it began to rain so I went for a coffee. Don’t worry about me. I love it here. Bath’s peaceful.’ Unlike my mind, I add silently.

‘Peaceful?’ she scoffs. ‘I thought it was full of tourists.’

‘Only in the summer. I mean, it’s busy, but not as frenetic as London.’

She falls silent and there it is. All that’s unspoken between us, wrapped up in one word. London. I know she’s thinking about it. How can she not? It’s all I think about when I speak to her. That cramped Victorian terrace that the three of us shared. That last night. Lucy’s final hours.

‘I miss you.’ Her voice sounds small, comfortingly familiar with its soft Welsh lilt. For a second I close my eyes and imagine how my life used to be; the hustle and bustle of London, the job that I had loved, the array of glittering parties and glamorous events thanks to Nia working in fashion PR, Lucy and Luke, Callum …

But looking back before that night is as if I’m looking back at someone else’s life, it’s so different to the one I lead now.

‘I miss you too,’ I squeak, then I force myself to make my voice sound cheerful. ‘How is it, living in Muswell Hill? Anything like Balham?’

‘Different, and yet the same. You know what I mean,’ she sighs. I know exactly what she means. ‘Abs, I’ve got to tell you something. I’ve been worrying about it for ages. I’m still not sure if you should know.’

‘Okay …’ I feel a sense of unease.

‘It’s Callum. He’s been in touch.’

I wait for the panic to descend upon me. But nothing, apart from a slight fluttery sensation behind my belly button. Is that what the antidepressants have done to me? Dulled the sensations, the memory of him? I try to conjure up an image of his six-foot-two-inch frame, his almost-black hair, his heavily lashed blue eyes, those tight jeans and leather jacket. I loved him, I remind myself. But he too is wrapped up in the memories of that night. He’s been sullied for ever, as has everything else.

‘What did he want?’ I’m trying to sound nonchalant but I know Nia won’t be fooled. She’s my best friend and she was there, she knows how much he meant to me.

‘He asked me for your number. He wants to talk.’

‘Shit, Nia,’ I gasp, taking ragged breaths. ‘Did you give it to him? Does he know where I live? If he knows, he’ll tell Luke. You promised me that you wouldn’t tell them where I’ve moved to. You promised.’ My voice is rising as I think of Luke’s face the last time I saw him, frozen in grief as he told me calmly that he would never forgive me for Lucy’s death. His words, along with his detachment, were as painful as the blade I took to my wrists.

‘Abi, calm down,’ she urges. ‘I haven’t told him anything. I don’t even think Callum lives with Luke any more.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I gulp, making an effort to suppress my anxiety, my fear. ‘I can’t speak to him. I can’t. Ever again …’

‘It’s okay, Abi. Don’t worry. I haven’t told him anything about you. I have his number, if you ever decide that you’re ready to speak to him …’ she trails off.

I stay silent, knowing I’ll never be ready. Because to speak to him would mean revisiting the night I killed my sister.

Chapter Two

Beatrice’s house stands on the left-hand side of a tree-lined cul-de-sac. Huge Georgian terraces that reach up to the cloudless sky in all their Bath stone, five-storeyed glory stand proudly on both sides of the road, and where the street widens, there are gated tennis courts, presumably for the private use of the residents.

The sun is at last blazing as if in celebration of the first day of the May bank holiday weekend and I can hear the buzz of a lawnmower in the distance, the yappy bark of a dog. I shrug off my leather jacket, bundling it up and cramming it under my arm as I hover on the pavement outside the address in Pope’s Avenue that I’ve memorized from Beatrice’s leaflet. A white Fiat 500 with two parallel stripes in green and red is parked on the road in front of the wrought-iron gate. Large stone steps lead up to a wide royal-blue door with the number nineteen etched in the glass of the fanlight above. Can this be the right place? It all seems too monied, too posh. It’s certainly not the student digs I’d been expecting.

Before I can talk myself into leaving I’m pushing open the gate and walking up the short black-and-white-tiled pathway, past a fat ginger cat cleaning itself on the manicured lawn. I hesitate, my throat dry, before pulling back the old-fashioned brass doorbell. A wave of nausea washes over me as the ding-dong of the bell reverberates behind that ornate door that any minute will open on to the next stage of my life.

I wait, heart thumping. Then I hear the dull thud of footsteps and the door is thrown back to reveal Beatrice, a huge grin on her face. She’s barefoot with black nail varnish decorating her toes; a wispy charcoal dress falls to her knees in sharp contrast to a pretty silver pendant which hangs between her two small breasts. A delicate tattoo of a flower weaves its way around her ankle like a vine.

‘I’m so glad you’re here.’ She looks genuinely pleased to see me. ‘Come in.’ She guides me into a long wide hallway with creamy flagstones that match the outside of the house and I take in the elaborate coloured chandelier that hangs from the ceiling, the coat stand that looks as if it might buckle under the weight of all the coats hanging off it, the daisy-shaped fairy lights that weave along the balustrade of the stairs leading to a higher floor, the daisy-shaped rugs (she must have a thing about daisies) and the old-fashioned school-type radiator that’s been painted pink. The house smells of Parma violets mixed with a faint whiff of cigarette smoke.

‘Wow,’ I can’t help but say as my eyes sweep the hallway. A vase of fresh daisies sits on an antique console table next to a small glass ashtray which is overflowing with bunches of keys. The leopard-print pumps she wore yesterday sit neatly next to the radiator. ‘This place is amazing. Whose is it?’

She looks at me in astonishment for a second, before emitting her already familiar tinkly laugh. ‘It’s mine, of course. Well, mine and Ben’s. Come on, everyone’s downstairs.’ She leaves the door on the latch, so that she doesn’t have to keep answering it, she explains. Not that she wants to take it for granted that people will come. ‘It’s my first open studio,’ she says. ‘There are quite a lot of us in this street who are opening their houses up this weekend and a few in other streets, so all in all it should generate some interest.’ She seems jittery, excited, pink-cheeked and almost skips down the hallway. I follow, wanting to know who this Ben person is that she mentioned. If she’s married it might change things.

We pass two big reception rooms, one with a paint-splattered canvas propped on to a large easel and the other with a strange smooth white sculpture that resembles Cerberus, the Greek mythical three-headed dog. It gives me the creeps.

The flagstone staircase curves down into a big square basement kitchen with hand-painted chunky units in a dove grey. The worktops are pale marble with a darker vein snaking through it that reminds me of a Stilton. A wooden table dominates the room where two young girls and one man sit drinking and chatting. A broad-shouldered plump woman with nose piercings and frizzy dyed-black hair pulled back so tightly that her eyebrows arch up in surprise, stands at an old Aga nursing a cup of something hot, judging by the steam coming off it. When she notices me hovering behind Beatrice she smiles warmly, flashing a gold tooth. ‘Hi, I’m Pam,’ she says in a thick West Country accent. ‘Are you Beatrice’s sister? You’re like two peas in a pod.’

Beatrice laughs a little too loudly. ‘I haven’t got a sister,’ she says, before turning to me. ‘I’ve always wanted one though,’ and a lump forms in my throat when I think of Lucy, and I know that my instincts are right about Beatrice.

She places an arm over my shoulder protectively. ‘Everyone, this is Abi. She’s our first … what would you call it? Potential client?’ Beatrice raises an eyebrow questioningly. I’m aware of all these pairs of eyes on me and it makes me want to run straight back to the security of my little flat. I’m not used to meeting new people, not any more. I spend my life – my new life – keeping my head down and my emotions in check, and here I am in this massive, funkily decorated house with strangers.

‘You’ve come to see our art?’ says Pam. ‘That’s splendid. It’s probably obvious we haven’t done this before?’ She laughs, it’s loud and booming and I warm to her straight away.

I stand mutely. When did I become inept at making small talk? Although I know the answer. Lucy was always the gregarious one out of the two of us. Beatrice squeezes my shoulder as if she can read my thoughts and I’m grateful to her. I know she understands me already.

‘Pam paints amazing pictures and she lives in one of the attic rooms,’ says Beatrice. Taking her arm away from my shoulder she turns to indicate the pretty girl with a bleached blonde pixie cut perched at the table. ‘And this is Cass, she’s a fantastic photographer. She lives here too and sitting next to her is Jodie. She’s a sculptor.’ I nod at Cass, and then at Jodie, who looks not much older than Cass, with mousy brown hair, striking blue eyes and a sulky mouth. I imagine she’s responsible for the three-headed monstrosity upstairs.

Beatrice leaves my side to skip over to the only man in the kitchen, the man I’ve been trying to avoid looking at even though I’ve sensed his eyes on me since I walked into the room. He stands up as she approaches, lanky but substantially built. ‘And this is my Ben,’ she says, wrapping her arms around his waist. She only comes up to his shoulder. He looks a similar age to Beatrice, with a freckled face, hazel eyes and tousled sandy-coloured hair. With a jolt of realization I note that he’s handsome. Not my usual type but good looking nonetheless. He’s dressed in smart indigo jeans and a white Ralph Lauren polo shirt. I glance at his left hand to see if they’re married and for some inexplicable reason I’m relieved when I see the absence of a ring. I can’t quite fathom why this pleases me so much or if it’s her or him that I want to be single.

To my annoyance I blush. ‘Hi,’ I say shyly, thinking they make an attractive couple. ‘Are you an artist too?’

His eyes scan my face and I get the sense that he’s trying to place me, that I remind him of someone. ‘Definitely not. Some people might say I’m a piss artist, but I don’t think that counts,’ he grins. He has a soft Scottish accent, more pronounced than Beatrice’s. He sounds like David Tennant.

Beatrice prods him in the side. ‘Ben,’ she admonishes, ‘don’t put yourself down. My brother’s the clever one, he’s into computers,’ she explains, glancing at him fondly. Brother. Of course. Now that she’s said it I can see the resemblance: the identical smattering of freckles over a ski-slope nose and full mouth. Only their eyes are different. She disentangles herself from him almost reluctantly and claps her hands. ‘Right, come on, everyone, let’s get to our stations. Abi, why don’t you come with me – I could do with an honest opinion on how I’ve set everything up. Is that okay?’

I nod, flattered to be asked, and we all troop after her as though we are her obsequious maids. As I’m following the others up the stairs, I turn to glance behind me. Ben is still standing in the middle of the kitchen. My eyes meet his and I quickly turn away and run up the remainder of the steps, my cheeks hot.

‘I haven’t got a studio at the moment,’ says Beatrice as she ushers me into her bedroom, propping open the door with a floral cloth door-stop. Pam, Jodie and Cass have disappeared into their own rooms to begin setting up, although I can’t imagine that Jodie will be selling the three-headed sculpture that I saw downstairs any time soon.

Beatrice’s room is huge with its high ceilings and intricate coving. It could belong to a movie star from the 1940s; a velvet buttoned headboard in sable, pale silk sheets and walls the colour of plaster. My feet sink into a champagne-coloured carpet. By the sash windows Beatrice has set up a French-style dressing table with sparkly stud earrings carefully laid out on midnight blue velvet and it has the effect of stars twinkling in the night sky. Behind the earrings is a stand in the shape of a tree. Silver necklaces dangle enticingly from its branches.

‘Wow,’ I say, going over to the jewellery. ‘Did you make all of these? They’re brilliant.’

‘Thank you,’ she says shyly. She’s standing behind me so I can’t see her face, but by the tone of her voice I imagine she’s blushing at my compliment, and I find it endearing that she doesn’t know how talented she is.

And then I see it, hanging from one of the branches. A short silver chain with raised daisies intricately arranged in the shape of a letter A. My heart flutters. That necklace is meant for me, I’m sure of it. It’s as if Beatrice somehow knew a girl would come into her life with this very initial. I reach over and touch it, running my fingers over the daisies.

‘Do you like it?’ Beatrice is so close her breath brushes the back of my neck.

‘I love it. How much is it?’

She steps in front of me and lifts the necklace from the stand, draping it over the palm of her hand. She holds it out towards me. ‘Here, I want you to have it.’

‘I couldn’t …’ I begin, but she hushes me, tells me to turn around so that I can try the necklace on. I lift my hair away from my neck to allow her to place the chain around my throat. Her fingers are cool against my skin.

‘There,’ she says, her hands on my shoulders, gently steering me so that I’m facing her. ‘Perfect.’

‘Please let me pay you for it,’ I say, uncomfortable with her generosity.

She waves her hand dismissively. ‘Call it a thank you for helping me out this afternoon.’ She wrinkles her nose in concern. ‘You will stay and help, won’t you?’

I touch the necklace at my throat. ‘How can I resist now?’ I joke, not wanting her to know that it was always my intention to stay. And that I would have done so for free.

The afternoon flies by as a steady stream of people trickle into Beatrice’s room to view her jewellery. Some are time wasters who have come purely to nose around Beatrice’s lovely home, a few are on the way down from the attic rooms after buying one of Cass’s photographs, or Pam’s paintings. We quickly fall into our roles, Beatrice as the sales person, me as the cashier, and in spite of how busy it gets I find that I’m enjoying myself. Beatrice interacts with everyone with such confidence and aplomb that I can’t help but admire her. I’m disappointed when Pam pops her head around the door at seven to ask if they should call it a day.

‘Definitely, I’m exhausted,’ says Beatrice as she flops on to her bed. Pam rolls her eyes good-naturedly and I can hear her heavy footsteps as she disappears off down the corridor. ‘Well, that was good fun. You will stay for a glass of wine?’ Beatrice asks me. ‘I think we need to celebrate.’

‘I’d love to,’ I say, although I would prefer to stay up here with her. We’ve had such a lovely afternoon, the two of us and I’ve enjoyed her company more than I thought possible. We were a team and I don’t want it to end. If we go downstairs I would have to make small talk with the others. I’d have to share Beatrice. I feel slightly deflated as I help her pack the few items of jewellery she has left into their respective boxes.

‘I wonder what Ben’s been doing all afternoon?’ she muses as she forces the lid shut on a bangle. ‘I think he wanted to steer clear of the whole thing.’ She gives a small sharp laugh but I sense her disappointment that Ben didn’t come up to see how she was getting on.

‘Is he older than you?’ I say as I hand her a pair of earrings.

She takes the earrings from me and shoves them in a drawer. ‘Only by a couple of minutes. We’re twins.’

I’m aware of the blood draining from my face. Twins.

Beatrice pauses. ‘Are you okay, Abi? You’ve gone pale.’

I clear my throat. ‘It’s … well, I’m also a twin. Was a twin. Am a twin.’ I’m rambling because I hate telling people about Lucy. I hate the way they look at me, with a mixture of pity and embarrassment, terrified that I might dissolve into tears. Inevitably there is an awkward silence, then they turn away to glance at their shoes, or at their hands, anywhere but at me, while mumbling how sorry they are before they change the subject, leaving me worrying if I’ve made a massive faux pas by mentioning my dead sister. Some of my old friends have avoided me since Lucy died. Nia assures me it’s because they don’t know what to say to me, but why can’t they understand that saying something, anything, is better than not acknowledging it at all?

I hold my breath, expecting something similar from Beatrice. But she stops what she’s doing and looks me directly in the eye. ‘What happened?’ she asks, and I can tell she genuinely wants to know. She’s not pushing me away, afraid of my grief. She’s not embarrassed by it. She’s facing it head on. I’m so relieved that she’s not like everyone else that I want to hug her.

‘She … she died.’ Tears cloud my vision. And it was my fault, I want to add. But I don’t. If she knew the truth about me it would ruin everything.

‘Abi, I’m so sorry,’ she says and she places a hand on my arm. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

I pause, knowing I can’t talk about Lucy. What is there to say? That she was my identical twin sister, that I loved her more than anyone else in the world, that she was the other part of me, my other half, my better half, and that without her I am lost, in limbo, that it doesn’t seem right being alive without her, that it’s my fault and that I can never forgive myself even if the courts of law did exonerate me. I shake my head.

‘I understand,’ she says, her voice gentle. ‘Our parents died when Ben and I were small but I still find it hard to talk about it, even after all this time. I don’t think you ever get over losing a loved one.’

And in that moment I sense it, the bond between us; formed over a shared grief and the special relationship that can only be understood by twins.

By midnight I’ve lost count of the amount of champagne I’ve consumed to stem my nerves and give me the confidence to talk to all of Beatrice’s friends. I excuse myself from her gathering and lock myself in the downstairs loo, afraid I’m going to be sick. I should have eaten more. I lean over the sink and take deep breaths until the nausea subsides. I need to go home, I think as I splash cold water on my face and assess myself in the glass of the bathroom cabinet. As always, I jolt at my reflection; at the dark circles under my eyes, the blonde hair that has long grown out of its neat bob, the too-big mouth that always gives the impression of jollity even when I’m anything but happy.

I see Lucy everywhere, but never more than when I look in the mirror.

Chapter Three

The front door slams. Beatrice moves to her bedroom window just in time to see two dark figures weaving out of the front gate and towards the bus stop at the end of the road. They’re giggling, stumbling, quite obviously a little drunk. He has his arms about her slim waist as if to keep her from folding in on herself and their pose reminds her of a puppet-master holding up his marionette.

They pass a streetlamp, thrusting them into the spotlight and her stomach falls when she realizes it’s Ben. And Abi.

The number fourteen bus trundles past her window like a lethargic old man, the brakes squeaking against the still-hot tarmac as it halts. Beatrice watches as Abi disappears on to it, watches as Ben continues to wave even after the bus has rounded the corner out of sight. It’s too dark to see the expression on her brother’s face, but she can imagine it. The twinkle in his hazel eyes, the crooked smile on his full lips. It’s the look of a man who’s been stupefied, it’s a look she’s only ever seen on his face once before.

And as he turns slowly, reluctantly back towards the house, she knows – in that special way that only a twin can – that this is the start of something.

Beatrice thrusts the curtains together so vigorously that they continue to swing even when she turns away from them to pace the room. She refrains from switching the light on, preferring to listen out for the telltale sounds of the key in the lock, the clip-clop of Ben’s Chelsea boots on the flagstone hallway, the thud as he climbs the stairs two at a time to her room. Why does the realization that her brother might have found someone he likes make her want to cry?

He flings open the door, flooding the bedroom with light from the landing.

‘Why are you in the dark, you mad cow?’ he laughs, flicking the switch.

She shrugs and perches at her dressing table. Ben sits heavily on her double bed, the mattress sighs under his weight. ‘Cass and Jodie have gone out and Pam has fallen asleep at her easel again. So, how do you think it went?’ He seems genuinely concerned for her, which tugs at her heart.

‘Okay, I guess.’ She pulls the earrings from her ears. ‘I sold some pieces of jewellery. I gave Abi a necklace.’ She watches Ben’s expression carefully in the mirror, looking for signs. She notices the shy smile at the mention of Abi’s name, then his eyes meet hers and the smile snaps off his face.

He frowns. ‘Are you okay, Bea?’

‘I saw you with Abi.’ She knows she shouldn’t but she can’t help it. ‘You fancy her, don’t you? That wasn’t in the plan, Ben.’

‘Plan?’ A pulse throbs in Ben’s jaw and Beatrice knows she’s made him angry. ‘There is no plan. We all spent some time together, got a little drunk, had a laugh, and then I walked her to the bus stop. Not much to tell.’

‘You know what I mean. You have to be careful. You know what she’s been through.’

‘She’s a big girl.’ Ben lays back on the bed with his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. She notices he still has his boots on and this irritates her.

‘I’m supposed to be the one helping her,’ she snaps. ‘And I don’t think getting emotionally involved is good for her at the moment.’

‘Whatever, Bea. You’ve obviously decided she’s another one of your projects.’

‘Projects?’ she says querulously. ‘This is more than a coincidence, Ben … It’s a sign.’

‘I know, you’ve already said.’ Ben sits up again and sighs. ‘Look, I’ve had a lot to drink. I’m going to bed.’ He gets up and leaves the room, letting the door slam behind him.

Beatrice stares at herself in the mirror. She refuses to cry. Instead she swipes at her eyes with a cotton pad doused in oily make-up remover, then cleanses her face and throat in rhythmic strokes.

She’d known as soon as she met Abi who she was. Those big green eyes had tugged at her memory before she even had the chance to reveal her name. But the name had cemented it, of course. Abi Cavendish. The Cavendish twins. Their delicate heart-shaped faces had peered endearingly out of the newspaper reports at the time, unknowing of the future that lay ahead for them. She’d got home yesterday – was it only yesterday? – and retrieved the newspaper cutting hidden between her bras and knickers in her underwear drawer and shown it to Ben, prodding it with an excitable finger, telling him that it must mean something. Didn’t he see, she urged, didn’t he see that this was fate? She’d cut that piece out of the paper over a year ago, and now, nearly a year to the day, she meets the very girl from the story. She told him that if Abi turned up for the open studio then it was a sign that this was the woman that Beatrice was meant to help.

And she did turn up. See, Ben? Fate.

Beatrice swipes angrily at her face with her cotton pad. No, she mustn’t obsess. Today has been a good day, a success. Not only has she taken the first steps to becoming a bona fide artist but she has Abi in her life.

She knows she’s done something terrible, unforgivable. But by helping Abi she can begin to put things right. She can Be A Good Person. Karma.

She has to do whatever she can to ensure that this time Ben doesn’t stand in her way.

Chapter Four

Returning to my cold, empty flat after the warmth, noise and babble of Beatrice’s vibrant house makes me feel like a dog that’s been banished from its family home to a kennel in the garden.

The silence bears down on me oppressively, reminding me that I do live on my own, that there is no Nia clattering around the kitchen making endless cups of tea, or Lucy curled up on the sofa tapping away at her laptop. Even though they’ve never lived with me here, in this flat, I still can’t get used to being without them, still expect to see the ghosts of them around every corner. It’s one of the reasons I left London.

I switch on the lamp and when I cross the living room to close the curtains I catch sight of something, someone, on the street below. My heart quickens. A man is standing by the front gate, I can barely make out his silhouette against the inky night. He has his collar turned up, a cigarette hanging moodily from his lips; the detail of his face is unclear, shadowy, a pencil drawing where his features have been rubbed out, but the shape of his head, the lanky figure, is so familiar I instantly know it’s Luke. It’s Luke and he’s found me. I fumble for my mobile that’s in the pocket of the jacket I’m still wearing, desperately scrolling for my parents’ number with trembling fingers. Then he looks up at my window, his eyes briefly meeting mine and I freeze. I watch, my mobile still in my hand, as he flicks his cigarette to the kerb and saunters down our garden path to ring the bell of the flat below. It’s not Luke, of course it’s not Luke. Nia would never break her promise to me. But it’s an unpleasant reminder that I’m not the only one who can’t forgive myself for what happened that Halloween night over eighteen months ago.

I sprint around the flat in a sudden frenzy of drawing curtains and switching on lights. When my heart finally slows and my breathing returns to normal I settle on the sofa with a cup of coffee and call Mum. I need to hear a comforting voice after the fright I’ve had.

She sounds husky, as if I’ve awoken her from sleep and I realize it is past midnight. ‘Abi? Are you okay?’ I imagine her sitting up in bed in her flannel pyjamas, her heart racing, expecting to hear me in tears, so I quickly explain that nothing is wrong. And then, without thinking, I tell her about Beatrice. I mentally slap myself when I hear the apprehension in her voice as she answers, ‘This isn’t the same as before is it, love?’

‘Of course it’s not,’ I snap, my cheeks burning when I think about Alicia.

She hesitates and I can tell that there is a lot more she wants to say, but my mother has always been a great believer in thinking before speaking. Instead she says how wonderful it is that I’ve found a friend, that I’m beginning to settle in Bath. Then she reminds me, as she always does, that I need to keep seeing Janice, that I mustn’t forget to take my antidepressants, that I have to do all I can to make sure I don’t end up in that place again – she lowers her voice when she says this last bit, in case the neighbours can hear through the walls that her daughter has been in a mental institution.

When she eventually rings off I sit with the phone in my lap. I’m consumed with an urgency I’ve not felt for a long time when I think of tonight, of Beatrice. The dancing in her living room after all her potential ‘clients’ had gone home, her cool, arty friends, the wine we drank so we were floppy and silly and finding everything hilarious, and then afterwards when the lights went down and we all slumped on to Beatrice’s velvet sofa, me squashed in between her and Ben so that each of my thighs touched one of theirs; believing for the first time in ages, that I belonged.

I touch the necklace at my throat, the necklace that Beatrice has made with her own two hands. She’s the one, surely? Even our names merge with each other – Abi and Bea – Abea. Does she sense it too? This connection, this certainty that we are supposed to meet?

Then the darkness washes over me, dousing my joy. I don’t deserve to be happy. Guilt. Such a pointless emotion, Janice constantly tells me that, yet I am consumed by it tonight. You were found not guilty, Abi. I can almost hear Lucy’s soft voice, her breath against my ear, as if she’s curled up on the sofa next to me, and then to my surprise, my own, deeper voice, coming out of nowhere, bounding off the walls of my tiny flat so that it startles me: ‘I’m so sorry, Luce. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.’

Two days pass without a word from her. Two days holed up in my flat with the rain drumming on the skylights in the roof, the fluke hot weather of Saturday a distant dream. Mum rings and invites me over, but I decline, telling her I’ve got some work to catch up on, when in reality the thought of spending the bank holiday with my parents but without Lucy makes the grief bubble back up to a dangerous level. Our family resembles a table with a leg missing; incomplete, forever ruined.

I know it’s not healthy for me to be on my own for too long, it gives me more time to obsess, to think about Lucy, to remember her last night; the panic, the fear. It comes back to me in moments when I least expect it, when I’m lying in bed on the edge of sleep, or when I’m perusing Lucy’s page on Facebook, re-reading the condolences from her three hundred-plus Facebook friends. I can suddenly smell the wet grass mixed with the smoke from the engine, see the blood caked on Lucy’s head, her beautiful but eerily still face as Luke cradles her in his arms, hear Callum shouting desperately into a mobile phone for an ambulance, feel the touch of Nia’s comforting hand on my shoulder as I crouch by the tree, the bark rough against my back, the metallic taste of blood on my lips and bile in the back of my throat as she whispers over and over again that Lucy’s going to be okay, in a futile attempt to reassure me, or herself. And the rain, so much rain, coming down in sheets so that our clothes clung to our bodies; coming down like tears.

To vanquish the relentless, soul-destroying thoughts, I try to remember Beatrice’s soft Scottish accent, the hurried excitable way she talks, her warmth, her humour. I’m still unsure if she knows about what I’ve done – a quick Google search would reveal everything. Is that the reason she hasn’t got in touch? Who wants to be friends with someone who’s killed her own twin sister?

I have a connection with Beatrice, even more than I first thought. Not only is she a twin too, she’s lost someone close to her, she understands me. Now that I’ve found her I know that I can’t let her go.

It’s still raining when I turn up at her door clutching an umbrella and cradling a bunch of large white daisies. I pull the bell and wait, jumping back off the stone step in alarm when a brown spider with yellow flecks drops in front of my face then desperately clambers its way back up its own silvery thread to the fanlight above.

There’s no answer so I wait a few more seconds before stepping forward to pull the bell again. When nobody comes to the door, I lean over the iron railings and peer into the ground-floor window where, apart from an easel and a couple of bookshelves crammed with irregular-sized, glossy hardbacks, it’s empty. I’m about to reluctantly leave when my eye catches a flash of something at the window of the basement, what I remember as being the kitchen. It’s fleeting, a blur of hair and clothes, but it makes me uneasy and the familiar paranoia creeps over me, causing sweat to pool in my armpits. I know with a certainty that I didn’t feel this morning that I’m not wanted. Am I making a nuisance of myself, as I did once before with Alicia? The feelings I’d thought I’d long since buried of that time – before I was sectioned, when I thought in my grief-addled mind that Alicia was some kind of soul mate – resurface, making me nauseous. Could I have got Beatrice so very wrong like I did with her?

Before Lucy died, I was fun, hard-working, popular within my group of friends. Now look at me. I’ve become the sort of person that others try to avoid, to hide from. My eyes sting with humiliated tears, blurring my vision as I stumble back down the tiled pathway towards the bus stop, the daisies wilting in my arms.

The voice is almost lost in the wind but I can just make out someone calling my name. I turn and there she is, standing in her doorway in her bare feet, toenails bruised with black nail varnish, wearing a blue spotty vintage tea-dress underneath a chunky cardigan, waving frantically at me and smiling. Relief surges through me and all the old doubts crawl back into the recesses of my mind where they belong as I trot towards her.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says as I get nearer. ‘I was on the phone, talking to a client, oh I’m so thrilled to be saying that. I’ve actually got a client. I wasn’t going to answer the door until I saw it was you. Come in, come in.’ She’s talking in her usual fast, excited manner and I can’t stop grinning.

I cross the threshold into the hallway, breathing in the familiar Parma violet smell I already love so much and handing her the now crumpled-looking daisies. Confusion alters her features for a moment so she appears older, sharper. ‘Are they for me?’ she frowns. When I nod self-consciously, explaining that they’re a thank you for the necklace, she takes them from me and smiles shyly, her face softening again. ‘Thanks, Abi. But you didn’t have to. I wanted to give you the necklace. You did me a huge favour on Saturday. Do you want a cup of tea?’

I tell her that I’d love one. Dumping my wet umbrella on the doormat, I nudge off my trainers, relieved that I remembered to put matching socks on this morning, and follow Beatrice through the hallway, the flagstones warm under my feet – of course, she would have underfloor heating – and down the stairs to the basement kitchen. ‘I love your house,’ I say as I admire, yet again, the high ceilings and intricate coving, the Bath stone floors and Farrow and Ball painted walls. Considering it’s full of young people, the house is surprisingly tidy.

By now we’ve reached the kitchen and I shrug off my wet coat and hang it on the back of the chair to dry before taking a seat at the wooden table and it’s as though I’ve come home. A fluffy ginger cat with a squashed face is curled up asleep on the antique-looking armchair in the corner. Beatrice follows my gaze and informs me the cat, a Persian called Sebby, is hers. Lucy loved cats too.

‘He’s getting old now,’ she says fondly. ‘He mainly likes to snooze.’

The house is quieter than it was on Saturday, with the dripping of rain on an outside drain the only sound to be heard, and I hope that it’s only the two of us here. I didn’t notice the little white Fiat with its red-and-green stripe parked outside. Ben told me the other night that the car was his and I recall making a joke about why a tall man would want to drive such a small car.

I watch as Beatrice busily runs the taps of her deep Belfast sink to fill a vase and then plunges the flowers into it. ‘These are lovely, thanks, Abi,’ she says as she arranges the flowers. I notice some of the daisies have drooped over the side of the vase. ‘That’s kind of you to say you love this house. I think it’s quite special, but maybe that’s because of the people who live in it with me.’ She turns to me and flashes one of her amazing smiles and a lump forms in my throat when I think of my empty flat.

‘It’s a huge house,’ I say. How can an artist and someone who works in IT afford a pad as luxurious as this?

‘It is. Too big for me and Ben. So it’s nice that we’ve got the others living here too, although Jodie is moving on.’ An emotion I can’t quite read passes fleetingly over her face like a searchlight. I play with the necklace at my throat, waiting for her to elaborate. She looks as if she’s about to say something further then appears to change her mind. ‘Let me put the kettle on,’ she says instead. ‘It’s a pitiful day and it was so sunny at the weekend. Honestly, this weather.’

‘Is Ben at work?’ I ask. Her narrow back stiffens slightly at the mention of his name. I watch as she pours boiling water into two cups, pressing the teabags against the side with her spoon, her fair hair falling in her face, and I find myself longing to go over to her, to push her silky hair back behind her ear so that it’s no longer in her eyes.

‘Yes. He only works contract.’ Her voice sounds falsely jovial and it occurs to me that perhaps they’ve had a row. ‘I don’t completely understand what he does, but I do know it involves computers.’ She laughs as she hands me the mug of tea and pulls out a chair opposite me and sits down. ‘What about you, Abi? You said on Saturday you were a journalist?’ Even when sitting, Beatrice seems to ooze energy; her legs jiggle under the table, her elegant fingers tap the side of her white bone china mug. She takes an apple from the bowl of fruit in the middle of the table and indicates I do the same. I murmur my thanks and choose a dark-red juicy plum, but when I take a bite it is hard and sour.

‘I used to work for the features pages for one of the nationals, in London,’ I say through a mouthful of plum which I manage to swallow with difficulty. ‘That was before I got my dream job on a glossy magazine. But I’ve done my fair share of news too. I used to work at a press agency and spent a lot of time hanging around the houses of famous people or public figures. We call it door-stepping, although some might call it stalking.’ I laugh to show I’m joking but Beatrice smiles seraphically and I wonder what she’s thinking. She takes a bite of her apple and chews it slowly, thoughtfully. ‘But now I freelance and things are a bit slow,’ I add hurriedly, wanting her to forget the stalker comment.

‘Is money a problem?’ She looks at me with concern and my cheeks burn. Judging by her lovely expensive-looking clothes and this beautiful house, money isn’t a problem for Beatrice. I don’t want her to think that’s the reason I want to be her friend.

‘No,’ I lie. ‘My parents have said they will help out if I need it. And I can always go and live with them if I can’t afford to pay rent any more.’

‘I’ve had an excellent idea,’ she almost shouts, her eyes bright and her cheeks pink. ‘Why don’t you move in here?’

‘Here?’ I’m so shocked that I can barely form the words and almost choke on a piece of hard plum. Of course, there is nothing I’d want more than to move in with her, to be with her all the time.

‘Oh, it’s perfect,’ she says, jumping up and dropping her apple in her exhilaration. I watch as it rolls across the table, falling off the end on to the tiled floor. Beatrice ignores it and stares at me, an intensity that I haven’t seen before in her eyes. ‘I was so upset when Jodie said she wanted to move out. But it’s fate, it’s so you can move in here with us. I should have thought of it before. Durrr!’ She actually slaps her own forehead with her hand and pulls a silly face, making me giggle. Her enthusiasm is infectious and the thought of moving into this stunning house, living with people again rather than rattling around my empty flat makes me want to bounce happily around the kitchen. ‘Why don’t you come and view the room now? I think Jodie’s gone out. Oh, it will be such fun if you move in.’

‘But …’ This is all going too fast and my heart begins to race. I’m not sure if I can do this, if I can start living a normal life again rather than my current hermit existence.

‘There are no buts, Abi. We got on so well on Saturday. I was so nervous about the showing, but you made it such fun. You’ll come to love the other girls. Pam is larger than life and such a laugh, and Cass is a sweetheart …’ She holds out her hand. ‘Come on.’ She smiles. Her eyes are wide with excitement, making her look even more beautiful. I think of how great it would be, living with Beatrice and not being alone any more; it would be like having a sister again, and I can’t stop the smile spreading across my face.

‘You’re right,’ I say as I take her outstretched hand, allowing her to pull me gently to my feet. ‘It will be perfect.’ And I follow her out of the kitchen, leaving the sour plum on the table behind me.

Beatrice’s bare feet make a slapping sound on the stone steps as we climb the winding staircase and I touch one of the daisy-shaped coloured lights that have been wound around the banister, excitement building at the thought that soon this beautiful house could be my home. The heady scent of Parma violets hits me again and I’m aware it’s coming from Beatrice. It must be her perfume or the washing powder she uses for her laundry. Either way, it’s intoxicating.

When we reach the first floor I can’t resist poking my head around the door of the huge sitting room that runs the length of the house, remembering from Saturday the velvet squashy sofas, the artefacts that Beatrice has collected from her travels to places such as India, Burma and Vietnam, the French doors leading out to a large terrace overlooking the garden. I remember the frisson of exhilaration I felt, wedged between Ben and Beatrice on one of those sofas, wine glasses in hand, chatting away as though the three of us had known each other for years.

Beatrice stops halfway up the next flight of stairs and turns in my direction with a questioning rise of her finely arched eyebrow.

‘I’m only being nosey,’ I admit as she continues up the stairs. I fall in behind her. ‘And remembering Saturday night.’

She laughs her endearing tinkly laugh. ‘It was a great night – and there will be many more like it if you move in. Jodie’s room is up here, next to mine. And Ben’s room is opposite, next door to the bathroom. Then, upstairs we have two more bedrooms, the attic rooms, which Cass and Pam use. They have their own bathroom, thankfully, as usually one of them is ensconced in there, dyeing their hair. I expect you remember all this anyway, at the open studio event the other day.’

I nod, not wanting her to know how accurately I’ve memorized the layout of her house; then she really would think I was a stalker. We reach the landing, pausing outside one of the first doors we come to. It’s painted in a creamy white with a solid brass knob for a door handle. There’s no lock. Beatrice raps her knuckles gently against it. When there is no answer, she pushes the door. It opens with a lingering creak.

The room is so at odds with the rest of the house that it’s as if I’ve been teleported into a student bedsit. It smells of unwashed bedding and dirty clothes mixed with something acrid, chemical. I give a little start. Jodie is lying on the single bed that’s been pushed up against the wall to make way for two more ugly sculptures. She has huge earphones clamped on either side of her head, her eyes are closed and she’s quietly mouthing the lyrics of the song that she’s listening to. I can’t quite make it out, but it sounds slow and angsty. I survey the large room with its indigo walls blu-tacked with many posters of gothic bands from the early 1980s, the high ceilings and marble fireplace, and try to imagine it as my bedroom. Two sash windows that are nearly the height of the wall face on to the street below and the identical five-storeyed houses opposite. A silver birch in the front garden bends and stretches in the wind, its leaves casting dappled shadows on the grubby-looking carpet.

Jodie’s eyes snap open and she pulls the headphones from her ears.

‘Sorry, Jodie, I did knock,’ says Beatrice, not looking particularly contrite.

Jodie sits up and swings her legs over the side of the bed, glaring at us sullenly. She’s wearing a huge black T-shirt with a silhouette of Robert Smith on the front which makes her look about twelve. Her legs are pale, her calves adorned with so many moles they remind me of a child’s dot-to-dot drawing.

‘Do you remember Abi?’ says Beatrice. Jodie nods gruffly as I say hello, her bright blue eyes surveying me so intently it’s as though she can read my thoughts, that she knows all about me. My heart skitters and I mentally recall Janice’s words, the mantra she taught me to calm myself when I sense a panic attack coming on.

Jodie turns to Beatrice, her little face pinched into a frown. ‘I only told you I was moving out yesterday and already you’ve found a taker for my room.’ She gets up and steps into a pair of grey skinny jeans that are in a coil by her bed.

‘It wasn’t planned, Jodie. It only occurred to me a few minutes ago when I was chatting with Abi downstairs,’ says Beatrice casually, as she walks over to one of the gargoyle-esque sculptures. I might not know much about art but surely anyone can see her sculptures are hideous.

‘Is she an artist?’ she says, as if I’m not even in the room. When Beatrice shakes her head, Jodie’s frown deepens. ‘I thought you only let artists live here?’ I can sense the animosity emanating out of every pore in Jodie’s body. I stand awkwardly by the door, feeling like an intruder. Beatrice opens her mouth to reply but Jodie cuts her off with a shrug. ‘Whatever. It’s none of my business any more. I’ll leave you to it.’

As she stalks towards me I instinctively breathe in, but instead of walking past me to go out the door, she stops so that her face is inches from mine. ‘For some reason, she desperately wants you here,’ she says in a low voice. I glance to where Beatrice is standing on the other side of the room, examining the sculpture, running her hands over its beaky nose and making appreciative noises, much to my surprise. My eyes flick back to Jodie as she continues, coldly: ‘I’d watch my back if I were you.’ And then she storms off, leaving me staring after her in bewilderment.

Chapter Five

Beatrice perches on her new antique leather sofa, watching as the hands of the reproduction 1950s clock on the mantelpiece move around to five thirty, its every tick pulsating through her fraught body. Any minute now, she thinks, he will be home. Her heart gives a flutter of anticipation when she hears the key in the lock, the slam of the front door, his boots on the stone tiles, his soft Scottish burr calling her name, and she tries to second-guess how angry he will be when he finds out what she’s done.

‘I’m in here,’ she calls back.

He pokes his head around the door and frowns when he notices that Jodie’s three-headed sculpture has been replaced by an unfamiliar leather sofa and a large mahogany desk.

‘Where’s Jodie?’ He comes into the room, dumping his laptop bag by the wall. Beatrice glares at it pointedly, concerned that the ugly black bag will mark her freshly painted lime-green walls. ‘And what have you done to this room?’

Beatrice swallows. ‘I’ve repainted it.’

‘In a day?’

She shrugs. ‘It didn’t take long.’ She decides he doesn’t need to know about the decorator she paid to help her out. Her knees jiggle and she pulls the skirt of her cotton dress over them in a bid to still them. ‘And Jodie’s gone.’

Ben shakes his head as if struggling to process what his sister is telling him. He ignores his bag and Beatrice bites back the stirrings of irritation. ‘Jodie’s gone? Gone where?’

‘Back to her parents’ house.’ Beatrice makes an effort to keep her voice even; she knows it unnerves Ben when she becomes too animated, and she can’t reveal to him how excited she is. ‘Her dad came to pick her up this morning. Thankfully, she’s taken those sculptures with her. They took up too much room. And now I can have this as my studio instead of using my bedroom.’

Ben glances around the room as if he is expecting Jodie to be hiding behind the long drapes that frame the French windows. He runs a hand over the prickly stubble that’s beginning to show on his chin. ‘I don’t understand. Why has she left so suddenly? She’s said nothing to me.’

Beatrice gives him a long, scrutinizing gaze, then says cuttingly, ‘You know why she left.’ It gives her pleasure to note the way his hand moves to loosen his striped tie, as if it’s choking him, the beads of sweat that bubble around his hairline. He pales, causing his freckles to look more prominent.

‘Because of what she overheard?’

She nods. ‘It was careless of you, Ben. And you’re never normally so careless.’

He paces the room and groans. ‘I know. I’m so fucking angry with myself.’

She winces at his display of frustration. ‘Anyway,’ she says, in an effort to placate him. ‘Luckily, no harm done. Although she says you told her to leave.’

He stops pacing and stares at her, his hazel eyes wide. ‘Of course I didn’t,’ he bursts out. ‘Why would she say that? And why hasn’t she spoken to me about it?’

Beatrice shrugs. She’s enervated by the whole experience. She’s past caring about Jodie.

‘And where has this come from?’ he says, walking across the oiled wooden floorboards to stand next to the sofa. He runs his hand along its curved back. ‘This must have cost a bomb.’

‘That’s what the Trust is for,’ she says. ‘I ordered it last week. I was always going to ask Jodie to move out of this room anyway. It wasn’t fair that she’d taken this over as well as the bedroom upstairs. She wasn’t paying any rent.’

‘You never asked her for any rent,’ he says.

‘It’s not about that,’ she snaps. ‘We don’t need the money.’

Ben takes a seat next to her on the sofa and places a soothing hand on her bare arm. Even though his fingers are warm, the gesture makes her come out in goosebumps. ‘Bea, what you’re doing is great.’

She turns to him, suspecting sarcasm but his hazel eyes are full of admiration and she’s overcome with love for him. Oh, Ben, I’m doing all this for you, she wants to tell him, but knows she can’t. He won’t understand, not yet.

She takes his hand. ‘What we’re doing, Ben. We’re in this together, remember?’

They sit in companionable silence and Beatrice thinks that maybe she won’t tell him about Abi yet, that it will only spoil this precious, rare moment when it’s the two of them, alone. He moves his hand from her arm and snakes it around her shoulder, pulling her to him, and she sighs contentedly as she leans against him. He’s still my Ben, she thinks. My twin.

And then he has to go and ruin it all by asking the inevitable question.

‘What are you going to do with Jodie’s room?’

Beatrice detaches herself from his embrace and moves over to the fireplace. She kneels down in front of it, the draught from the chimney blowing against her bare legs and methodically, and for no reason other than to stall Ben, she places a log from the nearby bucket on to the cold grate, trying to remember the last time they lit a fire in this room.

She hasn’t mentioned to Ben about Abi turning up unannounced two days ago, clutching those pathetic daisies, a sad, haunted expression in her big green eyes. She had stood by the gate, soaking wet and tiny in her oversized parka, looking so frangible that Beatrice’s heart had gone out to her. What she felt for Abi, in that moment, was almost maternal. She wanted to fold her in her arms and tell her that everything was going to be okay, that she, Beatrice, was here to help her.

Ben won’t understand, she thinks as she carefully lays another log in the grate, playing for time before answering her brother’s question. Because she knows that any burgeoning feelings Ben might have for Abi will have to be quashed and she’s not sure how he will react. They have an unwritten rule, no romances between housemates. He plays it down, of course, but she saw the look he gave Abi at the open studio, the way he made a beeline for her at the party afterwards. She understands exactly why he’s attracted to her. Vulnerable, a little shy, slim and fair-haired. Abi’s completely his type.

‘Shall we get someone else to move in?’ he says, cutting into the silence impatiently.

She stands up, rubbing her knees, and faces Ben, wanting, needing, to see his expression, but before she even opens her mouth his face falls as what she’s planned finally dawns on him. Oh, Ben, you know me so well, she thinks.

‘You’ve already asked Abi to move in, haven’t you?’ His eyes are hard, sharp. A hunted animal.

I’m sorry, Ben.

‘You didn’t even bother to ask me. It’s my house too.’

She can’t help but feel a flicker of remorse as he gets up wordlessly from the sofa and leaves the room, the door banging closed behind him.

Chapter Six

Monty’s house, or rather, his mansion with its gabled roof and turrets, sits grandly at the top of a steep hill overlooking Bath. A crescent moon floats above the chimney and I think how eerie the house looks in the fading light, how gothic. I’m almost expecting to see bats swarming around one of the towers. It gives me an unwelcome flashback to Halloween, to that night over eighteen months ago, to that fateful party we attended, the argument that resulted in us all leaving earlier than planned.

Beatrice sidles out of the taxi, elegant in her black shorts and opaque tights that show off her long, shapely legs. I follow her as we pick our way over the gravelled driveway. The cacophony of voices, clinking of glasses and the beat of some dance tune floats through the open windows, alerting us that the party is already in full swing.

‘Are you okay, Abi?’ asks Beatrice as she stops to extricate her stiletto heel from the gravel, leaning on me for support. ‘I imagine these things are hard for you.’

Beatrice hasn’t asked me any more about Lucy, which I’m relieved about. That way I don’t have to lie to her. Would she still want to hang around with me if she knew about Alicia and how I ended up in a psychiatric hospital after Lucy’s death? I pull the sleeves of my blouse further over my wrists to hide the evidence of my downward spiral.

‘I’m fine,’ I lie. I’d been so flattered when Beatrice rang me up and asked me to Monty’s party. Not only does she want me to be a housemate, but she’s invited me to be part of her group of friends too, to be part of her life. All the same, my anxiety levels are high this evening, despite the antidepressants.

‘Isn’t this place amazing?’ she says, in an effort to lighten the mood, linking her arm through mine. ‘Monty is minted. Ha, Minted Monty, that’s what we should call him.’ She laughs at her own, rather feeble joke while my heart pounds uncomfortably in my chest.

Beatrice told me she’d met Paul Montgomery, or Monty for short, after he’d given a talk while she was studying for her MA at the university, and they had become ‘great friends’ apparently. ‘He’s gay and very flamboyant,’ she says. ‘And quite a successful artist. His parties are legendary.’

I take a deep breath before we push our way through the heavy front door and the heat hits me like an invisible wall. I find it hard to swallow, my tongue sticking to the dry roof of my mouth. There are people everywhere, clusters of them on the landing, milling about the hallway, languishing against door frames with easy smiles, glasses of bubbly in their hands. Waiters dressed in black and white manoeuvre expertly through the crowds, refilling glasses surreptitiously and handing out hors d’oeuvres from silver trays. The music pulsates in my ears, making my heart beat even faster, my pulse pounding painfully in my throat. I always knew this was going to be difficult, the first party without Lucy.

I suddenly glimpse her amongst the knots of people gathered on the sweeping staircase, a floaty scarf around her long neck, her familiar encouraging smile playing on her too-large mouth, but when I blink again she’s gone. Beatrice glances at me, mouthing if I’m okay and when I nod she squeezes my hand reassuringly, telling me I’m doing fine and to stay close to her. I follow her swishy bob, my hand gripping hers as we snake our way through the hordes of jostling bodies, in the same way I used to follow my sister whenever we went to parties or clubs.

It was always Lucy and Abi Cavendish and never the other way around. She was two minutes older than me, my better half, the brighter, shinier, more intelligent twin. I was the runt of the litter. As my mum was always so fond of telling us, as a baby I was the sickly one who suffered from acid reflux, whereas Lucy thrived, consuming all the milk and solids that she could get her chubby little mitts on. In the faded photographs taken with Dad’s instant Polaroid camera from the mid-1980s, square-shaped and yellowing, the corners curled with age, Lucy and I sit together on a sheepskin rug in front of a stone fireplace or on a picnic blanket on the lawn of our garden, two almost identical toddlers dressed in matching clothes, her pudgy-thighed and cute and me, her stunted skinny twin, Lucy’s distorted mirror image.

Even at school she made friends easier than I did; she had a natural, breezy way about her, whereas I was too intense. When she suggested we join in with the other girls in the playground I would stick out my lower lip and shake my head, which infuriated her. She was a social butterfly and I was clipping her wings. I wanted her all to myself, as if I somehow knew, even then, that the time we had together would be short, finite. When Lucy did play Hide and Seek or Tag with the other kids, I would drift around the playground by myself, inventing stories in my head of the great adventures we would have, just the two of us.

It was only at university that I stepped out of Lucy’s shadow. I had no choice. With her brains she was always going to be accepted at a red-brick, Russell Group university; my parents wanted her to be a doctor, and she didn’t disappoint them. I, on the other hand, only ever aspired to the local poly, although I think I surprised everyone, myself included, when I got into Cardiff to study journalism.

Lucy would have walked into this party with her head held high, as if she belonged in this world of wealth and art and I would have followed, her confidence rubbing off on me like body glitter.

‘Beatrice, my pretty darling,’ booms a loud voice and a big bear of a man with a frizzy beard, who looks to be at least fifty years old, parts the crowd. ‘I’m so glad you could make it.’ He’s wearing a dazzling print shirt that’s open at the neck and strains over his ample stomach. They busily air-kiss each other and then turn to me. ‘So, this is Abi,’ he says, his chocolate brown eyes meeting mine. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you. I’m Monty.’ He gives my hand a hearty shake. ‘Come and get a drink.’

They walk off together, leaving me trailing behind them. I can see the strap of a blood-red bra poking out of Beatrice’s black vest top and cutting into the flesh of her shoulder. I can’t quite catch what they are saying above the boom of the music.

We reach a huge, high-ceilinged drawing room with white walls, the coving and Georgian shutters painted a lead grey. Monty thrusts a glass of something orange into my hand and then resumes his conversation with Beatrice and I’m hit with a twinge of jealousy that he’s taking up so much of her time. I take a gulp of my cocktail; it’s so strong the alcohol burns the back of my throat, coating my anxiety, and before I know it I’ve finished the glass and taken another one from the tray of a passing waiter. I feel light-headed as my eyes sweep the room, noticing the many gilt-framed oil paintings of scantily clad, angelic-faced men and women, almost like modern versions of Botticelli, that adorn the walls. I recognize the paintings as being Monty’s own work. Beatrice had shoved a leaflet from his most recent exhibition under my nose while we were in the taxi on the way here. His paintings aren’t to my taste.

I catch snippets of conversations about artists I’ve never heard of or books I’ve never read, and I’m reminded of the parties in London that I attended with Nia and Lucy. They were similar to this; glossy, monied people, effortlessly cool and confident. But I didn’t mind that I never quite fitted in, because I had Nia and Lucy, and we usually only went along for a laugh and a free goody bag.

A cluster of thirty-somethings are dancing rather self-consciously in the corner to Happy Mondays. I turn my attention back to Beatrice, relieved when I see Monty drifting away from her to talk to an elegant woman in her mid-sixties. Beatrice raises her eyebrows at me and wrinkles her nose. ‘Is that woman wearing a real fur stole?’ she giggles. ‘Look, it’s even got a head.’ She seems to find this hilarious and I stare at her, perplexed; how many cocktails has she been plied with? ‘Come on, let’s go and explore,’ she says. ‘I’ve always wanted to have a nose around Monty’s place.’ She takes my hand and we make our way through the different rooms, all as huge and elaborate as the drawing room and filled with people drinking cocktails or champagne. It’s like being in a Stephen Poliakoff film. My heart pounds in my chest. Not with the usual anxiety but with a growing sense of exhilaration at being so near to Beatrice. Her confidence, her joy, is infectious. When I’m with her I experience that heady rush of adrenalin at being around someone who I admire so much. She makes me believe that I can do anything, be anyone.

Giggling and clutching each other, we stumble across a small music room and dump our now-empty cocktail glasses on top of a glossy cream piano. ‘At last,’ sighs Beatrice as she leaps on to a Chesterfield leather sofa, dangling her long legs over the arm. ‘A room with nobody in it. There’s too many people at this party. And my feet are killing me.’

To emphasize this point she kicks off her high heels and stretches her toes, webbed like a duck’s in her opaque tights. I plonk myself next to her, grateful for a break from the relentless music and chatter and noise that accompanied us around every room as if we were being chased by a swarm of bees. The lighting is dim and I’m flattered that Beatrice is comfortable enough with me to lean back against me. I breathe in her smell; her perfume, the apple shampoo from her hair. We sit this way for a while in companionable silence. Me, upright against the stiff back of the Chesterfield, with Beatrice using my lap for a pillow, her legs stretched out so that she takes up most of the sofa.

Without consciously thinking about it, I reach out and gingerly brush her fair hair back from her face. It’s so fine, the skin of her forehead as soft as velvet. Her eyes are closed and at my touch she exhales contentedly. And as I stare down at her beautiful face, so similar to Lucy’s yet so different, my feelings for her merge like the paints on a palette until they become murky, unclear. On one hand she’s becoming a friend, a sister … and yet, just out of reach, a shadow in my peripheral vision, I’m experiencing another, unfamiliar feeling. I lean over her, studying her delicate features. Her eyes are still closed, her long lashes casting shadows on her smooth cheeks and I suddenly long to kiss the freckles that fan across her nose, to touch the clavicle in her throat. I imagine kissing a girl would be softer, sweeter somehow. I lean over her, my mouth hovering above hers and time seems to slow down.

As if reading my thoughts, Beatrice opens her eyes and lifts her head from my lap in one swift movement and I shrink back against the sofa, my face burning at what I was almost compelled to do. What was I thinking? Those two cocktails have obviously gone to my head. I don’t fancy Beatrice. The feelings I have for her are confused in my mind, that’s all. I admire you, Beatrice, I want to yell. You remind me of Lucy. You’re the sort of person I wish I could be and you’re so beautiful. Reminiscent of a sculpture, a piece of art. But the words won’t come, it’s as if my brain has been stuffed with cotton wool, and I can only stare at her as she swings her legs from the arm of the sofa, bending forward to pull on her heels.

If Beatrice suspects the internal struggle I’m having with my emotions, if she knows I was moments away from kissing her, from making the biggest fool of myself, she doesn’t let on. Instead she jumps up and offers her hand to me. ‘Come on,’ she says, her usual bright bubbly self. ‘Let’s go and dance.’

I take her hand and follow her humbly from the room.

The mood has changed when we re-enter the drawing room. Someone has dimmed the lighting and a monotonous house tune that is devoid of a chorus or verse is thumping away. Monty is swaying in the middle of the floor with a drink in his hand and his eyes closed.

I open my mouth to comment when I see a girl I recognize weaving her way through the sweating, heaving crowd towards us. She’s wearing a cute babydoll dress that suits her petite figure and her bleach-blonde pixie crop has been gelled off her face. Her large dark eyes are entirely focused on Beatrice. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere,’ she says querulously when she reaches us. Her voice is thin and reedy. And then it hits me who she is: Cass, the photographer who lives with Beatrice.

‘Cass, you remember Abi?’ Beatrice says. ‘She’s going to be our new housemate.’

Cass drags her eyes reluctantly from Beatrice to murmur a hello before turning her gaze back to her. ‘I need to talk to you,’ she says.

‘Okay,’ says Beatrice, taking her hand, as she did with me half an hour earlier. ‘I’ll be back soon,’ she says, flashing me an apologetic smile and I have no choice but to watch as they walk hand in hand further into the room and I can’t help the white-hot flame of hurt that flickers in the pit of my stomach.

I consider calling a taxi and leaving. I’m humiliated by what happened with Beatrice in the music room, and now I’ve been jettisoned for Cass. There is no reason for me to stay. I hover in the doorway self-consciously and I’m about to make a run for it when I spot a familiar face in the crowd by the large bay window. He’s dancing with two guys and a girl I’ve never met and he doesn’t notice me at first. I watch as he moves his body with the confidence of someone who knows they can dance. A waiter breezes past and I take another cocktail from his silver tray and sip it while staring at Ben; at his long legs encased in dark indigo jeans, at the crisp white shirt that’s open exactly the right amount to show off his tanned neck and contrasts with his expensive fitted charcoal blazer. I’d forgotten how attractive, how sexy, Beatrice’s twin brother is.

Then, as if he’s sensed me assessing him, he lifts his hazel eyes in my direction and he grins at me and I draw breath. He is extremely good looking. He stops dancing and we drift towards each other like two magnets and I’m unable to stop the smile spreading across my face. He’s so tall, taller than I remember, his sandy hair longer and more tousled, and before I know it we’re face to face. I suddenly have the urge to throw myself into his arms, to nuzzle against his chest, inhaling his lemony scent. He’s so different to Callum, the eternal student with his scruffy trainers and mussed-up hair. Ben seems more sophisticated, more grown-up somehow, even though at thirty-two they are the same age.

I process Ben’s full sensual mouth, his freckles scattered across the bridge of his straight nose. They belong to him but they are part of Beatrice’s beautiful face too and it suddenly occurs to me, in that moment, that some of Ben’s attraction is that he’s her brother, her twin. He’s the male version of her.

‘Abi,’ he says, his lips twisted in a smirk. ‘Fancy seeing you here.’

‘Hi, Ben,’ I say shyly. ‘I came with Beatrice.’

‘Of course you did.’ He’s smiling but I notice a coldness to his tone and his eyes flicker to where Beatrice is standing with Cass. She turns in our direction, a scowl decorating her pretty face and it has the same effect on me as a child’s scribble would have on a famous painting.

‘Have you two had a row?’ I ask, shocked at the animosity I detect in Beatrice’s eyes. Or was that aimed at me?

‘You could say that,’ murmurs Ben, much to my relief. Ben doesn’t take his eyes off Beatrice. It’s almost as if they’re having a staring-out contest, maybe a game from their childhood and I’m frozen out, invisible, it’s the two of them, always the two of them. How can there be room for a third? I realize I’m holding my breath, waiting.

Then his gaze snaps back to meet mine and I exhale, grateful that I’ve got his attention again. ‘I’m desperate for a cigarette,’ he says. ‘Do you want to join me in the garden?’

I follow him back through the chequered-tiled hallway, edging past a group of lads hanging out in the kitchen and dump my half-empty glass on the worktop before stepping into a large garden. It’s a fresh spring night and I wrap my arms around my thin blouse, wishing I had brought a coat but relieved that at least I’m wearing jeans and not the one skirt that I possess.

‘Here, have this, you look freezing,’ he says, inching off his blazer and placing it over my shoulders. The light from the kitchen casts a glow over us and I can see the outline of his slim body through the cotton fabric of his shirt. He huddles nearer to me, cupping his hands around his lighter as he sparks up his cigarette, the tip crackling and glowing as he takes a puff and then offers the packet to me. I haven’t smoked in a long time, but I take one gratefully, thankful that I have a use for my hands. He lights it for me and I inhale deeply, instantly calmer as the nicotine travels to my lungs. Oh, I’ve missed this.

‘So,’ he says, exhaling puffs of smoke that disappear into the dark night. ‘I hear we’re going to be housemates.’

I stamp my feet against the cold and nod. ‘Not until mid-June. I’ve got to give my landlord a month’s notice on my flat.’ I take another drag on my cigarette.

‘It’s a shame you’re moving in,’ he says, a shy smile on his lips. I stare at him mutely, disappointment coursing through me that Ben doesn’t want me to move in. Have I offended him in some way? We seemed to get on well at the party on the night of the open studio.

‘We have a house rule, you see,’ he says gravely. ‘No romances between housemates. Beatrice is very particular about it.’

My face flames and I try and hide it by blowing on my hands theatrically even though it’s not that cold.

‘And I was hoping that maybe you would come out for a drink with me sometime? But I’m not sure that would go down too well, now that you’re going to be moving in.’ He regards me intently over the tip of his cigarette.

I’m speechless. He’s attracted to me, I can hardly believe it. He flicks his cigarette butt into the flower bed where it glows orange against the brown soil before slowly burning out.

‘Well, I’m not a housemate yet,’ I say shyly.

‘That is true.’

We stare at each other and I wonder if he’s going to kiss me; my heart bangs against my chest at this unexpected turn of events.

‘So you will come out for a drink with me?’ His voice is hopeful, his pupils dark as he inches closer.

‘I will,’ I almost whisper, without breaking eye contact. We stand together for a few moments, neither of us speaking. Come on, kiss me, I think.

A far-off peal of laughter breaks the moment and he moves away from me slightly to retrieve his mobile from the back pocket of his jeans. When he asks me for my mobile number, I reel it off to him and he taps it into his phone. Then he rings my mobile so his number is stored on my phone as well.

‘No excuses, no saying you’ve lost my number,’ he jokes. ‘The joys of modern technology.’

I laugh, knowing I’d never have the nerve to ring him unless he called me first. I’m about to open my mouth to say something when I notice Ben stiffen. His eyes shift away from me to look at someone or something over my shoulder. I turn and see Beatrice standing in the doorway, her long fingers toying with the stem of a champagne glass, staring at us thoughtfully. Cass is nowhere to be seen. She smiles but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes and I can tell she’s annoyed about something. ‘There you are,’ she says. ‘I was wondering where you’d got to.’ I’m unsure if she’s talking to me or Ben.

‘I’m having a cigarette,’ says Ben.

‘Oh, Ben, you’re so naughty,’ she laughs, although I’m not sure she’s really amused. She steps on to the patio and stands next to her brother, holding out the palm of her hand and batting her eyelashes at him. Ben sighs and rolls his eyes at me in mock annoyance then rummages in his pocket for his cigarette packet, taps one out on to his hand and places it between her lips where he dutifully lights it. ‘I shouldn’t,’ she says to nobody in particular, snaking her arm around his waist while his languishes over her shoulder and I’m envious of their closeness.

She takes a few heavy puffs. ‘Pam and Cass are here too, somewhere,’ she says, turning towards Ben and avoiding meeting my eyes. I feel a stab of panic at the thought that I’m being slighted by her. Since she’s come outside she hasn’t glanced my way once. What if she suspects that I was tempted to kiss her earlier and no longer wants to be friends with me, regrets asking me to move in? I couldn’t bear to be cast aside now, not after everything. I don’t want to go back to my own, lonely life, rattling around that flat, terrified every time the sun goes down because I’ll be alone with my thoughts. I want to move in with her, be part of her life. ‘They’re having a great time,’ she continues, still not looking at me, ‘although Pam’s a little drunk and flirting with Monty. She’s convinced she can turn him.’

I laugh as if this is the funniest thing I’ve heard in ages. Beatrice turns to me and flashes me a puzzled smile. ‘Are you okay, Abi?’

‘Actually, I’ve got a headache coming on.’ I urgently need to get away from this party, from this situation. ‘I think I’ll go home.’

Ben’s hazel eyes fill with concern. ‘Do you want me to see you home?’

‘I will see her home.’ She shoots Ben a warning look and uncoils herself from him. ‘Come on, Abi. I’ll call a taxi.’ She puts an arm around my shoulder and steers me back into the house, away from the garden and away from her twin brother.

Chapter Seven

It’s the second Saturday in June when I finally move in. The sky is a cloudless powder blue and as we drive by the tennis courts I notice a couple of teenage girls in short swishy skirts, showing off tanned, lean legs, rackets insouciantly slung over their shoulders as they chat by the net, and I feel it, the unfamiliar stirrings of excitement at the thought that this is my new life. A new me. For once I am optimistic about the future, hopeful that maybe I can have a semblance of a life without Lucy.

‘Nice part of town,’ says Dad. He reverses his Mazda in between two parked cars to the right of Beatrice’s house. My house. I peer out the window and with a twinge of disappointment I see no sign of Ben’s little Fiat. Dad switches off the engine and points to number nineteen. ‘Is that it?’ When I nod he lets out a low whistle of approval. ‘You’ve done all right for yourself.’ He chuckles. ‘And you don’t even have to pay rent.’

‘I’m not sure about that,’ I admit. ‘Mum said I should insist.’

Dad shrugs, then tells me, as he always does, that my mum is probably right, before climbing down on to the kerb. I snatch my mobile phone from the dashboard and follow him around to the back of the car as he opens the boot, revealing my life packed up in an array of cardboard boxes and black bags. He turns to me and my heart pangs at the concerned look in his sea-green eyes. ‘Are you sure about this, sweetheart? You can always come and live with us if you don’t want to be on your own. Your mum was never happy about you moving into that flat by yourself, and after everything …’ He clears his throat, but when he speaks again his voice is gruffer. ‘Anyway, you don’t really know much about these people, do you?’

His concern brings a lump to my throat. A stranger wouldn’t be able to see it – his grief – but I can. He wears it like a heavy trench coat, one that he refuses to remove so that he’s buckling underneath its weight. It’s evident in the greying of his dark eyebrows, the hollowness of his once-rounded face, in the new lines etched into his sallow skin, and I think, I’ve caused this. For a man of nearly six foot two, he seems diminished, shrunken, older.

‘I want to move in here, Dad,’ I say. If only he knew how much. ‘Beatrice has become a friend, she understands me.’

Dad opens his mouth to reply but is interrupted by shrieks as Beatrice and Cass bound out of the house and towards us with Pam ambling after them, grinning good-naturedly.

Since Monty’s party I’ve only seen Bea a handful of times; the vintage fair a couple of weeks ago where she bought two expensive tea-dresses, a trendy bar in the centre of Bath one evening and last Saturday she asked me to accompany her to a showing of one of her favourite artists at the Holburne Museum. Afterwards we met up with Pam and Cass for afternoon tea in the café downstairs. The day was pleasant enough, I enjoyed the company of the other girls, even if Pam did monopolize me, regaling me with tales of her past, living with a nudist painter, and I tried to concentrate on what she was saying, but it was difficult with Beatrice and Cass murmuring to each other in the corner, the usual pained expression on Cass’s pretty elfin face, making me curious as to what they were talking about. I haven’t seen Ben since Monty’s party. He never did call to arrange to take me out for a drink, and maybe, on reflection, that’s for the best. I can’t deny that there is an attraction between us, but it’s probably not a good idea to get romantically involved with a housemate, particularly Beatrice’s twin brother. I sense that she’s quite over protective, maybe a little possessive of him.

‘Abi,’ shrieks Beatrice, throwing her arms around my neck as if she’s known me for years. ‘Happy Moving In Day!’ She laughs her familiar tinkly laugh. Then she unlinks her arms from me and turns to Dad to introduce herself, and I’m amused to see the flush of pink staining his rough skin as she bends in to kiss him on the check, informing him how happy she is to finally meet him.

She indicates the mobile in my hand. ‘Let’s do a selfie. We need to commemorate this day,’ she says, pressing her head against mine so that we are cheek to cheek, shoulder to shoulder.

I stretch my arm out, trying to aim the phone so that it captures both our faces and press click. I take half a dozen photos before we look through them, laughing at our cross eyes and silly expressions.

‘I could have taken a photo of the two of you, if you’d wanted.’ I turn to see Cass standing a little way behind us, the toes of her sandals on the edge of the pavement, her hands behind her back. She’s blushing as she says this, but there is something else in her expression, a tinge of petulance, like a child who feels left out because her best friend is giving someone else some attention. I smile warmly at her, but she doesn’t meet my eyes.

We each grab a box from the back of the car, and I show Dad into the house and watch, amused, as his eyes widen in surprise as he surveys the vast hallway and the large high-ceilinged rooms that run off of it. I follow his gaze, half-hoping that Ben will be in one of the rooms.

Beatrice comes up behind me hugging one of my boxes, small and oblong, the one that contains Lucy’s old letters. I have the sudden urge to snatch it from her. She tells me casually, as if she’s read my mind, that Ben had to be called in to work. ‘He said to tell you he’s sorry he isn’t able to help,’ she pants, scuttling past me and up the stairs. I trudge behind her despondently, grappling with my own box and wondering if Ben is trying to avoid me.

It takes most of the afternoon to unload the boxes from the car and heave them up the two flights of stairs to my new bedroom, which has been stripped bare of Josie’s belongings leaving a narrow single bed, with an iron frame and a sagging mattress that has been pushed up against the wall facing the sash windows. Next to it there is a rickety pine chest of drawers and a bedside cabinet. The indigo walls are marked where Jodie has ripped down her posters, leaving little holes of crumbling plaster where the blu-tac has been. The once champagne-coloured carpet is murky with the tread of numerous footsteps and there’s a dubious stain in the shape of a large moth by the built-in wardrobe. My excitement at moving in with Beatrice, at being part of her life at last, is dampened by the state of this bedroom. Apart from its size, the room reminds me of the one I shared with Nia during our student days in halls. The prickles of regret creep over me when I think of my tidy little flat in the centre of town, with its freshly painted walls and wooden floors. I drop the box at my feet and throw open one of the sash windows, taking in lungfuls of fresh air, hoping to dispel the stale smell of Jodie.

‘I’ll help you paint it.’ I hear Beatrice’s soft Scottish voice behind me. I turn to see her standing in the doorway, surveying the room, her ski-slope nose wrinkled in disapproval. Her cat, Sebby, weaves himself in and out of her legs. She looks fresh and pretty in her vintage tea-dress, even after lugging boxes all afternoon, whereas my jeans are sticking to my legs and there is a grey stain on my white T-shirt. ‘I’m not happy with the way Jodie kept it. I asked her to put mats down when she was working on her sculptures, but she’s got no respect for other people’s things.’

I can’t help but agree and I make a silent vow to look after this room so that it fits in with this beautiful, eclectic house. I glance up at the intricate coving around the high ceilings; a cobweb hangs from a corner, shimmying in the breeze from the open window, and I know with a fresh coat of paint and the carpet cleaned I can make this room my own.

Despite Dad’s earlier reservations, I can tell by the slight blush that travels up his neck, the chuckle that emerges from his throat every time Beatrice addresses him, that he’s as taken with her as I am. And when he says goodbye a few hours later, he tells me, ‘I think you’ll be happy here, sweetheart,’ and envelops me in a hug. ‘It will put your mother’s mind at rest at any rate.’

I watch as he strides on his long legs to the car, his tall frame bending almost in half as he gets behind the wheel, and I wave as he pulls away from the kerb and rounds the corner, out of sight. In the distance I hear the scream of an ambulance, the shrill noise at odds with the blue skies, the perfect summer day, and it sends goosebumps all over my body as I imagine the life that hangs in the balance, the family that could be torn apart. I will never be able to hear the sound of an ambulance again without thinking of the night my twin sister died.

We sit around the table drinking wine, our plates empty, relaxed and enjoying each other’s company. Pam is in the middle of telling us about bumping into her ex-boyfriend at Monty’s party with his attractive, and much younger, girlfriend when Ben walks in and for some reason we all stop talking. The air crackles with tension.

His hair is slightly dishevelled from the humid June day and he’s wearing a crisp linen shirt, open at the collar, revealing a tanned neck which I have sudden visions of kissing and I’m shocked at the impact he has on me.

Beatrice pushes back her chair and gets up from the table. ‘Ben,’ she seems surprised to see him, as if she’s forgotten he lives here too. ‘There’s some lasagne left over.’ She goes to the Aga, donning a pair of Emma Bridgewater oven gloves, and carefully lifts out a plate from its innards as if conducting an operation. She places it on the table next to Cass. From the corner of my eye I can see that Ben has taken the seat opposite me and alongside Cass, but I keep my eyes firmly fixed on the burnt curl of pasta left on my empty plate.

‘I don’t know if you’ve forgotten, Ben, but Abi moved in today,’ says Beatrice, as she takes her place at the head of the table.

‘I haven’t forgotten.’

I look up into Ben’s hazel eyes, flecked with gold, his familiar crooked smile tugging at his lips and a bolt of desire, so strong and unexpected, shoots through me, causing my cheeks to burn and giving me away. I pull my gaze from his reluctantly and glance towards Beatrice, who is staring at us intently, eyes narrowed, her pale fingers almost merging with the porcelain cup that she’s gripping.

And for some reason I can’t yet fathom, a sweat breaks out all over my body.

I’m sitting on the edge of my newly made bed later that evening. My room is still in disarray, boxes, some empty, some still full, are stacked around me, the chest of drawers yawns open, revealing the clothes that I’d crammed in there earlier, a pile of books leans against the skirting board, threatening to topple over at any moment. I pick up the framed photograph of me and Lucy that I’ve unpacked and placed on the table next to my bed. We both look tanned, our arms around each other’s neck, grinning into the camera. It was taken while on holiday in Portugal with Callum and Luke, the summer before she died. We had come from the beach and, as we sat on the wall waiting for Luke to return with ice-creams, Callum, ever the photographer, decided to take a few snaps with his camera. Both Lucy and I have, or should I say had, the same photo by our beds. I wonder idly what happened to hers. Did Mum take it when she came to pack up her room, a job I was too distraught to do so I let my poor grief-stricken mother do it instead? The guilt still gnaws at me. I put the photograph down.

The sky is hazy, shot through with violet and orange, the sun about to go out of sight behind the row of houses opposite. An evening breeze filters through the opening in the sash window, bringing with it the aroma of cut grass and bonfires. I close my eyes and inhale deeply, breathing in the smell of summer. I’m here, I’m actually here at last. And, when I think about it, getting here has been easier than I ever thought possible. I’ve managed to become part of her life within six short weeks.

There is a soft knock on my half-opened bedroom door. My eyes ping open and I see a long denim-clad leg, a linen sleeve. I jump off the bed eagerly, causing the mattress to groan in protest.

‘Hi,’ says Ben sheepishly. ‘Can I come in?’

I shrug. ‘If you want.’

‘I’m sorry I didn’t call you, but it’s difficult with Bea. Her rules, you know.’

‘That’s okay, it probably wasn’t a good idea anyway,’ I say nonchalantly.

The echoes of chatter, Pam’s raucous laugh and the clink of cutlery tell me that the others are still in the kitchen and I push the door closed on the darkening hallway with my foot.

I turn to face him, noticing his downcast expression at my words.

‘That’s a shame,’ he says. ‘Because I’ve not been able to stop thinking about you since the party.’

‘Really?’ I’m annoyed at how eager I sound.

He takes my hand. We are inches away from each other, his eyes are dark and intense in the half light and my heart hammers and I’m trembling with nerves. I don’t know who makes the first move, but we are suddenly kissing, his hands in my hair, mine stroking the warm soft skin of his back under his shirt. I’ve not felt so much desire since Callum. I press my body up against his, so that we’re as close as we can be with clothes on. His erection presses into my abdomen, his teeth nip my lips. I don’t know how long we kiss for, but I’m conscious that the room has darkened. Then he stops abruptly, pushing me gently away so that I almost stumble on one of my boxes.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says, running his hands through his hair. ‘I don’t know what came over me.’

I frown, confused. ‘Ben, it’s fine. I wanted you to kiss me. I’m glad you did.’

I watch as he walks over to the window, his face like parchment from the light of the moon that filters through the open curtains. Something is clearly troubling him.

‘Beatrice has warned me off you,’ he says eventually.

‘What?’ I’m shocked. Why would Beatrice do that? Am I not good enough for her twin brother? ‘Why?’ For the first time, I’m furious with her.

‘Because of your sister, your twin. She told me that she died. I’m so sorry to hear that, Abi.’

I swallow a lump that’s formed in my throat. ‘Thanks.’ I pause, something doesn’t add up. I walk over to where he stands by the window. ‘But why would that make her warn you off me?’

He turns to face me. ‘She thinks you’re vulnerable after everything that’s happened to you.’

I frown, oscillating between feeling flattered that Beatrice cares enough to worry about me and angry that she’s poking her nose into something that is none of her business. ‘She doesn’t know what happened to me.’

‘No, I know,’ he says, too quickly. ‘But she knows you’ve been through a lot. Call it woman’s intuition, I don’t know.’

‘I’m old enough to make my own decisions,’ I snap.

‘That’s what I told her,’ he murmurs. He grabs me by the waist and pulls me towards him, encircling me in his arms. He lowers his head and I shut my eyes expectantly, wanting, needing to be close to him.

We are about to kiss again when the creak of the door makes us spring apart. I’m sure my expression can’t hide my guilt as Beatrice stands there, a shadowy figure in the doorway. ‘I thought you might both be in here. Why is it so dark?’ She switches the main light on and I blink with the assault on my eyes, little black patches swimming in my vision.

‘I’m unpacking, Ben was helping.’ I indicate the boxes stacked behind me, the nearly empty one by my bed. I know I don’t sound very convincing.

‘Oh, I’ll give you a hand,’ she says. ‘Ben, be a darling and bring up some wine.’ Ben scuttles from the room obediently and I notice that his shirt is hanging out of his jeans. He throws me a rueful smile as he leaves and I can’t help but grin back.

I half-expect her to question me about Ben, to tell me she knows there’s something between us, but she doesn’t. Instead she goes to the small oblong box she carried for me earlier, the one that contains Lucy’s letters. It’s perched on the top of two larger boxes and I hold my breath as she picks it up, silently willing her to leave it alone. Don’t you know how precious that is? I want to wail. But she’s like a magpie with a new shiny trinket. She swivels on her heels towards me, the box in her upturned hands as if it’s an offering, a sacrificial lamb.

‘This one’s been damaged,’ she says innocently, and then I notice that the box is squashed and the brown tape holding the two flaps together, its lid, has come apart so the top is gaping open, revealing a hint of the coloured envelopes beneath. Frowning, I take the box from her.

‘I’ll go and see where Ben’s got to with that wine,’ she says, brushing past me, a look I can’t read in her eyes. When she’s gone I slump on to my sagging mattress, the box on my lap. Peeling back the flap of cardboard I take out the stack of pastel-coloured envelopes bound with an elastic band, and idly flick through them. Then, with a spark of realization and dawning horror, I go through them again, carefully counting them, knowing there should be twenty-seven, but even though I leaf through them five times, each time more frenzied, desperate, I can only count twenty-six. A letter is missing. My heart thuds in my chest, bile scratching the back of my throat. One of my precious letters is missing, the only tangible thing I have left of my twin, the only way I still get to hear her voice. It’s missing and I know that only Beatrice could have taken it.

The lasagne from dinner curdles uncomfortably in my stomach. Why would she do this to me?

I remember how Beatrice acted in the garden at Monty’s party, her calm nonchalance when she saw me with Ben, the way she stared at us both at the table tonight during dinner, and I’m suddenly painfully aware why she would do such a thing.

Beatrice suspects that I fancy Ben and this is her way of punishing me.

I’m bent double, trying to breathe deeply, my chest tight, my head swimming, and I don’t hear Beatrice walking back into the room until she’s standing over me with a glass of red wine in each hand.

‘Are you okay?’ she asks, handing me one of the wine glasses, which I take and place on the chest of drawers next to me. There’s something tucked under her arm, a flash of coloured paper. She seems to notice the shocked expression that must be evident on my face and follows my line of vision.

‘Oh, I think this belongs to you, it has your name on the envelope. I found it on the stairs. It probably fell out of the box when I carried it up earlier.’ She smiles at me serenely, retrieving Lucy’s letter from under her armpit, and I take it with a trembling hand, confusion clouding my thoughts. Surely I would have noticed the pastel-pink envelope against the cream flagstones? I’ve been up and down this staircase enough times since she carried the box for me.

‘Come on,’ she says cheerfully, seeming not to notice my anguish. ‘Let’s get some of these boxes unpacked. Ben won’t be able to help after all, I’m afraid. Monty’s popped over and taken him out for a drink.’

Why doesn’t this surprise me?

I replace Lucy’s precious letter back into the bundle with the others and when Beatrice’s back is turned and she’s engrossed in sorting through my clothes, I reach up and shove the box on top of the wardrobe, away from her prying eyes.

Chapter Eight

Beatrice hates lies, despises the havoc, the pain that they invariably cause. She remembers only too well the impact, the devastation that ensues when the truth is finally revealed; it is all still fresh in her mind. And now, the all too familiar feelings of betrayal have resurfaced. Why can’t she stop thinking about him?

She rolls over on to her back, kicking the quilt to the bottom of the bed. The room is musty even though the window is ajar, her legs are slick with sweat, her nightdress sticking to her body like a second skin. She turns on her side, a shaft of light evident underneath her closed bedroom door. Who is still awake at this late hour? Is Abi having trouble sleeping in her new home? Or Ben, unable to relax knowing the object of his affection is across the corridor? She sighs, sitting up and switching on her bedside lamp and reaching for her phone to see the time. It’s gone 1 a.m. It’s no use, how is she supposed to sleep, knowing that Abi is next door with only a wall between them, with only a landing separating her from her twin brother?

Of course she knows it’s only a matter of time before they get together. She can see the attraction between them, as if they have their very own forcefield. It was obvious at Monty’s party; did they think she was blind, not to see the way they were looking at each other in the garden that night? She had never even considered asking Abi to Monty’s party, but Abi had left numerous messages on her mobile, wanting to know if they could meet up before she moved in. Beatrice had begun to feel harried and in the end invited her mainly to appease her.

Even her stupid house rules will be powerless to stop them, she thinks. She won’t be able to keep them apart for much longer and she’s naïve to think otherwise. Unless …

She swings her legs out of bed and goes to her dressing table, gently touching the jewellery that she’s laid out between her face creams and make-up, calming down, as she always does at the thought of her new, burgeoning business. At last she’s found something that she’s good at, something that helps make up for all the pain in her past. Oh, Abi, she thinks as she touches a silver daisy-chained bracelet interlaced with sapphires, the piece of jewellery she’s most proud of creating, we’ve got more in common than you could possibly know.

Sitting at her dressing table she opens one of the drawers and retrieves a ripped-out page from a newspaper, creased and dog-eared and already beginning to turn to the colour of milky tea. She places it on her lap, smoothing it flat in a futile attempt to iron out the lines where it has been repeatedly folded, and reads the article for the hundredth time.

Identical Twin Not Guilty of Causing Sister’s Death by Careless Driving

A WOMAN who killed her identical twin sister in a crash on the A31 near Guildford, Surrey, has been found not guilty of death by careless driving, a court heard.

A jury of seven women and five men took less than an hour to return the not guilty verdict on Abigail Cavendish, 28, from Balham, South London at Southwark Crown Court yesterday.

Ms Cavendish, her twin sister Lucy, who was a front seat passenger, and three others were travelling home from a Halloween party on 31 October last year when her Audi A3 came off the road in torrential rain and turned over into a ditch. A breathalyser test taken at the scene showed that the accused was not over the legal drink-drive limit.

The prosecution had claimed Ms Cavendish was driving too fast in the rain and hadn’t been concentrating on the notoriously dangerous road. A statement from a passenger, a Mr Luke Munroe, the deceased’s boyfriend, stated that an ongoing argument had clouded Ms Cavendish’s judgement on the night in question, causing her to drive erratically.

Judge Ruth Millstow, QC, told the court that Lucy Cavendish’s death was the result of a tragic accident brought on by severe weather conditions.

Beatrice peers at the accompanying photograph, at the twin sisters’ happy, smiling faces, mirror images of one another. She would never be able to tell them apart if she had seen them both together. The photograph looks as if it was taken on a holiday, a palm tree frozen mid-sway in the background, the twins tanned and blonde, the shoe-string straps of a vest or a dress evident in the head-and-shoulders shot.

Beatrice had been on the tube, visiting a friend in Islington, when she saw the piece in the local free newspaper that someone had left discarded on the seat next to her. She had flicked through it idly, barely paying attention to the depressing stories about knifed youths or grannies robbed in broad daylight, until the photograph had caught her eye. The sisters, blonde, slim, with heart-shaped faces and full mouths, could be related to her, so similar were their looks. And when she noticed the headline she felt a rush of empathy. Twins – like her and Ben – and as she read on she actually gasped out loud as her eyes alighted on Luke’s name. Her stomach contracted painfully. Would she ever escape her past? Luke had been the dead sister’s boyfriend. He had obviously chosen someone who resembled her. Was the universe trying to tell her something?

She’d tucked the newspaper into her bag, had come home and carefully cut the piece out, knowing that one day it would come in handy.

She surveys herself in the mirror: her pale hair, slightly slick with sweat, her too-pink cheeks in the soft glow of her lamp. It doesn’t matter how she feels about what might be taking place under her very nose, about the way they are trying to keep her in the dark, laughing at her behind her back. It is her duty to help Abi, she must remember that, even if Ben seems happy to forget it.

You’re not the only one who can’t forgive yourself, Abi.

Beatrice carefully refolds the newspaper article neatly into quarters and slips it back into her drawer. And as she gets back into bed and settles underneath the sheets, she knows she has to intervene. Before it’s too late.

Chapter Nine

It takes me a few seconds to register that I’m at Beatrice’s house when I open my eyes the next morning. The tinny sound of a radio playing floats up from somewhere within the bowels of the house and the sun’s rays filter through the gap in Jodie’s threadbare navy-blue curtains, creating oblong reflections on the ceiling. I gaze up at the shifting patterns, unsure of what to do, how to act, now that I’m finally here. It’s been so long since I’ve lived with people my own age, my peers, that I’m immobilized with a kind of stage fright.

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