The Missing Twin Read online

  ‘No, thank you, madam,’ said the gold dealer, suddenly jovial now the deal was done. ‘It was a pleasure doing business with you.’

  ‘Likewise,’ nodded Fatima, and did not mean it.

  She stashed the money in the waistband pocket, nodded a perfunctory farewell and left. It was small, but it was a victory. It was proof that she could cope, that she would continue to cope. She would do it for her children because not doing so was not an option, and for Fayed, for his memory. As she walked back to Safa’s house, her thoughts strayed to how life used to be when they were all so happy together and had everything to look forward to. The twins were healthy and bright, they were comfortably off and, most importantly of all, she and Fayed were in love.

  Fatima remembered how he had brought the emerald necklace to her one evening as she sat in the girls’ nursery in the courtyard house, singing them to sleep with the songs she had learnt from her mother that had been passed down through the generations. He had hung it around her neck, gently fastening the clasp and then leading her to the mirror to show her how it complemented her dark skin and sparkling eyes. In that moment, Fatima’s world had been complete. The rumbling protests and skirmishes in the big cities far away had been expected to pass over quickly; order would quickly be restored and life would go on as before.

  How naive that complacency seemed now. Fayed was dead and the country dying. Life itself could no longer be taken for granted. Fatima quickened her pace as the sky darkened. She had a feeling there would be a raid that night. She must get back to the twins before the bombs began to fall.

  Edie

  ‘So you will forget your idea about the police?’ Vuk’s voice was low, full of concern. ‘Remember that you need to think about your status here. You do not have a work permit, for example.’

  He squeezed her hand conspiratorially. ‘It is not advisable to draw attention to yourself or the resort. Vlad would be most unhappy.’

  Edie was speechless for a moment. No one had mentioned permits or any kind of legal nicety when she had pitched up and asked for a job. Typical of Vlad to use threats to keep people down. Suddenly, the tension that had been building exploded out of her.

  ‘Fuck Vlad,’ she shouted.

  She got up, knocking her chair over in the process; it was one of the plastic ones, light and unstable. Exactly how she felt at that precise moment.

  ‘And fuck this whole stupid place.’ Without stopping to pick up the fallen chair, she marched off in the direction of her room. But her flouncing protest soon ran out of steam and she was already regretting her tantrum before she got even halfway through the olive grove and long before she reached her door. Once inside her room she flung herself onto her bed, clenching her fists tight and drumming them onto the pillow, tears of frustration pouring down her cheeks.

  Edie needed Vuk right now, really needed him. She couldn’t go to sleep after their argument. What had her mother always said to her? Never let the sun go down on a quarrel. Not that it had been so much a quarrel as a disagreement – her disagreeing with Vuk, him implacable as always. But still, Laura’s presence, her support, could never be relied upon, whereas in Vuk Edie had seen the possibility of building the permanent, fulfilling, mutually beneficial relationship she so yearned for.

  Slowly, she sat up and shuffled along her bed until she was facing the mirror she’d propped up on a shelf on the wall. She would have to go and see him, apologise, make up with him. Sniffing loudly, she rubbed her finger over the smudges of mascara on her cheeks whilst deciding what to do. Her make-up was strewn across the room and she gathered up the elements she needed – powder, mascara, some nude lip gloss that accentuated her pale rosebud mouth. She set to work on tidying herself up.

  The heat still had not dissipated as she picked her way back though the olive trees, their silvery leaves shimmering in the moonlight. The paths were lit at ground level and by overhead lanterns, but she always deviated from them, preferring to take the most direct course possible, and she had already established an off-piste route to Vuk’s cabin. As she drew near, she could see Vuk sitting on a lounger, his legs stretched out in front of him, his bare feet crossed one over the other. It was impossible to tell if he was asleep or awake, except for the twitch of his fingers as he tapped the ash off the end of his cigarette. Silently, Edie slid through the darkness and onto the terrace. She paused, sheltered by the huge fig tree that grew there. It was heavy with fruit, small and green, that clustered pugnaciously on every part of every branch like knuckles on a clenched fist. Hidden from view, she watched Vuk, his brown limbs at ease, his eyes shut, his breathing slow and relaxed.

  ‘Edie.’

  She jumped and her heart beat wildly. She had thought he couldn’t see her, wouldn’t know that she was there.

  ‘Why don’t you come over?’ His deep voice set her pulse racing.

  Stepping out of the shadows, she padded across the rough stone slabs, designed to prevent water from making them slippery. She had heard that in the winter the rain here was torrential, sheeting off the mountains and cascading downwards towards the sea, forming seasonal waterfalls that thundered during their brief revival and then fell silent when summer came again.

  Arriving at his lounger, Edie stopped and took a deep breath.

  ‘I’m sorry I shouted at you.’ The blurted apology was hard to make, but necessary. ‘It’s just because I’m worried about Laura. I mean, I wasn’t worried until Zayn put doubt into my mind and I probably don’t need to be worried, but somehow I am.’ She paused. ‘Just a bit,’ she added, lamely.

  Vuk flicked his cigarette butt into the flowering oleander bushes that sprawled beside his cabin walls.

  ‘You like a beer? Go inside and fetch one from the fridge.’

  Edie took the invitation to be Vuk’s way of saying ‘It’s OK, no problem, all forgotten.’ She made her way silently inside and into the kitchen. The senior members of staff who lived on site, namely Vuk and Vlad and Ivana, the admin manager, had cabins of their own. Although not as luxurious as the guest cabanas, they were still comfortable and Edie saw how they could be made really nice with the right touch – some rugs to absorb the echoes, pops of colour to break-up the monotony of the white walls and floors. An enormous bowl containing nothing but fifty lemons or limes sitting on a counter-top, like in the interior magazines or the home sections of the Sunday supplements.

  Vuk’s cabin, though, had nothing homely about it. Containing only the bare minimum – bedclothes, a few mugs and a kettle in the kitchen, his toothbrush in the bathroom – the cabin could have belonged to anyone. It was utterly impersonal. She resisted the temptation to go into the bedroom and check it for signs of female visitors other than herself.

  She came back with the beers, handed Vuk a bottle and kept one for herself.

  ‘Sit.’ Vuk indicated to his left hand side. As there was no chair there, Edie knelt down, resting on her upturned heels.

  ‘Are you still cross with me?’ Vuk was often so unreadable, so inscrutable that Edie could not tell what he was thinking.

  ‘Of course not.’

  Vuk drank and put the bottle on the ground. Reaching out his left hand, he caught hold of the back of Edie’s head, his fingers tangling in her hair causing tiny stabs of pain in her scalp.

  ‘I’ll make some enquiries around and see if I can find anything out about your sister. You should stop fretting. Leave it to me.’

  Adoration flooded through Edie. Vuk would not let her down.

  His right hand was on his shorts zip, undoing it, opening the waistband wide. Whatever he wanted, she would give to him, in return for being her knight in shining armour. He wrenched her head roughly forward, grinding her face into his groin, and then releasing the pressure to allow her mouth to find his penis beneath the soft fabric of his underpants. Her lips felt him swell and harden, and she began to tease him, bringing him to full size. He pulled himself free and guided her mouth onto him. Controlling the rhythm, his fingers even more tightly wo
und in her hair, he made her take all of him in her mouth, arching his back to her until he came, emitting a groan that seemed to originate from somewhere deep within him, and then relaxing back into stillness.

  Edie climbed onto the lounger and lay beside him, fitting her body into the spaces around his, nestling down between him and the arm of the chair. She shut her eyes and listened to the roar of the crickets and his steady breathing and the rustle of fallen leaves in the sandy soil as some night creature went about its business. She was so happy that she could please him, satisfy him. So happy he was finally here for her to do so. She didn’t mind that the sex they had was so often about satisfying his needs and so rarely about hers. If she could give him what he wanted, she regarded that as a privilege.

  ‘Shall we go to bed?’ she asked eventually. She thought he had fallen asleep and didn’t want to disturb him but it was getting uncomfortable wedged against the hard plastic and she had a sudden desire for sleep. She pushed herself upright and looked down at Vuk.

  ‘I’ll walk you back to your room,’ he said, swinging his legs over the side of the chair and getting up.

  She stared at him, wondering if she had heard correctly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come on.’ Vuk had slipped on his shoes and was waiting for her expectantly.

  Edie didn’t know what to say and Vuk was clearly impatient to be off.

  ‘Edie, please hurry. I have things to do.’ He was walking towards the path already, striding purposefully forward, not even looking to see if she were following.

  ‘What on earth do you need to do in the middle of the night?’ demanded Edie, running to keep up.

  Vuk didn’t answer, just continued up the hill. When they reached the staff cabins he bent down and pecked her on the cheek.

  ‘See you later,’ he muttered, looking into the distance, his mind clearly on other things. And then he was gone.

  In her room, Edie tried to think objectively. She was not Vuk’s keeper. Her mother had tried so hard to instil in her how important it was not to overwhelm people with demands and impositions. It had taken her years to accept that it was OK for Laura to have other friends, to occasionally want to do her own thing instead of always being with Edie. That doctor-type woman she’d seen in her teens had impressed on her the need to let go, to live and let live. Now she must put this into practice with Vuk. To keep him, she had to set him free. And that meant not questioning him to the point where he would get annoyed with her, not keeping tabs on his movements. Free, easy and undemanding, coupled with sex whenever the bloke wanted it; that was the way to conduct a successful relationship, Edie was sure of it.

  Remember those rules, she told herself sternly as she got into bed. It didn’t stop her feeling lonely, though, and wishing Vuk were with her.

  TEN

  Fatima

  Ehsan had been vacillating about leaving with Fatima, one minute certain, the next full of doubts again.

  ‘How will we manage it with three children in tow?’ he demanded, his voice gruff with anxiety. ‘What if they get sick? What if we do?’

  Fatima bit her lip. ‘But if we stay we’ll get sick for sure, next winter, if we haven’t been blasted out of existence by then.’

  Eventually, he made up his mind. He and Youssef would accompany her after all. Just like Fatima they, too, had nothing more to lose. It would work for both of them; she would do better with a male protector and Ehsan would benefit from the fact that she spoke much better English than him; an asset that would surely help them on their journey. And Fatima was happy to be with Youssef, who was a kind and loveably boy, and who deserved the same opportunities as her own twins.

  They would all attempt to get to Europe where they could begin again. One thing was clear to both adults; neither had any intention of just crossing a border and staying put. They had heard about that life, from friends and acquaintances, from the internet. The appalling conditions, the abject poverty, the abuse and degradation suffered daily by the refugees, the lack of work, of opportunities, the reliance on charity handouts that diminished in line with thinning donations as compassion fatigue set in around the world.

  Fatima knew also about the rape and domestic violence suffered by the women, the return of child marriage, families offering up their pre-pubescent girls for a fraction of the dowry they should have received in normal times, literally selling them into a life of early pregnancies and childbirth that would destroy them even if the bombs and shooting and soldiers didn’t. The parents would tell themselves it was to keep their daughters safe. It was a safety Fatima would never accept for her children, however far off it might seem right now, when the twins were still so very young.

  Above all, life in the camps was a life in limbo, waiting for a change for the better that would never come. That’s why they had never even contemplated leaving before now. It had seemed preferable to stay put and pray for an end to the war and the violence and the suffering. Until now. Now, anything seemed better than remaining where they were. Fatima only had to recall in her mind’s eye that vision of her once beautiful street crumpled and beaten, the lurking shadows of the injured and dispossessed scuttling like rats out of holes, the hideous sight of her beloved husband’s body, lifeless and stiff, to know that she would never, could never go back.

  The ancient cobbled lanes of the old town, suffused with scents of clove and cumin, the bright clothes in the shops, the bakery that smelt of warmth and cinnamon and everything good to eat, were all gone. The courtyard house, with its lemon trees and almond orchard and trickling fountain, was gone. The girls’ nursery where she had soothed them to sleep, with its white-painted walls and matching beds covered with the counterpanes she had embroidered by hand in the months she waited for them to be born – gone now.

  Her city, the only one she had ever known and where she had lived all her life, had been eradicated. Everything was in ruins. Nowhere to live, nowhere to work, nothing to eat. No Fayed.

  The only choice left was to go and to keep going until they reached northern Europe. That there were so many hundreds of thousands of others doing the same she was well aware. But she couldn’t think of them, couldn’t let the fact that she would be just one woman in the midst of a nameless multitude put her off. Of the two routes available, both were fraught with danger. They could get to Egypt and try to cross the Mediterranean from there, or from Libya. Disadvantage: a long and extraordinarily perilous boat ride to Italy during which it was highly likely one or all of them would perish. Advantage: from Italy it was the EU all the way to Germany or Sweden. Alternatively, they could take the Turkish route. Disadvantage: the danger inherent in getting to and crossing the border, in getting to one of the islands and then traversing Macedonia and Serbia before reaching the European countries. Advantage: a much shorter boat ride – the possibility that they might all survive.

  Fatima and Ehsan discussed the options until late into the night in the days following the destruction of their home and lives.

  ‘Everyone says it’s better through Turkey. Libya is full of warlords, cheats and traffickers without scruples of any kind.’ Fatima knew that Ehsan wanted to be in charge and she worked hard to make him feel that he was, whilst at the same time trying to influence him to her point of view.

  ‘That way it’s such a long journey before we reach the EU,’ countered Ehsan. He paused and rubbed his tired eyes with rough hands.

  They bandied the possibilities back and forth until finally they reached an agreement that the Turkish route was the best one. Once the decision was made, Fatima spent hours online, on chat rooms and websites that updated people on the situation across the country, whose troops held what territory, where the worst of the fighting was, the best places to try to cross the border. Ehsan talked with the men in town, surreptitiously.

  ‘It’s getting harder every day,’ he said to Fatima.

  ‘I know,’ she replied. ‘We should go now, while it’s still summer and we will have better weather for th
e sea crossing.’

  There was nothing to pack, no reason to delay a moment longer.

  They had just their phones, the jewellery money and a change of clothes for them all, two for the children (Safa had gathered together everything she and her friends and neighbours could spare) together with some food and water for the journey. No ID, no passports, no documents to show that they had once owned property, businesses, that they had had status. They had nothing to prove who they were or where they had come from. They simply had to take their chances with all the other homeless and dispossessed.

  ‘They say of refugees that they leave taking only what they can carry,’ Fatima commented ironically to Ehsan as they stuffed their few possessions into plastic bags and two small backpacks.

  ‘If only we had a choice of what to take.’

  ELEVEN

  Edie

  It was already scorching at eight-thirty the next morning when Edie surfaced from a fitful, troubled sleep. She stood on the veranda, a shaft of sunlight that filtered through the olive branches burning her cheeks, her eyes half-closed in protest. She needed a plan, she had realised in the hours during which she had tossed and turned in bed. A schedule to keep to, a process to follow. To systematically tick off the things that needed to be done and make sure they were done.

  She would have put calling her parents at the top of the ‘to do’ list, but that was not possible due to their remote location right now. Should the need arise, it would take them time to get here even once they were back in touch. And anyway, Edie wanted to sort this for herself. She had always been the slightly hopeless one, the one who couldn’t cope on her own or manage for herself. When her mother picked up the phone to find it was her, her voice would instantly develop a tone tinged with anxiety, the unasked question, What’s happened now? hovering between them in the ether. This was Edie’s chance to prove that she could confront a crisis head on and overcome it.