engage with that right now.
‘He’s not a wanker, Alice, and I’ve stopped it myself now.’
‘He is a wanker, he has to be a wanker to do this to Bea. And to you.’
‘It’s not as straightforward as you think it is.’
‘Yes it is. Stop defending him, he’s behaved appallingly. You’re not still hung up on him, are you?’
I don’t answer her, simply turning my face towards the wall.
‘You are then.’
‘I’m not hung up on him, Alice,’ I say, my voice rising. ‘I love him.’
‘You don’t love him, you’re infatuated with him. It’s completely different.’
‘Don’t patronize me! I know what love feels like, OK?’
‘You don’t know him! How can you possibly love him when you don’t even know him?’
‘I might not know all the petty details about his life, but I do know him. I know him in a realer way, not just the boring details. I can’t explain it, Alice, but there’s just this connection between us. It sounds so bloody sordid because it’s an affair, but the essence of it isn’t sordid. And before you carry on lecturing me, I promise you can’t make me feel any worse about it than I’ve made myself feel.’
‘Of course you have, because this isn’t you. You’re way too good for this. You’re – you’re my sister.’
And I realize that she’s going through a much-magnified version of the shock I experienced when I discovered that she loves beetroot, even though I think it’s the devil’s vegetable. Or that she has a strange, unwarranted crush on Martin Shaw, even though he’s about 105. There’s a nonsensical part of me that believes that because she’s my twin, because we were once one entity, she’ll feel just the same as me about almost anything. When we disagree on something significant I feel like the ground has shifted, like I’m utterly alone. Where is that comforting reflection that tells me I’m OK in the world?
‘Alice, I know how wrong it is, how illogical, and that is exactly why I’ve ended it. You don’t have to worry about it any more. The job’s nearly finished, the affair’s over, life’s back to normal.’
‘Do you absolutely promise? Do you swear on Pablo’s grave?’
Pablo was the lop-eared rabbit that Dad got us a few months after Mum had died. We became obsessed with him, saving all our pocket money to get him elaborate accessories for his hutch and carving up carrots into alluring shapes. Swearing on his life became the biggest guarantee of truth and, after his death, invoking his grave took on the same solemnity. It’s something we’ve long since left behind and tells me at a stroke how disturbed and frightened Alice actually is.
‘I swear on his ears and whiskers,’ I say, kissing her on the cheek. ‘Do you want to sleep in here tonight?’
‘No, you snore and you kick.’
‘Yeah, and you talk and dribble,’ I shoot back.
Alice gives me a hug and then swings out of bed. She gives me a long look when she reaches the door, weighing it all up. ‘Night, fat face,’ she says, finally leaving. I can’t bear to lie here going over it: whatever Alice needs to believe, it’s not so easy to reduce and dismiss. Rather than getting caught in a mental rat-run, I need to focus my energies on quarantining my feelings until they’re no longer infectious. Bad analogy. I go to sleep and dream in Victoriana: dilapidated hospitals filled with handsome consumptives, women in crinolines that rip to shreds when they brush past their beds. I wake up hung-over and badly rested, forcing myself to push round the Hoover even though it sounds to my sore head like a herd of elephants. I let Alice sleep in till eleven, feeling like it’s the least I can do. She finally emerges, yawning.
‘Morning, little one,’ she says. ‘Shall I do toasties?’
I breathe a sigh of relief that she’s chosen normality over a continued state of emergency. ‘Mmm, let’s try one with peanut butter and banana.’
‘That’s disgusting! You can’t put sweet things in a toastie. Cheese and tomato is my final offer.’
‘It’s your only offer.’
‘Same difference.’
We bicker on companionably as we pack and clean, setting off for London around midday. As I’m squashing my case into the Peugeot’s tiny boot, I take a moment to look back at the house, thinking how little I knew of what was to come when I first laid eyes on it. These seven days feel more like seven months, so packed were they with emotional highs and lows.
We