The Sisters: A gripping psychological suspense. Claire Douglas

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