Mo Hayder - Pig Island

Angeline worked intently, jamming the fork into the ground, making small grunts, occasionally stooping to pull out a root or a piece of stone and throw it into a pile. She wore a scarf, mud-congealed boots and a thick hemp skirt. Her hair had grown in, very dark and curly. Whenever she bent, the extra limb strained against the fabric of the skirt in shadowy outlines.

'What?' she said, straightening up. The work and the cold had brought the blood to her face and against the stony colours of the garden her skin was vivid. She pushed some stray strands of hair back into the scarf. 'What're you staring at?'

'Nothing,' I said.

'You're staring at me. What's wrong? You know what's under my coat — you saw it — so why are you staring now?'

I let all my breath out at once. My pulse began to move a bit. So today was the day we were going to talk about it.

'Well?'

'Well what?'

'You saw it, but you've never once said what you really think.' She was flushed now. Her knuckles, where she was pressing the fork into the ground, had gone white. 'Joe? What did you think? Of my twin? My twin?'

I stared at her, not blinking. I couldn't answer. Just couldn't get a single word out. I didn't know what I thought. I'd read Lexie's letters. I'd spoken to Guy Picot and somewhere I had a vague idea I'd dealt with it, fitted it somehow into my head. But I was finding good ways of not thinking about it. It was locked away somewhere. Just locked in a place I didn't want to go.

'Well?'

I stood, avoiding her eyes. I crossed the frozen ground to where the wind had opened the gate to the alley just a fraction, so a section of shingled ground was visible through the crack. I waited for a second or two, wondering if I could say anything. Nothing came to me. I pulled the gate closed, kicking a stone against it to jam it there. I looked at the gate, at the stone wedged at the bottom, then turned back to Angeline.

'You know something? You know when I'll feel better?'

'No. When will you feel better?'

'When they've found your dad's body.' I went and closed the cellar door and stood, brushing my hands off, looking up at the featureless blanket of cloud above us. 'But I suppose you know that already.'

In the kitchen I opened a bottle of Newkie Brown and sat at the table. Outside it was getting dark and the clouds had that heavy look, like they might start spitting out hailstones any minute. I sat on the chair, upright, my hands on my knees, my heart thudding. I tried to read the paper. But I couldn't. On the wall the clock was ticking dead loud.

After about ten minutes the door opened. At first I thought it was the wind, but then she came in, bringing rain and dead leaves. She didn't see me sitting there in the dark. She stopped on the mat and stamped the mud off her feet, so hard you'd think she was pissed off with the floor. She levered one boot off with her heel and was about to start on the other when she realized I was there. She froze, one boot on, one off. Her eyes rolled round to me.

'What?' I said, guilty of being in my own kitchen. 'What?'

She shook her head. She began to say something, but instead closed her eyes and suddenly she was breathing very fast and hard, like she was ill. Then all these tears came out of her eyes and dribbled down her face and on to her chin.

'Oh, Christ.' I was on my feet next to her, not knowing what to do. I kind of patted her shoulder cautiously, not leaving my hand there for too long. The way you'd pat an animal you thought might bite. 'Oh, Christ. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I really am.'

She turned away from me so her face was against the wall, put her hands over her ears and just cried and cried, like she was crying for everything that had ever happened to her. We stood there, me kind of shocked, useless, without the guts to put my arms round her; her with her forehead pressed into the wall, her shoulders jerking up and down.

'When's it going to be over, Joe? When?'

'When's what going to be over?'

'This. This — this…' She could hardly get the words out, she was trembling so much. 'You're paralysed, Joe, just paralysed, and I don't know why. I mean, you read the letter. You know what she did.'

'What who did? Lexie, you mean?'

'Yes, Lexie. You know what she did. Why c-can't you forget her?'

'Why can't I…? No. It's not just her — not just her any more.'

'Then it's my dad. It's about him.'

'Yeah, him,' I said. 'Him too. It's about lots of-'

'And that's just as bad. Can't you see — can't you see? If you let him stop you writing then he's won. He's won again and you're just sitting there and letting the world go past us both.'

'Yes, but — hey, hang on — '

She lurched past me, out of the kitchen, up the stairs and into her room. I stood for a second, listening, not knowing if I was supposed to go after her. I could hear her moving things around, and after a couple of minutes I went into the hallway, following the trail of mud from her single boot up the stairs. On the landing I stopped. The bedroom door was open. She was in there, hobbling around, pulling things off the shelves in big handfuls. I hadn't been in her room for weeks. She'd filled it with library books and notebooks. Sheets of paper printed off the Internet.

'James Poro.' The moment she saw me on the landing she flung a book on the floor. It was open at a black-and-white photo. I didn't have time to register it before another book came down. And another. 'Lazarus-Joannes Baptist Colloredo, Betty Lou Williams…' She turned to the shelves, sorting through the other books, leaving me to blink at the one on the floor. It showed a photo of a traffic-stoppingly pretty girl in a frilled prayer-meeting dress. Arranged in her lap were four small limbs, plump and black against the white dress. If there was a head you couldn't see it: it was buried in the girl's stomach. I went from the limbs to her face and back again.

'Betty Lou.' Angeline limped over to me, holding more books. She squatted down, the books wedged between her knees and her chest, and put her hand on the girl's face. She wasn't crying any more. The tears had dried on her cheeks and there was a fixed look in her eye. 'Betty Lou's twin was epigastrus. Do you know what that means? No. Why would you? It means the twin is attached here. To your chest.' She opened another of the books and slammed it down. 'Most of them are epigastrus, but some are like me. Look at this — Frank Lentini. He was just like me, an extra leg. Look, Joe, look where it's attached.'

I held up a hand, stalling her. I couldn't process it all, this science fiction, this Victorian bestiary she was showing me. 'This isn't real. This isn't real.'

' "The deeper aspect of the parasite is composed of large, cystic and tubular structures."' She picked up a piece of paper and read, her voice fierce: ' "And solid organs resembling liver and-"'

'Angeline-'

'"Resembling liver and spleen. There are rudimentary gastrointestinal structures, some bowel sac, for example, a rudimentary genito-urinary system, severe skeletal anomalies compromising the autosite's vertebrae…"' She held up another book, pushing it in front of my eyes so I had to look. 'It's real, Joe. It's real.'

This book showed a young man with a small pagri on his head. He was smiling graciously into the camera and holding up two tiny limp arms protruding from the front of his embroidered tunic. A matching pair of legs dangled below, reaching just below his belt. '© Barnum and Bailey collection', said the photo tag line. 'Until the era of prenatal scans and microscience, circuses were littered with parasitic twins.'

'That's Laloo. He was famous. Made a fortune. But you know the worst thing for him? For Laloo?'

I pushed the book away. I sat down with my back to the doorpost, my hands on my ankles. I couldn't look any more.