Alex Day - The Missing Twin - A gripping debut psychological thriller with a killer twist

They’d had a great few months in Eastern Europe – Krakow and Warsaw, Prague and Budapest – and then Laura had met a handsome Slovenian man, much older than her, and gone off to the mountains in search of inner peace and really hot sex.

Edie wasn’t sure exactly what had transpired but had a feeling that the discovery that the man was married with children had had something to do with Laura’s sudden disenchantment with her Slovene lover. The rest of the story, the gory details, the retribution that she was sure her sister would have wreaked on such a traitor, she had yet to hear but she was going to enjoy it when she did.

‘I’ve got a bit of dosh left but it’s in the bank at home – I’ve had to cancel all my cards because of the robbery, so I can’t get hold of it at the moment.’ Laura grimaced dolefully. ‘Pants, isn’t it, being skint.’

Edie reached across the table and squeezed her sister’s hand. ‘I can keep us in vodka, no worries. Although,’ she made a sweeping gesture with her head across the crowded forecourt of the bar, ‘the real skill is in not buying our own drinks.’

Laura giggled and nodded. ‘Way to go, Ed.’ Laura was the only person who called Edie ‘Ed’. Edie liked it; it made her feel special and cemented the bond between her and her twin that no one could sever.

Edie continued scrutinising the clientele. She kicked Laura under the table. ‘Those guys over there – you see them? Russian, probably. Let’s see what we can squeeze out of them.’

Laura cast her eyes casually in the direction that Edie was indicating.

‘I’ll drink to that.’ She gave a low wolf-whistle as she appraised the two men, both of whom were dressed in white shirts and chino shorts as if they had just stepped out of a casual wear advert. One sported an ostentatious watch on his left wrist, which even from this distance Edie could tell was a Bvlgari. The other had a pair of mirror sunglasses pushed up onto his head. Both were clean-shaven, blue-eyed and handsome, though one was slim and slight and the other much chunkier – not overweight but solid and sturdy.

It didn’t take long to attract their attention.

***

The rest of the night had passed in a haze of flirting and alcohol and more flirting and more alcohol. Edie recalled going back to the men’s apartment where they had put music on loud and played strip poker, which led quickly to nudity since they were all wearing so little. The watch, she clearly recalled, had stayed firmly on Mr Bvlgari’s wrist although at some point Laura had grabbed the sunglasses and put them on, refusing to give them up for the rest of the evening.

Thinking back on it now, in the cold light of a new morning, tearing her memory apart to remember the details, Edie kept reaching a blank. Disjointed bits of dialogue, snapshots of her and Laura posing naked for pictures on the balcony, of the two of them in the bathroom taking turns to pee, collapsing into heaps of giggles whilst raiding the kitchen cupboards for food, dancing wildly to some Beyoncé number, kept appearing and disappearing in her mind, making no sense and giving no indication of timing or indeed veracity. One thing she knew for certain is that nothing – other than a bit of kissing and cuddling – had happened . It had all just been good, clean fun. Now that Edie had Vuk in her life, the casual flings and one-night stands that had peppered her existence previously no longer appealed. She craved a true partner, a companion, intimacy and love . She longed for Vuk to be the one and only. When – if – he ever reappeared from one of his damn sailing trips, trailing dreary tourists around hidden coves and picturesque harbours, she hoped she would find out for certain that he was of like mind.

In her room, feeling sick and confused, Edie stared around her once more. There really was no one else there. But she herself was there, had woken up in her own room in her own bed and she would never, ever have deserted Laura. That was the code, the rules of the game – one in, both in, never get separated, no one left behind. She slipped her feet into her flip-flops, went to the door and opened it tentatively. The sun hit her full in the face, making her pupils contract painfully and causing the throbbing behind her eyes to intensify. She stepped to the front of the narrow veranda that ran the length of the building and off which each of the staff bedrooms opened. At the far end, by an oleander bush, she could see her scooter, parked haphazardly, leaning heavily to one side.

A dim recollection of leaving it there in the early hours before the dawn surfaced, sending misty tendrils of memory through her sleep-deprived, hungover brain. Had Laura ridden home with her, holding on behind and screeching in alarm when she took a corner too fast or seemed to be coming off the road and heading for the clear water of the bay? She must have done. Edie could not remember unlocking her door, getting undressed and into bed. But she was wearing her pyjamas now so she must have done. It would have been a squash in the single bed with Laura but they had done it before. Had Laura slept beside her last night? She must have done .

It was completely clear that Laura must have done all these things. But beyond that certainty lay nothing. There was absolutely no sign of her.

There was no home.

Her house and those immediately around it had taken a direct hit. The tree-lined street, once green and peaceful, alive with birdsong and the gentle rustle of branches in the breeze, was now filled with noises of an utterly different nature. The sounds of carnage; of pain and despair. A man was running along the street carrying a child, a boy of about six. The boy was screaming with pain, his left leg bent at an impossible angle and his left arm dangling, limp and lifeless, by his side. Tears were pouring down the man’s face so thickly that his vision must have been obscured and his frequent trips and stumbles testified to that. Fatima turned her head away, appalled by their suffering. There was nothing she could do to help.

She stared around her. Charred remains of tree trunks stabbed at the sky where the once majestic maples had provided shade. Colour had been obliterated and replaced by grey, interrupted only by spatters of blood, deep red blotches on the shattered concrete. And everywhere she looked she saw bodies strewn amongst piles of stone and plaster and roof tiles. Or not, in fact, bodies, only pieces of bodies, randomly distributed; an arm here, a blackened and filthy leg, ankle and foot there. A head lay face down in the arenaceous soil of what was once someone’s carefully tended garden; its hijab soaked with so much blood it was hard to tell what its original shade had been.

Fatima walked forward a few steps, incapable of lucid thought. She would have screamed herself, like the young boy, but she had no voice, could not make her vocal chords produce any sound. A couple, ghostly in their dust-coated clothing, were standing on a pile of rubble, frantically but futilely sifting through it, lifting pathetically small pieces of wreckage and throwing them aside, their shredded hands raw and bleeding, making no impact on the huge mound beneath their feet. Fatima knew them; they were her neighbours, a young man and woman with a new-born baby. She put her hand to her head, covering her eyes as she realised what they must be looking for, and staggered on, away from them and their tragedy.

She continued her stumbling progress, the twins beside her. Somewhere here should have been their house with its courtyard and lemon tree, its almond orchard and its years of family history.

The house was gone.

In its place was a body. Its clothes were ripped to rags by the force of the bomb blast but it looked surprisingly intact, no injury visible. It was a body so familiar that Fatima knew instantly who it was.