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

Coursing through the water, Edie concentrated on her breathing and then dived down, deeper and deeper. The underwater world was blue and green and grey, fish flitting between clumps of seaweed and submerged rocks, the occasional bright glint of some sunken litter the only discordant note. She relaxed her body, shut off her mind. She had spent some time with free-divers in Greece and tried to learn their techniques. Although she’d only managed to hold her breath for just over three and a half minutes so far, she was constantly working on it. Swimming was her passion – she’d been in a squad in her school days, won tournaments and medals. At one point it had been thought that she might compete nationally, perhaps even internationally. But then she’d become a teenager, discovered boys, got ill … and those ideas had faded away into the distance. She was still a better swimmer than Laura, though. That was one thing – the only thing – she’d always been best at, and what better place to show off her prowess than here at this idyllic seaside resort?

Now all she had to do was sodding find Laura.

Distant relatives in a nearby town that had so far avoided attack took them in. Fatima and the children, together with Ehsan, Fatima’s dead husband’s younger brother and his son Youssef, who had been at a football match when the bombs hit the house and so survived. Ehsan’s wife Noor had died of breast cancer eighteen months ago, about the same time Fatima’s own parents had been killed in a car accident, and he and Youssef had lived with Fatima and Fayed from then on, along with Fayed and Ehsan’s parents. Death had seemed to surround them for a few awful months, but they had got through it, she and Fayed, because of the strength of their love. Missing her parents and Noor, who she had been close to, had diminished over time. Now death was back with a vengeance, claiming Fayed and so many others.

Fatima had not imagined that they would be subsumed by such loss again and had not contemplated having to pull through once more. At times, her grief was like being in an earthquake, nothing secure, nothing to hold on to; everything shaking and rocking out of control. She longed for her husband and soulmate and knew the longing would never end. But she had two children to care for and had no choice but to do so. In this terrible war, which had seemed to come out of nowhere and to grow and grow until it engulfed them all, like being sucked inside the rapacious mouth of a giant monster, the only way to survive was to concentrate solely on the here and now, on how to get through each day and night and make it to the next sunrise.

Fatima knew she should be thankful that she was not entirely alone, that she still had her brother-in-law Ehsan. But she had always felt a little uneasy around him. He seemed to be constantly looking at her, observing and appraising her, following her with his eyes, noticing parts of her body that he should not. She’d never mentioned it to Fayed; he had a terrible temper that, when provoked, made him irrational and unpredictable and she didn’t want to bring his wrath down on either herself or Ehsan, because she had no reason to cast aspersions against him. All she had were feelings and feelings were not enough to accuse anyone of anything.

Ehsan was a weak man, though, she knew that for sure. A few months ago Fayed had beaten Youssef for bringing a magazine into the house. It contained pictures of scantily-dressed women, as far as Fatima had gathered, although she hadn’t seen it herself and couldn’t imagine where a thirteen-year-old could have procured such a thing. Ehsan hadn’t joined in the beating but he hadn’t stopped it either. That just made him even more unappealing in Fatima’s eyes – Youssef was his son and he should have taken the lead in disciplining him, not cowered in a corner whilst Fayed thrashed the boy.

Despite this, there was one undeniable fact to contend with. She was a widow now, a woman with neither father, husband, brother nor son to take care of her and protect her. That was not a good position to be in at the best of times, and these were the worst of times. Ehsan, whatever his failings, was a necessary evil. She would just have to put up with him, as with everything else that had befallen them. In thinking this, tears flooded her eyes and the grief clenched at her heart once more. Her anguish and misery were more than she could bear; she could not live without Fayed who had always led and guided and protected. She wanted to shout out at his ghost, release her fury that he had not, as he had suggested he would, gone to the office that afternoon but instead had stayed at home and been pulverised by the falling bombs. Why had he betrayed her like this?

But then the tears fell with renewed intensity, as if desperate for release, as she railed with herself for her disloyalty and evil thoughts. Fayed had not meant to die. He had not wanted to leave them. And now that he had, she must somehow and some way, find the inner resources to keep going.

A test of her resolve came from the rightful demands of Safa, the matriarch of the family with whom they had found shelter.

‘We need food – bread and rice, and lots of other things that are nearly finished,’ Safa declared bluntly to Fatima, a few days after they had arrived. She and Marwa were sitting in an armchair. Fatima was trying to read the little girl a story but she kept losing her place on the page, her thoughts drifting away, her voice falling silent. She swallowed hard and fiddled with Marwa’s hair to cover her embarrassment. She should have thought of the need to contribute without having to be asked. Of course the family couldn’t afford to keep them; everyone was struggling enough as it was.

The shock of losing everything had temporarily eclipsed all else from her mind and then the trauma of arranging a funeral for Fayed, once she had managed to get his body recovered, had also taken its toll. It had all been overwhelming and she hadn’t been thinking straight but now that must change. Money must be procured to give to Safa, Fatima understood, immediately the demand had been made. She had not left Safa’s house since they had arrived there so she had had no opportunity to get cash. She had told herself that she was not going out because there was no reason to and she was tired but she knew that really she was scared. Scared to leave the house and not know if it would still be there when she returned. So she and the girls had stayed at home, if you could call it that, but now she had to pull herself together and pull her weight.

‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised to Safa. ‘I’ll go to the bank and withdraw some money.’ As she spoke, it occurred to her what Safa probably really wanted. ‘And – I can do the shopping on my way back. Tell me what I should get.’

‘Bread, rice, as I already mentioned,’ replied Safa, disappearing into the kitchen to check the cupboards. ‘Salt, meat, flour–,’ she continued, reeling off a seemingly endless list of the household’s requirements. Fatima wrote it all down on a scrap of paper.

Armed with the list and a veneer of bravado, Fatima left the girls drawing pictures in Safa’s kitchen. The queue at the bank stretched all the way out of the door but Fatima only needed to use the cash machine so she didn’t join it. Putting her card into the slot, she marvelled at how ordinary life continued amidst the mayhem, or at least the approximation of ordinary life. She could still shop. She could still go to the cinema or to a restaurant if she wished. Not that she could imagine doing either of those two things, but it was somehow unbelievable that such diversions still existed.

The machine bleeped and rejected her card. ‘Transaction not possible’ flashed up on the screen. Fatima frowned at the message. She reinserted her card and tried again. A line was forming behind her, of people anxiously shifting from one foot to the other, looking around them and up at the sky. Air strikes had become more frequent recently.