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

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This is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, living or dead, real events, businesses, organizations and localities are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. All names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.

Killer Reads

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Published by HarperColl‌insPublishers 2017

Copyright © Alex Day 2017

Alex Day asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2017 ISBN: 9780008271282

Version 2017-08-15

A little water clears us of this deed.

Macbeth; William Shakespeare

It was a dry cold night, and the wind blew keenly, and the frost was white and hard. A man would die tonight of lying out on the marshes, I thought. And then I looked at the stars, and considered how awful it would be for a man to turn his face up to them as he froze to death, and see no help or pity in all the glittering multitude.

Great Expectations; Charles Dickens

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

Summer, 2015: Edie

Fatima

ONE: Edie

TWO: Fatima

THREE: Edie

FOUR: Fatima

Edie

FIVE: Fatima

SIX: Edie

SEVEN: Fatima

EIGHT: Edie

NINE: Fatima

Edie

TEN: Fatima

ELEVEN: Edie

TWELVE: Fatima

Edie

Fatima

THIRTEEN: Edie

FOURTEEN: Fatima

FIFTEEN: Edie

SIXTEEN: Fatima

SEVENTEEN: Edie

EIGHTEEN: Fatima

NINETEEN: Edie

TWENTY: Fatima

Edie

TWENTY-ONE: Fatima

TWENTY-TWO: Edie

Fatima

TWENTY-THREE: Edie

Fatima

Edie

Fatima

TWENTY-FOUR: Edie

TWENTY-FIVE: Fatima

Edie

Fatima

TWENTY-SIX: Fatima

Edie

TWENTY-SEVEN: Fatima

TWENTY-EIGHT: Edie

Fatima

TWENTY-NINE: Edie

THIRTY: Edie

THIRTY-ONE: Edie

THIRTY-TWO: Edie

THIRTY-THREE: Edie

THIRTY-FOUR: Edie

THIRTY-FIVE: Edie

THIRTY-SIX: Edie

Fatima

Edie

THIRTY-SEVEN: Edie

THIRTY-EIGHT: Fatima

Edie

Edie

Fatima

Edie

Epilogue

Author’s Note

About the Author

About the Publisher

A shaft of bright sunlight found the gap between the misaligned wooden screen and the window frame and lanced across the room. The girl in the bed groaned, shifted onto her stomach and buried her face in her pillow. Moments later, she turned back onto her side, clutching her stomach as she fought back the nausea. Tentatively, she opened her eyes, feeling her pupils contract painfully against the light and becoming aware of a dull, persistent pounding in her head and a thumping at her temples.

Little by little, Edie Marsh woke up enough to sincerely regret the amount she had drunk the night before, and to chastise herself, as she had many times before, for not knowing when to stop. Hauling herself into an upright position, she reached out for the glass on the floor by her bed and drank, finishing it all even as she screwed up her face at the water’s stale taste and tepid temperature. Holding her hands to her head in an attempt to calm the throbbing, she shut her eyes and tried to concentrate. Something was wrong.

She dropped her hands to her lap and forced her eyes open again, head still drooping down with the effort of it all. Gazing around the room from corner to corner, scouring all pathetic three square metres of it, she did not see what she was expecting to. There was no one there.

No one but her.

The door was firmly closed – no sign that anyone had got up early for a swim or gone out in search of hangover-curing coffee and paracetamol. Even so, in case her eyes could not be trusted, Edie got up and investigated a couple of piles of discarded clothes, picking garments up and immediately throwing them back down again. She even looked under the bed. Then she slumped down onto the single plastic chair, the pulsing in her head suddenly overwhelming and uncontrollable. Massaging her eyelids with her thumbs, she searched her memory. What had happened last night? Hazy snapshots drifted through her mind but the details were sunk in alcohol and wouldn’t surface.

They had planned to sleep squashed into the single bed together, something that they were used to, that they’d grown up doing, of that she was sure. ‘They’ being her and her adored identical twin sister, Laura, whose unexpected arrival at the holiday resort on the shores of the Adriatic sea where Edie was working at midday the day before had filled Edie’s heart with happiness. They’d gone out on the town that evening, for sure. But right at this moment, Edie couldn’t remember how or when they’d got home or anything much of what had gone on at all, during their night out or afterwards.

And the bed, now that she, Edie, had got out of it, was completely empty.

Where the hell was Laura?

The sea looked flat and calm. Benign. Perhaps it always did from the shore, with the lazy ripples of tideless waves lapping the fringes of golden sand that gleamed in the heat. Fatima didn’t know as she’d never been to the seaside before. She wasn’t exactly here for the beach, anyway. Screwing up her eyes against the sun she could see, hazily in the distance, the outline of what she supposed must be the island they would be heading for.

It wasn’t far. Really not far at all. Just a little water in-between. Compared to the distance she had already travelled it barely registered. You could almost swim there.

But she had never learnt to swim and neither had her children. She was sure that Ehsan didn’t know, either, nor his son Youssef. Despair threatened to engulf her, together with an utter weariness that suffused her body and made her bones feel liquid, no longer able to support her weight. She sank to the ground, right there on the seafront promenade, crouching into the scanty shade offered by the low beach wall whilst tourists strolled past, all wobbly pink skin and red noses. They were so well fed and rested, so oblivious . But that was to be expected – they were on their holidays, after all.

A sudden, searing jealousy made Fatima want to stop them, to tear their expensive clothes from their backs, grab their over-priced ice-creams and throw them into the sea. Look at me , she would say to them. This is what it’s like to have nothing . But the problem was that wasn’t what it was like. Having no property, no income, no possessions, was not the problem.