S. Tremayne - The Ice Twins

Again, it strikes me, with painful force, how those words are, really, the only evidence we have for believing it was Lydia that died, not Kirstie. But why did I believe those words?

Because there was no obvious reason for her to lie. At that moment of all moments. But maybe she was confused in some bizarre way. And I can see why she might have been confused, given that the twins were always swapping names, swapping their whole identities, during that fateful summer. When they were dressed alike, when they had the same haircut. It was a game they liked to play, that summer, on me and Angus. Which one am I, Mummy? Which one am I?

So maybe they were playing that game that evening? And then disaster happened. And the fatal blurring of their identities froze over, and became fixed, like a flaw in ice.

Or maybe Kirstie is still playing this game. But playing it in the most terrifying way. Perhaps that is why she is smiling. Perhaps she is playing the game to hurt me, and to punish me.

But punish me for what?

‘OK,’ says Angus, ‘this is Torran Island.’

The next five days are all about work, I do not have time to stop and breathe and brood or think too much. Because the cottage is a brutal nightmare. God knows what it was like before Angus ‘prepared it’ for our arrival.

The basic structure of our new home is pretty sound: two gabled white cottages, designed by Robert Louis Stevenson’s father in the 1880s, and knocked into one family house in the 1950s. But the first hour’s exploration of Torran cottage proves, beyond doubt, that no one has significantly touched the buildings since the 1950s.

The kitchen is indescribable: the fridge is rotten, there is black stuff inside. The whole thing will have to go. The cooker is usable, but demonically filthy: on the afternoon of Day One I spend hours cleaning it, till my knees burn from the kneeling, but when the evening light falls – so early, so early – I’m only halfway finished. And I have not even touched the deep ceramic kitchen sink, which smells like it’s been used for butchering seabirds.

The rest of the kitchen is little better. The taps above the sink spout tainted liquid: Angus forgot to tell me that our only running water would be provided by a thin plastic pipe from the mainland – and this pipe is exposed at low tide on the causeway. It hisses with leaks, and lets seawater in; at low tide I can actually see the leaks as I stare out the kitchen window – joyous little fountains of spray, squirting from the pipe, and saying hello to the sky.

Because of this saline taint, we have to boil everything. But still everything tastes of fish. Fixing the water supply is consequently essential – we can’t keep humping bottled water from the Co-op supermarket at Broadford; we can’t spare the cash or the effort. Yet filtering or purifying water with tablets is too tricky and time-consuming, as a long-term solution. But how do we tempt the water company to come out and help us, just three people who chose, of their own volition, to go and live on a ridiculously remote island?

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