Mary

I’m sat on one of the twin’s beds, all clean, a damp towel wrapped around me, hiding my bindings what’re drying quick and getting too tight. My hair’s been combed and braided. The twins unravelled the tangles I thought I’d already ripped out. Four vicious hands tugged and twisted, pulled and tweaked. I feel like I’m not really here. A red ribbon pinches the top of my head; them have fixed it so firm that it stings. Them told me, ‘To be pretty, it has to hurt.’ The twins said my hair is too lovely for my dress what I’ve scrubbed clean and left hung to dry over the side of the washtub.

The one in grey – Ash, she said her name were, when yanking my hair – has gone off to get me an old dress of thems Mam’s from a dress-up box. Hazel is standing by the door watching me, kicking one bare foot against the other.

Ash comes back in with a black linen dress. I take it into the washroom where my drawers and vest are nearly dry. I put them on and pull the dress over my head. It’s far too wide but it covers me from neck to ankle.

I come out into thems bedroom and say, ‘Who did the drawing of the boy?’

Ash sits on the bed on one side of me and Hazel on the other.

Hazel says, ‘I’ll give you two answers – you have to guess the right one. My answers are: My sister. And. You did.’

‘Which sister? Ash or Morgan?’ I ask, quick.

Hazel says, ‘We’ve got a question for you, so we’ll tell you, if you answer our question first.’ She goes to the mirror, picks up a pink ribbon and ties it in her hair. Ash follows her and unties her own grey ribbon and hands it to Hazel, who puts it in her hair as well. Both of them are watching me in the mirror. I hear a thump in the room. Them are thinking so loud the air feels thick.

Them stare at me.

I stare back.

No one in this house has spoke to me of Morgan yet. Them tricked me into saying her name. That will be thems question: Where is Morgan? We’re face to mirror to face to face. Not one of us wants to speak the truth.

But I say, ‘Ask me then.’

‘What’s it like?’

‘What?’

Ash says, ‘Outside. Where you saw Morgan. What’s she hearing that we’re not. What’s she looking at. What can she smell.’

‘What’s she eating, who’s she talking to, what can she see that we can’t see—’

‘You’re not asking these like questions. Just saying—’

Ash says, ‘Too many questions stop sounding like questions when we think them a lot.’

Hazel says, ‘We can stop being friendly. Because we’re—’

‘You dun have any friends.’

‘We’ve got an axe,’ says Ash.

‘Good for you. So?’

‘We can get out whenever we want. We need to plan it—’

‘—make sure outside is better. In case Mum hammers a plank over the hole we axe out of the fence, so we can’t get home.’

I smooth my hand over the soft bedspread. ‘If I tell you what it’s like outside, will you tell me about the picture?’

‘Are there any places we can have?’

‘Houses just for us. Without a fence—’

‘—for us together.’

‘No parents—’

‘—no sisters. Only for twins.’

‘No, the cottages are all lived in. You dun want an old rotten barn, not after living here.’

‘We might.’

‘Are there mice in it?’

‘Aye, I’d have thought so.’

‘That sounds perfect.’

‘It’d be cold in a barn. No toys. No food. You wouldn’t like it. Smells of cow shit. You’d be dirty all the time. And the mice dun do being friendly. Them’d chew off your fingers when you were asleep. Tell me the truth about the picture.’

Hazel frowns at me. ‘Why haven’t you had your fingers chewed off?’

‘I dun live in a barn.’

‘Can we have your house then, since you’re not in it?’

‘There’s a ghost in it.’

‘Morgan will love that.’

‘Never said she were there, did I?’

Ash says, ‘You thought it.’

I glare at her. ‘What do you mean, she’ll love it?’

‘She likes ghosts. More than she likes us.’

‘Come on, she dun.’

‘Does. Wants to live with the little girl one.’

I look round the room. ‘She see any ghosts in this house then?’

‘No, she says it won’t have any, not till someone dies.’

I say, ‘Well, you’d best keep that axe of yours safe then.’

Them glance at the wall-hanging in the corner.

I cross the room to the corner. ‘Can Morgan talk to ghosts – hear what them say?’ I stroke the fabric wall-hanging, run my fingertip over one of the silver-painted trees.

Hazel nods.

‘So if Morgan were in my cottage, and I’m not saying she is, mind, if there were a ghost there, she could ask it a question for me?’

‘Of course she could.’

‘Now, in case your Mam or Da ask, we dun talk about Morgan. And if you tell me about the picture of the boy, I won’t tell your Mam where you’ve got your axe hid.’

The twins come rushing at me, as I find the axe leaning in the corner behind the wall-hanging.

I say, ‘So the picture – who drew it?’

‘It wasn’t me, or Hazel or Morgan,’ mutters Ash. ‘It was you.’

I tell them not to lie to me, and at least tell me something I can believe in.

Hazel says, ‘No, Mum draws the picture, but you draw on top of it. With your eyes.’

‘Load of skank,’ I mutter.

Hazel sighs.

I say, ‘All right. How do my eyes draw the boy?’

Hazel says, ‘Because that’s what you want to see the most.’

Ash poses, her face rests on her hand like she’s in a drawing. ‘Mum draws what she thinks she’s drawing. When someone else looks at it, they see what they really want to see. You saw a boy you love.’

Hazel nudges her, ‘Not what she really drew.’

I slump back on the bed. I thought someone here’d seen him. I thought … I just want to be little like this pair, and I can’t. I curl up on the bed and can hardly breathe, for the bindings are tight round my chest, and them feel like them’re coming loose as I sob. The stain from my tears spreads across the bedspread. Tears come out of my eyes, nose, mouth. I’m brimming with sea.