First Born(15)

‘This is the street,’ says Dad.

‘Oh, Paul,’ says Mum, shaking her head.

‘You want to stay here, Liz? You want me to find you a little café or something?’

She looks at Dad and then at me and says, ‘No, I’ll come with you both. I’ll do my best.’

The building is smart. Brown brick. Four storeys with a tiny yard out front with climbing shrubs concealing the ground-floor windows. It’s a whole world away from KT’s old flatshare in London.

Dad buzzes the owner’s apartment bell and she comes down wearing a cashmere wraparound dress and a pair of beige Uggs.

‘How are you all bearing up?’ she asks, with an over-caring expression, and then she sees me and she says, ‘Oh.’

I can’t meet her eyes. She’s visually scanning me, comparing every physical detail to KT.

‘You must be the twin,’ she says. ‘I’m Victoria.’

‘Molly.’

She pauses for a moment, still gazing at me, then says, ‘I’m sorry. Come in, please. Do come in.’

She opens the ground-floor apartment door. There is no crime scene tape. No chalk outline, or piles of disposable CSI latex gloves. There is only order.

A kitchenette with fancy coffee machine and smoothie-maker. A bathroom with proper deep bath and separate shower. I can see the lipstick on the bathroom mirror shelf, the lipstick that was KT’s present for her birthday back in June. For our birthday back in June.

Mum sits on one of the two kitchen chairs and wipes her eyes with a tissue.

The room still smells of KT, and in a way it smells of me. I can hardly breathe. The blankets are folded the exact same way I fold blankets. The tea towels are draped over the oven door handle the way I would do it. The exact same way.

‘She had a good time in this place,’ says Dad, looking around the living room. ‘I’m glad she got to experience the life she dreamed of.’

He says that even though it killed her. There is no malice in his voice but I can tell that Victoria, the building owner, still standing in the doorway, is deeply uncomfortable.

I push the door into the bedroom.

Double bed.

An expensive-looking mattress, but all the bedding has been removed.

A rug from Laura Ashley. The exact same rug was in her London apartment during the final year of her undergraduate course at King’s College. I remember us texting back and forth for weeks because of the price.

‘She was right there,’ says Dad, pointing at the bed. ‘They’ve taken the sheets and pillows, but she was right there. Like she was asleep.’

Opposite the bed is a photo collage. There’s a picture of Mum and Dad outside Nottingham Castle, and a picture of them in her London flat from last year. Then there’s a bunch of Polaroid photos. One of her outside the Bronx Zoo, taken from down by her waist. Another of her with Scott Sbarra, her boyfriend; he looks like a classic jock in a TV series. Square jaw, short hair and a dimple in his chin. There’s a photo of her class at Columbia, including Violet, her friend. She has a Yankee cap on but I can see her red hair underneath. Then there’s a Polaroid from on board a small plane, holding a glass of champagne. There’s another woman in the shot. One final photo of her with a young guy wearing a T-shirt with a clenched fist on it above the words End Chad.

‘Mum, I’ll be back tomorrow,’ says a voice from the other room.

I step out into the living room and Mum and Dad are with Victoria and someone else I can’t quite see until he steps out from behind her.

‘Molly Raven, this is my son, Shawn. He lives downstairs, you might recognise him from the internet, or . . .’

‘Hi,’ he says, looking me up and down.

His bomber jacket isn’t zipped up.

The T-shirt he’s wearing underneath is the same one in the photo on the wall. The one with the fist and End Chad.





Chapter 9


‘Say hello to the Ravens properly, Shawn,’ says the landlady.

Shawn introduces himself again without making eye-contact. ‘Hi, I’m Shawn.’

I walk up to him. ‘Hi, I’m KT’s twin.’

He looks uncomfortable. Maybe because it’s obvious I’m her twin, or maybe he’s just ill at ease. I’d be ill at ease if my mum treated me like a little kid. He keeps wiping his hands up and down his trousers. This guy looks around my age. Veins popping out of his neck and his hands, but he’s not a bodybuilder type, he’s just ultra-lean. Like a marathon runner, or an actor who has trained long and hard for a shirtless scene.

Shawn does not meet my eyes. When he talks, he focuses on the floor, or the wall or just above my head.

‘Really sucks what happened to your sister.’

Sucks? It more than sucks, Shawn.

‘Did you see anything that day?’ I ask.

His mother looks uncomfortable. ‘Oh, the house was totally empty,’ she says. ‘We only let out this ground-floor apartment. Shawn and I were both out. We’ve explained it all to the police. I wish we had been here to call the authorities.’

Dad says, ‘She’s in heaven now. In a better place.’

The landlady crosses herself and says, ‘I need to take a call. Shawn can you look after the Ravens for ten minutes?’

He looks at her like a teenager who’s been asked to tidy his bedroom.