‘Catriona, how’re you holding up?’
I turn around. ‘It’s not her.’
Rafiq marches to the centre of the room, indicates the chesterfield with the flat of her palm, nods once when I sit down on it. ‘We don’t know anything for sure yet.’
‘You know it’s her boat,’ Ross says. He sits on the footstool, nearly missing the edge of it and ending up on the floor instead. He looks like I do: shellshocked, slow, confused. Maybe he’s not as resigned to El’s fate as he thought.
‘Aye. But at this stage, that’s all. We don’t know if the … deceased woman is Ellice. And while you should both prepare yourselves for that possibility, it’s also important you don’t leap to conclusions before we have any.’
I don’t see how managing both is even possible. ‘Have you seen her?’
She looks at neither of us when she nods. ‘I’ve come from the City Mortuary. It’s why I wasn’t able to be here earlier, I’m sorry.’ She clears her throat, indicates a tall, skinny man standing behind her. ‘Iain Patterson here is a forensic scientist,’ she says. ‘We want to be able to give you both an ID as soon as possible, all right?’
With his solemn frown, black suit, and big case, Iain Patterson looks like a cross between an undertaker and a Mormon. He nods at Ross, and then at me. Sets his case down and starts unzipping it.
‘Ross,’ Rafiq says. ‘Would you mind maybe finding something of El’s? A hairbrush maybe, or a used razor?’
He stays half-squatting on the footstool. ‘I already did that,’ he says, looking up at her. He sounds like a little boy. ‘Didn’t I?’
‘Aye, you did, that’s right. We’ve already got her toothbrush. But two samples are always better than one. Shona, you want to give him a hand?’
Shona helps him up like he really is a child, and moves quickly into step alongside him, her hand hovering at his back as they leave the room.
Rafiq waits until the sound of their footsteps disappears before turning back to me. Her expression is either very grim or very pained, it’s hard to tell which, but that look makes me feel claustrophobic all of a sudden. She’s looking at me too hard, like she’s hoping I’ll trip up. I have no idea why.
‘Catriona, would you give your consent to Iain here taking a DNA sample?’
When I don’t immediately reply, she comes closer, lays a hand on my arm. Her nails are short and neat and white. ‘Initially, we’d only take reference samples from the missing person’s belongings, rather than kinship samples from relatives, but in this case—’
‘Because we’re twins.’
She nods. ‘Because you’re identical twins, aye. You have exactly the same DNA. So, d’you give your consent?’
‘Yes. Of course, yes.’ I look at her. At that expression. ‘Is … is there something else?’
Rafiq is quick to shake her head, force a smile, but I know there is. And I know, too, that whatever it is – whatever it is she thinks she knows, or thinks that I know – she isn’t going to reveal it until she’s ready to. My stomach clenches; the fog in my brain only gets thicker.
Rafiq nods at Iain Patterson, who gets up from his crouch after taking a plastic test tube out of his bag.
‘Afternoon,’ he says with gusto. His voice is so low, it’s more a vibration than a sound. He takes a long cotton bud out of the test tube. ‘Now, if you can just tip your head back a wee bit, and open your mouth wide, I’m going to take a quick swab of the inside of your cheek, okay? It won’t take a jiffy.’
He sounds entirely too cheerful for both his suit and the circumstances, but I nod, follow his instructions. As soon as he puts the cotton bud into my mouth, I have an urge to bite down on it hard, clamp my mouth shut.
‘We may need to take a blood specimen from you at a later time,’ he says once he’s withdrawn the bud and slid it back inside the test tube.
I’m shivering, I realise. I’m not sure when that started, but I don’t seem able to stop.
‘Here, Catriona, sit back down,’ Rafiq says, and her voice is no longer hard, but soft enough to make me want to cry. But I won’t.
When we hear Ross and Shona coming back down the stairs, Rafiq looks relieved, buttons up her jacket.
‘A DNA analysis can take anything between twenty-four and seventy-two hours,’ she says. ‘But obviously, we’ll put a rush on this, okay?’
I nod. Ross nods too, while leaning heavily on the lowboy he fucked me against less than a week ago. I close my eyes, and when I finally manage to open them, Rafiq is giving me that hard probing look again.
‘Try not to worry,’ she says. ‘Either way, it’ll all be over soon.’
After I close the door behind them, I stay in the hallway for a long time, standing inside that silver spear of sun from the fanlight window.
We’re in this together, okay? Ross whispers in my ear. But, of course, when I whirl around to the hallway, he’s not there. It’s just another ghost.
CHAPTER 17
Time is so thick and slow, it’s like I can feel it. Like I could reach down and push my hands inside it, watch it drain through my fingers. Ross and I move listlessly from room to room. We stay close together. Whenever we stop or sit, we touch knees or arms or fingers, and I can’t bring myself to care about all the reasons why we shouldn’t. He shakes; tremors rattle down through him and into me. We’re sitting at the kitchen table when he finally lifts up his head. I realise that he’s as angry as he is afraid.
‘I don’t want El to be dead, Cat.’
‘I know,’ I whisper.
‘I never wanted her to be dead.’
And I don’t know if he means because of us, because of how quickly we’ve turned back towards each other, or because of how strong his grief has always seemed from the start, how certain. I reach for his fingers, weave mine between them. ‘I know, Ross.’
Eventually, I have to be alone. I lock myself in the bathroom, blink at the face in the mirror, its eyes tired and just as afraid. I think of the last time I looked at this face and it wasn’t a reflection. New Year’s Day, 2006. Six months after El’s I win. Six months before we would no longer be teenagers any more. We met at Yellowcraigs. It was two buses and a mile-long walk from my house share in Niddrie. I had no idea where El had come from; didn’t even know if she was still living in the city.
The beach was empty, the waves wild, wind vicious, the day sunny and cold. It was hard to look at her for long. I missed her and Ross so badly it was an angry, wretched ache; a stump that itched and tingled and couldn’t forget what it felt like to be whole. She wouldn’t let him talk to me, although he did and often, phoning me whenever he could – even if both of us could see that it was pointless, more painful than silence. I couldn’t bear to hear about her, about them, about plans that didn’t include me. I couldn’t bear to hear his sadness, his guilt, his pleas for me to understand why. Why it had to be this way.
‘You’ve lost too much weight.’
I couldn’t sleep. I saw too many doctors and took too many pills. I’d even flirted with the idea of suicide, and the only thing to stop me was the thought of how ridiculous I’d look if I failed, how pathetic. That then there would be nothing at all of mine that hadn’t first belonged to El.
I kept looking at her in small snatches. Her skin was bright and her hair blonder. Her nails were red and long. I wondered when she’d stopped biting them.