‘Come on, Sam, just come on,’ pleaded Amanda. ‘Just do it, quickly, come on.’
Sam realized that staying put wasn’t going to help, but she was beginning to panic, and couldn’t bring herself to move her legs. She could clearly see the cracks appearing from under her shoes and spreading along the white surface.
Amanda saw Michelle approaching and urged her sister to hurry. Then she turned back to Sam, and for a brief moment their eyes locked.
CRUNCH
The youngest of the three sisters saw a tear run down the rosy red cheeks of her beloved twin, as a large crack split open beneath Sam’s right foot, before a final crunching of the ice below her feet was followed by a small splash, and Sam was gone.
Amanda stood frozen to the spot as Michelle ran screaming towards the lake. The eldest sister shook the youngest out of her trance and ordered her to go and get their mummy.
‘Go!’ screamed Michelle, ‘go!’
Amanda sprinted as fast as she could up the gentle incline towards the family home, as Michelle tried to get out on the ice to the hole that had appeared just a few moments ago, the hole that she had just seen had swallowed one of her little sisters whole.
CRUNCH
Michelle, bigger than her sister, couldn’t make it close to the hole without breaking more ice beneath her feet. She couldn’t move forward, but through the tears streaming down her face, she could see that Samantha hadn’t yet come back.
CRUNCH
She was forced back, and luckily made a leap towards the shore before a large chunk of ice broke apart beneath her and landing her with the same fate as her little sister.
Claire, the girls’ mother came running down from the garden, screaming at Michelle.
‘Where is she?’ Where is she?’
Claire slowly edged her way onto the ice a couple of feet along the shore, but again, the ice was too weak to hold any substantial weight.
Amanda stayed at the back gate, looking down towards the lake where her mother and Michelle jumped up and down where they stood, frantically screamed at the water, as if by making enough noise, Sam would miraculously rise up from the ice cold water, that smug smile that she loved to give so much plastered across her face.
She watched as her mother dropped to her knees, pulled a phone from her pocket, dialled a number and put the phone to her ear.
Then the lonely twin watched as Michelle tried to give her mummy a hug, only to be pushed away and shouted at.
Amanda swiped away some hair that hung down in her face, and made her way up the garden path and back into the house.
2
The body of Samantha was finally dragged from the water the day after she fell through the ice. A verdict of accidental death was recorded by the coroner and the funeral took place six days later.
Not once had Claire spoken to Michelle, since the accident. The mother was upset, but also angry, and for a few days, including the day of the funeral, she had been drinking heavily into the night, and then sleeping on the sofa for a good part of the days that followed.
The girls hadn’t been to school and the man of the house, Gordon, had taken as many nights off from his busy restaurant as he could afford.
Gordon Spencer was a nice guy at heart, but he didn’t really know how to show affection, or how to comfort his wife or his remaining two daughters. He was hurting of course, but instead of breaking down and giving up and getting angry like Claire, he just had to keep moving.
He kept himself busy by preparing food for the girls, sorting out some of the mess that had accumulated in their home over the years and even started clearing out the attic for some reason, probably so he didn’t have to see the three faces of misery on the females in the house.
The girls spent most of their time upstairs, away from the negative energy of their mother. Amanda had taken to sharing a bed with Michelle, not wanting to stay in the room that she previously shared with her twin. She hadn’t been sleeping well at all. She knew she had been sleeping a little bit at least, for she remembered waking up every morning in the arms of her older and now only sister.
She’d stay awake long into the night, that much she was sure of, and she’d picture that last look of fear on Samantha’s face. She wondered why she hadn’t cried, not once during the last week. Everybody else had shed tears, like her aunt and cousin, even the teachers and classmates from her school.
Her mum had cried everyday between glasses of wine and naps in the living room. Her dad had cried quite a bit too; though usually up in the loft where she guessed he thought nobody could hear him.
Michelle had cried more than most. She had lost her little sister whilst being in charge of the girls and her mother didn’t let her forget it. On a couple of occasions, Claire could be caught staring at her first born child with eyes like daggers, and Gordon had had to stick up for her and try to get Claire to act reasonably. Gordon knew that the death of Samantha was no more than a tragic accident, and defended his daughter like a man who had already lost one.
The start of the next week, Gordon had to return to work at the restaurant, and coincidently, the girls asked their father about returning to school. He said if they wanted to have more time to rest and get use to things then they could, but in his heart, he knew that the last thing they wanted to do was stay home and be near their mother, who grew increasingly agitated and difficult to be around as the days passed.
The girls became closer than ever before.
After school, the sisters would go to the restaurant and do whatever they could to help their father, be it cleaning the pots and pans or chopping vegetables. Of course, Amanda was too young to be of any real use, but there was no way she would go home on her own with her mother there.
The girls would be sent home by Gordon before it got dark, and if they were lucky, Claire would already be passed out by the time they got home. If not, they would be as quiet and courteous as possible in the hope of not aggravating her into abusing them verbally. One evening she threw an empty glass in the direction of Michelle. She missed, but there was no doubt that any bond between the two females had been broken forever.
Sometimes Claire would hug Amanda, and it made her feel guilty and awkward as the surviving twin knew what nobody else in the household knew, that she was the reason Sam had walked onto the ice that night.
Amanda knew that she caused the death of her twin sister, that she was the cause of her mother’s anguish, that she had played a huge part in the breakdown of the relationship between her two closest female relatives, and that the growing stress between her parents was also down to her.
Weeks later, Amanda began sleeping back in her old room.
She had drawn an invisible line down the middle of the bedroom and tidied up Samantha’s side of things as best she could. She arranged all of her sister’s clothes and folded them or hung them up neatly. She gathered Samantha’s toys together and placed them on two shelves that she had cleared and polished.
The last item that Amanda put in place on the higher of Sam’s shelves, the one at eye level, was the teddy bear that was recovered along with her corpse from the lake. Amanda only ventured into Sam’s side of the room at night to kiss goodnight the teddy bear, which she had recently started to call Samantha.
Sleep was still hard to come by for the youngster. She would often lay awake and listen to her family move around the house. Her sister would pretty much only move between her bedroom, the kitchen and the bathroom. Her mother stayed by the sofa, sometimes venturing to the bathroom and only ever into the kitchen for another bottle of wine, or whatever she fancied drinking on that particular occasion.