The Ravenscroft Difference
I’m
not easily frightened but the fear in her voice was palpable and set my nerves
jangling.
‘Calm down, Sis,’ I tried to keep my
voice level and reassuring, ‘and tell me what the trouble is.’
‘I know this is going to sound
silly, but I think I’m being stalked.’ Her voice started to rise in pitch. ‘In
fact I know I am, I’ve just seen him again … outside my flat. Can you come over
right away … please?’
I couldn’t ignore the pleading note
- and she is my only sister - so I told her to sit by the phone and to call me
again if anything happened. We don’t live far apart, but to save time I caught
a cab. For some reason the driver wanted to be chatty but I felt the cell phone
vibrate in my coat pocket. I flipped it open and glanced at the caller ID, it
was her.
‘Sis-‘
‘He’s outside now, I can see him
from the window. Please come quickly.’ She was close to panicking.
‘We’re only a few minutes away.
You’ll be okay in the flat but don’t open the door until I tell you it’s safe.’
I flipped the phone shut and scowled
at the driver. He got the message and accelerated. At the front door of the
apartments I had a good look around. There was no one hanging around dressed in
a hoodie, so I pushed the button for her flat.
‘Is that you?’
‘Yes Sis, you can open the door, there’s
no one about.’
The latch clicked, I pushed open the
door and climbed the stairs. She was waiting for me at her front door and locked
it behind us.
I took off my coat, made us a cup of
tea and listened while she told me the story. Although in reality there was
little to tell. Only that she had noticed a man who appeared to be stalking her.
Sometimes he was outside her apartment. Sometimes he seemed to be following her
and, scariest of all, sometimes he turned up near to where she worked, or went
to meet her friends, or went shopping. As if he knew of her daily routine.
Always dressed in dark blue jeans and a black hoodie with the hood pulled up so
that she could never get a sight of his face.
‘How long has he been bothering
you?’ I said.
‘Several weeks, although at first I
thought it was just a coincidence, you know, that perhaps he just lived nearby
and travelled the same way I did, so it might have been a bit longer than
that.’
‘You’ve not had any problems with
jealous ex-boyfriends or amorous pests at work?’
‘No!’ she almost snapped my head
off. ‘Sorry, no, there’s been nothing like that.’
‘And you never told me, until now?’
I tried hard not sound reproachful.
‘You’d been away and had only just
come back and, well …’
‘I know, we haven’t always been
close, but I am your sister. You should have called me. But you have told the
police, haven’t you?’
‘Yes, but they say they there’s not
much they can do. He hasn’t threatened me or touched me or approached me, he
hasn’t even spoken to me. The police seem to think I’m imagining it, or that
it’s just some harmless, silly young man with an infantile crush on me.’
‘But you have given them a
description and a list of the dates and times when you’ve seen him.’
‘Yes, the sergeant let me write it
down in a statement. But unless he does something threatening …’ She shrugged
her shoulders and her eyes started to fill with tears. I took her in my arms
and held her until the sobs subsided.
‘I feel so much safer with you
here,’ she said dabbing her eyes with a tissue. Waterproof mascara be dammed.
There were black streaks running down her cheeks. I reached for the tissue,
grinning.
‘Give me that face, you look like a drowning
badger,’ I said as I wiped the tears and the black streaks away. She sniffed
and smiled back at me.
‘That’s better. Have you got a
bottle of wine, I think we could both use a drink.’
She pointed at the ‘fridge and I
opened it to find a bottle of chardonnay. I unscrewed the cap and found two
glasses.
‘You really should have called me
sooner. I know we’ve had our differences, but that’s in the past. You know I’ll
always be here for you.’
I held out my arms again and we
shared a reassuring hug but I could still feel her trembling. ‘I’ve no one else
in the world but you,’ she said. ‘Thank you for being here.’
We sat on stools in her tiny kitchen
and sipped the wine. ‘Did I tell you I’ve made a will?’ The wine had put some
of the strength back in her voice. ‘If anything happens to me, you’ll get my
share of the inheritance.’
‘Oh Sis!’ I exclaimed, reaching out
for her hands. ‘You did tell me, but there’s no need to talk like that,
nothing’s going to happen to you. I’m sure whoever’s doing this is quite
harmless. We could confront him together if you like. I’ll bet he’s just a
coward who enjoys winding people up.’
‘I’m not sure if I could face him,
even with you there.’ she replied, her face paling at the thought. ‘I feel so
scared. Would you … stay here tonight?’
‘Of course, if that’s what you want.
But –‘
‘Oh please say yes.’ He voice was
pleading.
‘Of course I’ll stay, I was only
going to ask whether you had enough food in for dinner. If not I’ll pop down to
the shops and buy something.’
‘Okay, but please …’
‘It’s okay Sis, I won’t be long.
Give me your keys so I can let myself in and don’t open the door to anyone.’ I
reached for my cell phone. ‘Call me if you see or hear anything … Oh, shit, my
battery’s flat.’
‘Take mine,’ she said pulling it
from her handbag. ‘I can call you on the landline.’
I went downstairs, opened the door
and looked up and down the street. ‘There’s no one out there,’ I called back up
to her. ‘But its threatening rain so I’ll take your raincoat and umbrella. Is
that all right? I won’t be long.’
She brought them down to me and then, when she had
shut it behind me, I gave the front door a hard shove to make certain it was
securely latched.
It took longer than I had expected
and I was starting on my way back to her flat when I called. Her telephone rang
several times. Pick up, I muttered
and then her voice answered. But it was only the answering machine. I left a
message telling her I was on my way and quickened my pace. By the time I
reached her apartment building I was practically running. My fingers fumbled
with the keys and when I finally got the door unlocked I flung it open and dashed
up the stairs to her apartment. Her door was shut and locked. I pressed my ear
against it but could hear nothing.
My heart was pounding as I slid the
key into the lock, turned it and pushed the door open.
‘Sis,’ I called, softly.
There was no answer. The apartment
was still and the only sound I could hear was the ticking of the carriage clock
on the hall table. It had been a gift from our Ravenscroft grandmother.
I walked the few steps to the
kitchen and eased open the door. My sister was lying on the floor, her eyes wide
and bulging, her face swollen and suffused with blue and her mouth gaping in a strangled
scream. I grabbed a carving knife from the knife block on the kitchen bench.
There were footsteps behind me and I wheeled round.
To be confronted by a man in blue jeans and a hoodie,
his face threateningly concealed by a ski mask. His eyes, unnaturally large in
the black rings of the mask, bored into me. I gripped the knife firmly behind
my back.
‘Bloody hell, you two do look
alike.’
‘We’re identical twins, yes.’
‘You’re not frightened I’m going to kill
you too.’
‘Why should I be, you’ve been well
paid.’
‘Well seeing as there’s the matter
of the inheritance, perhaps I should ask for more.’
I flashed my warmest, most alluring
smile at him.
‘I think you’ll find me satisfyingly
grateful. Why don’t you have a little taste now?’
‘You’re a she devil,’ he replied,
stepping forward as if expecting to be able to put his dirty paws on my body
and then gasping in surprise as I buried the carving knife into his chest. He
slumped to the floor his eyes wide with shock as his lifeblood pumped onto the
vinyl.
I threw myself hard against the kitchen bench, feeling
several ribs crack and the beginnings of a nasty bruise starting on my face.
Then I sank to the floor screaming for help.
And that’s how the neighbours and
the police found me. Sobbing over the body of my dead sister and screaming
hysterically that I had killed a man.
In self-defence, of course.
But the police painstakingly put the story together.
They identified the man I had hired to stalk and to kill my twin sister. They
traced the payments I had made to him and the telephone messages with the
instructions I had left for him. They found the keys I had given him and which
he had used to let himself into my sister’s apartment. And they established my
motive; her half share of the Ravenscroft inheritance that my sister had willed
me.
But they also uncovered the matter of the mistaken
identity. They discovered from my sister’s cell phone records that she was not
in the apartment at the time of the murder and obtained corroboration from
witnesses at the shops who saw her wearing her coat and carrying her umbrella. And
I heard the detective’s chuckle with satisfaction at the irony, at the poetically
just fate of the hired stalker killing the wrong sister; the very one who had
hired him to commit murder.
And, of course, they believed my
story that it was self-defence. Coming home to find the man who had been
stalking me in the act of strangling my sister and then turning on me when he
realized his mistake. I grabbed the knife but never intend to hurt him. I just
wanted him to go away but he lunged at me and it went into his chest. ‘Oh God,
Oh God! What was I to do?’
And we are identical. There is no
one who could ever tell us apart, except the Ravenscrofts’ old dog, which once
bit me, perhaps able to sense the essential, invisible, difference between us.
Sometimes I’m not even sure, now, which one I am myself. She was one the one
who everyone called good and I …well I wasn’t. And I hated her for it and at the same time I
hated myself because I wanted to be more like her. But I don’t hate either of
us anymore. It’s like we were the opposite sides of a coin that have somehow
merged and I am so much more at peace with myself, and happier. And richer.
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