Chapter Eighteen Jade
Chapter Eighteen
Jade
I borrowed Mum’s silver Renault Clio without asking, but it’s so much easier than the bus.
Public transport is a joke in a suburb like ours – four buses a day, and one of those is a myth.
I’d have had to leave at dawn, and the idea of sitting in a bus full of chattering pensioners and screaming toddlers is enough to put me off the whole mission.
Not that I’m on a mission, exactly. But there’s a reason I’ve driven the forty-one minutes to Lymington with the windows down, even though it’s a freezing November day.
I’m trying to clear my head since the idea for this little experiment popped into it, setting my pulse hammering.
Anyway, Mum’s at work, so she’ll never know about the car, and I’ll be back long before she’s home. I’ll have to top up the petrol, and hopefully she won’t check the mileage. Although you never know with Mum; she can be quite fussy about those sorts of things.
I park on the outskirts of Lymington, where the roads are emptier, and consult Google Maps to get my bearings.
Finally, I check the time, lock the Clio, and walk into town, shoulders hunched.
I have a navy baseball cap jammed low, tinted sunglasses, and my parka zipped to the chin.
I’m nondescript and unrecognisable, I hope.
Though I’m aware that from a distance, my posture and gait are probably hers.
That’s the problem with trying to stay inconspicuous when you’re a twin.
Despite the precautions I’ve taken to appear invisible, now that I’m here, I don’t feel concealed enough.
I worry about my face being too on display.
I cross the High Street like a spy, duck into a charity shop, and buy a wool scarf that smells a little too musty for comfort, just for the extra layer, pulling it up over my chin and part of my mouth.
Then I double back and stake out the Portofino restaurant from the safety of a café across the road.
I order an overly frothy cappuccino I don’t want, so I can sit by the window and watch the show.
Bella is already there, seated at a prime table with an uninterrupted view of the entrance and the street beyond.
I marvel at her face. My face. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of looking at her.
It’s so weird. I can’t explain the feeling it gives me.
An unexpected rush of emotion wells up in my chest, and I take a breath to try to dispel it.
A little voice in my head tells me to abandon this charade and just go and speak to her.
Get to know her like you were going to do originally. She’s your sister, for goodness’ sake.
But then I remember how dismissive she was towards me on the phone.
How up herself she was. I look at her now, at how put-together she is – as I knew she would be – hair in a neat chignon, make-up flawless, the black suit jacket with the subtle velvet lapel – and I know that I’m right to continue with my course of action.
Every time I feel a flash of guilt, I have to remember why I’m doing this.
She has to have a taste of what it’s like to have a bit of bad luck.
Of how it feels to not have everything go your way.
I need to stay strong and not weaken for a moment. If I do, I’ll wreck everything.
She’s scanning her phone, jaw set, pretending to look busy, but I can see she’s really on edge, chewing the skin around the edge of her acrylics.
The moment is so achingly familiar that I almost laugh; she’s displaying the same fragile insecurities as me.
Watching her is like watching myself – if I were rich.
She’s waiting for Joe Sainty, the phantom developer I invented a few weeks ago.
I created him in an afternoon with a Gmail account, a carefully doctored LinkedIn profile, and a mobile number routed through a burner SIM.
I sent emails, played hard to get, teased enough to keep her biting.
She’s come here thinking this is the final pitch, the one that will land her a juicy contract worth thousands.
Instead, she’s going to leave with nothing, and I know because I’m the one who arranged for her to be stood up.
I booked the table in the window, told her what time to arrive.
It’s amazing the power you can wield if you choose to.
I squash any misgivings, sip my coffee, and watch the minutes tick past. Bella’s shoulders tighten every time the door opens, and she glances up, hope flickering and then dying as each new arrival turns out to be not the man she needs to impress, but a bunch of pensioners in bright fleeces, gym mums, or a family with sticky-fingered kids.
She stays for almost an hour, eyes fixed on her phone, refusing to admit defeat even as the waiters begin to hover and the lunch crowd thins.
I admire her tenacity, her professionalism, and I wonder what excuses she’s made for him – a meeting that’s overrun, or he got the time wrong and thought it was one-thirty rather than twelve-thirty.
Maybe a traffic accident where he got snarled up in a tailback.
Eventually, she realises he isn’t coming.
I watch her try to pay for her bottle of water with a credit card, but the waiter waves it away.
She must know him – either that or he’s taken pity on her.
She heads towards the exit with her back ramrod straight, pretending it’s all gone exactly as planned.
I almost feel bad. Almost. Until she steps outside, and I see her ice-cold expression.
I already know she can be a bit of a bitch.
She’s used to things always going her way.
And my earlier twinge of guilt is replaced by a low, hot satisfaction.
This is what it’s like to have the upper hand, for a change.
But as she disappears up the High Street, I realise this is barely going to register for her.
At best, it’s a blip, a mystery to solve, another minor annoyance in a life that will always tilt in her favour.
I’m sure the loss of one potential client happens a lot in her line of work.
No. If I want to affect Bella – properly affect her – I’ll need to do more than catfish her with fake emails and a no-show meeting.
I’ll need to keep piling on the pressure.
In the café, my hands start to shake with equal parts adrenaline and horror because I’ve already crossed a line I didn’t even know I’d drawn.
The reason I know I’ve crossed it is because I wouldn’t dare tell Mum or Zac what I’ve done, or what I’m planning.
They’d both be appalled. I could walk away now, go home, return Mum’s car, and chalk this up to one more failed experiment.
But I know I won’t do that. The urge to continue is too strong.
I want to knock Bella off her axis. I want to ruin her days, the way she ruined mine.
I start tapping ideas into Notes on my phone, and by the time my third cappuccino is cold, I have a list. Change her diary appointments.
Leave more bad reviews for her business online.
Leak something to the local press about a shadowy deal.
All minor things, but if you add them together, they’ll do the job.
I wonder if she has a boyfriend . . . My heart is pounding with possibilities.
When the High Street is all clear, I slip out of the café and circle back to the Clio, careful to keep to side streets and alleyways.
I drive home with the radio blaring, one eye on the mirror, half expecting to see someone tailing me – the police, Bella, Zac.
Of course, that’s just me being paranoid.
No one knows what I’ve done, or what I’m going to do.
And, anyway, like I keep telling myself, they’re only little things.
Nothing really bad or illegal. The important thing is the escalation.
That, and the sense that there are new rules now – my rules.
As I pull into Mum’s parking space at the back of the block, I try not to remember my elation when I first discovered I had a twin (after my initial shock, of course).
I was stunned to realise I have a sister.
It felt like someone had given me a gift.
A built-in best friend for life. A soulmate who might travel by my side and support me.
I can’t think like that anymore, not after her careless dismissal of me on the phone.
True, she didn’t know who I was, but it still felt like a punch in the gut.
I think about Mum’s ruined relationship with her own sister.
For her, it sounds like it’s always been a duel.
Like fencing, but with secrets, and guilt, and an endless struggle over who gets to be the best one. The real one.
So I’m not taking any chances. I refuse to be the loser twin, the one to be pitied. I’m going to be the one in control. I exit Mum’s car and slam the door, striding to the flat with a renewed sense of purpose and a sly smile that refuses to stay off my face.