The Stolen Twin

Prologue

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‘Bella!’ my husband shrieks, and I mean shrieks. I have to rip the phone away from my ear, but bring it back quickly, every fine hair on my body standing on end. I can tell from the frequency of his voice, the high pitch, something is very wrong.

My first thought is that one of the girls has somehow fallen from their cot, hurt themselves.

I brace myself for a taxi ride to A the girls have been on the verge of lifting themselves up and over the bars for weeks.

‘James? What is it?’ I shout over the pulsing music, Michael Bublé belting out ‘Holly Jolly Christmas’. I fight my way through the crowd gyrating around me trying to make out anything from the other end of the phone.

‘Bella,’ he says again. ‘Robin’s gone.’

I still, the floating restaurant rocking lazily side to side.

There is a moment, an acquiescence in my stillness.

A sombre surrender to a future I hadn’t seen coming.

Out of everything my husband could have possibly said, it is this that I’m least expecting, and I hate to admit it, but my reaction is to laugh.

I actually smile, my lips breaking apart, showing my teeth to my colleagues as I head towards the exit.

It’s a reaction to shock, it must be, because the last thing this is, is funny.

Still, I’ll never forgive myself for laughing, and I’ll never be able to laugh again. Not properly.

I can’t believe it though, even when James says it again. ‘Robin’s gone.’

There’s a hysteria to his voice so alien to me it really is almost comical.

This is a prank. A sick joke. It must be.

Robin can’t be gone. I fed her dinner, bangers and mash.

Most of it she chucked to the carpet with her chubby little hands, flung gravy at our teal walls.

I washed her in the bathtub, listened to her squeals of delight as I poured in the Max Matey bubble bath.

James had lifted her out and pretended she was a rocket ship, launching into space.

He’d wrapped her in a towel, forced her to brush her ten little milk teeth before passing her to me so he could repeat the process with her twin sister, Skyla.

I’d pulled on Robin’s Bluey Christmas pyjamas, part of a matching family set from Tesco I couldn’t refuse.

I’d read her a story about unicorns and gave her a bottle before I left tonight.

I’d breathed in her blueberry shampoo, fought a cry when I’d stepped on the Duplo scattered on the nursery floor.

I’d whispered, ‘I love you,’ and put her down, the way I’ve always done.

She turned on her side and snuggled into her teddy spritzed with my Ghost perfume, eyelids fluttering closed. She was fine.

‘Robin?’ I ask now, blinking once, twice, three times. ‘What do you mean, Robin’s missing? Missing how?’

‘Y-yeah. Robin. Definitely. And I don’t know, I don’t know. I checked the monitor, and she just wasn’t there. She’s gone, Bella.’

He isn’t sure if it’s Robin or Skyla missing, and while that shouldn’t be important right now a prickle of annoyance works its way into my system. You’d think almost twenty-four months after the adoption, he’d be able to tell the girls apart.

‘Skyla?’ I whisper, gripping onto a stair banister wrapped in a Christmas garland dusted with winter berries and pine cones. The needles prick into the palm of my hand, but there are too many questions surfacing to care.

‘Skyla’s still asleep,’ he says, his voice softening.

I breathe out, relieved to know one of our daughters is safe — but how is that fair? How can I be feeling any kind of relief? Robin is missing.

‘James, you’ve been there all night. Haven’t you?’ There’s an accusatory tone in my voice I can’t camouflage — and I don’t want to. How the hell could he not notice someone taking our child from their cot?

‘Yes. Of course I have,’ he responds, hurt scored into his words. The music around me is too loud, the slow vibrations of the bass jarring my heartbeat.

Then how did you miss it? I want to ask.

How did you miss someone coming into our apartment and taking one of our daughters from her cot?

It isn’t a big apartment. It’s pocket size at best. Someone would have had to creep right by the living room to get down the hallway and into the girls’ nursery.

Could he have missed that? Was the television turned up too loud? What the fuck happened?

‘I’m coming,’ I say, my words hollow. I hang up and immediately flick through the apps on my phone.

‘Was that the hubby?’ Gabby, one of our admin ladies asks drunkenly.

She’s swaying, gripping onto my forearm for support.

There’s tinsel wrapped around her neck like a scarf and it takes all of me not to hurl her into the wall and choke her with it.

Right now, I do not have time to deal with the drunk, drinking from their cups of cheer.

‘Please,’ I manage to gasp. ‘Please say there’s an emergency. I have to go.’ And with that I’m out the doors, a cold sweat dripping down my back.

Every tree along the harbourside is strangled, tightly bound with fairy lights, the masts of moored boats, too.

I breathe in roasted chestnuts, cinnamon and clove — it’s overpowering, making it hard to concentrate.

The water laps gently, shimmering under the glow of outdoor heaters.

I push through the people wrapped up in scarves and hats swarming each wooden chalet selling handcrafted gifts, mulled wine and sweet treats along the quay, needing space.

Needing to get home to my family. I knew I shouldn’t have come.

I run through the puddles marking Millennium Square, and beneath the luminous white lights blinking from the Bristol Wheel, I manage to book an Uber.

The driver is infuriating. The little icon of his car, a black Mercedes, bobs up and down the streets, seemingly going in circles for a good seven minutes before he finally pulls to a stop in front of me.

I want to scream at him, to ask what he’s been doing, but I daren’t lose my transportation home.

Not now. It’ll take another twenty minutes to wait for another driver.

Instead I buckle up and when he asks me to confirm where I’m going, all I can do is nod silently and watch the clock, one day turning to another.

I just have no words. Not for this man, not even for the police when I finally arrive outside our estate.

The situation hasn’t dissolved as I was sure it would.

Robin hasn’t been found hunkered down in some corner she’s somehow managed to wedge herself into.

No. I know that even before I speak to anyone.

Helicopters and drones are scouring the harbourside and docks from above.

The cobbled quaysides are lit up with searchlights.

It’s the first jolt to my system that this is very, horribly real.

I run past them all. Past the police and dogs already pressing their snouts to the ground.

Past my husband with his head in his hands at our kitchen table.

I stumble up the staircase, the walls cold against the palm of my hand as I push myself forward.

I don’t stop outside the twins’ nursery, I barrel in.

Skyla flips in her cot, raising her head sleepily in my direction.

Her mop of blonde curls falls into her eyes — just as she blinks me into recognition, a smile adjusts her face.

‘Mummy,’ she grumbles, and I can’t ignore her. Despite everything, I must continue as Mummy. Because I still am a mummy, even if one of my babies is missing.

Nothing is out of place. Before I left this evening, I’d rearranged the girls’ toys, packed everything neatly away.

The board books have all been carefully slotted back into place after they’d ripped most of them down from the shelves.

Their room is undisturbed, almost too perfect.

The window is closed, secure on its latch.

The idea that someone uninvited was in here at all is unfathomable.

‘Bunny,’ Skyla whines as I lift her from the cot, her tiny arms reaching out for her plush toy, the one she won’t go anywhere without.

I glance at Robin’s cot, where an identical bunny lies abandoned.

Robin would bawl until that toy was tucked safely under her chin at night.

But here it is. Her pillow is slightly indented, making me think she hasn’t been gone that long.

I fight the urge to reach out and touch it, press my fingers to where she slept just hours ago. Is it still warm?

The nursery seems darker, somehow. I make for the light switch, slap it on. It doesn’t help, revealing nothing. My daughter, my sweet little Robin, is gone.

Two police officers darken the hallway, shuffling foot to foot. ‘Bella,’ they whisper softly. ‘We need to speak with you now.’

I pull Skyla in, closer, as close as I can make her. Her little legs wrap around my waist, and she nuzzles deep into my neck in that irresistible way toddlers do.

‘Where Robin go?’ she asks, her head swivelling, twisting around the room, searching for her sister, and I think it’s that moment my world shatters.

She is too young to understand what’s happening.

Just shy of two, and for a moment I think perhaps I am too young to understand too.

A ridiculous thought at thirty-six, yet I can’t comprehend what is happening around me.

‘Robin,’ Skyla sings. ‘Where are you?’ Her little voice is haunting as it carries through the night.

I don’t know how to answer her. I can’t. My tongue turns heavy, and my entire body begins to tremble.