Chapter Twenty-Eight
Raven
A few weeks later
A group of ravens is called ‘an unkindness’.
For the start of autumn, it’s surprisingly cold, and yet there are people out picking wild blackberries from bushes, big heavy buckets full of them under their arms as they stir up piles of colourful, fallen leaves.
Spiky green conker casings litter the ground, tiered fungi creeping up onto logs.
I walk through the park into town, instantly unravelling my scarf as I step into the warmth of the café.
The Rushmores were just another family on the news to me at first, another missing person’s case getting a ridiculous amount of media attention year after year.
It was Vicky who got me interested in the case, not because I cared about it but because of the way she seemed magnetically pulled towards anything to do with it.
The newspaper articles that cluttered the caravan were my first indication that there was something different about this family.
I didn’t understand at first why Vicky would keep so much information about one family in particular, and so I knew something wasn’t right.
I only noticed it as I got older and more in tune with what was going on around me.
I’d always known pretty much everything was more important than me when it came to her, but there seemed to be something about the Rushmores’s story that bewitched her.
If a story came up on the radio about them, the volume would go up — I’d be shushed no matter what we were doing.
If they appeared on television, she’d lean forward, abandoning her phone.
I didn’t understand her fascination with them in the beginning.
All I knew is that she was giving them and their story a lot more attention than she ever gave me.
To her I was just a means to her child benefit income.
The money that should’ve gone towards caring for me went solely to her hedonistic lifestyle.
I received the bare minimum to keep living and breathing, and yet I was way too scared to ever tell on her.
If I did, someone far worse could get their hands on me.
I was lucky in that, for the most part, Vicky left me alone.
That was a blessing, but it did make it harder to figure out what her interest in the Rushmores was really about.
That took time, digging, and a lot of patience.
Vicky’s name didn’t used to be Vicky. She changed it, whether legally or not I don’t really know, but I found her old driver’s licence in the box.
Gabriella Crisell, a younger, black and white version of herself glaring into the lens of a camera.
At the time the licence had been issued, she lived at an address in Bristol.
That was my first clue that she might be more connected to the Rushmores than she’d want people to believe, because that’s where the Rushmores were from too.
I started investigating the case more, watching old YouTube videos. That’s when I happened across a video of Vicky, getting interviewed as Isabella Rushmore’s old work colleague, Gabby Crisell, an administration assistant. What I couldn’t figure out is why she had changed her name.
I guess you can say that me trying to uncover the truth behind Vicky’s obsession sparked one of my own.
Without meaning to, the Rushmores became enchanting to me.
This family that had endured such evil. I realised the girl I’d seen in photos, the one that clearly came to stay with us for a short time when I was little, was the girl on the news, their daughter.
The revelation sent my jaw to the floor.
I started printing out photographs of the Rushmores, sticking them in my journal, which became more of an album, a time capsule of watching Skyla grow up without her twin sister — and I always wondered if they knew Robin was buried in our back garden.
I didn’t understand why they wouldn’t visit her if they did know.
That’s when I started suspecting maybe Robin was hidden there, in secret.
I guess I should’ve gone to the police when I figured that part out .
. . but I had this burning desire to be a part of the Rushmores’s life.
At first, it started with trying to mimic Skyla’s smile, the way she moved and used her eyes.
It helped that our eye colour is almost identical, and it was easy enough to stay out of the sun, get paler to match her skin tone.
I studied her photographs for hours, the laptop screen glaring in front of me, a stainless-steel swivel mirror right by its side.
I would work on the expressions she’d pull, practise them until my facial muscles hurt.
It was a delicious secret, the only one that was mine.
Impersonating her gave me something to do.
In a world with no friends, no family that cared and nothing else to do, becoming similar to Skyla became therapeutic.
I took a knife to my face when I saw Robin had a beauty spot above her lip, gave myself an impressive looking scar.
It was easier to do that, I thought, than to draw on a mole every day.
People get moles removed all the time, so I decided that was my best option.
I kind of liked the look it gave me too.
Edgy, formidable. In doing so I became the twin Vicky always wanted me to be — and yet it still was never enough for her, for anyone.
I knew all along that I couldn’t have myself too similar to Skyla.
I wanted to leave room for doubt. Am I Robin?
Am I not? That was the fun of it. So I dyed my hair to keep some sort of a question mark in the air before I stepped foot into the Rushmores’s world.
I don’t think I ever meant for it to go as far as it did, but by the time it had, it was too late.
‘So why did you hate me so much?’ Isabella asks, and it hits me that I’ve been so enthralled in explaining the bones of the story, where it all started, that I’ve left out the best part, the meat.
We’re sitting at a quaint Italian restaurant — and when I first got here I really didn’t think she was going to come.
But she’s here, sipping her San Pellegrino at the red-and-white checkered table.
In the background, an accordion plays as freshly baked focaccia has roasted garlic filling the air.
I pick at the bowl of olives between us, leaving only the black ones untouched.
I look at her and smile. A sympathetic smile. I tilt my head to the side, give her a moment to acknowledge it. But she doesn’t get the hint. She doesn’t seem to see that the question shouldn’t be why I did hate her so much, it’s why do I.