The Santiago Sisters (36 page)

C
alida was aware of movement. The road dashed beneath them, slick and wet, and she thought of melting snow, a running engine, rumbling and final.

Her head felt heavy and there was a strange, metallic smell. She couldn’t move. Panic fluttered, fast and hectic in her ribcage like a trapped bird. Up front, a shape was hunched, a horrid set to his shoulders of uncompromising intent—and more: pleasure. Exhilaration. He could not wait to reach the place he was going. He had longish hair; she could see it against the light coming through the windshield.

Who are you? Where am I?

Calida could feel the phone in her pocket, on autopilot fumbled for it and desperately tried 911. It bleeped the disconnection. Then she remembered the other digits, the ones she had taken down as she had left Tess’s place.

Easy to find, even through her addled brain. Recent additions.

Bingo.

She felt the phone spring to life.

Mia. Whoever you are, please pick up. Please pick up. Please.

Calida groaned. She tasted chemicals at the back of her throat, and retched.

He heard her. Too quick, too sudden, he reached into the back and a hard object slammed into her head. The black world consumed her whole.

Barcelona

I
n a top-floor studio off La Rambla, Tess and Mia disappeared off the face of the earth. Tess disconnected her phone, ignored the Wi-Fi and avoided going online.

Just the getaway they’d sought.

Barcelona was magical, shot through with dazzling lights. The women got lost in the teeming crowds that bustled through the city. They visited the Sagrada Familia and saw a show at the Gran Teatre del Liceu. They climbed Montjuïc and ate in late-night tapas bars, and listened to live music until the sun came up.

One morning, as the women stumbled home, Mia couldn’t stop talking about a Spanish painter she had met called Gabriel. Tess said, ‘You like him, don’t you?’

Mia couldn’t suppress the glint in her eye. ‘Do you think Alex has moved on?’ she asked, but it was more an appeal for permission than an enquiry.

‘I don’t know,’ said Tess, the words leaden in her throat.

The thought of Alex moving on made her ache, the same ache she had felt when she’d seen him at her wedding, when he’d held her before her car accident, when he’d become engaged to her best friend. It was stupid. She was drunk.

Alex wasn’t interested in her any more. The Vittorio scandal would have put paid to that.
Pirate, you’re not the girl I thought you were …

Alex’s smile darted into her head. The firmness of his chest when she had first met him, bumping into him and spilling her drink down his shirt. Their journey back to Madame Comtois and the jacket he had left behind. She still had that jacket somewhere; it had never occurred to her to part with it.

‘I do like Gabriel,’ Mia confessed, unable to keep the smile off her face. ‘We talked all night. You know when you meet someone and it’s so easy to be yourself? Easier than you thought it could be. There must be a word for that.’

‘Soul mates.’

She remembered what Alex had said to her at her wedding to Steven Krakowski. She had been so mad with him then, but the reason she’d been mad was because he spoke the truth. He spoke to something inside that no one else could see.

You can’t deny where you came from. It’s
inside you.

It’s part of you.

All this time, Tess had thought she was unable. That she would never love a man—she was too damaged. Love was a trap only fools fell into.

Then she guessed that made her a fool. Because the men had been wrong so far, not her. She had met the love of her life when she was fifteen.

Mia elbowed her. ‘Don’t be dumb.’ But she was grinning.

The women fell asleep around six, and didn’t get up until midday.

Mia had resurrected her phone short-term while she hoped that Gabriel would call. Next door, ringing silent and on the last bar of its power, it flickered to life, an unidentified number flashing across the screen.

New York

U
sually, when Simone Geddes felt as downright abysmal as this, she would check into rehab. Now, she couldn’t check into rehab. Nowhere could numb the pain.

Tess was lost.

Her daughter had vanished. Every place, every corner, was demonic.

‘Simone, how are you coping? Have you heard anything?’ Reporters harassed her everywhere she went—and none worse than when she touched down at JFK.

I don’t know
! Simone wanted to yell.
Stay away from
me
!

It occurred to her what they wanted to hear: that Tess was dead. That would satisfy them, wouldn’t it—the hungry, circling vultures, their appetites sated until a fresher story came along? They had driven Tess to this. They had ruined her.

It was their fault.

Simone was in hell. She was sick with worry and dogged by guilt. The last words she and Tess had spoken had been in fury. She understood her sin—oh, she knew it too well. She understood the truth and it made her weep.

Just as her child had been taken from her, so Tess had been
taken without her consent. Simone was responsible for ripping a family in two—just the same as hers.

Tess and her twin should never have been parted.

Ultimately, blood was strong as steel. It could not be broken. It could be diluted, kept apart, separated for years on end, but it would always find its way back. Blood defied death; it was the unbreakable, eternal bond, and she should know that better than anyone. She, who had given up her child, her son; her newborn baby …

I’m sorry,
Simone thought.
I never meant to hurt you.

She didn’t know whether she meant it for Tess or her baby.

That letter she had written, the cunning she had been so proud of but now felt terrible about. The heinous lie she had told about Calida and Julia’s death—not that Tess was any the wiser about that—and its revelation would sever them for good. What had she been thinking? She was a different woman today from the woman she’d been.

If only she could turn back time …

Back to when she visited Argentina; she would be honest with Tess, tell her the truth and on that foundation they would build their union. Because blood was only half the battle—trust was the rest. Now she had broken that, where could they go?

Where are you, Tess
?

Back to her grandparents’ attic: she would snatch her baby back and tell them she was surrendering him over her dead body. They would have to kill her first.

Why didn’t I do that
?

I was fifteen. I was scared. I was a child myself.

Nothing was any comfort. Simone had created a nightmare and was caught in its whirling, sinister epicentre; not knowing which way was up.

Please come home, Tess. Please come back.

Simone wished that Christmas and all its attendant festivities could fuck off as she made her way to the old apartment she still owned off Broadway. It wasn’t much of a place, disused for most of the year, but Tess knew it. Maybe she would be there.

It was a long shot. Really, it was impossible.

But an unseen force drew Simone to that door. Blood—or something like it.

A
lex and Daniel aided the police investigations as best they could.

‘You knew Tess?’

‘You grew up with Calida?’

It was always in the past tense, as if they were fielding polite enquiries at a funeral. Neither dared to voice the fear that it wouldn’t be enough.

‘Why were you at Tess’s house?’

Both had the same reason, just different women. Love.

Calida would have been on her way there, Daniel realised, when he lost her trail. He had tried calling her but she must have changed her number.

‘Do you think she’s with Tess?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Daniel.

‘Has anyone heard from the twin?’

‘No, chief,’ said an officer. ‘We didn’t even know she had a twin.’

‘Seems like nobody did. Get on the phones, McCarthy.’

Alex had been on his way to see Tess. They’d been together in the past, he said. He had only ever loved her. And now she was gone.

Outside the station, Daniel flicked out a packet of cigarettes
and offered Alex one. ‘Teresita … she’s why you bought the farm, isn’t she?’

Two sisters, poles apart by misunderstanding, and two men, from separate walks of life—but somehow, in this place, not so different after all.

‘Yes,’ said Alex.

‘Why didn’t you tell her?’

‘I was going to. I tried. But she didn’t want to know. Until the night we got together, she was … I don’t know, she was stubborn—’

‘She’s certainly that.’

‘She got married to someone else.’

There was a long silence. They both had regrets.

‘What was she like as a girl?’

A smile lifted one corner of Daniel’s mouth. ‘Difficult.’

Alex smiled too. ‘And Calida?’ he asked.

The smile faded. ‘She was my friend.’

The men smoked.

‘I wish I could tell her,’ said Alex. ‘I’d do anything to tell her now, take her home and show her it’s all still there—that her sister’s there, too. She was so cut up about Calida. To see her, to hold her, to make it better … I know I could.’

‘There are things I’d like to tell Calida, too.’

Alex put a hand on Daniel’s shoulder.

‘You will,’ he said. ‘We both will.’

‘
S
ay good night, sister.
’

The blade touched the tender skin on her throat. Calida thought of Christmas unfolding outside, of joy and laughter and lights. That was the last thought she had.

Not yet.

Only it wasn’t her voice, this time. It was Teresita’s.

They were girls again. Outside the ranch, on the wooden veranda …

Don’t go yet. Come back. Come back …

The words she had longed to yell at Teresita’s departing car that day when she’d left.
Forget our fight. It doesn’t matter. Don’t go; please, don’t go …

It happened fast. Suddenly Calida’s wrists were freed, worked from their ties, and with a last fist of strength she pushed against her assailant. For a second she thought she might be dead, departing her useless body and heading for the skies. The propulsion of his weight across the room told her she was not.

She was alive. She was strong.

Shock stalled him.

‘WHORE!’

The man came towards her. In a flash, Calida’s fear was replaced by fury.

How dare you do this to me? Who the hell do you think you are?

Then another question:

Who do you think I am?

In her heart, she knew. The van outside Teresita’s
house, the dress she was wearing from her sister’s closet, the stalker her sister had sensed at her back …

The man swiped at her but he was too slow. Calida tore the gag from between her teeth and spat in his face. He was shuddering now, his eyes wide and darting, floundering at having lost control. How could she have thought he was an old man? He was barely in his fifties, still powerful, still capable of hurting her.

‘You’ll pay for that,’ the man snarled, thrusting against her.

Calida tasted fear. She could feel the man’s stiffness pressed against the inside of her thigh, and choked. ‘Get off me!’ she screamed. But it was no good. He was rubbing himself against her, grunting like a pig. His hand snaked under her clothes and touched her bare skin. Wildly, she recoiled. Vomit surged up her throat.

‘Get away from me!’

He would not be deterred. Calida thought fast.

The knife. In his desire, he had forgotten about it.

The blade glinted on the dark floor and she pounced. Before the man could react, she slashed his leg. With a wet, stunned gurgle, he collapsed.

Calida slashed him again, and again, and again.

He had shown her no mercy.

She should kill him.

‘You did a bad thing to me,’ she rasped, her words—his words—spitting from her lips like fire. ‘I don’t like people
doing bad things to me. If someone does a bad thing to me, I have to do a bad thing back.’ She raised the knife.

‘But first,’ she said, ‘tell me who you are.’

She needed to know.

‘Tell me who you are before I kill you.’

Barcelona

O
n Christmas Eve, Mia called her parents. ‘They’ll murder me if I don’t!’ she protested, but they both knew she’d powered her phone to see if Gabriel had texted.

Tess was in the shower when Mia started banging on the door.

‘What is it?’ Tess turned the water off.

‘I’m not sure,’ came Mia’s voice. ‘Get out here.’

Tess dried and wrapped herself in a towel. She opened the door, hair dripping.

‘What’s happened?’ she asked. She thought of Béatrice and Anton. ‘Mia?’

Mia shook her head. She was icy pale. ‘I’m not sure what it is.’ She handed over her phone. ‘I went online. Apparently, you’ve been kidnapped.’

Tess scanned the item. ‘Of course I’m missing,’ she said. ‘I’m here.’

‘Yes, but look.’ Mia scrolled across. ‘There.’

Tess read:

‘Shit,’ said Tess.

‘You need to go back. They think something’s really happened to you!’

‘But this is crazy. What are they talking about? Who got in what van?’

‘Simone will be going out of her mind—you have to get in touch.’

Tess took Mia’s phone, and noticed she had a series of missed calls from an unidentified number. Thinking it must be Simone, she dialled straight back.

She held the phone to her ear and waited.

Mia was right. It was time to go home.