Page 16 of Silent Scream

‘I ay hungry,’ Beth said.

Nicola tried not to cringe at Beth's broad Black Country dialect. It was a habit she herself had worked hard to overcome. As children they had both spoken that way but Beth had made no effort to change.

‘Have you eaten today?’ Nicola asked and then silently reprimanded herself. Would she ever grow out of the habit of being the older twin? Even if it was only by a matter of minutes.

‘Yer don't want me here, do yer?’

Nicola stared down into the pasta. Suddenly her appetite was gone. The directness of her sister’s question did not surprise her and it was futile to lie. Beth knew her almost as well as she knew herself.

‘It’s not that I don’t want you here, it’s just that it’s been so long.’

‘And whose fault's that, dear sister?’

Nicola swallowed and took her plate to the sink. She dared not look. She could not face the accusation and hurt.

‘Do you have plans for tomorrow?’ she asked, steering their conversation to something less explosive.

‘Of course. Will yo be working again tomorrow night?’

Nicola said nothing. It was obvious that Beth disapproved of her lifestyle. ‘Why do yer degrade yerself like that?’

‘I enjoy what I do,’ Nicola defended. She hated that her voice had risen an octave.

‘But yer degree in Sociology. It’s a bloody waste.’

‘At least I have a degree,’ Nicola shot back and instantly regretted it. The silence between them was charged.

‘Well, yo took that dream away from me, didn't yer?’

Nicola knew that Beth blamed her for their estrangement but she could never bring herself to ask why.

Nicola stared into the sink, clutching the unit. ‘Why did you come back?’

Beth sighed heavily. ‘Where else would I go?’

Nicola silently nodded and the air between them calmed.

‘It’s all gonna start back up again, ain't it?’ Beth asked quietly.

Nicola heard the vulnerability in her sister’s voice and it made her heart ache. Some bonds could not be broken.

The dirty plate blurred before her eyes and the years without her sister bore down on her.

‘And how will yer protect me this time, big sis?’

Nicola wiped at her eyes and turned, reaching out to hold her twin but the bedroom door had already closed.

Nicola emptied the contents of the second plate. She spoke quietly towards the spare bedroom. ‘Beth, for whatever reason you hate me, I’m sorry. So very, very sorry.’

Ten

At seven a.m. Kim stood before the headstone and pulled the leather jacket tightly around herself. On top of the Rowley hill dominated by Powke Lane cemetery the wind howled around her. It was Saturday and she always made time for family on a Saturday, new case or not.

Grave markers still bore the debris of Christmas gifts left by the living guilty; wreaths reduced to skeletal twigs, poinsettias battered into wilted submission by the weather. A layer of frost glistened on top of the Imperial Red stone.

From the moment she’d found the simple wooden cross marking the space she had saved as much as she could from her two jobs and bought the stone. It had been installed two days after her eighteenth birthday.

Kim gazed at the sparse gold lettering, all she’d been able to afford back then; simply a name and two dates. As usual she was struck by the distance between the two years engraved, no more than a blink.