No Longer Seeing Double

Once more I was finding it difficult to walk in my shoes and she wasn't helping by trailing along behind me. Sand is not the easiest thing to walk on, but trying to walk on sand with it pouring into your shoes is near impossible. So again I stopped and pulled off each of my red Converse shoes and tipped out the unbelievably small amount of sand in them. It was so frustrating: shoes on, shoes off, every couple of metres. She stopped behind me too. Taking in the view I thought to myself, knowing that she shared and understood my frustrations. I pulled my shoes on and continued trudging along with her still following. It was a comfort to know she was there, even if she wasn't by my side.

Egypt was so strange, so unlike what I'd imagined. In books the pyramids had looked so tiny. Standing at the foot of one now, I peered up at the top and then quickly looked down and leaned on the block in front of me to steady myself; the difference in perspective was making me dizzy. She'd followed me all the way here, but hadn't stepped forwards to touch the stones as I had, so I turned to her.
'Ash...' I stopped; my head was still spinning from gazing at the top of the pyramid.
But of course she wasn't there, not really. I squatted down, pushing my hands against my face, refusing to let the tears come out. It had been our dream to come here, to come here together. She stood watching me, she wasn't a mirage, she was a part of me, she was a memory. She was more than a ghost.
I turned on my camera and lined up some shots, I imagined her standing in every single one of them, pulling faces as she always did, offering to take more pictures of me than those I could snap of her. No one could tell us apart. How we would laugh.
A young American couple passed by, then stopped. He seemed nice enough and she was painfully thin. 'Would you like me to take your picture?' he asked, smiling.
I hesitated, as I always do, before I noticed his big SLR and knew that he wouldn't try to steal my little camera. I smiled and stammered 'sure'.
I stepped back to the pyramid and he took my picture. He returned my camera and I looked at the pale figure in its screen. I could tell people that she took the picture of me... Of course I would know that wasn't true, then they would know and I would seem pathetic. But she is me, I am her - I can't get away from that.

Because we were twins, my mother and her friends thought that it would be cute to dress us up the same. Some people found it eerie when we took it, unconsciously, to the next level and started to pull the same expressions at the same time. Our favourite party trick, the one that really freaked people out (especially in the girl's toilets at school) was when we would do the mirror. We realised from an early age that mirrors were something that we never needed, my reflection was hers and hers mine. We would stand in front of each other completely still, analyse each other and then slowly we would straighten up each other's ties, sort out and correct each other's make up (putting on mascara was the hardest part) and organise each other's hair. This performance, especially at school, got us into trouble a couple of times. It upset the girls who didn't know us. And just like our matching clothes, we shared everything and did everything together. We had the same memories. We were in the same classes, we sat next to each other, more often than not we said the same thing at the same time; visitors would sit stunned when we used the exact same words. At night we would giggle about it, curled up in the same bed next to one another under the duvet, while the other bed lay empty.

I woke up tangled in my bedsheets covered in a layer of sweat. I hadn't expected it to be so warm in Barcelona. My mouth was dry like cotton and my eyes were sore as I squinted across the room, then stumbled to the sink. I twisted the tap and gulped down the warm water; in my mouth it was refreshing, but it aggravated my sore throat. I drenched my face in the water that never seemed to get any colder. I looked up in the mirror. My eyes were pulsing, and only then did the events of the night (and the day) catch up with me. So many drinks down at the bar and torrents of tears that would rival a biblical flood. I didn't remember how I came up to my room. I gripped the edges of the sink and turned round to crawl back onto the bed, but then I stopped. She was lying on the other side. She wore a Captain Hammer t-shirt, her favourite one. She looked up at me, her pale figure still in the moonlight that splashed through the open-curtained window, her eyes as red as mine. I recoiled.
'Get out,' I hissed, my throat still sore, my hand on my pounding forehead while the other steadied me as I held on to the sink. 'Please go. Get out. GET OUT.'
I closed my eyes and turned back to the sink to try and still the nausea building up inside of me. I glanced at the mirror but couldn't see if she was there or not. I couldn't calm my thoughts, just as grasping hold of the sink didn't settle my queasiness. I looked back to the now empty bed, before I gagged and ran to throw up.

'Oh, you two with all your secrets and giggling, what on earth will you do when you grow up?' Mother's words brought us up short; we stopped laughing.
'What do you mean?' Both of us watched her intently.
'Just you might get sick of the sight of each other. You'll both want to grow up and stand on your own, be your own selves.' Mother wiped her hands on her apron and then peered at the cookies in the oven.
We looked at each other. 'Why would we want to do that?' Ash asked her.
'Oh it's just what happens when you grow up.' Mother prodded at the cookies with her fingers, her expression one of concentration.
That night as we lay side by side, Ashley asked me. 'Do you think we'll really want to grow up and become separate people?'
I stared up at the ceiling. 'Only if you want to.'
In the darkness, her voice was soft when she answered. 'No, I don't want to, do you?'
'No.'
'Promise?' She asked.
We were never going to change; we would always be the same. I hesitated. Wouldn't we?
'Promise.' I answered eventually. But I still wasn't certain.
When we reached puberty we were too busy hating our parents, our older brother and some of our childish friends to hate each other. We understood how the other was feeling and we became closer than before. We picked the same subjects at school and were put in the same classes. Then we met our first boyfriends at the same time, nothing special, just two of the boys at school and the four of us would hang out together. At night we would still cuddle up, share stories and feelings about our boyfriends and agree on our dislikes for certain subjects and certain teachers. We enjoyed the confusion we still managed to cause when a teacher tried to address us in class. Nothing came between us then, not even boys.

I awoke again, my eyes still gummy and my head aching. I didn't want to move but I needed to pee. Her arms around me felt solid and warm. I wrapped them tighter around me, enjoying the warmth of her body next to mine. Just like good old times. My eyes were closing again but my bladder still ached. I kissed her fingers before I slid out of her arms. The combination of the cold air and relief half dragged me from my somnolent state. When I stumbled back to the bed I stopped before I reached the covers and admired her tousled long black hair. She had always been a heavy sleeper, nothing could ever disturb her. Then, suddenly, it hit me: this was not her, this was not Ashley. I stared at the nameless girl in my bed. And yet she was so like Ashley. But without a doubt, it was not her. I groped for my cigarettes and lighter, lighting one with my shaking hands. I exhaled and quickly turned to look out of the window. But my attention was not held by the night lights of Budapest. I just stared at the glass' reflection of her sleeping figure. Could I pretend for this one night? If I was still half asleep I could have fooled myself and climbed back into that bed. But I wasn't. If only it was her. I collapsed on the hard chair by the window and pulled my knees in close to me. As I smoked I tried to conjure up an image, a memory of her in my head. But I couldn't. It was just me and the nameless sleeping girl until the sun rose over the skyline.

Our passports ran out at the same time, just as we turned 17, making us eligible for the 10 year passports. Ashley stepped in the photo booth first. She wore the green sweater and the green alice band that swept her hair back leaving her fringe. I wore the black alice band in the same style, but I had a white shirt on. From outside I smiled as I heard her giggling as her photographs were taken. For my own pictures I felt caught: not knowing whether to smile or not, it was hard to pull a neutral pose. Her pictures were ready when I had finished, she slipped them into her bag and pushed me back into the booth where we had our photos taken together, pulling faces in all of them. We got home and filled out the forms, both of us hovering over the "distinguishable features" section. We pulled out all of the photographs from Ashley's bag and looked at them.
'I always prefer your pictures to mine.' I sighed and held her pictures in my hand.
'Me too, I hate the way I look in those photographs. At least you look more neutral and professional in these ones.' She held my photographs in her hand.
'But yours feel more like us, not some other boring person,' I flicked my hand at my own pictures. Eventually we decided that she would use one of mine and I would use one of hers. No one would know the difference anyway.

She looked at me and I looked at her. We both raised our arms in unison and smoothed down one eyebrow. She copied me exactly and I her, after all it wasn't hard; she was my mirror image. I reached forwards to stroke her face at the same time that she reached forwards to feel mine but our fingers touched instead. She felt solid and cold just like the mirror's surface. Only then did I see my true reflection: shadows around my eyes made darker by mascara and eye shadow that left streaks down my face and over my hollow cheekbones; lips that were cracked and eyes looking back at me that showed nothing but emptiness behind. My hair was a tangled mess: it looked back-combed, lank and greasy. Seeing myself doubled but only as a reflection. I curled my fingers up into a fist and collapsed down onto the floor. It took me a few minutes to realise I was sobbing. I knocked the photograph from the mirror's frame and watched it drop to the ground. Black tears rolled down my cheeks and dripped from my chin onto my open shirt.

University was another easy decision made between us. Sociology and history at Bristol. There were no problems for both of us being accepted and we were placed in the same classes. We didn't move into halls; instead we got our two bedroomed flat and lived together for the whole four years. We very rarely slept alone; if either of us met a guy when clubbing we would come back and share our stories lying in the same bed, sharing the exact details so we would both have the same memories. And then she met him, her guy, the man. And then nothing was the same.

I sat in the middle of the Jardin du Luxembourg flicking through a Diane Arbus book I had found in one of the little bookshops on my way to the Panthéon. Lingering over the pages of black and white photographs, I half expected to find myself among them, I finally left the book open on the picture of the twins: two little girls wearing matching dresses with matching alice bands. The photograph reminded me of my own. They unsettled me. The twins reminded me of the days gone by that I had spent in the same way. But instead I now sat here in the middle of Paris alone on a bench. I had travelled through most of Europe alone. I wished everyone could see her ghost sitting next to me. I wished she was real just for a moment. Just for one moment. I closed the book on the twin girls and picked up my bottle of wine that sat by me on the bench. An older couple drifted by, they looked away disgusted as I lifted the opened bottle to my lips and drank. The cigarette in my fingers went out and a single tear escaped my eye. Her ghost didn't move to wipe it away. I just wanted to have the real her next to me.
I really wanted to hold her hand. I couldn't touch her, not any more. I just held onto the crinkled photograph from my wallet, it had been folded over and over, handled until it started to look fragile. There were small rips in the sides from moments when I wanted to shred the picture into little pieces. The single tear fell and splashed on my knee.

He went to Bristol as well. The three of us graduated together with 2/1s. He, Peter, was in every one of our pictures, hanging from her arm like a leech. I wasn't able to get a photograph of just the two of us. I could see from his expression that he was crazy about her, but so was I. He moved into a flat just down the road but practically lived here, always sitting between us. I could tell that he didn't like me, that he just tolerated me for her. The feeling was mutual. But he had come barging into my life. He wanted them to move in together and I was powerless to stop it, even when they decided he should move into our flat since it was bigger. I understood how she felt, she told me every night when she wasn't out with him. But I just couldn't let her go. Luckily he had to wait a month or so for his lease to run out. I thought it would give me time to talk her out of it. But then the worst thing happened only a week or two later. He took her to the theatre and a fancy dinner, he wanted her to dress up, so I persuaded her to wear my favourite dress (it had cost me a fortune) I loved seeing her in it. They walked back home, it was the middle of summer and the nights were warm. I don't know the details, I didn't want to hear them. That was the night that he proposed. And that was the night that she accepted.

I was back on home soil, walking down the coastal path that led to Land's End. I breathed in the sea air, it felt good to be home. I dropped my pack and sat down in the grassy field occupied by sheep. She still followed behind me. I smiled back at her as I lit a cigarette from the last packet I had allowed myself to buy. I had gone to be alone, this trip was to get away from her, but her memory had followed me where ever I had gone. Cold air washed over my skin as I enjoyed the view across the Bristol channel. I tried to pick out specific places along the Welsh coastline, but I only knew Cardiff and Swansea and quickly gave up. I smiled again at her ghost before I got up to continue along the coastal edge.

It was days before she came home to me. She kept radio silence, shutting me out. The whole time I was uneasy and nervous, I sat perched on the edge of my chair with my mobile next to the land line; every so often checking the signal and picking up the receiver to listen for the dial tone. I worried about what had happened to her, we'd never spent this much time apart. I tried to push images out of my mind: Gretna Green. Kidnapping. Murder. Engagement. Drugs. Date Rape. My mind rushed through them all a hundred times over as I stared at the blank television screen. The one thing that didn't cross my mind was that she'd done it willingly. By the time she sauntered through the door excitedly, I could only view her good news through the eyes of jealousy and betrayal. He'd taken her to see a house that he wanted them to live in and she loved it too. We argued when she told me, we fought like cats and that was the first night that we spent under the same roof together in separate beds. She wanted me to move closer to her new home, then she could still see me. I told her I didn't want her to go. We argued for days until she packed her bags and left. It all happened too quickly. I left the flat (and my job) as soon as I could and without telling anyone I escaped from this city, this country. I needed to get away.

I couldn't get a signal on my mobile. Frustrated, I stuffed it back in my pocket. I had passed only three people on this stretch of coast this morning. I saw the large beach at the bottom of the cliff and decided to stray off my path. It was much harder to get down there than I thought. Down the steep steps, clinging to the flimsy handrail until I reached the rocks below. Beyond me the rocks merged into pebbles that gave way to sand that trailed out to the surf. Leaving my shoes and bag on the rocks, I dug my toes into the hard sand and surveyed the beach, surprised at how sheltered and isolated it was. Anyone who could see me would only see an undefined person, a shape, a dot. I faced the sea and the wind blew against my skinny frame, whipping my long hair into my face.
I grasped my hair and yanked it back into a ponytail, vowing to get it cut. She stood beside me. I savoured my last cigarette and her company. My constant twin. I took the folded photograph from my jeans pocket and once again looked at both of us grinning back at me. I had been starting to notice little differences between us: her face was rounder, I was slightly taller. Like little imperfections in a mirror's surface. Carefully, I placed the picture back in my wallet. As I walked back to the rocks she didn't turn or move. She kept her eyes on the sea. Pulling on my shoes, I picked up my bag and left her behind at the creeping surf. Another cold wind swept in, making my eyes sting. I didn't look back. Finally, she is her and I am me. I climbed the steps. Tomorrow, I thought, I will get my hair cut.