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“We have to be quiet,” Lucy instructs, squeezing my hand for good measure. Three times. “There’s a step. Lift your foot, Lauren.”
I know what steps are, but I have no idea how high to lift my foot.
I’m twenty years old and have never used stairs before.
Lucy guides my foot and after the first couple of stairs I’ve got the measure of them. I count. Seventeen stairs to the main floor of Waldgrave House. We are both barefoot as we run through the house. I marvel at the feel of carpet beneath my feet. Another first. I wonder how many firsts I’m going to have today. Many.
Lucy squeezes my hand again. This time a signal to stop and be quiet. It’s not such a stretch. I’ve spent my whole life being quiet. My heart pounds as I take in the sounds. Somewhere in a distant room someone is banging. The fitters for the security system, perhaps? It sounds like the ratatatat of a hammer.
“Ok, go,” she whispers.
I grip her hand and follow where she leads. She knows this house. I don’t. I trust her implicitly as she leads me from room to room, corridor to corridor. The one thing that strikes me is that Waldgrave house is so big. I’ve imagined it plenty of times and Lucy has described it in detail, but before now, it was abstract in my mind. The basement must have been a lot bigger than I knew. I only occupied the tiniest part of it.
The air around us changes abruptly forcing me to shut my eyes. I stop and dig my heels into the ground as my face is pounded with icy water. The first tendrils of panic begin to grip me causing my breathing to speed up.
“It’s rain,” Lucy explains gently, urging me forward.
I suddenly feel stupid. I know what rain is. I thought I did, but I likened it to a shower. This is something else entirely. It’s cold. It’s frightening. I trust Lucy, but this is not something I’m prepared for. My heart pounds in my chest and I can’t breathe. I’m scared to open my mouth. It hits me then how utterly unprepared I am. In the last few weeks while planning this day with Lucy, I’d felt excitement over the apprehension, but now faced with reality, I want to go back. Back to my room where I know where everything is. Back to where it’s warm and familiar.
“I can’t!” I say, my words almost incoherent through trembling lips.
“Lucy. It’s just water. It can’t hurt you. I won’t let you get hurt. I promise.” She pulls me into a hug that stills my nerves slightly. This time I press my own fingers into my palm. Three times. “I’m going to hide you in one of the outhouses then look like I’m taking a stroll in the gardens. I need to make sure I’m seen.
This is the part of the plan that has me the most nervous. I’m supposed to hide for twenty minutes alone. It takes every ounce of strength I have to step out of the house. I pull on the shoes that I’ve been holding and follow Lucy over soft ground.
The outhouse turns out to be not as bad as I thought. At least it’s dry. The smell is unfamiliar but not too bad. I have no frame of reference to compare it to. While Lucy is gone, I rifle through my bag. I don’t need anything, but feeling my own things is the only source of comfort I have. I close the bag then move to Lucy’s. I pull out a sweater and inhale it. It smells like fabric softener. Cool Breeze, Lucy said it was called, though it smells nothing like the cool breeze that’s forcing the rain outside. I wonder what other parts of my life have been a lie.
I breathe in slowly, trying to calm the pounding of my heart. This was always the plan. She’ll be back. She promised. Lucy always does what she promises.
Sure enough, a few minutes later, she arrives back. I stuff her sweater back in her bag and we both race across the gardens through the rain.
“You are going to have to climb.” Lucy says, taking my backpack from my shoulders. I know she’s thrown it over a fence because there’s a soft thud as it lands. A second later there’s another thud as hers joins mine.
“It’s a chain-link fence. You can grip the holes and fit the toes of your shoes through. It’s twelve feet tall, so hold tight.”
I run my hand over the fence, getting a feel of it. Just like the stairs, a chain-link fence is something I only know from the TV. I know the sound it makes as people climb it, but this is the first time I’ve been able to get a true sense of it. I wrap my hands around the metal as Lucy gives me a push. It’s not too hard. I climb the top and slowly make my way down the other side. Beside me Lucy jumps down to the ground.
“We’re free,” I whisper. For the first time in my life I’m no longer in the grounds of Waldgrave house.
My pulse is racing with a mixture of panic and wonder. I remind myself that this is only the beginning. The first of many firsts. Lucy is going to take us both somewhere warm. Somewhere where the sun always shines and I will be able to hear the sound of waves lapping against sand.
“Not yet,” Lucy says, breaking me from my thoughts. “That was the easy part. We have a long way to go. We are in a forest. We’ll stay in the forest for most of the day.”
A forest. Trees. I want to stop and reach out and touch their bark, but Lucy has my hand and is dragging me through them at breakneck speed. The rain barely touches us here, thanks to the canopy of leaves above us. I can’t see them, but I can smell them. They are glorious. I only wish I could feel them, but there will be time for that. All the time in the world. I’ll be able to experience it all.
We run, then walk for hours. I tire much more quickly than Lucy, She goes to the gym. I go from my room to the bathroom and back. We might be twins but our bodies are not the same. They haven’t been for a long time.
I feel like we’ve been walking all day when Lucy finally announces that we are at our destination.
A door creaks loudly making me jump, but I’m getting used to new sounds.
“I don’t think he knows about this cabin,” Lucy says as she pulls me inside. The air changes again. Now it’s still. Old. I don’t like the smell of it so I wrinkle my nose. “I found out about it written in our mother’s journals. It belonged to her father before he passed. I think we should be safe here for a couple of days, but no longer. We are going to have to change our appearance. I’m too recognizable.
Being her identical twin, that makes me recognizable too. She guides me to a sofa. As I sit, a plume of dust envelops me, causing me to cough.
“Sorry, Lauren. It’s been a long time since I’ve been here and I guess it needs a good clean.”
I sit still as she moves around the room. The cabin is cold, but at least we’re out of the rain. We’re safe and we’re together. Just like always.
