The truth is, when Mum first told me she was pregnant I felt all rushing and hot. Not about the join, which we didn’t know about then, or even about them being twins. No, I felt rushing and hot about her being pregnant at all. I can’t really explain it except to say I didn’t want people looking at my mother, I didn’t want them watching her swelling up with Si’s baby. It seemed to be making something very private go very public. And I didn’t like myself for the way I felt, so when it turned out to be twins, and conjoined twins at that, I hid myself in the join. I made this the secret. I didn’t want people to know about the join (I told Zoe, I told Em), because of all the mumbo jumbo talked about such twins down the centuries. I didn’t tell them that I wasn’t so sure about the babies myself, that the idea of the join actually made me feel sick to my stomach. I kept very quiet about that.
Am I a bad person?
A nurse is hovering and sees the babies stir.
“Do you want to hold them, Mum?” the nurse says as if my mother is her mother.
“Yes,” says Mum.
Si helps Mum into a comfortable sitting position while the nurse unhitches one side of the incubator and adjusts some tubes. Then he stands protectively as the nurse puts a broad arm under both babies and draws them out. Si never takes his eyes off the babies and there is something fierce in his gaze and something soft too, that I’ve never seen before.
“There now,” says the nurse as she gives the babies to Mum. They are in Mum’s arms, but they are still facing each other, of course. The nurse has been careful to keep the blanket round the babies as she lifts them and she’s careful now to tuck it in.
One of the babies makes a little yelping noise and Mum puts a finger to the baby’s lips and he appears to suck.
“They’re doing very well,” says Mum, and then she loosens the blanket.
The babies are naked, naked except for two outsized nappies which seem to go from their knees to their waists – where the join begins. Mum leaves the blanket open quite deliberately. Gran turns her head away, but I look. I look long and hard as Mum means me to do.
The babies’ skin is a kind of brick colour, as if their blood is very close to the surface, and it is also dry and wrinkled, as if they are very old rather than very young. Aunt Edie again. But the skin where they join is smooth and actually rather beautiful, like the webs between your fingers. It makes me feel like crying.
Very gently, Mum strokes the place where her children join, and then she draws the blanket back around them.
I realise then I don’t know what the babies are called.
“Richie,” says Mum, “after Si’s father. And Clem, after mine.”
It seems to be enough for Mum. She lies back and closes her eyes and the nurse comes and takes the babies away again. I think Si would like to lift them himself, but he doesn’t dare. Maybe he feels they are too fragile, that he’d hurt them.
Mum seems to have gone into an almost immediate sleep, and just for a moment, I feel we might all be just some dream of hers – me and Si and Gran and the babies all rather unlikely conjurings of her exhausted brain. And then, as I watch her chest rise and fall, I think about the flask and that seems like an even deeper dream. I had been going to tell Mum about the flask, how I found it in the desk and how it was full of something unearthly, something beautiful and scary at the same time and how I captured it, because I feel fierce and soft towards it, just like Si does towards the twins, but that I also feel bad because, as Mr Brand says, you can’t catch things that are supposed to be wild and free and…
“I think we ought to go now,” says Gran.
“Mum…” I say.
“Ssh,” says Si. “She needs to rest.”
By the time we get back home it is almost dark.
“Who’s that?” Gran asks as we turn into our drive.
It’s Zoe, of course, knocking at our front door. She turns as she hears the car pull up. I wind down my window.
“Want to come to the park?” she asks.
Zoe and I often go to the park at dusk. It’s one of our little rituals. We swing on the swings after all the little kids have gone home. We swing and talk. Or Zoe dances. She dances around the swan on its large metal spring. She dances along the wooden logs which are held up by chains, she backflips off the slide. When she’s tired, which isn’t often, we lie together on our backs in the half-moon swing and look at the sky. Or I look at the sky anyway. She looks upwards, but what she sees I don’t know, because people can look in the same place but not see the same things, can’t they?
“Bit late for the park,” says Gran.
But I want to go to the park because I want some private time with Zoe. I want to tell her how beautiful my brothers are, after all; I want to take time, sharing all the details of those little birds and the web of their join. I want to look in her eyes, see myself reflected in the mirror of her, the big sister of two baby boys.
“Please,” I say to Gran. “Just for half an hour.”
I also want to tell Zoe about the flask.
“Well,” says Gran. She looks at her watch. “Oh, all right then. Just while I make dinner.”
“Thanks, Gran,” I say, and I actually lean over and give her a kiss.
Zoe doesn’t know we’ve just come from the hospital and I don’t tell her. I want to be lying in the half-moon when I tell her about the babies. I want her to be the first to know, as she was about the join. A special moment, shared. Luckily, as we head down the cul-de-sac, she’s already chatting to me, she’s telling me about her sister’s boyfriend and his new car and how her mother won’t let the boyfriend drive Zoe about, but she doesn’t mind him driving her sister about, which is ridiculous and…
And soon we’re at the park and Paddy and Sam are there too with a football and two jumpers to mark a goal. Paddy isn’t Paddy’s real name, his real name is Maxim, but he doesn’t look like a Maxim so everyone calls him Paddy. He has a big, round, smiling face and he bounces through life like a beach ball. Happy and full of air. Or at least that’s what I think. Zoe thinks he’s massively handsome and has An Outstanding Sense of Humour. It’s Paddy, in fact, that Zoe has her eyes on.
I’m desperate to skirt behind the conker tree so we can get to the playground unseen, but Zoe is heading straight for the boys.
“Zoe…” I start urgently, clutching at her jacket.
But she’s already pulling away, calling. “Hi! Hi! Hi Paddy. Hi Sam.”
So there I am, trailing behind her.
The boys look up.
“Hey,” Sam says. Sam wears slouchy trousers and likes to think he’s cool. “How’s it going?”
“Great,” says Zoe.
We haven’t seen either boy since school broke up for the Easter holidays.
“We were just going to the swings,” I say quickly.
“Well, in a mo,” says Zoe.
Paddy looks at Zoe and then he looks at me. “Did the babies arrive yet?” he asks.
And there’s a moment where I could just say no, I could just say no and then we could walk away, and I could tell Zoe like I planned to as we lay in the half-moon swing.
“Well, did they?”
“Yes,” I say.
“What?” shrieks Zoe.
“They