So when Iggy turns up wanting to go fishing, my first thought is: Are you mad? Then it dawns on me.
‘Is this Sandra’s idea?’ I ask, holding the front door half closed to keep the cold out.
Iggy doesn’t seem to mind. He gives his characteristic confident nod. Iggy knows Sandra already: he’s had several reasons for a police Family Liaison Officer to call at his house.
‘Yes. She thought you might want to get out of the house for a bit. You know, change of scene, and all that malarkey. Think of something else.’
Malarkey. It’s a very Iggy sort of word. He doesn’t have much of a local accent, though he’s not exactly posh either. It’s like he can’t quite decide how his voice should be and uses odd words to fill the gaps.
He goes on: ‘And so, here I am!’ He holds up his fishing rod. ‘Well,’ he adds, nodding to Suzy. ‘Here we are.’
I’m really not sure about Iggy. Dad doesn’t like him at all, ever since – soon after we arrived in the village – Dad caught him stealing a box of crisps from the pub’s outhouse. His mum said the outhouse should have been locked, so Dad’s not keen on his mum either. She keeps bees. She’s divorced from Iggy’s dad, I think.
Still, I have to admit: what Iggy is doing is quite kind, even if it wasn’t his idea. I don’t even like fishing. Suzy, Iggy’s chicken, stretches out her neck for a scratch, and I oblige, burying my fingers deep in her warm throat-feathers. To be honest, I have my doubts about Suzy too. I mean, who has a pet chicken?
Then, as I tickle Suzy, I think: What’s the worst that could happen?
So I put my head round the living-room door. Dad has gone into the kitchen on his phone and Mam is just staring blankly at the television, which is switched off. Gran snores a bit. The room’s far too hot and the remnants of the fire in the wood burner glow white-orange.
‘I’m just going out for a bit, Mam,’ I say. ‘You know – fresh air, an’ that.’
She nods but I’m not sure she completely heard me. All that’s in her mind is Tammy.
Tammy, my twin sister, who has disappeared off the face of the earth.
The tape is still there – POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS – strung across the path where Tammy left her bike, but the police have searched the narrow lakeshore and the path a few times and there’s nobody there now. I haven’t been back since Christmas Eve, when it all happened, and I feel a tightening in my chest as we approach.
‘Are you all right with this?’ asks Iggy. ‘I’m sorry – I didn’t think about, you know … the lake and whatnot …’
‘Thanks. I’m OK.’ There is another approach to the waterside but it’s quite a bit further away.
We leave our bikes at the top of the path and go down the steep path through the woods, and all the while I’m thinking: This is where Tammy came …
We emerge on to the little shoreline. Iggy has been babbling on about a huge pike that lives near the Bakethin Weir, where the reservoir narrows into a sort of overflow lake.
‘When the weather’s really cold, pike often come to slightly shallower water … Using a laser lure is sure to attract him … this line has an eighty-pound breaking strain …’
It might as well be a foreign language to me, but I go along with it because it’s good to be able to think of something other than Tammy just for a while.
It’s mid-afternoon. Already the sky is darkening and the vast stillness of Kielder Water – a deep lilac colour in the near twilight – stretches out in front of us. I gasp at the sight and say, ‘Wow!’ very quietly.
Iggy comes up and stands next to me, staring out across the reservoir.
‘D’you reckon she’s still alive, Tait?’
Oof! His directness kind of throws me, and I feel the pricklings of annoyance until I realise he’s just asking what everybody else wants to ask. Everybody else tiptoes around the subject, very often scared to say anything in case they say the wrong thing.
I sigh. No one has asked me this before, so I even surprise myself with how certain I am. ‘Yup,’ I say. ‘I feel it. Here.’ I touch my chest near my heart. ‘It’s a twin thing.’
Iggy pouts and nods slowly as if he understands, but I don’t think you can unless you’re a twin.
‘Shh,’ I say. ‘Listen.’
I’m hoping that I might hear the whining noise from the night that Tammy disappeared. But the only sounds are tiny waves rippling on to the shore every few seconds and the rhythmic bump, bump of a bright orange fibreglass canoe hitting the long wooden jetty that sticks out over the water. The old planks of the jetty creak under our weight and Iggy unpacks his tackle bag.
The last time I stood on this jetty, I think, was with Tammy, playing our throwing-stones game. It’s basically: who can throw a stone furthest into the lake? But we’ve got rules, like size of stone, best-of-five and so on. Maddeningly, she nearly always wins. She’s good at throwing. Iggy is chuntering on …
‘Here we go. Two eight-strand braided fishing lines, one hundred metres, each with a steel wire trace … Four ten-centimetre shark hooks … one short rod and my good old pike reel, plus a Johnson Laser Lure.’
Iggy – who has a school record that you’d call ‘inconsistent’ – would get an A-star in fishing-tackle speak. From his bag he extracts something that he unwraps from its plastic and holds in front of me. I nearly gag at the smell.
‘What the …?’
‘It’s chicken. It was in the bin behind your pub.’ He adds quickly, ‘And if it’s in a bin it’s not stealing, is it?’
He had explained the plan on the way here, but now – kneeling on the jetty screwing his four-part rod together – he goes over it again.
‘So, this chicken breast is the bait. We paddle out about thirty metres and drop the chicken over the side attached to the buoy.’ He points to a red buoy the size of a football in the bottom of the canoe. ‘That should stop it sinking. It’s attached to the line and my rod. We paddle back, letting out the line, and just wait. Pikey comes along and sniffs the lovely meat …’
Iggy acts this out, his eyes narrowing as he twitches his nose left and right.
‘He just can’t resist it! Bam! Down go his jaws and he’s hooked. We see the buoy bobbing and start reeling him in to the jetty, where you are ready with your phone to get the pictures. Then we release him and we cycle back to fame and fortune, or at the very least, our pictures in The Hexham Courant!’
I keep telling myself that everything will be fine, even as we throw all of the gear into the canoe and I step into the rocking vessel, with the freezing water in the bottom seeping into my trainers. Suzy follows us and I could swear she looks at me funny. She takes one sniff of the rotten chicken and moves as far away as she can, right up to the far end of the canoe.
I hadn’t mentioned anything to Mam about going out on the water, because I hadn’t known till Iggy said so. My conscience is clear. But still …
‘Iggy?’ I say. ‘Do we … erm, do we have life jackets?’ I feel daft saying it, and even dafter when I see the look of disdain on Iggy’s face. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ I say. ‘I can swim.’
We