My twin sister. My ‘other half’, Mam used to say, and she was right.
Tamara ‘Tammy’ Tait. Cool name, I think, mainly because of the alliteration. Tammy Tait. And since she went missing, seldom has an hour has passed when I haven’t thought about those three syllables.
An hour? Try five minutes. Try five seconds. It’s exhausting.
Then there will be times when I realise that I haven’t thought of Tammy for a few minutes, and that’s almost worse, so I force myself to replay her in my head, to listen to her again. The way she says ‘Oh, E-thaaaan!’ when she is annoyed with me for something (which is quite often); or how she farted in the bath once when we were little and laughed so hard that she banged her head on the tap, which made her laugh even more even though her head was bleeding.
Then I’ll end up thinking of the last few months, when we moved to Kielder, and started secondary school. We are now in different classes. She has friends who I don’t even know (and at least one who doesn’t even like me. It’s OK, Nadia Kowalski, the feeling’s mutual).
Then thinking of all that makes me sad again, which – weirdly – makes me feel better because it sort of makes up for forgetting to think about her all the time.
And when I am sad, I remember the last words I said to her: I hate you.
I haven’t told Mam that. It would upset her, and Mam and Dad are upset enough. The fact is, Tammy and I said we hated each other far more than we ever said we loved each other.
Which is not hard, because we never said we loved each other. Why would we? It would be like telling yourself.
Still, I wish I hate you hadn’t been the last thing I’d said to her.
It was Christmas Eve, and snow had fallen on the top moor. I think everyone was hoping that a big snowfall would cover the village and make it look like the front of a Christmas card, but it didn’t and, to be honest, it’s not that sort of village anyway.
Kielder is sort of spread out, with a mixture of old and new houses, and no typical ‘village street’ – you know, a baker, a butcher, and a sweet shop like you get in stories. Because of the forest and the lake and the observatory, there are loads of visitors in the summer, but most things shut down in the winter, like the tearooms, and the maze, and Mad Mick’s Mental Rentals, which hires out bikes. Tammy had taken to calling the village Boring-ville. She once said, ‘I don’t belong here. I’m a city person’, as if sleepy Tynemouth – where we used to live – was New York.
There is a pub, though, run by my mam and dad. The Stargazer is set back from the main road, with a swinging pub sign at the end of a short driveway, and a huge Christmas tree outside, and coloured lights in the windows and candles everywhere, because Mam is half-Danish and they’re obsessed with candles.
I can remember almost every detail of that evening, even though I wish I couldn’t. I have gone over it all with the police officers, with Mam, with Dad, with Gran, with reporters and most of all with myself: in my head, again and again and again.
So here goes, ‘one more time from the top’ – as Miss Swann, our music teacher, says.
It was five minutes past six in the evening. Mam had gone over to the pub, where there were going to be carols. Dad was going to dress up and Tammy and I were going to follow later, first going round to the old folks in the village to drop off a Christmas present from Mam and Dad. There was Scottish Sheila, Tommy Natrass and the Bell sisters. They all got a bottle of vodka with a label saying, Happy Christmas from Adam and Mel at the Stargazer.
My job had been to wrap the presents.
Tammy came downstairs with the oblong boxes wrapped in red paper and ribbon in a carrier bag. That’s when we had our row. It started with Tammy holding one of the presents up and saying ‘Nice job!’ sarcastically.
‘I did my best,’ I said.
The paper was scrunched up, the sticky tape all over the place, and the ribbons badly tied. When she held it up, one of the labels fell off. Wrapping presents is hard.
‘“I did my best, Tammy,”’ she mimicked in a baby voice. ‘You always say that! But you never do, do you? You do what looks like your best. You do what people will think is your best. You do just enough so that when you say, “But I did my best”, people will believe you and go: “Aw, poor Ethan – he did his best.” But you know what, Ethan? I know what your best is. I’m your twin, remember? I’m the other half of you. How could I not know? And you haven’t done your best – nothing like it, so don’t lie.’ She waved one of the badly wrapped gifts as evidence, and another label flew off.
‘Where’s your costume?’ I said, to change the subject. We had agreed: we would dress up as elves for the evening. It would be fun.
Tammy rolled her eyes and tutted.
‘You’re so childish, Ethan.’ When she said that, I looked down at my costume from last year’s school parade: striped tights, green buckled jacket and the pointy hat I was holding. I hate it when Tammy says stuff like that: it’s as if being ten minutes older than me gives her some sort of age advantage.
‘But we agreed!’ I said, trying (and failing) not to sound as though I was whining.
Tammy was in her usual clothes: jeans, trainers, thick fleecey top. She’s not big on fashion, is our Tam. She was pulling on her new red puffer jacket, an early Christmas present from Gran, who was staying with us.
‘Well, we can disagree. There. Just done it! I disagree to dress up and prance around Boring-ville like some six-year-old. As for you – go ahead. You look great.’
‘Well, I’m not going to be the only one. I’m going to get changed,’ I snarled, and began to stomp up the stairs.
‘See you at Scottish Sheila’s. I’m going.’
‘You’re not going to wait for me?’
‘No. We’re late as it is. Bye.’ She opened the front door and stepped out into the cold, and that’s when I yelled it.
‘I hate you!’
(I sometimes hope that she didn’t hear me, but she must have done. I yelled it loudly, and she hadn’t even shut the front door.)
Five minutes later, I had taken off the stupid elf costume and had calmed down. Maybe she was right anyway, I thought. I compromised, and put on a sweater with a flashing red reindeer nose instead. (I wasn’t going to give in completely, you understand?) I pulled the front door closed behind me and set off on my bike to catch her up.
Shortly afterwards, I saw Tammy’s bike lying in the ditch at the side of the road, its front and rear lights shining white and red, illuminating the frosty verge, and no sign of Tammy.
I haven’t seen her since.
When people find out that Tammy and I are twins, they sometimes go, ‘Ooh, are you psychic?’, which is so daft that we developed this routine.