The Making of Us (36 page)

She’d bought some Teach Yourself French tapes and had been listening to them in her car as she drove around between home, Libby’s, work and the hospice. She was listening to it now: ‘
J’ai laissé ma porte déverrouillée
’, said a woman with a slightly patronising tone of voice. ‘
J’ai laissé ma porte déverrouillée
,’ repeated Maggie with as much verve as she could muster, wondering if she would ever have cause to tell someone in French that she had left her door unlocked.

She flicked her indicator to the left and turned off the main road into the driveway of Daniel’s home. Marc was due in an hour and she was going to strip Daniel’s bed and put some clean bedding on. She also had some bags of shopping on the back seat, just some basics, some bread, milk, cheese. (Only Cheddar. She’d lingered over the earthily named French cheeses at the counter in Waitrose, but lost her nerve; how could French cheese purchased in Bury St Edmunds possibly compare to the real stuff?) She also had some apples, some bananas and a couple of pots of chilled soup. And a bar of soap. (It was always nice to be the one to start a new bar of soap, even if the existing soap belonged to your own brother.)

She turned off the engine and the patronising lady stopped halfway through saying something about a shoe shop. As she pulled the shopping from the back seat and let herself into the building, Maggie spoke French under her breath. ‘
Je vais à la maison de Daniel. J’ai quelques achats. Je m’appelle Maggie. Comment s’est passé votre vol?
’

Maggie was wearing her new sundress – it was good at her age that she still had nice arms and that her décolletage had not yet turned to crêpe; it was nice to be able to uncover herself on warm days. The dress was white. The day that lay before her felt so fraught with darkness and uncertainty that she had been drawn subconsciously to a colour that signalled newness and innocence. On her feet she wore putty-coloured gladiator sandals, and her highlighted hair was pinned up away from her face.

As she walked through the front door of the flat she heard a text message arriving on her phone. It was from Marc:
Chère Maggie, je suis dans un taxi. Je serai là en une heure
. Exactly an hour later she came to the window at the sound of tyres over gravel and saw a car slowing as it approached the building. Maggie pulled down her sunglasses. It was a taxi and there was a man sitting on the back seat. She put the sunglasses back on to her head and then decided in a fleeting moment of vanity to put them back on her face. The light was harsh today and she wanted to make a good, and hopefully youthful, first impression.

She’d straightened herself out and then she ran down the stairs and greeted him, with a wide and welcoming smile, on the driveway.

She’d had her first French phrase all planned out and repeatedly rehearsed in her head: ‘
Bonjour, Marc, ravis de vous rencontrer
.’ As the cab pulled into the driveway she went to the passenger door and saw him lean forward to open it.
Bonjour, Marc
, she thought to herself,
bonjour, Marc
. But as he climbed out of the back of the taxi, all the words in Maggie’s head just drained away and she was left instead staring at him, with her jaw slightly slack and her hand clutched tight to her chest. Because the man climbing out of the back of a taxi outside Daniel’s flat was, in fact, Daniel.

He smiled at her. ‘You must be Maggie,’ he said. ‘It is lovely to meet you. I am Marc.’

Maggie still said nothing, still stared at the man who called himself Marc but was clearly, in fact, Daniel. ‘I …’ she began, but no words followed.

‘Are you OK?’ he asked, letting the hand he’d put out for her to shake drop back to his side.

‘Yes.
Oui
. Sorry, I … er …’ Her brain slowly started to function again and all the thoughts that had been stuck in a logjam began to filter through. This man was not Daniel. This man was too healthy to be Daniel. This man was Marc. This man, then, was not only Daniel’s brother, but also Daniel’s twin.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Daniel didn’t tell me, he didn’t say … I’m sorry, I don’t know, what is the French word for “twin”?’

The man called Marc smiled at her and said, ‘
Jumeau
.’

‘
Jumeau
?’ repeated Maggie.

‘
Oui
. Yes.
Jumeau. Jumelle
if it is a girl.’

‘Oh,’ she said, and then tried to process another unexpected fact. Marc could speak English. ‘Your brother told me that you couldn’t … that you only spoke French.’ The man smiled and laughed, and at the sound of that laugh Maggie already knew that this man may have the same face as Daniel but he was a completely different person. ‘My brother,’ he said, pulling his wallet from his back pocket to pay for his taxi ride, ‘has not seen me for thirty years.’ He shrugged as if to suggest that no further explanation was necessary.

He paid the driver and bade farewell to him in confident conversational English, and then he turned and smiled widely at Maggie. ‘You are not as I expected either,’ he said.

‘Oh,’ said Maggie. ‘What were you expecting? Or shouldn’t I ask?’

‘No, you should not ask.’ He smiled again, that big, dimpled smile that his brother rarely allowed himself to expend. Then he picked up his small suitcase and glanced at the building in front of him. ‘So, this is where my brother has been hiding all these years?’

Maggie smiled back. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘this is where he lives. Come in. Let’s get you settled in.’

He followed her through the communal hallway and up the stairs to the front door of the flat. ‘I still can’t believe that Daniel didn’t tell me you were his twin,’ she said, as she turned her key in the lock.

‘Well,’ said Marc, ‘it has been a long time. Maybe he forgot?’

Maggie smiled. ‘Maybe,’ she said. She pushed open the door and let Marc into the flat first.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘this is a very nice apartment that Daniel has. I did not know. I was always maybe a little worried that he might not be living comfortably, that maybe he had found himself a little poor. But it seems not.’ He walked slowly around the two rooms on the first level, wandered to the window in the living room and looked down into the leafy communal garden from Daniel’s roof terrace. ‘This is nice, very nice. And you, do you live near here?’ he asked, turning to look at her and throwing her once more into disarray with his facsimile resemblance to his brother.

Maggie averted her face so that he would not see her expression. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I live in town, near the station, that way.’ She gestured vaguely to the east. ‘Shall I show you the upstairs?’

He beamed at her. ‘Of course,’ he said.

He followed her up the softly carpeted stairs and she showed him Daniel’s small eaved bedroom and the eaved bathroom off the landing. He left his suitcase on top of Daniel’s bed and then turned to Maggie and smiled again. ‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘thank you for your help, Maggie. I wonder if it would be possible for me to take a quick shower before we leave for the hospital?’

She started. ‘Oh, yes, of course. Sorry. I should have thought. Have you got everything? I mean, I’ve put in fresh towels and a new bar of soap, is there anything else you’ll need?’

‘No, thank you, Maggie. That will be enough, I’m sure.’

She backed out of the room and tiptoed down the stairs again. She sat on the terrace while she waited for Marc to get ready and stared across the gardens and into the distant landscape. Yet again, Daniel’s reticence to share anything of himself with her had tripped her up. An identical twin. An English-speaking identical twin. A twin who appeared not to have suffered any of the existential damage that his brother must have sustained to have evolved into such a closed box of a person.

She picked at the dry skin around her French-manicured fingernails and she waited. She felt suddenly engorged with questions she wanted to ask. But this was not a day for asking questions. Today was a day for reunions. Questions could wait.

Marc emerged a few moments later, with damp hair and wearing a very smart windowpane-check shirt in shades of blue and a pair of dark indigo jeans. He smelled of soap and cologne, and he looked, as his brother had once done, terrifically handsome. ‘There,’ he said, patting his freshly shaved cheeks, ‘I am now clean. And, I think, nearly ready for the next bit.’

Maggie smiled and got to her feet. ‘How old were you both,’ she began, ‘the last time you saw each other?’

‘We were twenty-four,’ he said. And with the words came a vague tone of regret. ‘Yes,’ he said, dropping his gaze to the floor. ‘It is crazy. Twins. Divided. My mother, well …’ he looked up at her with watery eyes ‘… she has a broken heart. But still,’ he smiled again and clapped his hands together, ‘there is time to talk, no doubt, as we drive. And now, after thirty years, I am more than ready to see him again. So, let us go.’

‘Yes,’ said Maggie. ‘Let’s go.’

In the car, Marc stared quietly through the window for a few minutes. Eventually he turned to Maggie and said: ‘How bad is he? Really?’

She sighed, and peered into her wing mirror as she pulled into the next lane. ‘I don’t know, Marc. Honestly, it’s very strange. It’s so hard to tell. But I would say, well, he’s very bad. I would say, let’s put it like this, I think you came just in time.’ She turned and looked at him, her mouth forced into a tight smile.

He turned away from her and returned his gaze to the view from the window.

She allowed him another moment of silence before speaking again. ‘Listen, Marc,’ she began, tentatively, ‘there’s something else I have to tell you. And this will probably come as a surprise to you, but a few weeks ago Daniel told me something, something quite remarkable. He told me that when he first arrived in this country he was so hard up for cash that he, well, he became a donor. Do you know what I mean by that, a donor?’

‘No, I am not sure …’

‘Well, you know, ladies who can’t have babies, or rather they have husbands who can’t have babies, they can go to a clinic and be artificially, well …’

‘Ah.’ Marc’s head nodded in understanding. ‘Yes. A
donneur
. I do know what you mean.’

‘Good. Well, your brother did that. And he was told by the clinic where he was a donor that his … he … there are four children. Who are his.’

Marc’s full brows rose higher. ‘Yes?’ he asked in a tone of surprise.

‘Yes,’ said Maggie. ‘And he asked me, and I’m still not sure how much this was to do with the drugs or with the disease spreading to his brain, but he asked me to see if I can find them. And I haven’t found them yet. But I’m hoping that I will. And if I do, I’ll be asking them to come … to come and see Daniel.’

She glanced at Marc to see how he had taken this revelation. He nodded his head slowly up and down and stroked his chin. ‘Wow,’ he said eventually. And then he laughed, a soft bubble of laughter at first, followed by a few more bursts. His smile grew wider and then he turned to Maggie and beamed. ‘Wow!’ he said again. ‘That is amazing! You mean, I have nieces and nephews?’

‘Well, yes, I suppose you do.’

‘Oh, this is incredible news! I thought … well, indeed, I thought there would never be any such thing. I have no children, and as far as I was aware my brother had no children. And now, suddenly, there are children! This is wonderful! Just wonderful! Thank you, Maggie. I can see that you are a true friend to my brother. I can see that he is lucky to have met you.’ He smiled gratefully at her and Maggie felt something peculiar happen to her heart. She ignored the sensation and smiled and said, ‘Oh, honestly. It’s no big deal. Nothing anyone else wouldn’t have done.’

At the hospice, they walked the corridors together, side-by-side. It felt other-worldly, to be walking into this place with the before version of her dying boyfriend, and Maggie caught her breath against the oncoming moments.

Daniel was as he’d been the previous day; slack, semi-conscious, grey. Marc caught his breath as he saw him and for a moment almost seemed to be about to turn and leave the room. Maggie heard his breath catch in his throat and laid her hand against his arm. ‘Are you OK?’ she asked. Marc had his fist at his mouth and his other hand thrust in his pocket. He inhaled deeply through his nostrils and then smiled tightly. ‘Yes,’ he said quietly, ‘I think I am. I will be.’ He approached the bed and Maggie followed him.

‘Daniel,’ she said in a loud whisper, touching his shoulder gently, ‘Daniel. It’s me, Maggie. Can you hear me?’

Daniel stirred slightly and his dry mouth opened a crack. A noise exited his lips but Maggie could not make out a word. ‘There’s someone here with me, someone special.’ Daniel groaned again. ‘It’s your brother, Daniel, it’s Marc. He’s here. Can you open your eyes? Can you see?’

Daniel’s eyelids twitched and then his lips turned up into a smile. He opened his mouth and slowly he uttered the word, ‘Marc.’

Marc moved closer to his brother and laid his hand against his shoulder. ‘Yes!’ he said. ‘
Oui, Daniel, c’est moi!
’

‘Marc,’ said Daniel again. He pulled his arm from under the sheets and let his hand drop heavily on top of Marc’s. And then, very suddenly and quite unexpectedly, Marc kicked off his shoes and he climbed atop the bed and he rested himself, in what little space there was, against the side of his brother’s poor wasted body and he draped his arm across his brother’s waist and he held his hand tight within his and then he kissed him on the cheek, just above his ear, hard and passionate.

Maggie was about to say, Oh, be careful, he has an intubation in his stomach, and a catheter, don’t hold him too much. But she caught the words in the base of her throat and left them there. And then she turned and walked out of the room.

An hour later they sat together by the Koi pond. The earlier warm weather had dissipated, leaving behind a disappointingly nondescript afternoon of grey skies. With the chill breeze, Maggie had returned to her car to fetch a cardigan. Marc sat and peered at the gravelled ground between his feet.

‘I must have known,’ he said. ‘It is so strange. But I must have known. To have written that letter when I did, after so many years without any contact. I must have felt it. Because, you know, they say, don’t they, that identical twins have this, how you say … see-kick …?’