The Thirteenth Tale

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What happened to me in that moment? Inside my head everything came to pieces and came back together differently, in one of those kaleidoscopic reorganizations the brain is capable of.

I had a twin.

Ignoring the tumult in my head, my curious fingers unfolded a second piece of paper.

A death certificate.

My twin was dead.

Now I knew what it was that had stained me. Though I was stupefied by the discovery, I was not surprised. For there had always been a feeling. The knowledge, too familiar to have ever needed words, that there was something. An altered quality in the air to my right. A coagulation of light. Something peculiar to me that set empty space vibrating. My pale shadow.

Pressing my hands to my right side, I bowed my head, nose almost to shoulder. It was an old gesture, one that had always come to me in pain, in perplexity, under duress of any kind. Too familiar to be pondered until now, my discovery revealed its meaning. I was looking for my twin. Where she should have been. By my side.

When I saw the two pieces of paper, and when the world had recovered itself enough to start turning again on its slow axis, I thought, So that's it. Loss. Sorrow. Loneliness. There was a feeling that had kept me apart from other people-and kept me company-all my life, and now that I had found the certificates, I knew what the feeling was. My sister.

After a long time there came the sound of the kitchen door opening downstairs. Pins and needles in my calves, I went as far as the landing, and Mrs. Robb appeared at the bottom of the stairs.

'Is everything all right, Margaret?'

Yes.

'Have you got everything you need?'

'Yes.'

'Well, come round if you need to.'

'All right.'

'They won't be long now, your mum and dad.'

She left.

I returned the documents to the tin and put the tin back under the bed. I left the bedroom, closing the door behind me. In front of the bathroom mirror I felt the shock of contact as my eyes locked together with the eyes of another. My face tingled under her gaze. I could feel the bones under my skin.

Later, my parents' steps on the stairs.

I opened the door, and on the landing Father gave me a hug.

'Well done,' he said. 'Good marks all round.'

Mother looked pale and tired. Going out would have started one of her headaches.

'Yes,' she said. 'Good girl.'

'And so, how was it, sweetheart? Being home on your own?'

'It was fine.'

'Thought it would be,' he said. And then, unable to stop himself, he gave me another hug, a happy, two- armed affair, and kissed the top of my head. 'Time for bed. And don't read too long.'

'I won't.'

Later I heard my parents going about the business of getting ready for bed. Father opening the medicine cupboard to find Mother's pills, filling a glass with water. His voice saying, as it so frequently did, 'You'll feel better after a good night's sleep.' Then the door of the guest room closed. A few moments later the bed creaked in the other room, and I heard my father's light click off.

I knew about twins. A cell that should ordinarily become one person inexplicably becomes two identical people instead.

I was a twin.

My twin was dead.

What did that make me now?

Under the covers I pressed my hand against the silver-pink crescent on my torso. The shadow my sister had left behind. Like an archaeologist of the flesh, I explored my body for evidence of its ancient history. I was as cold as a corpse.

With the letter still in my hand, I left the shop and went upstairs to my flat. The staircase narrowed at each of the three stories of books. As I went, turning out lights behind me, I began to prepare phrases for a polite letter of refusal. I was, I could tell Miss Winter, the wrong kind of biographer. I had no interest in contemporary writing. I had read none of Miss Winter's books. I was at home in libraries and archives and had never interviewed a living writer in my life. I was more at ease with dead people and was, if the truth be told, nervous of the living.

It probably wasn't necessary to put that last bit in the letter. I couldn't be bothered to make a meal. A cup of cocoa would do. Waiting for the milk to heat, I looked out of the window. In the night glass was a face so pale you could see the blackness of the sky through it. We pressed cheek to cold, glassy cheek. If you had seen us, you would have known that were it not for this glass, there was really nothing to tell us apart.

Thirteen Tales

Tell me the truth. The words from the letter were trapped in my head, trapped, it seemed, beneath the sloping ceiling of my attic flat, like a bird that has got in down the chimney. It was natural that the boy's plea should have affected me; I who had never been told the truth, but left to discover it alone and in secret. Tell me the truth. Quite.

But I resolved to put the words and the letter out of my head.

It was nearly time. I moved swiftly. In the bathroom I soaped my face and brushed my teeth. By three minutes to eight I was in my nightdress and slippers, waiting for the kettle to boil. Quickly, quickly. A minute to eight. My hot-water bottle was ready, and I filled a glass with water from the tap. Time was of the essence. For at eight o'clock the world came to an end. It was reading time.

The hours between eight in the evening and one or two in the morning have always been my magic hours. Against the blue candlewick bedspread the white pages of my open book, illuminated by a circle of lamplight, were the gateway to another world. But that night the magic failed. The threads of plot that had been left in suspense overnight had somehow gone flaccid during the day, and I found that I could not care about how they would eventually weave together. I made an effort to secure myself to a strand of the plot, but as soon as I had managed it, a voice intervened-Tell me the truth-that unpicked the knot and left it flopping loose again. My hand hovered instead over the old favorites: The Woman in White, WutheringHeights, Jane Eyre…

But it was no good. Tell me the truth.…

Reading had never let me down before. It had always been the one sure thing. Turning out the light, I rested my head on the pillow and tried to sleep. Echoes of a voice. Fragments of a story. In the dark I heard them louder. Tell me the truth.…

At two in the morning I got out of bed, pulled on some socks, unlocked the flat door and, wrapped in my dressing gown, crept down the narrow staircase and into the shop.

At the back there is a tiny room, not much bigger than a cupboard, that we use when we need to pack a book for the post. It contains a table and, on a shelf, sheets of brown paper, scissors and a ball of string. As well as these items there is also a plain wooden cabinet that holds a dozen or so books.

The contents of the cabinet rarely change. If you were to look into it today you would see what I saw that night: a book without a cover resting on its side, and next to it an ugly tooled leather volume. A pair of books in Latin standing upright. An old Bible. Three volumes of botany, two of history and a single tatty book of astronomy. A book in Japanese, another in Polish and some poems in Old English. Why do we keep these books apart? Why