The Likeness

It was-this always seems to shock people all over again-a happy childhood. For the first few months I spent a lot of time at the bottom of the garden, crying till I threw up and yelling rude words at neighborhood kids who tried to make friends. But children are pragmatic, they come alive and kicking out of a whole lot worse than orphanhood, and I could only hold out so long against the fact that nothing would bring my parents back and against the thousand vivid things around me, Emma-next-door hanging over the wall and my new bike glinting red in the sunshine and the half-wild kittens in the garden shed, all fidgeting insistently while they waited for me to wake up again and come out to play. I found out early that you can throw yourself away, missing what you’ve lost.

I weaned myself on the nostalgia equivalent of methadone (less addictive, less obvious, less likely to make you crazy): missing what I had never had. When my new mates and I bought Curly Wurly bars at the shop, I saved half of mine for my imaginary sister (I kept them at the bottom of my wardrobe, where they turned into sticky puddles and got in my shoes); I left room in the double bed for her, when Emma or someone wasn’t sleeping over. When horrible Billy MacIntyre who sat behind me in school wiped snots on my plaits, my imaginary brother beat him up till I learned to do it myself. In my mind adults looked at us, three matching dark heads all in a row, and said, Ah, God, you’d know they’re family, aren’t they the spit of each other?

It wasn’t affection I was after, nothing like that. What I wanted was someone I belonged with, beyond any doubt or denial; someone where every glance was a guarantee, solid proof that we were stuck to each other for life. In photographs I can see a resemblance to my mother; nobody else, ever. I don’t know if you can imagine this. Every one of my school friends had the family nose or her father’s hair or the same eyes as her sisters. Even this girl Jenny Bailey, who was adopted, looked like she was probably the rest of the class’s cousin-this was the eighties, everyone in Ireland was related one way or another. When I was a kid looking for things to get angsty about, being without this felt like having no reflection. There was nothing to prove I had a right to be here. I could have come from anywhere, dropped by aliens, swapped by elves, built in a test tube by the CIA, and if they showed up one day to take me back there would be nothing in the world to hold me here.

If this mystery girl had walked into my classroom one morning, back then, it would have made my year. Since she didn’t, I grew up, got a grip and stopped thinking about it. Now, all of a sudden, I had the best reflection on the block, and I didn’t like it one bit. I had got used to being just me, no links to anyone. This girl was a link like a handcuff, slapped on my wrist out of nowhere and tightened till it bit to the bone.

And I knew how she had picked up the Lexie Madison ID. It was in my head bright and hard as broken glass, clear as if it had happened to me, and I didn’t like this either. Somewhere in town, at the bar in a crowded pub or flipping through clothes in a shop, and behind her: Lexie? Lexie Madison? God, I haven’t seen you in ages! And after that it would have been just a matter of playing it carefully and asking the right casual questions (It’s been so long, I can’t even remember, what was I doing last time I saw you?), picking her way delicately to everything she needed to know. She had been no dummy, this girl.

Plenty of murder cases turn into knock-down-drag-out battles of wits, but this was different. This was the first time I had felt like my real opponent wasn’t the murderer but the victim: defiant, clenching her secrets white-knuckle tight, and evenly, perfectly matched against me in every way, too close to call.

By Saturday lunchtime I had made myself nuts enough that I climbed up on the kitchen counter, took down my Official Stuff shoebox from the top of a cupboard, dumped the documents on the floor and went through them for my birth cert. Maddox, Cassandra Jeanne, female, six pounds ten ounces. Type of birth: single.

“Idiot,” I said, out loud, and climbed back up on the counter.

***

That afternoon, Frank called round. At this stage I was so stir-crazy-my flat is small, I’d run out of stuff to clean-that I was actually glad to hear his voice over the intercom.

“What year is it?” I asked, when he reached the top of the stairs. “Who’s the president?”

“Quit bitching,” he said, giving me a one-armed hug around the neck. “You’ve got this whole lovely flat to play in. You could be a sniper stuck in a hide, not moving a muscle for days on end and pissing into a bottle. And I brought you supplies.”