Free A Dark Dividing by Sarah Rayne Page B

faint, purely so as not to give the old bat the satisfaction.
    But the hovering darkness was with me as we went along, like a huge black bird, beating its wings relentlessly and uselessly against prison bars. The wheels of the chair screeched and scratched on the stone floors, like the sound made when somebody draws a nail across a slaty surface, and the wheels sang a sinister little song to themselves like train wheels. You’ll - never - cope… You’ll - never - cope…
    Yes-I-will… Yes-I-will…
    And then we were there, entering a room painted an unpleasant dark green, and the nurse was pushing the chair across to a wide hospital crib in one corner, and I wanted to get out of the shameful chair and walk across the room to meet the twins properly, but I was still sore and aching from the birth, and light-headed from the chloroform.
    The light from one of the narrow windows slanted across the crib and their eyes were shut tight against the unfriendly world, and if Dr Austin had not explained to me that they were joined together at the waist, I would just have thought they were lying cuddled close together. The one nearer the window had turned her little face to the sunshine as if she was absorbing its golden warmth through her skin, and I wanted to snatch her and her sister up, and take them out of this dour place where people thought it acceptable to put babies in depressing dark green rooms.
    It was suddenly enormously important to give them names, to make them into real people. I looked at them for a long time, seeing all over again how they were clinging to one another, almost as if they were trying to draw strength from one another.
    Clinging. I remembered that I had wanted to give them fashionable flower names.
    ‘Ivy,’ I said aloud, trying it out. ‘Ivy and Violet.’ And then I looked back at the small shut faces and knew those names were quite wrong. Ivy was a creeping, clinging plant; Violet was a shy, shrinking name. The twins would need all the strength they could get: vital not to give them creeping, cowering names. So I said, ‘No, not Violet—Viola.’ Viola had been one of Shakespeare’s nicest heroines: she had been a twin as well, and she had triumphed over all kinds of adversities.
    ‘Viola. That’s very pretty.’ The nurse bent over to write it on a little tag around one of the tiny soft wrists. ‘And Ivy for the other one, did you say?’
    ‘No. Ivy’s a parasite. Sorrel,’ I said, without realizing I had been going to say it. Wood sorrel had grown in the garden at home when I was small; it was pretty and hardy, and even remembering the name made me think of autumn woods and the purple mists of harebells.
    ‘Viola and Sorrel.’
    ‘Yes.’
    Viola and Sorrel.
    They left me alone for a very long time with the twins. As long as you wish, they said. We shan’t disturb you. Are you comfortable in that chair? There’s a cushion here if you want it.
    So I stayed in the room on my own with the babies, and when the nurse had gone I reached both hands down inside the cradle, one hand to each of them, and they each curled a tiny hand around one of my fingers in the way babies always do, only this was different, because they were mine. I stayed with them for a long, long time.

    And now I’m lying awake in the high, narrow bed in my own room and I can suddenly see that the nurses and the doctor, who were so emphatic about leaving me there on my own, had been more than half-hoping I would pick the cushion up and place it over the helpless little faces. Quick and clean and merciful. Except how could I possibly have murdered my babies? How could anyone?

    Later
Have no idea yet how I am going to face Edward. All the recriminations: told you not to go racketing around Town all those months, told you to live quietly, even offered to rent a country house for a few weeks, but you always know best…
    (Would Edward have wanted me to use that cushion tonight? If I believed that, I would have to leave