THE SHADOW TWINS

  FIONA HOLLOWAY

  Copyright © 2025 Black Swan Digital

  The right of Black Swan Digital to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in 2025

  Concept created by Black Swan Digital. Developed by Mark Coleman.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the author or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Have you read?

  A Note From The Publisher

  Also by Fiona Holloway

  1

  The rental was smaller than the photographs had implied, narrower in the hallways, lower in the ceilings, the kind of house that asked you to tuck your elbows in for fear of clipping them as you moved through it. Boxes multiplied wherever she looked, labeled in her rushed handwriting, slanted and tired. Kitchen. Linens. Ella’s Books.

  The movers carried them past Tanya in steady relays, with their heads down, faces closed, professional, careful, and not unkind. It was the fourth time she’d said thank you in ten minutes and the word had started to feel thin on her tongue, like a pleat ironed in too many times.

  Ella pressed against her hip like a shadow. Ten years old and suddenly weightless and heavy at once, all fine bones and unyielding will. She kept one fist hooked in Tanya’s cardigan, stretching the knit, the other around the handle of the pet carrier on the floor, as if she could keep both mother and cat from being moved by sheer grip. The carrier door ticked each time Mittens shifted inside, a small sound with too much power.

  “Careful with that one,” Tanya said, pointing to a box marked Frames, though she had no intention of opening it any time soon.

  “Please could it go against the living room wall? Just… yes, there.”

  The taller mover bobbed his head and navigated the narrow doorway sideways. The shorter one followed with a wardrobe box that made the hallway look like a cardboard canyon. They were competent, almost invisible. Tanya found something soothing in their wordless competence, their action without commentary. If only that could be ordered in bulk.

  “Mom,” Ella said.

  “I’m here,” Tanya said. A reflex before thought. Her hand settled on Ella’s hair, absently, like checking for fever.

  Ella would not cross the threshold of the small bedroom the listing had optimistically called ‘second bedroom, bright’. She angled her body so she could see it from the hall but kept her feet planted. The room was empty except for a mattress on the floor and a low chest of drawers the landlord had left behind. A simple window offered a square of view, a sliver of the neighboring fence, the suggestion of trees. It also held a closet barely large enough for a winter coat and a bad decision. The walls were a faded off-white. Someone else’s former choice still clinging in paint.

  The movers edged past again.

  “Where d’you want this?” one of them asked.

  “Kitchen, please. On the counter’s fine.”

  Ella said nothing at all, which was louder than anything.

  A woman from next door waved from the shared gravel strip. Older than Tanya, neat in a way that looked permanent, with tidy hair, tidy posture, and tidy smile. She had the kind of expression people cultivated in small towns that was welcoming while reserving judgment for later when the door was closed. She held a potted plant in both hands and lifted it slightly, a pantomime of offering, then seemed to think better of interrupting the choreography of boxes and bodies. Tanya raised a hand, awkward, then let it fall. Another box slid past her shoulder.

  “I’ll pop back later,” the neighbor murmured through the open door, shaping the words with a smile that lived nowhere else on her face. The woman’s eyes flicked to Ella, to the carrier at the child’s feet, then back to Tanya. A nod. The plant hovered, then lowered. The neighbor retreated, leaving the possibility of kindness hanging like a coat on a hook.

  “Mittens should stay here,” Ella said, toe on the carrier so it wouldn’t slide on the lino. The carrier door ticked again, a soft knock from inside. A smell of old carpet, lemon cleaner, the faint ghost of other people’s meals.

  “He will,” Tanya said. “For now. We’ll set him up in the laundry where it’s quiet. He’ll like the corner.”

  “He likes under things,” Ella said. “He hides under the blue chair.”

  “We don’t have the blue chair anymore,” Tanya said, then wished she hadn’t.

  She felt Ella go still beside her.

  “We’ll find him a different place to be under. I promise.”

  The tall mover reappeared with the box of cookware.

  “Ma’am?”

  “Counter,” she said again. He placed the box and left, boots respectful of the thresholds. When the door swung open, a slip of bright could be seen, showing the narrow street, a slice of the coast road, the suggestion of distance. Tanya looked away quickly. She had picked Port Orford for its scale. It had streets that ended, edges you could count, a town you could cross on a determined walk. She had wanted borders she could name.

  “Mom,” Ella said again, softer now.

  “I’m right here.” Tanya tucked the hair behind Ella’s ear and kept her palm at the child’s temple a second longer than necessary. Counting. One-two. Three-four. The old ritual.

  The smaller mover paused in the hall, peering into the second bedroom.

  “This one for the kid, right?” he said, and then, seeing Ella’s eyes, amended, “For your daughter?”

  “Yes,” Tanya said. “But the bed frame can stay flat-packed until later. We’ll… she’ll use the mattress tonight.” She could hear herself as though from far away with her careful voice, the logistics. The part of her that could manage a checklist. A useful part. But a thin part.

  Ella’s hand pulled the cardigan again.

  “Don’t go far,” she said.

  “I won’t,” Tanya said. It came out before she could consider whether it was true. The new house had a kitchen you could cross in six steps and a living room you could cross in eight and still the space between one room and the next felt like a place you could lose a person. She stayed within reach. Every time the movers asked a question she answered from the same square of floor, turning with her daughter’s tug.

  “Kitchen boxes are done,” the tall mover called. “Sofa?”

  “Living room,” Tanya said. “Against the back wall. Please.”

  She pictured Ella sleeping there if she refused the bed. She’d slept in far stranger shapes this last year, curled around her own ribs like something bracing for impact. Tanya could carry her to bed. She could carry her anywhere. Her arms would give out long before her will did.

  The phone buzzed in her pocket. Jonah on the screen. She let it ring out, then felt the absence of his voice like a draft and thumbed redial before she could dissuade herself.

  He answered on the third ring as if he had been looking at her name, deciding.

  “You’re there,” he said. Not a question.

  “We’re here,” she said, and hated the way we sounded like a defense.

  “How is it?”

  “Small. It’s…” She glanced around at the boxes, at the old couch, at the undeniable fact of the pet carrier at her feet. “It will be fine.”

  She made herself inject lightness, a careful half-measure.

  “There’s a laundry room. And a little patio. The street is quiet. The landlord seems kind.”

  “That’s good,” he said, and she couldn’t tell if he meant it. She pictured him in the apartment he’d rented after leaving, or the office, or his car with the engine off and the phone on speaker. Distance flattened people into outlines.

  “How’s Ella?”

  “Right here,” Tanya said, and resisted the irrational impulse to turn the phone toward the child as proof. Ella had not moved. “She’s… tired.”

  There was a pause that held too much. “Put me on speaker?” Jonah said. “If she wants.”

  Tanya’s thumb hovered. “Later,” she said. “When we’ve… when it’s calmer.”

  She found she was pressing the carrier with her foot the way Ella had, as if anchoring it to the kitchen tile. Through the vents, two yellow eyes watched her from the dark.

  “We’re in the middle of the unload.”

  “Of course. I don’t want to make it harder
,” he said, and she bit down on the almost-laugh that rose at that. Harder than what, exactly? The movers passed again, a moving landscape of anonymous competence.

  “You got my email about the school?”

  “I did,” she said. The word school vibrated like a struck glass. She touched Ella’s shoulder. The child leaned closer, a plant turning toward the closest source of known light.

  “We’ll talk later.”

  “We should set a time.” A paper rustled on his end, or maybe he wanted her to think it did. The sound of a plan. “Transitions are…”

  “…easier with routine,” Tanya finished, because she had read the same articles and sat in the same meetings and held the same brittle cups of coffee between the same sips of polite hope. “I know.”

  Another pause. “I could come down this weekend. Help you settle.”

  The offer hung there. She could feel its weight and the way her own organs reconfigured around it. To accept would bring one kind of ache, to refuse would bring another.

  “Let me see how this week feels,” she said. “It’s a lot.”

  He exhaled, a sound like a shrug. “Okay. Text me if you need… if you want…” He stopped. Tried again. “Just text me.”

  “We’re fine,” she said, as if saying it made it a choice rather than a wish. “I should… They’re waiting for me to point at things.”

  “Right,” he said. “Tell her I called.”

  Tanya ended the call before the residue of his voice could settle. Her hand shook once, and she pretended it was from balancing the phone and the carrier door at the same time.

  “Dad?” Ella asked, not looking at her. For a child who refused to step into a room alone, Ella could make her voice sound as if it came from far away.

  “He says hi,” Tanya said.

  Ella nodded as if this tidied something up. She bent and peered into the carrier.

  “We’re here now,” she told the cat. “You can come out when it’s safe.”

  The movers announced the final trip in the tone of men preparing to leave. Tanya signed the clipboard and wrote a tip she couldn’t quite afford because gratitude seemed like the only currency she had, and because she could not bear to be the woman who shorted people who had lifted the weight of her life for two hours. The taller mover set the last box just inside the living room, wiped his palms on his trousers, and said, “All set.” The door scraped the threshold on their way out. The house closed around the three of them, woman, girl, and cat, as if sealing a jar.

  Ella tipped her head toward the small bedroom again but did not move.

  “Will you carry it?” she asked, nodding her chin at the carrier.

  “I will,” Tanya said. “We’ll put him in the laundry first. Make him a corner.” She had learned to narrate the day as if it were a story made of steps. Now we do this, and next we do that, and then we pause and breathe. It kept the edges from fraying.

  She carried the carrier down the hall while Ella walked so close their hips touched at each step. The laundry was a square of tiled floor, a shelf, a hook with a spare key, and a washing machine that was at least a decade old. She set the carrier in the corner and opened the door.

  Mittens stayed inside, a dark knit of catness, with bright eyes, and a tremor at the nose. A small, contained life that had not asked to be moved and had been moved anyway.

  “He’ll come out when he’s ready,” Tanya said, the way a person says time will help when they mean I don’t know what else to do. She offered her hand to the cat, let him sniff. He did not. She left the door unlatched, the opening there if he wanted it.

  Ella had still not let go of her sweater. Her breath made a light, rhythm-less pressure against Tanya’s sleeve. In the quiet, the refrigerator clicked in the next room. The house had begun to make its own introductions. I am this kind of place, I make these sounds, I keep these secrets.

  “We should look at your room,” Tanya said. “Choose where your books will go.”

  Ella blinked at the open carrier door, then at the hall that led to the small square of not-quite-bright.

  “With you,” she said. Not asking.

  “Of course, with me,” Tanya agreed. She pictured the mattress on the floor and the way Ella would lie at the edge, one arm flung out as if claiming more space than her body could manage. She pictured herself on the carpet, spine against paint, a guard posted. It would be fine. It had to be. She could do anything a night at a time.

  They stood in the doorway of the small room together. The room behaved like a polite stranger, offering nothing, waiting to see what kind of people had come to occupy it. A stack of boxes leaned under the window, labeled Ella Drawings, Ella Clothes, Ella Private in Ella’s own neat block letters from the night before, when labeling had felt like control. Tanya did not look at the one marked Private. She felt the gravity of it anyway.

  “Desk goes under the window?” Tanya asked, and was surprised by the thin lift in her own voice. A plan, even a small one, was a sturdier kind of word. “We can put the books along this wall. The lamp on the floor tonight, then the table when we’ve found the screws.”

  Ella did not answer. She kept her gaze steady on the open door as if something might walk through it that would demand a witness. Tanya kept talking because the sound filled the room and pushed the silence into the corners.

  “Sheets first,” Tanya said, bustling lightly, the way women in films bustle when they don’t want to cry on camera. “You pick which ones. The stars or the stripes.”

  Ella lifted a shoulder in a half-shrug that read, none of this matters, but if it matters to you, I will let it matter to me.

  “Stars,” she said.

  “Stars it is.” Tanya found the right box on the second try, slit the tape with a key. The smell of detergent bloomed, clean and reassuring. She pulled out the sheet, shook it once, and the sound startled her, like a flag someone forgot to salute. She stretched the cotton over the mattress, smoothing each corner. Ella stood watching, hands tucked into her sleeves, the frayed cuffs hiding her knuckles.

  When the sheet was tight and the pillowcase had its plumpness, Tanya stepped back. “There,” she said. “See? It already looks like a bedroom.”

  Ella didn’t answer. She stood in the doorway, chin up, as if listening for a verdict from a person who had not entered.

  “Lila doesn’t like it here,” she said quietly, almost conversational. It landed without warning, a pebble dropped into a still bowl, rings moving outward. Tanya’s breath caught with the kind of precision that suggested practice. She turned her head as if she were checking the fit of the lamp plug, the neatness of the smoothed sheet. She made her face do the expression she had taught it for lines like this, mild, tolerant, bright enough to pass.

  “She’ll get used to it,” Tanya said. “We all will.”

  Ella’s eyes didn’t move. “She says it smells wrong.”

  Tanya felt the body-knowledge she had learned to override. A small spasm along the jaw, the urge to put her hand over Ella’s mouth and say no more words like that in this house, please, no more words that make the air heavier. She pressed her palm to the doorframe instead.

  “New places always smell strange,” she said, and made her voice smooth as if mentally smoothing the sheet again. “It’s all the paint and the cleaner. It fades.”

  Ella’s mouth did a movement that wasn’t a smile. “She says don’t promise things you can’t keep.”

  Tanya stayed very still. She had the sense that if she moved too quickly, something would slide off a shelf inside her and shatter.

  “How about we open the window,” she said, and opened it, and pretended that was the same as solving something. Cool, ordinary air came in. She let it touch her face and told herself she felt better because of it.

  “We’ll put your lamp here,” she said. “And your books here. And…” She forced the tone higher, bought herself a second of steadiness. “Look, there’s a hook for your backpack.”

  Ella’s gaze traveled the short distance to the hook as if the journey required a passport.

  “Not right now,” she said. The cardigan tug came again. “Stay.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Tanya said. This time she let the words be bone-deep, not brave, just true. She felt how need could kneel a person from the inside.

  They assembled the small things that made rooms less ambiguous. They plugged the lamp in, fixed the crooked shade, chose a book and placed it on the floor where a bedside table would later be. Ella’s drawings, rolled, were left rolled. The box marked Private remained closed, and that counted as a kind of wisdom.