Dark Mirrors by Siobhain Bunni Read Free Book Online

putting one ornament down only to swap it for another. How the hell am I going to do this?
    The pain was obvious on her face as her eyes moved desperately about the room, looking for something else to focus on, settling eventually on one of the many-framed pictures that hung in the informal family gallery on the tired and once delicately patterned wall. She saw herself, her brother and two sisters captured in a smiling instant. She must have been about fifteen when the picture was taken – that would have made Tom seventeen, Lizzie twelve and Penny ten. Looking at the grinning group, she cast her mind back to remember that moment, a snapshot in time. Held by the slightly faded smiling faces, she wondered how they, her siblings, would react to her situation. Despite their differences – with sisters being sisters there had been a few – and the girls were very close. She saw them at least twice a week and spoke to each of them almost every other day and, while every now and then they would squabble and bicker, it was never for very long – no sooner was it started than it was over.
    But with Tom it was a little different. They, Esmée and her brother, had a pretty big falling-out when he left his wife for another woman, and things had been strained ever since. If he hadn’t left of his own free will Rachel probably would have kicked him out anyway, having caught him in a compromising embrace with a young lady friend at least half his age. At the time Esmée had been so disappointed in him. How long was it now, she asked herself – six, maybe seven months? Close enough that she could easily recall her feeling of absolute disgust. Selfish really, she knew, but she just couldn’t believe that he had turned out to be just the same as Philip. She felt betrayed and a little humiliated by the very person, the only person, she had trusted to talk through her fears about Philip’s adultery. He was her big brother who had always protected her and she, in return, looked up to him, respected and admired him. Together they had spent hours talking, discussing her suspicions about Philip and what she should or shouldn’t do. He talked her through the worst moments and helped her cope. He had comforted her and jeered at her husband when all along he was doing the same thing to his own wife. He had, she decided, betrayed her too. He had let her down. He had let himself down. Adding insult to the already salted wound, his young lady friend disappeared after a matter of weeks. He had let everything go, lost it all, and for what? A quick shag with a slapper called Jacinta, if memory served her right. The outcome of their final confrontation was mutual silence: phone calls, spontaneous visits, casual texts, they all came to an abrupt and concrete end. She refused to listen to what she thought were childish, clichéd excuses. Her instinct at the time was to call Rachel, to console and advise her. But she never did call. Why? Because despite her big brother’s poor and reprehensible behaviour she couldn’t be disloyal to him like that, and so she chose instead to punish him by distancing herself from him and, in doing so, she served only to punish herself more. She missed him so much, now more than ever, and it hurt.
    She wondered how long it would take for her mum to call and tell him what she had done? The spiteful little girl inside her hoped he would feel guilty. She hoped that when he saw the devastation of their, his and Philip’s, combined infidelity, by the natural laws of cause and effect he would be sorry for his own as well as Philip’s actions. Maybe now he would understand why she couldn’t be around him, why she had to separate herself from him.
    “Esmée?”
    She didn’t immediately register her mother’s voice nor did she immediately understand the stunned and anxious expression etched on her face. Confused and distracted by her mute rant, it took her a few moments to realise that the cause of her mother’s apparent