Allie sits by the hospital bed and talks and talks - tells stories to her sleeping sister's ears. Twelve months and Rose's hair has grown long and thick like a briar hedge. Sometimes Allie combs out the tangles but usually, from habit, she doesn't touch her twin, who lies as if encased in a coffin made of glass.
They say she can hear everything. So Allie spins tales of beautiful princesses and gleaming white castles; loving royal parents and gracious courtiers; evening gowns studded with the moon and the stars, and balls danced until dawn. Bedtime stories their mother used to read to them before the woman grew old, cracked and wizened, bitter lines etched into the curves of her mouth.
Rose had the same mouth, only young and fresh like a flower bud. Allie had watched her kiss Peter Spindel under the apple tree in the backyard the night of their eighteenth birthday party. Rose hadn't wanted the party - not the way their mother had planned it: fruit punch, finger food, guests mingling in the velvet warmth of the living room. She had grabbed Peter's hand and taken him outside just as the dancing began. Allie had watched them lost in each other, oblivious to the winter winds. Her mother had shouted a summons.
It shouldn't have been a surprise but it was. One week after the completion of the HSC, Rose crept out before sunrise and sped northwards with Peter in the green Mazda 121 their parents had given them as a birthday gift. She sent them a postcard from Port Macquarie saying she was all right but not to expect her home. Ever.
Their father cursed and disowned her; their mother pursed her lips and threw out the things Rose left behind. And Allie hid herself in her room because she hated being a living reminder of all that was ungrateful in a child.
Six months passed and one night Rose was home, charging through the door, clutching her old house key, a suede jacket and a battered orange suitcase.
"I'm pregnant!" she announced. "Pete's run off with everything except the car. I'm moving home so you can look after me and the baby."
And their mother raised her voice and a terrible argument broke loose and it was just like the old days when Rose would throw a tantrum and the sound would bounce off the ceiling. Allie sat at the kitchen table and stirred her hot chocolate which slowly went cold, listening to the shouting as if it were a soapie on the TV.
"You have to have an abortion."
"No mum! I'm keeping it. It's mine."
"But how are you going to look after it? How are you going to clothe it and feed it?"
"I want you to help me. You and Allie."
"Allie's in Uni now! She doesn't have time- she's too busy studying."
"It'll be her own flesh and blood. You don't ignore your flesh and blood, mum!"
"You'll have to get an abortion."
"I am not getting an abortion!"
"Rose!"
"Mum," said Allie quietly, "she doesn't have to get an abortion. I'll help look after it. I'll get a job and help Rose. It'll be fine."
Her mother stared at her, then at Rose, then back again. Mirror images. A perfect pair. Teamed up against her, the wicked mother, the enemy.
"Get out," she whispered to her pregnant child. "I never want to see you in this house again."
And Rose spun on her heel and left, her sister calling behind her. The Mazda fired up and roared down the street and Allie reached the porch just in time to see it collide with the side of a panel van.
Three operations. Twelve months in a coma. The baby plucked out by a surgeon's knife.
"How are we going to tell her?" whispered Allie through her tears. Her mother hugged her and stroked her hair.
"She's not alive to tell."
Allie comes to visit every week; her parents, about once a month now. She sits by the bed for two, maybe three hours, sometimes more, until a nurse comes by to say her time's up. She knows all their names now; they know who she is but it unsettles them every time to see the image of their comatose patient up, dressed and walking about. They hear her reading Grimms and they half-smile. "Life is not a fairy tale," they say. "There are no happy endings." But it's the hope, Allie argues, the hope that things will sort themselves out. That the cinder girl will marry the prince, the merchant's daughter will return to the Beast, the swans will turn back into brothers and her sister will wake as if from a lovely dream and then -
"Then what?" say the nurses. "She won't be like before. The cuts and lesions may have healed but her mind ..." The words trail away. They don't like shattering people's threadbare dreams. But they are like wise benevolent godmothers; they are realists, they have aged with telling truths.
"I have three friends in college," whispers Allie, laying her head on the pillow next to Rose's. "Ashley, Belle and Elise. Ash does Commerce/Law and for a while she was going out with this guy named David. He was perfect. But then she decided she didn't want him. Belle, on the other hand, is still with her boyfriend; he no longer travels and often comes to visit ..."
One by one she tells all their stories - all that they have told to her. And Rose, the perfect audience, lies there and listens, and keeps Allie's secrets locked behind her immobile eyelids, her pale sealed lips.
Allie feels guilty when she hears her parents talk about her sister as if she were a vegetable, a non-living organism, a non-human species. Her father is remarrying and moving to Adelaide; her mother is clearing out the garage and throwing away his old records. The subject of the baby is forbidden; it's as if it never was.
Well, it wasn't, but there was the expectation of it. Him. Her. It. A baby. Rose had wanted to keep it. Allie had wanted to keep it too. And now ... she knows Rose can hear her but she can't say the words. Your baby is gone. Your child is dead. They stole it while you were sleeping.
It'll be easier when she wakes up, Allie tells herself, but the weeks creep onwards and the nurses shake their heads and tell her it's rare, especially now that she's been out for so long.
Allie brings her flowers and strokes Rose's hands. She drinks cups of water from the cooler and reads out amusing items from the Herald. She plays tapes and sings songs but gradually speaks less and less. What else is there to say? A thousand things happen day by day. What does Rose want to hear?
"What happened to the fairy tales?" say the nurses as they bustle past. "She seemed to be enjoying them. Dreaming a prince will come and kiss her awake."
Allie doesn't answer. She stares at her hands, then at Rose's. She leaves, then comes back the next day and sits until the shadows grow long and the sun hides behind another building. She comes again and again, arguing with herself.
She can't hear me. What difference does it make? She won't understand. This is stupid.
She can hear me. She needs to know. Who will tell but me?
"Rose," says Allie, putting her mouth right near her twin's ear. "Rose, they took your baby. They killed it. They didn't think it would survive with you like this. Rose, I'm so sorry. I wanted you to have it. We could have looked after it together ... somehow." She takes Rose's hand and squeezes it. "I miss you."
They say that after she left, Rose opened her eyes and said one word before the cardiogram went flat. The night nurse got a fright, seeing her sitting up like that, staring into space with blank eyes.
"Alethea."
In her college room, Allie wakes and knows her twin is dead.
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