Текст книги "After Forever Ends "

Автор книги: Melodie Ramone

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Текущая страница: 29 (всего у книги 39 страниц)

My last thought before I fell asleep was that it was Oliver who had made it all possible.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

With the addition of our Warren, or “Little Renny” as he was soon to be called, since neither Gryffin nor Natalie could say his name, it seemed that our family was complete. Oliver and I brought him home as naturally as if he’d always been part of us and set about doing what we did each day with his welcome addition. In a way that the other children hadn’t seemed, Warren wasn’t new to us. We were experienced by then. We knew his sounds, we could discern the motions he made with his head and his little hands. Warren was a communicator, too, a noise maker from the moment go. He’d sit in his chair and smile, clicking his tongue and cooing. Or he’d bang his toys on plastic bowls like it was the greatest thing on Earth. Warren was a pretty baby, too. Long limbed and strong at birth, he had gorgeous brown eyes, but they weren’t like his dad’s. They were large and round, a polished topaz colour with odd flecks of green and gold. They were the kind of eyes that caught you when you least expected them to and kept you there, waiting, staring into them. Like his brother and sister before him, he was a happy little chap, except unlike either of them, he wasn’t the independent sort. Warren needed to be close, he needed touch. He was so glued to anybody who seemed to want to hold on to him that it was difficult to get anything done when I didn‘t have a willing volunteer available to relieve me of him. It was only a few weeks after he was born that Oliver bought me a sling contraption to wrap him in and I spent most of our first six months together with Ren strapped to my belly as I went about my business in the wood. I thought that Gryffin might be jealous about this, but if he was he never expressed it. His only concern was that his little brother wasn’t big enough to play with yet and that he wanted to know when he would be.

“He’s very boring, Mummy,” Gryff told me one day peering at his brother in the pram as we were strolling down the sidewalk in Newtown. “He can’t walk and he can’t talk. He’s not good for much.”

I didn’t stifle my laugh, “He’s just a wee bairn, Gryff! He’ll be on his feet in no time!”

“That’s your best friend there in that pram!” Oliver told him, “Honestly, he’s the one who’s going to have your back for the rest of your life!”

“Like you and Uncle Xan?”

“Just like me and Uncle Xan,” Ollie rubbed his son’s head, “When the chips are down, I’ll tell you, your brother’s the only one who’ll be there for you!”

“What about Carolena?” Gryff asked quite seriously.

“Oh, her, too,” I assured him, “Count on that as well.”

We raised them like that. Not just our three, but the seven of them. We raised them all with the belief that in the end it was only the seven of them and that they had a duty to take care of each other. There really was no differentiation between who was brother and sister and who was cousin. All of them were Dickinson’s. All of us were Dickinson’s. We were, in a very real sense, an army.

“Dickinson’s take care of Dickinson’s,” Alexander used to say, “Family is a holy obligation.”

Having not come from a true and right family, it was amazing to me how much to heart the children took that sentiment. With Carolena in school, it was just me and my two boys most of the time in the wood, except for the days when Lucy would come by with her three girls. Annie and Bess were still babies and spent most of their time toddling about and having kips, but Natalie was growing by leaps and bounds. She was small for her age, but her mind was keen, and she was curious about everything everyone did. Natalie was not afraid of anything large or small and she was full of a million questions. She had this special way of caring about the people she loved as well, almost an over-caring where she noticed little things and set about fixing them.

“Teach me to cook!” She told Lucy and I one afternoon when she was four, “The children all want eggs!“ and then there was the day she came in with the little ones after playing in the snow. She plopped down beside me on the sofa and said quite seriously, “Auntie Sil, show me how to make mittens! I want to knit so my sisters never have cold hands! They‘re freezing!“ She was quite the little nanny, taking on responsibility with them that worried Lucy a bit.

“I want her to be a child, but she acts like she’s twenty!” Lucy shook her head, watching Nattie pass out dry cereal in handfuls to the children, “I can’t get her to sit and play a game!”

“It’s just her way,” I told her, “She’s a bit serious minded, but she still giggles.”

And she did giggle, especially when she was with her dad and Oliver. Oh, she adored them both and they loved her back with gorgeous abandon. Oliver would pick her up and swing her around like she was nothing. Toss her up over his shoulder, catch her, swing her around his back, catch her, then send her flying at Alex, who would do the same. They’d hold her by her arms and let her walk upside down across the ceiling until her little face would turn bright red. Having been so betrayed as a child, it amazed me the trust she had in them. There was no question in her mind that they’d never hurt her, no thought that they could just let her go and she might come crashing to the floor. It was perfect trust, never let down.

Alex had said the first time he held her that she was the girl who would teach him what love was all about and it had been the truth. Natalie brought out gentleness in him that I don’t think he ever knew he had. I never saw Alexander become cross with Nattie, not cross enough to ever say more than something like, “Not now, Nattie! Quiet down!" and he certainly never raised a hand to her. Alexander was a wonderful, patient father and he adored all of his children, but Natalie was his little angel.

“Nattie, my love," He’d say, “You’re so pretty. Pretty like your Mummy, but you’re mine through and through, yeah? “He’d hold her close, “I don’t know what I did to deserve a daughter like you, but I got you and I love you to bits! “

She adored him as well and she took any opportunity she could find to steal a moment with him, especially if it was away from the older children. It was the cutest thing I’d ever seen, Natalie at five years old, sitting with Alexander in the garden, yellow balls of yarn lying in the grass, instructing him on how to knit.

“Oh, blimey!” Alexander held his work out in front of him, “Is it knit one, purl two? Or the other way around?”

“It’s knit one, purl one for three rows, Daddy. You’re working on a ribbing.”

“Oh, bugger it all to hell!” He dropped his project to his lap, “I’m doing it all wrong!”

“Don’t give up! You can do this!”

“You think so?”

“I know so!”

“OK, if you say so! Let me start over then. Knit one, purl one…for three rows…”

They were fascinating, every single one of them. Nigel, the oldest, was always the first and usually the best at everything. He had the restless nature and good looks of his father as well as Alex‘s zeal for having a good time. He was a bit more sociable than his dad, however, and found himself from an early age the centre of attention most everywhere he went. I have to admit that it did go to his head at times, but the other Dickinson’s made it a point to bring him back to Earth. Nigel, through all his hot headedness and tantrums, in the core of his being, was a good soul. He was clever and needed occupied, however, or he could be borderline evil. He did stupid things as well, though, like trying to take his bicycle down a slide at the city park and breaking his leg in three places. He drove Lucy up the wall with his antics, but I realized early on that Nigel was as easily entertained as he was bored. The trick with him was to keep him busy. Clever as he was, if left to his own devices all he could usually come up with to do was to make something explode or beat up his mates. Thus, we were always looking for something to keep him busy and over the years we found many, many things.

Nigel lacked his father’s artistic genius, so paints and modelling were out, but he had a knack for athletics. Ollie and Alex coached him in football and rugby, but he was too much a roughneck for the junior rugby teams. Perhaps the twins shouldn’t have shown him so young how to tackle, I suggested, but both of them looked at me like I was mad and said, “You can’t play properly if you don’t tackle!”

“He’s only eight! Does he need to be slamming his mates down so hard?”

“Bunch of pansies!” Oliver huffed.

“They need to grow a pair,” Alex looked away, “Babies!”

I just shook my head.

For his birthday when he turned ten, we bought him a weight bag and had Oliver hang it from a tree. Alexander did the same in his own yard. What we ended up with was a more relaxed lad who discovered that, aside from punching things and slamming other boys to the ground, he enjoyed reading books. It connected him with his father, this love of reading, and the two, who had been at odds more than not, were suddenly trading stories between them and, as Nigel grew, discussing philosophy and literature.

The physical and mental exercise didn’t stop him completely from having outbursts, mind you. Nigel had a temper that wouldn’t yield. I’d be tempted to say that it was even worse that Alexander’s. Like his father before him, Nigel wouldn’t say a word as he grew angrier and angrier with somebody. He’d remain quiet; perhaps begin the argument, but not usually. No, usually he’d just stand there with a blank expression on his face and when his opponent least expected it, he’d blast him square in the face. Needless to say, he didn’t lose often. Punching people was a bit of a hobby for him, but he loved to tease and torment Carolena more than anything. I’m sure that it was his favourite pastime, but it certainly was not his most productive. Caro was by far his most even match.

I understood the rivalry between them. Nigel and Carolena were so close in age that they were always nose to nose. They shared the same form at school, sometimes even the same classroom. Caro was intensely competitive by nature, something she inherited from me, no doubt, especially when it came to her marks. After they were eight or so years old, she couldn’t fight with Nigel physically as he was much larger and stronger than her, but she gave him a run for his money with everything else. Carolena was an excellent footballer, although she didn’t take to rugby, and she’d show him up at matches. He’d retaliate by tripping her as often as he was able. She’d usually respond by punching him, at which he would laugh, and the two of them would be expelled from the game and sit on the side, arsing off. But by both of them striving to outdo the other, both managed to achieve excellence in academics, at athletics…at everything really. They drove each other mad, but they made each other better, too. And no one…and I mean NO ONE…messed with either of them without having to deal with the other.

As Carolena matured into her teenage years, she took on more physical traits of her father. Facially, she looked like me, except I always thought that she was prettier. But, like Oliver she was unusually tall and slender with long arms and legs. Her hair was the colour of shiny copper, hanging in curls to the middle of her back and her eyes were glittery dark chocolate. Llike her dad, too, everyone for miles around seemed to know who Carolena Dickinson was. Still, being so popular didn’t make her interested in many of the boys. Carolena had a serious mind and dreams of leaving Wales for a posh life in London. My daughter had her eyes on the stars and paid little attention to the comings and goings of people who were not like minded. Thus, she had adopted a reputation for being a snob.

She wasn’t. Caro was kind and considerate. She always took time for people. She’d learned it from her father, how to listen and care. It was only the ones that were jealous that called her names. When she was fifteen, she was pursued by the star of the local rugby team. Caro found him boorish and brainless and it was only three dates before she put an end to his courtship. It didn’t sit well with him and within a week he gone on a mission of slander, making claims against her virginity.

Oliver and I were doing our best to comfort her.

“Carolena,” I told her gently, “You can’t control what anyone says about you. The people who know you know you. They know it’s all lies. And the others who choose to believe it without knowing you…well, who cares? They don’t matter.”

“Your mum should know,” Oliver added, “People said a lot of foul things about her. Especially when she married me.”

“Why is it that just because I don’t want to marry a local rugger bugger and live my whole life within twenty miles of the municipality I was born in people think I have a problem?” Caro was literally in tears. “Connor Stuart is a mega-fuck brain and I wouldn’t be caught dead naked with him!” Oliver and I almost laughed out loud. Carolena had no idea she had slipped and used a curse in front of us. We choked back our smiles and allowed her to continue uninterrupted, “He’s dirt, he is! And if that makes me a bitch for saying it, than I am a bitch!”

“You are not a bitch and I don’t ever want to hear you call yourself a name like that again! Listen to me now, Carolena.” Oliver moved her chin with his hand so she was looking right into his face, “There is nothing wrong in this world with a woman setting levels of acceptability for herself. If some mega-fuck brain rugger bugger does not live up to those ideals that is entirely his problem. Girls who lower their standards or have none at all, for that matter, marry boys who abuse and misuse them. You are my child and you are worthy of respect. Don’t request it. Expect it. Demand it. Always.”

Caro’s dark eyes were glittering in the afternoon sun as she stared into her father’s face. “I love you, Dad!” She hugged him around his neck. “Why can’t I meet a boy like you?”

“I love you, too, Muffin.” He patted the back of her head. “And maybe one day you’ll meet a boy who’s even better than me. But don’t ever have one that’s any worse, yeah?”

About three days later Nigel wound up in Oliver’s office after he clothes-lined Connor Stuart during rugby practice. “He kept getting in my way!” Nigel proclaimed as Oliver wrapped his shoulder in ice, “He slammed right into me, causing me to nut him the first time!”

“He’s got a hump the size of a walnut right in the middle of his forehead,” Oliver mumbled, weaving the bandage to hold the ice under Nigel’s arm.

“Well, yeah! Our head’s collided! As far as the alleged clothes-lining, well…I dunno how that happened. It was an accident!”

“Yes, Nigel, and you accidentally kicked him in the ribs and accidentally stepped on his face as well as he lay in the grass gasping for air, right? Put down your arm now.”

“Well, yes,” Nigel grimaced as he lowered his arm, “Exactly.”

Subsequently, he was not so accidentally suspended from the team for his lack of control.

“I was in control!” He argued, “I was in perfect control! He’s alive, ain’t he?”

It was not the first time that they’d shown that when they’d take the time to quit bickering, Carolena and Nigel were the best of friends. The most obvious example I can remember of this was when they were eleven and they both ended up sitting after hours in Oliver’s office bleeding after Caro jumped in on a fight that Nigel was coming out on the bad end of.

“I’ll do him again!” Caro told us as she sat on the examination table.

“Sit still!” Oliver demanded, gently prodding her face, “That’s a whopper of a bruise! Hitting a girl! That boy should be ashamed!”

“She was pounding the sense out of him, she was!” Nigel said proudly from his seat off to the side, “He got me down, so’s I couldn’t get up and here comes Carolena just a blaze of red hair and flying fists! Bloody magnificent she was, Uncle Ollie!”

Caro grinned, “It was fun. Is he still here?”

“No, no. I sent him off with his mother.” Oliver turned her face in his hand, “It was fun, yeah? You two shouldn’t fight!” He scolded them responsibly, and then added, “But I’m right proud you both for taking up for Natalie. Your dad’ll be having words with his father, I‘m sure…two on one, he said. Well, who came and put our little Nattie into a bin? She’s got bruises all over her!” He turned, “Lucy, is Nigel’s numb enough for stitching yet? I’m through here. Take Caro for an x-ray of this cheek. It looks like it’s all swollen tissue, but I want to make sure there’s nothing broken to be safe. ”

After the twins were born, Lucy had found her calling in life. She went back to school and became a nurse. Oliver hired her straight away, of course, and she helped him run the office. I did the accounting and managed the labs, but mostly I just looked after Oliver and the children, as I always had. Me, with all my degrees, knowing all I knew, and all I ever wanted to be was a mum! But Lucy could juggle a career and her home life with me taking care of the kids. I was very proud of my sister, little Lucy Cotton, who’d grown up to be a dedicated mother, a wonderful wife who was adored by her husband and a damned good nurse to boot.

Little Nattie was sitting quietly outside the door in the hallway. I really did not want to see my Nigel getting stitched, so I came and sat beside her. “You all right, Muffin? That was a right nasty thing that boy did. I’m sorry it happened to you.”

“I was just walking and he picked me up and tossed me in the rubbish bin,” She said softly. Natalie often got the brunt of bullies because she was so unusually small, “I didn’t mean for all of this to happen. Are they hurt?”

She was the sweetest of all the children. Blue eyed and golden haired, she had her mother’s gorgeous looks and full mouth. In fact, she looked nothing at all like Alexander, except often mocked his expressions, “Ah, Nattie,” I told her, “Caro and Nigel will be just fine. Don’t you go feeling bad about what happened to them. You did nothing wrong. Some bully came and decided to throw you into a bin and your brother was having none of it. Be glad he was there for you. He takes after your daddy, you know?”

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah! When your dad was a lad he had an awful temper. And he especially hated it when someone would dishonour a lady.” I heard the front door to the office open and close, “I think that’s your dad now. Go see!”

She jumped off her chair and raced to the waiting room. “Daddy!”

“I don’t want another shot!” Nigel yelled, “I don’t want another shot! Mum, make him stop! I don’t want…Oy! Get away from me, Uncle Ollie!”

“Do you want to feel a needle coming in and out of your brow over and over again or just once?” Oliver asked seriously.

“Shush your noise,” Lucy told him gently, “It’s just a little sting!”

I cringed as he screamed anyway. Nigel had a flair for drama.

I could hear the excitement of children down in the waiting room now that Alexander had arrived. “Oy, you little munchkins! Natalie, my love! Come here, I heard you had a rough afternoon!” He grunted as he lifted her from the floor, “Oh, you look fine! Beautiful, in fact! Hello! Hello, all of you! Hello, Warren! Hello, Gryff! How are you, Little Bessie? Hi, Annie!”

“I’m not Annie, Daddy,” I heard a tiny voice, “I’m Bess!”

“And I’m your Uncle Ollie,” Alexander returned, “You can’t play at that one with me! I invented some of those tricks!”

“We got you the other day!” One of the chirped.

“For about three seconds!”

The twin girls giggled.

“Uncle Xan!” It was Gryffin, “Can you draw a cat for my new story I’ve written?”

I stood alone in the hall with my eyes closed and I listened to all of their voices mingling together. It was chaos, all of them talking at once and Alexander trying to lend an ear to each one. I let the sound of them fill my ears and swell my heart until I thought that I would burst from all the love inside of me.

As she got older, Natalie did not grow any less lovely in her disposition. It took my breath away sometimes how much she looked like Melissa, she was stunning, but that was where any reminder of her mother ended. Natalie was anything but an unbalanced air head. She was calm and kind and she had a spirit that was impossible to sink. Natalie was close with Lucy. Never having known her mother, she had absolutely no interest in seeing her when Melissa came to Wales.

“It’s nice that she’s here,” Nattie told her father, “But I don’t know why she’s bothered to see us now. I suppose I can sit with you and Nigel, but I don’t have anything to say to the woman.”

“I’d appreciate it if you did,” Alexander said calmly, “And you don’t have to say much.”

“Good, because I’m not going to.”

Nigel, on the other hand, was very excited. He had vague recollections of his mother and was eager to see if anything about her matched his memories. He was concerned, on the other hand, that his eagerness would somehow insult Lucy. Lucy, however, was not threatened in the slightest. “I’d like to beat the shit out of her, Sil,” She told me privately, “But knowing that she lost out on her children and I got both of them and Alexander, too, is enough revenge for me. Her stupidity and selfishness were my gain.”

Nattie was unimpressed when she got through meeting her mum. She hugged Lucy afterwards and said, “Ah, my real mum! I love you, Mummy!” Nigel, being more open to the experience, kept contact with Melissa for many years until she succumbed to breast cancer when he was forty-three. Still, he hugged Lucy when he returned from their first meeting and told her loved her enormously. When Alexander arrived back at the wood after the reunion, he scooped Lucy into his arms and kissed her passionately then held her very, very close. “Oh, my God,” He said about ten times, stroking her hair, “Lucy, Lucy, Lucy…you’re like a dream…”

I think my sister was very satisfied.

They were happy together, Lucy and Alexander. Their marriage was not perfect, but it worked. They needed each other. Lucy needed the consistency and support Alex offered her. He was safe, secure, solid, and she knew that he’d never hurt her. Lucy was a calming influence on Alexander. She didn’t take any of his rubbish and gave him a reason to behave, motivation to work hard and stay focused. She loved him, certainly, but there was never any question in anybody’s mind that she’d put him out if she had to. I think Alex liked that, the idea that his wife could make it without him. It made him want to please her. Plus, she took care of him, which was something that Alex had always desperately needed. They were an excellent team. The friendship and affection that they’d always shared had grown deeper and deeper until they’d become a part of each other. Once they’d recognised it as love, it had taken them over. Bless their hearts, they endured the pitfalls and made it work.

“In the end,” Alexander told her on their tenth anniversary, “It’ll just be you and me. The kids will have grown and gone and it’ll be just you and me staring at each other with nothing at all to do.”

“That’ll be brilliant!” Lucy giggled, “I’ll make pies!”

Alexander brought out his old oil paint set out to the cabin one summer and sat with her and their three girls in the garden. I watched him show each of them the different brushes and explain what each did. They opened and checked every jar carefully.

“Is it still good?” Lucy asked excitedly.

Alex nodded. They smiled at each other. “Are you ready?” I heard him ask the girls.

They nodded enthusiastically and walked to the car with him, all three holding on to his hands. He pulled out four large canvases and the four of them headed out to the clearing by the pond. Lucy and I sat on the stoop and chatted while they stood in the sunlight until each had finished their first painting. Annie’s was complete Picasso nonsense. Bessie’s was of birds in the sky. And Nattie’s was the sun shining grandly across the pond, reflecting light all over the wood. Alexander painted three little girls standing behind canvas with brushes in their hands. Those paintings still exist, hanging proudly in the front room of the cabin in the wood.

Now, I watched all of my children grow with great interest, but there was something about my Griffin which was special. This is not to say that the others weren’t but Gryffin had his own way about him. The child was a deep thinker from an early age. He questioned everything. He wanted to know all about the world…scientific things, but he always seemed to be heading toward spiritual answers. He had a fascination with the soul, with all the supernatural possibilities the universe offered. It crossed over into the occult at times, this thirst for knowledge, but we never discouraged him from reading books on Witchcraft or ghosts or demons. It was all research for him, really. He took bits and pieces from everything and used them to make sense of the world around him. He used everything in his writings.

Gryffin wrote his first poem before he was old enough to write it down himself. Oliver and I were sitting in the living room in the rented cottage when he sprang off the bottom step and landed almost in the middle of the room.

“Gryffin Alexander!” Oliver scolded, “It’s way past your bedtime!”

“I know, Dad, but I’ve written something!” He swore breathlessly. “It’s in my head and I need you to put it on paper before I forget it!”

Oliver and I exchanged glances. Ollie grinned suddenly and I said, “Right then. I’ll get pen and paper then.”

This was the poem:

“When God made Adam and Eve, they were meant to eat the poison apple

When God made the horse it was meant for man to ride

When God made the camel it was meant to walk the desert dry

When God made the people they were meant to live and die”

He was four years old. I thought it was rather magnificent. It was something he got from my dad, this love of the written word, and it wasn’t there that he stopped writing. We got him a tape recorder and he told his stories by mouth for about a year until he got his penmanship under control. He read as well, read everything he could get his hands on, even newspapers and things that we knew he couldn’t reason for himself. He wanted to know everything, sometimes just for the sake of knowing it.

Gryffin was the jokester of the family as well. He was a cheeky monkey from the moment of birth, I think. He could pick out the absurdity in any situation and bring it to light immediately, which was infuriating when you were angry with him to begin with. For instance, Oliver once got so angry with him over something he told him, “If you ever do that again, I’m going to punish you and you’re not going to like it!”

“Well, obviously, Dad,” Gryffin retorted as if his father were the stupidest person he’d ever met, “Why would I like it if you were punishing me?”

Cheeky, cheeky, cheeky. He was very lucky Oliver was his dad and not Alexander. Alex would have knocked him to the floor without a second thought. Oliver, no matter how angry he was with the boys, never hit them. I don’t think he hit them even once. Not like me. I’d spank if I had to. I always felt badly afterward, but I’d do it.

Gryffin was always quick with the comebacks. All three of our children had grown up around banter and could hold their own in a battle of wits, but Gryffin was particularly sharp. That is when you got him in the mood to talk. Most of the time he’d just sit quietly and you never knew where his mind was at. Gryffin was a constant thinker. I don’t think his brain ever shut off. He was a worrier, too, which I never quite understood. Sometimes he’d worry himself into a stomach ache and I’d have to get him a hot water bottle to hold against his belly. “You can’t do this to yourself, Darling,” I’d smooth the hair away from his forehead, “You have to learn how to rationalize all this anxiety…”

“I knows it,” We lived North of Cardiff in Wales. Far enough North that the very distinctive dialect that exists down there should not have factored in, but it did. Oliver made sure that all of our children started off speaking clearly instead of adopting that dialect, even though he, himself, was able to speak both fluently. Therefore, once they started school and they began hanging around with all the trash talkers in town, all of our children could both communicate effectively and, as Gryffin was ever famous for, throw verb conjugation and the proper English language to the winds. And sound like he had a mouth full of stones as well. He’d respond in the Cardiff jumble, “I don’t wants at do it, it’s just all sorted-like and I don’t like to not acts like it don’ bother me ‘cause it doos…”

“Gryff…stop talking your nonsense!”

“Sorry, Mum,” He immediately spoke properly, “I just do it anymore and don’t think about it.”

“Well, that is a problem then, isn’t it?”

He laughed softly, “Only for you.”

Gryffin grew tall and strong over the years. He was a quiet lad, thoughtful. Gryffin looked just like his dad, so much it was scary, but he’d inherited more than being handsome from Oliver. Gryff had a gentle voice and a gentle disposition. His touch was always soft and easy. He was honest to a fault and did his best never to harm any creature. Of all the children, I was the closest with Gryffin. Why, I’m not sure. I think he chose me. Caro was stuck to her daddy from day one. Warren always seemed to gravitate to his uncle Alex. Natalie was definitely Alex’s girl. Nigel usually turned to Oliver. Annie and Bess loved Lucy. But Gryffin, he was my little buddy. He’d sit and talk to me for hours while I knitted. I never had to ask him to do anything twice. He could make me laugh so hard I’d cry. He was my son, certainly, and he respected me as an authority figure, but he loved me as his mother and as his friend. We were playmates.

Annie and Bess made their way through their childhood much I suppose like any pair of look-alikes who were struggling to establish their separate identities in a world that wanted to think of them as the same person. Those two were identical down to the pads of their feet. Unlike their fathers, it was hard to tell one from the other even once you got to know them. Still, like their fathers, they were fundamentally different. Annie was good at mathematics, Bess was good at Language. Annie liked light haired boys, Bess preferred dark. They fought like two cats locked in a box as well. You would have thought that they hated each other the way they’d scream and pull hair. Lucy and I, having grown up separate, couldn’t understand that. We’d rush in to break up the tussle, but Oliver and Alexander would stop us when they were home.