The following day it rained quite heavily. Aunty M was busy in her studio so I decided to go up to the attic to finish looking at the album. Everything looked the same up there. I had a look at the rack of dressing up clothes and there were some gorgeous silk dresses and amazing matching hats. There were fur stoles with the foxes head and feet still attached and the weirdest shoes with round toes and buttons.
“These must be great granny’s and granny’s dresses when they were young.” I said aloud to myself.
It was comforting to hear my voice. Because I am an only child, I do tend to talk to myself.
Unfortunately, once at school I’d gone to the loo and thought I was alone. I chatted to myself and Felicity, one of the ‘cool gang’, came in and heard me. She called me, “Dingbat” and told everyone so then everyone called me that. They won’t call me that at my new school.
I picked up the album and carried it to the sofa and made myself comfortable. I turned back to the wedding photos. I turned over to the next page. There was the wedding group a huge crowd of small faces stared back at me. There was the man I’d seen in the photo before. He was the groom. Then I recognised the dress. The bride was wearing the wedding dress and the coronet and veil in the box.
That’s who wore the dress, I thought to myself. As I looked more carefully I realised that the woman in the wedding dress looked like mum. The picture was so small but it was her. It was taken ages ago; eleven years ago, in 1996 and she would have looked different then. Then I realised what I had found. My mum married someone else before my dad. Why had she never told me? I looked more carefully at the groom but the picture was too small. I flicked back to the bigger picture and stared at the face. I didn’t know him but he definitely looked like someone I knew. Who was it? I thought about everyone that came to our house. No I’d never seen him and yet he looked so familiar. He had black hair and blue eyes, and a gap between his two front teeth. I have blue eyes and a gap between my teeth too. I turned over a couple of pages. There were more wedding pictures. The bride and this man smiling and happy. I looked along the line of guests. There was granny and granpy and Aunty M. I turned over to the next page. Baby pictures. Two dear little babies. Twin babies. They were dressed the same and looked the same. As I looked at the photo, I shivered. I was one of the babies. I had photos like this one at home taken when I was little but I was always alone. Well I would be because I was an only child. But here were two identical babies. Who was the other baby? And why did she look the same as me?