We were late and I was cross; you’d forgotten your camera. If you hadn’t gone back home again to fetch it, we would have been on time. I wasn’t sure Lydia would still be waiting for us. She was the kind of girl who would get bored and go off with other friends if we took too long.
You stopped dead. I almost tripped over you. I knew what was wrong; there were dogs in the park. One was bounding up to us, small and skinny, but still a dog. We held each other tight, unable to move. As the woman put the dog on the lead, we managed to start walking again. I looked around, praying that Lydia hadn’t seen us. She would never let us live it down. ‘It was tiny,’ she would say, and she would laugh and laugh.
Luckily, Lydia hadn’t seen anything. She was lying in the grass by the water, with a book spread out in front of her. A boy, taller and wider, whose posture mirrored hers, was lying beside her. They were each wearing khaki shorts and sunglasses. Lydia looked up as we approached. ‘You took your time,’ she said. She pointed to the boy beside her. ‘This is my cousin, Adam.’
He barely glanced at us. We murmured some sort of greeting that wasn’t reciprocated. Now that we were closer I could see there was a family resemblance. Both he and Lydia had thick, dark hair. Their mouths turned down very slightly at the corners, giving the impression they were always rather bored.
‘Say hello, Adam,’ said Lydia, giving him a nudge.
‘Hello Adam,’ he muttered, without looking up from his book.
Lydia laughed. ‘He’s so rude,’ she said, but she sounded proud of him.
‘Who are they?’ he asked.
‘They’re the twins. They’re called Selina and Zora Bunting, but they like to be called Selzora.’
‘That’s stupid,’ said Adam.
I turned red.
Lydia gave the kind of shrug that said he might have a point but she didn’t really care. ‘They live round the back of my house. Look at them, I told you they were very nearly the same.’
Adam raised his head and studied each of us, seeming to take in every twin-ish detail. ‘It’s the baby Buntings. Bye, baby Buntings,’ he said, and he waved his hand at us dismissively.
You looked unsure about what we should do but we still remained where we were. Lydia and Adam laughed so hard that Lydia got hiccups.
‘They’re interesting, aren’t they?’ said Lydia, as if we were exhibits in a glass case.
‘They are interesting,’ Adam replied. He gave us one final, penetrating stare and then returned to his book, continuing to read while we played catch with the big red ball Lydia had brought. ‘Keep the noise down, can’t you?’ he said intermittently.
I threw the ball at his head when he wasn’t looking. He sat up sharply and stared at the three of us. ‘Who did that?’ he demanded.
You looked worried and said nothing, but Lydia replied, ‘It was Zora, and she did it on purpose,’ as if there was nothing wrong with telling tales.
Adam jumped to his feet. He loomed over me. ‘Do that again and I’ll knock you into the middle of next week.’ His voice was disconcertingly quiet but I could see that he meant it. I wandered over to a patch of grass, a safe distance from him, acting like I wasn’t bothered in the least, and I picked some flowers for a daisy chain, threading them with dignified concentration.
‘It’s far too hot to keep on running about,’ said Lydia, flopping down and pushing the ball back and forth along the bumpy ground with the flat of her hand. She smiled as you took a picture with the camera you’d brought. You took one of Adam too.
He looked up. ‘Did I say you could take a picture of me?’ he said to you crossly.
‘She didn’t think you’d mind,’ I answered. I could see his hostility was making you anxious.
‘Well I do mind. She should have asked.’
‘Leave her alone, Adam, you love having your picture taken really. He’s so vain, you know,’ said Lydia.
Adam glared at her.
‘We go back to school the day after tomorrow,’ I said gloomily, tossing my daisy chain into the flower bed behind us.
‘I don’t start back for another ten days,’ said Lydia, sounding pleased with herself. ‘I’m being sent away to boarding school. Daddy says it’s to rub the corners off me.’
Adam looked across at us. ‘Best of British luck with that,’ he said, and Lydia put her tongue out at him.
I looked down at the grass; I was so bitterly disappointed that Lydia was being sent away that I could have cried. Lydia was the first real friend I’d ever had and I knew how desperately I was going to miss her.
We were thirsty. Lydia got bottles of ginger beer for her and Adam from the pink Tonibell ice cream van but you and I didn’t have any money. She gave us a sip each but it wasn’t enough. Our throats were so dry we were starting to cough. ‘We’d better go home now,’ I said reluctantly.
‘No, don’t go,’ replied Lydia. ‘Come back to my house instead. Joyce won’t mind, as long as we’re quiet, and it is nearly tea time. We’ve got proper lemonade, with real lemons, and we’ll put some ice in.’
‘Who’s Joyce?’
‘My stepmother. She’s very wicked you know. It’s why she made Daddy buy a house with an apple tree in the garden. It will come in very handy when she decides to bump me off.’
‘Never eat her apple pie, you’ll die,’ said Adam.
You and I looked at them, unable to tell if they were joking. Then they burst out laughing again.
Lydia said, ‘Come on, let’s go home. I’m dying for some iced lemonade.’
We didn’t even have a fridge, so we stood up eagerly.
‘They’d better not come back with us,’ said Adam, ‘not without your dad or Joyce saying it’s all right. We hardly even know them.’
‘I know them,’ said Lydia.
‘Well I don’t. We’ve only just met. They could be anyone.’
‘Well, we’re not anyone,’ you said, quite bravely for you. ‘We’re friends of Lydia.’
Lydia stared at you, surprised to hear your voice. You hardly ever spoke to anyone outside the family.
Adam looked us up and down again. Then he said, ‘My father doesn’t like coloured people. He says they’ve got no manners and they’re ruining everything, taking over the whole country. They eat funny food as well and the stink gets everywhere.’
You and I began to walk away, our angry footsteps in perfect sync.
‘Don’t go,’ said Lydia. ‘Adam didn’t mean anything, he was just being stupid.’
‘I’m not stupid,’ Adam answered coldly.
‘You are,’ said Lydia, glaring at him.
To our surprise, he backed down. ‘Oh, all right, I suppose they can come back to the house, but don’t blame me if Joyce has a hissy fit.’
I wasn’t sure I wanted to go back with Lydia and her cousin anymore, but the lure of lemonade was strong and Lydia said there would be biscuits too.
Lydia’s street backed onto ours, but it was called an Avenue. A long drive led up to each front door and fuchsia bushes hung over the walls shedding pink and purple petals over newly mowed lawns. I could tell you wanted to take a picture of Lydia’s house as we approached, but you remembered Adam’s anger and kept your camera in its case.
‘Don’t just stand there, come in,’ instructed Lydia as we hovered on the doorstep.
We followed her into a hall that had stained-glass windows that cast orange and blue light onto a tiled floor.
‘We’re home,’ called Lydia, but nobody answered. ‘Joyce has probably gone out and Daddy’s busy I expect. Let’s go into the kitchen.’
We went down a flight of stairs into a room that was almost the same size as the whole of the upstairs part of the house we lived in. A thin, sharp-faced woman was standing at a table. Her knuckles were pounding dough.
‘Is that your stepmother?’ I asked in a low voice.
Adam and Lydia laughed until they couldn’t laugh anymore. Then Lydia said, ‘Of course it isn’t. That’s the woman who does for us.’
‘What are you doing down here?’ the pastry-pounding person asked, suddenly paying attention. She was looking at you and me, waving her rolling pin with menace.
‘It’s all right, Billy, they’re with us,’ said Lydia.
‘Billy’s a funny name for a lady,’ I whispered to Lydia.
‘It’s Mrs Billington really,’ she replied, without lowering her voice, ‘but we always call her Billy.’
‘Does Mrs Russell know you’ve brought them here?’ Billy asked, still staring at us.
‘See? I told you not to bring them back,’ said Adam.
‘Don’t mind Billy, her bark’s worse than her bite,’ Lydia told us. ‘She’s a billy goat gruff.’
‘She can’t cook though,’ said Adam. He was chewing a home-made biscuit he had taken from a large glass jar and pulling a face.
They were talking as if Billy wasn’t in the room. We went red again. We’d never heard children speaking to a grown-up like that before.
‘Go on, be off with you,’ said Billy, ‘and take both of them with you. Who are they anyway?’
‘Selina and Zora. They like to be called Selzora.’
‘Do they indeed? Does your mother know you’re here?’ she said, looking at us both once more.
I said nothing. You shook your head.
‘You’d better be off home, then, hadn’t you?’
‘I want them to stay,’ replied Lydia imperiously.
Billy sniffed as she considered this. Eventually she said, ‘If they’re going to stay, don’t let them get up to anything. I know their sort.’
We didn’t know what she meant, but she’d obviously taken a dislike to us. Her lips were pursed and there was a frown across her forehead.
‘They never get up to anything. They’re pretty boring really,’ laughed Lydia, getting out some glasses and pouring lemonade from a jug in the fridge. She took a few more biscuits from the jar and handed them round. ‘Come on, we’ll go up to the playroom.’
We drank the lemonade in a room that had stuffed dogs and teddy bears piled up against a wall. An electric train set covered a large part of the floor. We knelt beside it, examining the metal station and the track with its signals and points.
‘Adam is staying here for a few days,’ said Lydia. ‘He didn’t think I’d have any decent toys so he brought that with him.’
‘And I was right, wasn’t I?’ replied Adam, gesturing towards the stuffed animals. ‘Do you want to see it working?’ He picked up a controller and put a train on the track. We watched as it circled a little model village.
‘Can I work it?’ I asked.
‘Girls can’t do train sets,’ said Adam scornfully.
This statement infuriated Lydia. She kicked the station master onto his side and threw a metal tree across the room. Adam launched himself at her and they fought wildly. Adam was much bigger but Lydia was speedy and her blows landed with greater precision; their shouts and screams filled the house. Billy burst into the room and pulled them apart. ‘What are you, a couple of savages?’ she said, with a pointed look at you and me, as if our very presence had caused the fight. ‘There’ll be no pudding for either of you this evening.’
Adam stood up, brushed his knees and said, ‘Leave us alone. You can’t tell me off. You can’t do anything to us, you’re not allowed. You’re supposed to be in the kitchen.’
‘Your uncle asked me to keep an eye on you today and that’s what I’m doing. I’ll be telling him all about this when he comes home.’
‘He won’t care,’ said Lydia defiantly.
‘No, he won’t,’ agreed Adam.
The two of them were united again in the face of Billy’s threats. We stood there awkwardly, not understanding why Billy didn’t tell Adam and Lydia off for being so rude. ‘We’d better be going home now,’ I said.
‘No, stay,’ replied Lydia.
We wanted to stay. There were so many things to explore; in addition to the stuffed toys there were shelves full of children’s books, all with colourful covers. It was like a library, only better – the books all looked brand new. But Billy was glaring at us again, as if the disruption was all our fault, so we made our way downstairs.
‘Come round again tomorrow,’ said Lydia, standing by the front door.
‘It’s Sunday tomorrow,’ I replied. ‘We’ll be at church.’
‘Monday, then.’
‘We’re back at school on Monday, I told you that already,’ I answered crossly.
‘Don’t be angry,’ Lydia said. ‘I’ll write to you when I go to boarding school and we’ll be together in the holidays. We’ll still be friends.’
I nodded; I so much wanted it to be true. Lydia was naughty and funny and she didn’t worry about things the way you did; when I was with Lydia, I didn’t feel I had to take care of her, I could just be myself. She never mixed us up; even Mum, Dad and Cal sometimes confused us with one another, if only for a moment. Lydia never did; she knew the difference between us, and I loved her for that.
In the weeks that followed, I ran to the front door each morning, hoping to find a letter from Lydia – not addressed to both of us; a letter just for me – but no letter ever came. You and I went round to the house in the Christmas holidays, then again at Easter, but no one was home. The house looked empty. There was a sign up outside: FOR SALE, it said. Lydia had gone and she hadn’t even bothered to say goodbye.
I remember crying while you slept, determined to keep my tears hidden because you wouldn’t have understood. You thought our bond was all we ever needed, but I wanted more; I wanted to be in the world as me, not one of a pair or two of a kind. Why hadn’t Lydia told me she was going? Why had she never even written? Had she cared about me at all? I felt the loss as an ache that lasted far longer than the broken arm I’d got when we’d first met, but when you asked how I felt about her departure, I only said, ‘I couldn’t care less about Lydia.’