Door and Dee Brevington were non-identical, fourteen year old twins who
lived with their parents in the Boltons, which was one of the
most expensive areas in London. But, unlike the wealthy
residents who lived in the swish houses with
intricate security systems and sky-high gates, the
Brevington family were impoverished.
The simple reason why the Brevingtons weren’t rich like their
neighbours, was because Mr Brevington was a lowly paid writer
whose academic books on the Ancient World didn’t
sell many copies. ‘They’re
masterpieces,’ he insisted. However, the family
were able to live in the exclusive area, because they were
sitting tenants in their spacious garden flat,
which Mr Brevington had been fortunate to rent for a very low
sum since before the twins were born.
Although the twins were non-identical, they more or less got
on. But, they were so unalike in every way, that Door
secretly thought she was from another planet or more likely
adopted. It wasn’t such a daft idea, for not only
did she look completely different from her pretty
twin sister Dee, but she didn’t remotely resemble her
parents either. While they more or less looked
normal, in comparison she looked like some kind of freak, for
she was a six foot tall slouching beanpole, whose wild
mushroom brown hair stuck out like a tangled mess of barbed
wire. It was no wonder she thought she was an
outsider. For, while Door looked liked like an unruly giant,
her twin sister Dee was a dainty creature whose glossy, black
hair cascaded down her back like a rippling
waterfall.
Mrs Brevington’s theory for the twins being so unalike was,
they were born under different sun signs which meant they
didn’t share the same birthday.
‘Door was born just before midnight on the last day
of Taurus, the sign of the bull while Dee was born
the following day on the first day of Gemini, the sign of the
twins,’ Ma explained. But, Door didn’t
swallow her mother’s mumbo-jumbo, for if she and
Dee had come from the same egg, it wouldn’t have
mattered what sun signs they were born under as they
would have shared some characteristics, whatever they
were. As it was, they shared none.
Although, the twins were like two misshapen peas in a tin,
they had learned to tolerate each other from an early age,
which was just as well, as they had to share a bedroom.
Although, the Brevingtons’ large flat had a spare
room which should have belonged to one of the twins now that
they were teenagers, it was rented by an endless succession
of anonymous lodgers. That was because the Brevingtons always
needed the extra cash.
However, Door and Dee hadn’t realised they were
poor when they were growing up, because during
their childhood they had been given oodles of love and
affection by their parents. But, now that the twins were
teenagers, they realised their parents weren’t
rich like their neighbours. If Door and Dee wanted
extra pocket money which was most of the time, they
had to work for it. ‘Let’s make some
toadstool earrings to sell to Ma’s
friends,’ Dee would suggest.
‘Let’s make the bumblebee ones
instead,’ Door would argue. For, although Mr Brevington gave
his beloved daughters as much money as he could afford, it
was never enough.
Door and Dee didn’t realise their parents were eccentric.
Even ‘though Mr Brevington spent most of his time holed up in
his office, a dank and gloomy cubicle which looked out onto the neat
communal gardens at the back of the flat. Pa never noticed
the ancient trees and rhodedendrum bushes however,
as he was always in another world, dreaming and
scribbling about dead as dodo creatures with his
beloved quill pen. His resultant text books on the
Ancient World were so highbrow, that ‘A’
level students who were forced to study them at
school, found the books so heavy going, that in comparison
they found Latin a doddle. Not that the twins thought Pa was
a ponderous or boring old soul. To them, he was a bumbling
professor type who wore his long grey hair in a bedraggled
ponytail. Although, the girls respected their father, they
thought of him as a rather remote figure, due to him being
closeted inside his cubicle day and night. They
didn’t understand that although Pa was
extremely fond of his family, he loved his work more. And,
when the girls did see him shuffling to and fro from his
study, he was more often than not, dressed in his
ancient slippers, pyjamas and shabby dressing gown,
because most days, he was so immersed in his work,
he simply forgot to get dressed. ‘The man in a
dressing gown,’ Door would grumble and
mumble, wondering why wasn’t he like her
friends’ fathers who went to work early in the
morning, dressed in a suit.
While Pa was a shadowy figure, flitting around the flat like
an affable bat, Ma was so vivacious that she sizzled like an
ignited stick of dynamite. She had been considered such a
great beauty in her youth, that she could have married anyone
she wanted. That’s why none of her
friends understood why she picked Mr Brevington. But, Mrs
Brevington ended up with Mr Brevington for one reason only.
She had fallen in love with him.
‘I could have been a great artist,’ she
repeatedly told the twins while relentlessly driving them around to
their ballet classes, piano lessons, singing classes and any
other class which was classified as an ‘extra’ on
the National School Curriculum. Private classes which Mrs
Brevington paid for out of her own money, money which she
used her wits to plot and plan and scrape together each week,
as Mr Brevington who paid the flat’s low
rent and bills gave her just enough cash to buy groceries each
week.
There was no question of Mrs Brevington going out to work,
for she was too busy making sure the flat didn’t
resemble a bomb site day after day. And besides, what employer in their
right mind would hire her? For, more often than
not, she wore moth bitten mini-skirted costumes and a
paintbrush sticking out of her flame coloured locks, which
she usually, absent-mindedly stuck there after one of her
painting sessions.
Although, Door and Dee didn’t think their mother’s
bohemian appearance was odd when they were younger, now that
they were teenagers, they found her a bit
embarrassing to go out with. But, nevertheless they could see she was a
very striking woman, what with her attractive, animated face
and flamboyant manner.
‘You get my good looks from me,’ Mrs
Brevington often told the twins, which made Door cringe and
gnash the braces on her teeth, for she knew she looked
nothing like her. She was convinced she was some kind of
changeling, as even her toes looked different from
the rest of her family. On the other hand, it was
obvious that Dee was Ma’s blood daughter,
for although their facial features weren’t the same nor their
hair colouring, they had the same porcelain coloured skin. It just
wasn’t fair, Door constantly thought but she was determined
to keep her suspicions to herself until she proved she was
from outer space or more likely, adopted.
Then, she’d show
them!
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