Me Myself Milly (4 page)

Mum came with me today when I went to buy my new uniform. I was glad because as the beginning of term draws nearer, I’m getting really nervous about going to the new
school. I had to buy a new blazer, jumper and tie. The new uniform is black and looks a lot smarter than my old maroon one. My new school is an all-girl’s school, which means I’ll have
one less thing to worry about. And I was worrying. What if I can’t make any new friends?

All through the shopping trip I was worrying about Mum being unhappy. I know I’m not as exciting or entertaining as Lily. I reckon she wished it was Lily getting the new uniform, Lily
going on the shopping trip and going for coffee when we’d bought the things, but instead she was stuck with boring old me.

I really tried to keep cheerful, but it’s hard to sound natural when there’s such a huge, unspoken thing hanging over your head. Mum was doing the same, so we were like two big fakes
pretending to have a good time. Anyone would have thought we were just a normal mother and daughter out on a shopping trip, which is what we were trying to be. And failing.

I told Mum I wanted to go to the library before we went home.

When we got there Mum went off to talk to the librarians. She knows them all because she often does talks in there about her books. I couldn’t get many books out, because I’d taken a
load out on Saturday and hadn’t returned them yet.

Actually, I only wanted one. It was called
How to Make Friends
and I didn’t want to draw attention to it so I grabbed a couple of other books and hid it between them. I’m
embarrassed that I need a book on something that most people do without even thinking, but the truth is that being a twin has made me socially inept and now that I’ve got to go to a new
school on my own I don’t know what to do.

When we got home I went to hang my new uniform in the cupboard next to Lily’s maroon one. I try not to look at her clothes when I use the wardrobe. Her clothes are completely different
from mine. She likes to look distinctive and original, whereas I like to blend in. They’re a constant reminder of how things have changed between us. When we were little we used to insist
that we wore identical clothes. Mum didn’t approve, she kept telling us we were individuals but we didn’t believe her. We looked identical so we wanted to dress identically.

I was about to close the wardrobe door when my new tie fell onto the floor. I bent down to pick it up and caught sight of something stuffed into the back of the wardrobe that made my blood
freeze. It was a blue hoodie. I didn’t want it in my wardrobe but I couldn’t bring myself to touch it. I slammed the door shut and put the tie away in my sock drawer. My heart was
beating painfully fast.

I hid the library book about making friends in the doll’s house with my journal. Just in time. I turned around as Lily came in. I’d never hear the end of it if she saw my book was
How to Make Friends
.

As it was, she was spoiling for a fight. She lay on her bed and smirked at me.

‘I can’t believe you’re seeing a shrink.’

‘I’m not.’

‘Uh-oh, you’re in denial,’ said Lily, laughing.

‘Ha ha, very funny,’ I said, trying to give her a withering look.

I wasn’t going to tell her that actually I’m enjoying my trips across town to see Ted. I like sitting on the bus, on my own. Nobody looks at me, or even notices I’m there. Not
like when I’m with Lily. People always notice twins when they look so alike. They look in passing and then they look again. They usually smile. Lily loves it. She always looks right back with
a smug expression as if to say, Yes, I was so amazing they made another one, just the same.

But on the bus no one knows who I am or what happened to me. The first time I got on the bus on my own I thought people would stare and somehow know – it was such a big thing inside of me
it seemed impossible that the whole world couldn’t tell. But nobody looked or whispered behind their hand, ‘Hey, it’s that girl, you know, it was in all the papers.’ So now
I like going out, I like the anonymity, though I worry about leaving Mum sometimes.

Mum’s been a lot better today and I didn’t want Lily to spoil it. She was in her workroom right now. Okay, so she wasn’t working, she was just moving things around, but it was
a big improvement.

‘If you’re not seeing a shrink, what are you doing then? Dating him?’ Lily wasn’t going to let up; she thinks it’s hilarious. I wanted to point out it’s all
her fault but if I did she’d go away, and Lily in an annoying mood is better than no Lily at all.

‘He’s not really a shrink, we just sit in his kitchen and talk while he drinks tea.’

That was true. I wasn’t sure that they were proper counselling sessions. I mean, Ted wasn’t really a proper counsellor. Mum told Carmel she’d got me a counsellor but really
he’s just friend of Mum’s from her university days who did a degree in psychology or something. Anyhow, he’s very laid-back and we just sort of chat.

I think he used to worry that we weren’t talking about what happened to me but now he’s given me the journal he thinks I’m writing about it, so we talk about other stuff and
never mention Lily or what happened. He’s a lot more relaxed now, though that might be due to all the dope he smokes. He even offered me a drag once, though I think he was just being polite;
he looked quite relieved when I said no. Ha ha, I’d love to see Carmel’s face if she knew. I don’t think that was the kind of therapy she had in mind.

But I don’t tell Lily any of this, she’d just tell me I should have had some, like it’s no big deal. We grew up around the stuff after all. I got quite nostalgic when Ted lit
up. It reminded me of the old days in the house; the parties and the music. Lily and I would join in the dancing until we were so tired we’d fall asleep under the table.

Today Ted and I talked about books. I said I’d noticed that in a lot of children’s books I’d read, like
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
,
Harry Potter
,
The
Wolves of Willoughby Chase
and the Lemony Snicket books, the children’s parents were either dead or conveniently not there. Ted said it was because at some point children want to believe
they’re autonomous. They want to grow up and move away from their parents and become their own person. Or their sister, I thought, though I didn’t say it. I said I thought that in books
it was probably more a case of getting the parents out of the way so the children could get on with the adventure without being called in for tea or told to wash behind their ears.

To be honest, I like talking to Ted. He doesn’t treat me like an idiot and even if he does use words I don’t always understand, I can look them up in the dictionary when I get home.
Today I looked up ‘autonomous’. The dictionary said:

Autonomy

i) the possession or right of self-government.

ii) freedom of action. From the Greek ‘autonomous’ meaning ‘having its own laws’.

I like that. I am autonomous.

I didn’t learn to talk until I was about four years old – at least not properly. Lily and I talked to each other but it was a weird, private language made up of
sounds and gestures. I think, when we were younger, we each knew what the other was thinking and we didn’t need to say it. If we had to communicate with adults, Lily did all the talking. She
would say, ‘We want a drink’, or ‘Milly needs the loo’, so there was no need for me to talk. Eventually Mum realised what was happening and told everyone in the house they
were to talk to me directly, not through Lily, and I wasn’t to get anything unless I asked for it myself. These changes didn’t bother me as much as they bothered Lily.

I discovered that I could talk, if a little quietly and hesitantly. This annoyed Lily, who quickly lost patience and tried to speak for me because she was so much better at it.

All I really remember about those early years is how Lily was always there. We played together, bathed together, even slept in the same bed. I think I thought I was Lily in a strange way.
There was Lily and there was me, but in my head we were the same person. Mum had a big mirror on the wardrobe in her bedroom and we used to stand in front of it looking at ourselves. If I moved,
Lily copied me, like a mirror in a mirror. I’d hold my left arm out, she’d hold her right arm out. The game was that she’d try and anticipate what I was going to do so that we did
it at the same time.

Mum told us how, when she came to Bath as a student to study art, she soon got fed up with living in the student halls of residence so she and a few friends found the empty house on King
Street and moved in. Mum said it was a beautiful house which deserved to be lived in and if the owner didn’t care about it then they would. Lots of students came and went in the house, but
Mum and her friends Jeanie, Matt and Finn were always there. Mum said, after they’d been living there for a couple of years, the property market really took off and the other residents in
King Street began to complain about the squat on their doorstep. The council got involved and tracked down the owner. She was an elderly lady who lived in New Zealand but she was very ill and died,
leaving the house to her great-nephew, David, who she’d never met. He was finishing his degree at Newcastle University and after he’d done his finals he came down to view his property
and he never left. He fell in love with Jeanie and the house and the city; so Mum and her friends didn’t have to move out.

When we were little there were about seven adults and three other children living in King Street. Mum had a theory that, although she’d given birth to us, we were humans, and one human
couldn’t own another human and, besides, the whole world was one big family, so we were to call her Summer and not Mummy. This didn’t quite work out because when I was little I had
trouble with my ‘s’ sounds so I called her Mummer, which sounds like Mama anyhow.

If we fell over and cried someone would pick us up and comfort us. If we wanted a bedtime story there was always someone willing to tell us one. And as the cooking was shared, a different
person gave us our tea every night. If it wasn’t always Mummer we didn’t care or even notice.

I was alone in my room, flicking through
How to Make Friends
and pretending that I wasn’t panicking about starting at the new school next week. The book suggested
that you should always act naturally. Well, that wasn’t going to work. What if your natural self was painfully shy? I skipped over that bit and started on the chapter that talked about being
optimistic and staying positive. How could I
stay
positive when I wasn’t feeling positive in the first place?

It was hopeless. All the girls at the new school would already have friends that they’d made years ago and they wouldn’t want some newbie barging in. Perhaps the whole idea had been
a mistake. But then what were the alternatives? I really didn’t want to go back to my old school and have people treat me differently, which they would. I wondered if I should persuade Mum to
let me be home educated. But the thought of being stuck in the basement all day and never getting out was even worse. I’d just have to do it. There was no other choice. But, whatever, the
library book wasn’t much help so I stuffed it back in the doll’s house. There was a knock on the door.

‘Milly?’ It was Mum. She didn’t open the door and come in, which annoyed me.

‘We’ve been invited upstairs for a meal with Jeanie and David. I think there’s something they want to tell us. Five minutes, okay?’

‘Okay.’

As I was brushing my hair I began to worry about what it was they could want to tell us. Were they planning on selling the house? They couldn’t sell the basement flat, obviously, because
that was ours, but there was no reason why they couldn’t sell the rest of the house. It would certainly explain all the work they’d done on it recently. Oh God, I hoped it wasn’t
that. Or perhaps they were going to have a baby. That would be a good thing.

It turned out to be neither of those things.

Jeanie had cooked a lovely vegetarian curry and there was naan bread, poppadoms and chutney
and
yoghurt which kept us all busy, but I noticed that the atmosphere was a bit strained.