Traveling English

 

As most people who know me are aware, I like to travel.  As I’ve said previously, I often travel alone, especially when I’m going to the UK.

Why the UK? Well, they speak English. And I promised my husband I’d save Australia and New Zealand until he could go for long enough to see them properly.

Okay, according to those who live in the British Isles, it’s probably a misstatement to say I speak English. I speak the American version of English.

We were probably all taught a few differences between British and American English the first time we read a school-assigned book by a British author (if it hadn’t already been translated into American), like the use of ou in words we only use o in (color/colour, etc.), extra syllables in some words (Aluminum/aluminium; specialty/speciality) and car parts (A: roof/B: hood; A: hood/B: bonnet; A:windshield/B: windscreen; A: parking break/B: handbrake; A: turn signal/ B: trafficator; A: tire/ B: tyre)

But there are a good many terms that can lead to some often funny misunderstandings.

The British term for clothing that covers your lower torso and legs is (are?) trousers. While we sometimes use that term in the US, we usually say pants. All well and good except that in the UK pants refers to underwear. So, just imagine the amusement of someone there overhearing two American women discussing not wearing pants to a party, but wearing a dress instead.

Of course, having American TV programs (telly programmes), and experience with American tourists, just hearing the accent would clue them in on what the women meant.

In the UK, you don’t stand in line (or on line for New Yorkers). You stand in a queue, or queue up. Asking someone in the UK where the end of the line is would probably result in at least a momentary blank look.

In the UK a jumper is not a sleeveless dress that is worn with a blouse underneath. (That would be a pinafore, which, on the rare occasion that word is still used in the US, means a summer dress with frills at the armholes.) A jumper is a pullover sweater. The open front kind is called a cardigan (a word also used in the US). Of course, American's don't necessarily differentiate; we call both types sweaters.

One thing to note: never, ever call anything a fanny pack. They call them bum packs. (Does anyone even use them anymore?) Fanny is a vulgar term for a woman’s private parts. It certainly makes one wonder about the British band, the Bee Gees’ song, “Fanny, Be Tender with My Love.”

Pedestrian crossings on the road – picture the Beatles’ Abbey Road cover – are called zebra crossings, and those in the UK generally pronounce that with a short e. (Rhymes with Debra) I've recently been told the animal is as well. I’ve never been to the zoo there. And the letter Z is pronounced zed, except when referring to the band, ZZ Top.

You won’t hear “yeah” as much there, the Beatles notwithstanding, but you will frequently hear “whilst” rather than “while” or “amongst” in place of “among”

Americans are a people of euphemisms, possibly because of the country’s puritan roots, so we will say bathroom, rest room, ladies’/men’s room when we actually want a toilet. I suppose we’ve been trained not to say toilet in public. (Our commercials even say "bathroom tissue" rather than toilet paper.) Not so the British. If you need a toilet, it’s best to just ask directly -- although they do have ladies' and men's rooms in places like airports and railway stations.

I once asked for a bathroom at an older-style B&B, and was shown to a room containing only a tub and a sink. Seeing my confused look, the lady of the house finally said, “Oh, you want the toilet,” and showed me to a different room containing a toilet and a sink (what we would call a powder room or half bath).

While this is not the norm, it’s best to be direct. Of course, if you can’t bring yourself to say the word, they also call it the loo or the W.C.

The British and Irish are amused by Americans using brand names in place of generic terms: Scotch tape (although they call it Sellotape, which is also a brand name), Jell-O for gelatin, and Kleenex for tissues. Americans are confused by the British and Irish calling Jell-O jelly, which is what we often call preserves.

While Americans tend to think the British make words longer than we do, this is not always the case. They tend to say fridge rather than refrigerator and zip instead of zipper. Yes, Americans also sometimes use the word fridge, but zip is always a verb, while the noun is zipper.

Some words are the same in both countries, only with a different accent. For example, garage has the accent on the first syllable in the British Isles and on the second in the US (except in some parts of the East Coast where it has been carved down to a single syllable: Grazh.)

Story has two meanings in the US: something to be read or a floor of a building. In British English, the literary one is story, while a floor of a building is storey.

Pavement in America is the road surface; in the UK it’s the sidewalk. In the U.S., the road is surfaced with macadam; in the UK it’s tarmac. Both are shortened forms of tarmacadam. In the U.S., only airports have tarmac, our word for where the airplanes land.

You’d think we’d all have the same word for newer inventions. Not so. Americans have cell phones. The British have mobile phones (pronounced with a long I) A GPS in America is a Sat-Nav in the UK, and American security cameras are the same thing as British CCTV.

For those only taking a short vacation – called a holiday in the UK – this is probably more information than you’ll need.  Knowing chips are French Fries, crisps are potato chips, a lift is an elevator, the underground or tube is the subway system, "way out" means exit, and the natives want you to think that only Americans go to McDonald’s is basically all you need to know to get by.

If you are spending an extended time in the UK, I’d highly recommend a book called British English A to Zed. It’s a list of British words and their American counterparts, although in some instances, I’ve never heard of what they call the American version, since I’ve only ever heard the British phrase used. That could be due to where I’m from and the fact that I’m only third generation American, so my parents and grandparents were raised with the old-world terms. The book also contains explanations of some of the expressions.

If you go, have a great time. Just don’t call your umbrella a bumbershoot. You’re not visiting the set of Mary Poppins.

To London, to London

 

[ There is a comment section, but no way for me to actually answer questions that are sometimes asked in those comments. I have decided to answer them at the beginning of the following month's blog. In October, someone asked how old I was when my dad died. I was 32.]

My favorite sport is travel. You may say that’s not a sport, but just trying to get through TSA at the airport is a marathon event: the dead lift of carry-on onto the conveyor belt, emptying your pockets and removing jewelry before the person behind you pushes past, and hand raises as you pass through x-ray, all while juggling a ticket and passport. And when you consider that a flight to Europe costs about the same as the basic equipment needed to take fencing lessons (my other sport), I stand by what I’ve said.

While I travel with my husband for vacations to destinations we’ve both never been to, when I go to the UK and Ireland, I usually go alone. His attitude is, “I’ve been there before; I want to go someplace different.”

My take is that there are still so many places in the UK and Ireland that I’ve never seen, I still need to go back.

Our conversation usually goes something like this:

Him: It’s cold there.

Me: It’s warmer there in the winter than it is here.

Him: It rains there.

Me: Surprise, surprise, it rains here, too.

Him: Not all the time.

Me: I spent a month in Ireland, and it rained one day in the Republic, and one day in Belfast while I was there.

But I don’t push the envelope. He knows I like to travel more than he does. He doesn’t mind. I go without him. There are places in the world I refuse to go. If he wants to see those places, he’s welcome to go without me.

You may wonder why I don’t travel with someone else, instead. I have done that. It has its pluses and minuses. On the plus side, you get to discover somewhere with another person and share the experience. Often my friends can’t afford the trip or don’t have the time off from work to go. Others have commitments that don’t allow them to go. Of course, the introvert me also needs my alone time. Traveling with someone else is exhausting.

I carefully plan my trips, and if someone is coming with me, I give them a copy of the itinerary. It isn’t because I have to be in charge. In fact, I ask the other person where they want to go, what they want to do and see. I’m usually met with, “Oh, you know places better than I do. Whatever you pick is fine with me. And when I give the suggested itinerary, they never tell me if they aren’t interested in something I’ve listed. They give me the, “Oh, this is great.”

I don’t like to arrive in a country with no idea what I’m going to do. I did that once, and it was disastrous. I thought the other person had planned that part of the trip. They hadn’t, and as a consequence, we saw only what we could figure out how to get to on foot with our trusty Tourist Information maps.

It is frustrating, though, when you’ve planned events for the day, especially when some include buying tickets (in advance) for a timed event, and the  other person isn’t ready on time. Sometimes we miss the event entirely.  Yes, vacations should be relaxing, but they shouldn’t be boring. And I hate wasting money, especially over someone else’s disorganization. When I was a child, my family almost never went on vacations.  I have worked too long and hard to be able to afford vacations to have someone else treat it like it’s no big deal.

It’s also frustrating, after you’ve done all the planning because the other person won’t participate, only to find they had their own agenda they didn’t tell you about, and spring it on you at the last minute.

I have also travelled with someone who constantly sabotaged me throughout the trip. It reached a point where a foreigner I’d met actually asked me if said person was really my friend.

I mean, really, if you ask me to make all of the decisions, and you’ve seen and approved all of them ahead of time, don’t play games with it. I don’t jam pack the schedule. I have one, or perhaps two things per day scheduled, and the rest of the time is to relax and do spontaneous things. There are even days with no plans.

Maybe I’m just difficult to travel with. It’s hard to see me from the outside.

It’s simply easier to travel alone.

Of course, traveling in general has its own issues.

Unless I’m going to Ireland, I have to fly into London to go anywhere in the UK. This is because there are no direct flights from where I live to places like Wales or Scotland. First I'd have to fly to Toronto, Washington, D.C., Amsterdam (!) or Chicago – which is in the wrong direction.

That means changing planes, which in turn involves collecting my carry on, standing in the aisle for an extended period because people refuse to wait for the row in front of them to get out first. They don’t stop to consider that would be faster.

Instead, the (expletive, expletive) people in the back race up the aisle before the doors are open, and often before the seatbelt light has gone off, in the wrongheaded idea that they need to be the first one out.

This is another reason I call travel a sport. I keep expecting to hear the winner of “first person out” announced once we arrive in the airport, along with medals for first, second and third place.

Then there’s the Olympic race to wherever your connecting flight is leaving from – usually at the other end of the airport – and resettling in another plane for the now at least seven-hour flight.

I’ll pay a bit extra for a non-stop flight, thanks.

Once at the final destination, there is a mad dash so as not to be the last one in line at customs.

Customs is its own special world. I usually arrive in London between 6 am and 10 am. Mine is never the only flight. There are several hundred packed like sardines in each flight, since they moved the seats closer together. Want more leg room? It’ll cost you an additional $80. Care to move to business class? Another $2,000, please. They know at the airport what time the various flights are due to arrive. They come in at the same time every day. There are hundreds, if not thousands of people, mostly sleep-deprived, waiting to have their passport stamped.

There are perhaps 20 customs kiosks, yet never, including pre-Covid, are there more than two customs officials for British and EU passports, and two for the rest of us. Bring a good book and maybe one of those canes that opens out into a chair; it’s going to be a while.

The next leg of my journey is the trip from Heathrow or Gatwick to Central London. After collecting my checked luggage, finding the correct lift to the trains or the underground and purchasing my ticket, the journey is lovely. The trains are clean, well-lit and smooth-riding. They leave often enough that they’re not jammed with travelers.

It’s a nice change after an overnight flight where, unless you’re gifted in being able to sleep anywhere, or wealthy enough for business class, you get little to no sleep. Often the first two hours of the flight are taken up with the noisy prospect of flight attendants offering some form of dinner, and the last hour pretending it’s been long enough since dinner to feed you breakfast. In any case, there’s too much noise – and often crying babies – to allow for any sleep. And four quiet hours don’t exactly provide the recommended good night’s sleep.

From Heathrow, the high-speed train arrives at Paddington station, where I maneuver my luggage – which, over the years I’ve whittled to the size of a carry on suitcase – and whatever small carry-on I have, which usually contains my electronic devices.

I usually spend my first day in London to reacquaint myself with the place that feels the most like home to me. If I’m leaving that night to go to Scotland, I need to take the tube to King’s Cross station. There, I can get the night train to Edinburgh or the train to Hogwarts.

Once at King’s Cross, I can check my bags at Left Luggage, and start seeing the sights I’ve chosen for the day.

If I’m going to Cardiff, Wales, I don’t need to leave Paddington, since the First Great Western train line leaves from Padding to Cardiff. If I am going directly there, it’s usually only a short wait for a train, and in two hours I’d be in Cardiff.

On my most recent trip, I opted to spend a few days in London, and take day trips to nearby places I hadn’t yet seen, as well as a few plays on the West End – London’s equivalent to Broadway.

Staying in London means there’s still the matter of baggage. Most places, check in time is 2 or 3 pm.  Since I arrived in Paddington before noon, I had to deal with what to do with the luggage.

Most hotels and B&Bs will allow you to drop off luggage before check-in time if you’ve made arrangements, at no additional charge. If they don’t, there’s Left Luggage at Paddington for a nominal fee.

I usually try to get accommodations near the railway station I’ll be leaving from, to keep from having to navigate stairs and escalators when I’m trying to catch a train. I’ve learned from past experience that the cheaper places are inconvenient to railway stations going elsewhere, and they usually don't have elevators, so you may have to carry your luggage up a few flights of stairs.

Getting luggage around London is its own event. It’s almost always necessary to take at least one underground train to get from place to place. (This assumes you’re not going to splurge for a taxi, which I have done in smaller cities that don’t have the underground.) I’m adept at minding the gap and getting my suitcases over it most of the time. Most tube stations usually have lifts or escalators to transfer you from different level platforms and to the street level.

There is sometimes a problem when the underground station is quite old and not attached to a railway station. In this case, sometimes there are neither lifts nor escalators, and it’s necessary to take a long stairway, made to seem longer if your luggage is heavy.

I have stood at the bottom of a set of tall stairs, looked up and sighed, gearing myself up to pick up the heavy suitcase and making the climb, pulling myself up the railing while my suitcase threatens to pull me back down.

Fortunately, my experience has shown that Londoners are incredibly generous people. Most of the time, someone on the way up the stairs will see me preparing, and simply pick up my suitcase without a word, and carry it up the stairs, then wait for me to get to the top to claim my bag. They have my eternal thanks.

Of course, on the tube there are signs telling people to give up certain seats to those with special needs, pregnant women and the elderly. While I have never been handicapped or pregnant, apparently people can look at me and conclude I’m a senior citizen. While my chronological age qualifies, my inner self still identifies as 25, so it’s both a shock and a bit of an embarrassment to have someone give up their seat for me.

What’s really difficult is trying to decline the kindness when I will be getting off at the next stop. People take it almost as an affront for this senior to decline the designated seat just because the train will be stopping about the same time my bum hits the seat.

Sometimes people will assist me with getting my bags off the train.

Often, the most difficult place to manage luggage is where I’m staying. It’s really important to check out the finer points of hotels and B&Bs. Some hotels are more like B&Bs unless they’re big name places like the Sheraton or the Marriot.

If you book through Bookings.com or Kayak.com or any of a growing number of such places, you can find out whether or not there is a lift in the hotel. You can also request a ground floor room, but they don’t guarantee you will get one. 

If the booking site doesn’t have that information, they usually have an email address for the hotel, and you can find out that way.

If you really can’t manage multiple flights of stairs with your luggage, you may have to opt for a name-brand hotel which is often – but not always – more expensive than those with more old-world charm.

Once free of suitcases, the underground, walking and taking in the sights are much easier. There is no need to rent a car in London. Aside from the extra city tax when you rent in the city, there are buses and the underground to go anywhere you want within the city, and trains for places outside the city. Walking from place to place is fairly easy.

The usual suspects – Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Parliament, The London Eye, and Trafalgar Square – are walking distance to one another. Hyde Park, St. Paul’s, The Tower of London and Carnaby Street are fairly quick underground trips from there – just keep your Oyster card topped up.

If you want to be spontaneous with visits to things like the London Eye or the Tower of London, you’ll need to stand in line (or queue up, as they say in London) for a bit. But a quick visit online either to the place’s website, VisitUK.com, Viator.com or Bookings.com, among others before your trip can get you advanced tickets and allow you to skip the queues. And definitely take advantage of the hop-on-hop-off busses. It’s a great way to get the lay of the land, as well as a ride from place to place, if not the most direct one.

Traveling can be exciting, even with some of the drawbacks. Like all sporting events, it’s all a matter of planning, and being realistic about what you physically can do.

The best tip I can offer is make a list of places you want to go, make sure you don’t list more places than you have days for vacation, then cut the list in half, and you’ll be in the right ballpark. Even if you guess wrong and have extra time, you can always add things. Just remember that traveling from one place to the next takes time, too.

 

Muse Clues

 

“You write? It must be really hard to write a novel.”

That’s been said to me many times over the years. I think most people picture someone locked in a small room, ink-stained hands, and pieces of paper wadded up, lying about the room, the writer red-eyed, with hair tangled and standing on end from all the times they’ve run their hands through it in an anxious attempt to find the perfect word.

So, when I say, “Not really; it’s kind of like breathing,” I destroy their image. They don’t know what to do with that.

If I’m sitting and not reading, I’m frequently writing something.

“Where do you get your ideas?”

This is another question I’m asked, especially by those who aren’t so awed by hearing someone admit they write novels.

Often ideas hit at 2 a.m. on those nights when my brain won’t shut down, and old scenes from my life – especially upsetting ones – invade my head, magnify, and keep sleep from being a possibility. Mental rants and things I wish I’d said, morph into a scene, as yet unwritten, for whatever story I’m working on.

Or not.

Sometimes those rants morph into blogs or just something to keep me from falling asleep.

Unfortunately, 2 a.m. to sunrise is usually not a good time for me to write. If I’ve gone to bed, I’m tired. My usually meandering ADD mind is even more unruly than usual, making it difficult to put pen to paper – although I have done it once or twice. Instead, I toss and turn, trying to embed a particularly desirable turn of phrase into my mind to commit to paper the next day, when I can actually hold a pen.

And pen to paper is how I write. I’ve never been able to compose at a computer, I suppose because computers didn’t come into my everyday life until I was in my 40s. Yes, I’d used them before that, but I never had one of my own until then. I can write an email or a paragraph or two, but nothing longer.

Sitting in front of a keyboard doesn’t inspire me. In the dark ages, I couldn’t compose at a typewriter, either.

But whereas a typewriter only had keys and that cute bell at the end of the line, a computer is a dangerous thing, with many enticements: I wonder if I have any emails. Did I do my Wordle today? Is it time to make a click to feed shelter animals? I can’t think of the word I need; maybe if I play a game of solitaire, I’ll think of it – just one game (HAH!)

No, it’s safer to stay with what makes writing come easily: a pen and paper, and the satisfaction that my cursive looks relatively nice sometimes (yes, cursive).

I admit I’m as undisciplined as they come. Add a layer of attention deficit, and it’s amazing I’ve ever finished anything. It certainly explains why, although I started writing at about age 10, I didn’t finish a novel until I was 38. I actually had to put away one I’d been trying to write since I was 18, and decide it was never going to be finished. I started something new. It’s actually more surprising that I’ve written 25 novels and a cookbook.

As I said, I’m undisciplined. I can’t say I’m going to write from 10-12 every day. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect a writer to work at it from 9 to 5. I write whenever and wherever. I use loose leaf, notebooks, legal pads, paper towels, whatever is available. I actually love writing on C-fold paper towels. I write at a desk, a table, floating in the pool, in railway stations, in the doctor’s office. All are fair game as places to write. (That sounds so Dr. Seuss: I will write on the train, I will write on a plane. I will even write by the Seine. But I will not write on a phone!)

I am your high school English teacher’s nightmare. He or she likely told you writers plan out novels and make outlines. They consult a thesaurus, and have the very best dictionaries. They consider every word carefully, and plot the story climax, leaving heaps of foreshadowing along the way.

My response to that is a carefully-planned eight-letter word beginning with B and ending with T.

I once had to do a research paper at my university for an OT class. Our teacher had us do an outline first, before we even did a review of the literature. I thought that was stupid, since I didn’t know whether or not I’d find the things I thought I would. But it was a good way to organize ideas, and have a sense of the order of the topics.

But even when you do a review of the literature, some books on your list may have only a mention of your topic as an aside, with no useable information.

I assumed we would do a revised outline once we found out what topics were out there. I thought that was a reasonable assumption, but when it wasn’t listed as part of the project, I asked the teacher if I could revise mine, because some topics I wanted information on had not been researched. She said no, that the outline was just a preliminary guide.

So I wrote my paper, and handed it in, along with the footnotes, bibliography, review of the literature list, and the outline (which she’d already graded.) I did get a B for the paper, which was on brain lateralization and handedness (yes, we lefties are always on about that stuff), and she said it was well-written. She also wrote in the comments that it didn’t receive an A because I hadn’t covered all of the topics in my original outline! Apparently, I was supposed to make something up about the things that were not to be found in other people’s books! It makes me understand why some people falsify their data.

It also makes me resist the idea of using an outline unless I write it after the fact.

Perhaps writers of historical fiction, or non-fiction writers use outlines and find them useful. But I’m not them. I find a character – or build one – and chat with them for a while. Then I give them a name, a particular height, hair and eye color, nationality, and other particulars that are only of interest to me as background information. I often make a family tree for them so I know their relationship to the other characters. If I like them a lot, I’ll make them left-handed (because I am). Then I give them a nudge to see what they’ll do.

They take me on their adventures, and I discover their story along the way. I don’t plan anything in advance. The characters tell me when it’s finished.

Yes, I have some idea of what the story is about when I start, but it doesn’t always stay quite where I expect it to. That’s why writing is an art, not a science.

Sometimes I want a character to say some phrase I particularly like. Having a great title or an interesting remark is better than icing. It’s more like cocaine (from what I’ve read).

But some characters aren’t enablers. They will put their hands on their hips and tell me, “I’m not saying that, and if you make me, I’ll make it sound stupid.”

Often, it takes several pages to even reach the point where the character will say the line. And usually, it sounds stupid. Then I have to delete all of those extra pages.

It’s usually best to simply trust the characters.

“I don’t want to be some character in one of your novels!”

That line has been flung at me more than once when someone was angry with me for something I’ve done or said (and never having anything whatever to do with my writing). My response is usually, “You wish!” or, “Not bloody likely!”

I write fiction. I do not use real people as characters. I don’t even base my characters on real people. I find that characters I’ve made up are much more amenable.

Something I actually do when I’m not writing or reading is to observe. I watch people. I pay attention (yes, really!) to situations I’m in or that others are in. I store them in my head for later use. Then I will use the situation, only peopled with my characters, who behave as themselves, not like the people who were in the actual situation.

An example is when my father died. It was obvious to me that he was already dead when the EMTs took him out of our house. He had CHF, and his heart simply slowed to a stop. He went peacefully.

However, the doctors at the hospital worked on him for well over an hour before anyone came to the waiting room to tell my mother and me that there was nothing more they could do.

I suppose because I knew it was coming – or perhaps I was in shock – I felt like an observer in the situation. When the nurse came to tell us, and asked if we wanted to see the body, my immediate thought was, “No, that’s all right. I believe you.” I had seen the arms and legs sprawled as he lay on the ambulance gurney, before they got him appropriately positioned at the house. I didn’t actually say anything to the nurse. My mother immediately said, “Yes, of course.”

So, when they were ready, we were led into the room where his body lay peacefully, dressed in a hospital gown and his trousers. I felt like a video recorder, observing as my mother smoothed his hair, kissed his forehead, remarking on how his head was still warm – which I thought was a bizarre thing to say.

I have never and will never kiss a corpse. I know, other people have no problem with this. The person is no longer there. Frankly I find many of the rituals associated with death somewhat on the grotesque side.

But I watched and the memory of everything about that room and my mother’s actions are etched in my mind. And then I accidentally brushed up against the icy hand and was shocked. She’d talked about his head being warm. His hand was not. I knew from experience that the body hoards its warmth in the core to protect the brain and other vital organs, so hands and feet are the first to lose heat. I simply hadn’t expected to come into contact with that hand.

I used the loss of heat in a hand of someone who had just died in a story, although the other circumstances were completely different.

And I used the hospital scene in another, as yet unpublished, novel.  The person in the same position as my mother in the story had nothing in common with my mother beyond being a woman who had just lost her husband. The experience fit the story. I just didn’t use real people.

While I can’t write the original on a computer, I can edit there. Once I put the written story onto the computer – which in itself involves several edits, I can read and edit, then let the story rest before having another go at editing.

My blogs are edited several times from being put on the blog site and scheduled months ahead of when they go live, until – sometimes – 10 minutes before the blog is available for anyone to read.

So, while I don’t prepare for writing the way my English teachers taught me – and English teachers and lit. majors are often some of the worst writers I’ve encountered – I do have my own methods, even if they’re somewhat scattered.

I mainly write the stories I want to read, but can't find in the library.

I’m sure many, if not most writers have their own method of creating a story that is not necessarily in keeping with what their teachers taught them. You do what works for you, and if it happens to be what the English teacher taught you, all well and good. If it isn’t, that’s okay, too.

A Look Back

 

“Hey, girl, c’mere!”

I looked up from where my four-year-old self was playing in the front yard – the front yard – to see a girl standing outside our side gate. She was bigger than I was – probably five – with brown hair the same shade as dirt. I thought if she got down on the ground grass might get confused and grow out of her head. I thought that was funny, but I didn’t say it because I didn’t want to be mean. Sometimes I said things I thought were okay and got yelled at for being mean.

I had never seen this girl before. I didn’t know her name, and obviously, she didn’t know mine. I didn’t know where she’d come from. She must be a street urchin, I thought. That was what my mother called children who roamed the streets instead of staying in their own yards.

“Girl, c’mere,” she said again.

I obediently walked over to the gate, resting my arm on the top. She didn’t smell, but she looked like she needed a bath, anyway.

“Can I come in to play?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “I’m not allowed to let anyone in.”

She pinched me! I didn’t even know that word.

“Now can I come in?” Was she serious?

“No. I’m not allowed to let anyone in,” I repeated, thinking maybe she was stupid.

She pinched me again, and I ran into the house to tell my mother. She ran out and chased the girl to the end of our property, and told her to go home and leave her little girl alone.

Go home? This little girl had a home? I always thought urchin and orphan were the same thing. I imagined a truck coming down the street to collect all of the urchins when the street lights came on to take them back to the orphanage.

But the girl wasn’t an orphan. My mother even knew her name. She lived on the next block. But, my mother said, she was too old to play with me – she really was five – and my mother didn’t like the fact that her parents let her “run wild.”

Apparently, sometime later, one of her parents came over to complain about my mother chasing their daughter. My mother made no bones about what she thought of their daughter pinching me when I was only doing what she had told me to do.

The girl’s name was Veronica, and she became my nemesis a few years later when I started school, and she was in first grade for the second time.

Why I was in the front yard is a mystery. The sandbox, swings, and sliding board – and in summer, the little swimming pool – were in the back yard. That was where children played. Only on summer evenings, when my parents sat out in the front and my two older brothers and I dashed around catching lightning bugs in jars were we allowed in the front yard. And then my mother admonished us to keep our voices down so we wouldn’t bother the neighbors. Once the street lights came on, we had to set the lightning bugs free and go inside to wash out the jars and wash the ick smell of lightning bugs off our hands.

We lived on the corner. The high telephone pole with the street light on it was on our corner. Just before it was the stop sign. That was the big red circle with a lot of corners on it and painted letters. I didn’t know how to read, but I knew my letters – you had to to sing the alphabet song, although I thought elemeno was one letter.

The letters on the sign danced around when I looked at them. They were P-O-T-S or P-O-S-T or S-P-O-T or T-O-P-S or S-T-O-P. It was always different, but it meant stop. 

I always thought that was the most likely place the man in the big black car would pull up someday and say, “Hey little girl do you want some candy?” I would shout, “No!” and run into the house. But he never showed up

I had two older brothers, Eddie and Robbie. They had friends who lived across the street, Bobby and Jimmy, and they had a little sister, Nancy. She was still a baby, maybe two years old. That was the natural order: two boys and a girl. Sometimes when my mother went across the street to have coffee with Bobby and Jimmy’s mother and watch her smoke cigarettes, I was allowed to play with Nancy.

I don’t remember what we played, but she had toys I didn’t have, like blocks and rattles and a jack-in-the-box. Her toys were easy to play with. You could pretend they were all kinds of things until she took them away from you.

I knew about real names and nicknames, although I could never figure out what Nancy’s real name was. Nancy must be a nickname, since that’s what everyone called her. My brother, Robbie’s real name was Robert, so I thought Nancy’s brother, Bobby’s real name must be Bobert. But everyone laughed when I said that.

Several of my aunts and uncles – the real ones, not the neighbors we called aunt and uncle – had lots of children, and when they did, the first one was often a girl. I used to think that was so sad for them to be the oldest and a girl. If they didn’t have older brothers, who would teach them how to build snow forts, or catch frogs, or how to find the front and back door of a worm’s house? Who would squish bugs for them so they didn't have to get bug gook on the bottom of their shoes? Who would take them on adventures and pretend things with them or teach them how to climb up the slidey part of the sliding board? No wonder they were so girly!

But if you were only having three children, the first two had to be boys. It was a rule.

Our front yard had two gates, one on the front and one on the side because we lived on a corner. Our front steps and the walkway that led to the front gate, as well as the one to the side gate were made of flagstones that were cemented in place. The stones were all different sizes and shapes. My favorite was a light grey one that was bigger than the others, and roundish, with a hump in the center. It was a little sparkly, too. When I was allowed in the front yard and not catching lightning bugs or playing jacks on the steps, I was usually sitting on my favorite stone and pretending something.

When I was four I didn’t really have any friends. Nancy was still a baby, but I guess she was my friend when I played with her, even if she couldn’t pretend things.

There was also a girl who came with her father when he stopped by for the block collection for church. Her name was Patty, which was one of my favorite names when I was little (my other favorite was Debbie). When she came with her dad, she and I would stand there looking at each other and say hi. She was a couple of years older than I was. I didn’t know then that she had a sister who was my age – and no brothers! I thought of her as one of my friends since I said hi when she came to our house, and I sometimes saw her at church, and said hi to her there. I didn’t know where she lived, so we didn’t play together. My parents did, which I thought was amazing. But they said she lived too far away, and was too much older. I think she might have been six.

My brothers were in school, and had lots of friends. I knew the names of many of them: Jerry, Ricky, Skeeter, Benny, Frankie,  Joey and Glenn. When I was by myself I used to pretend to be those friends, even though I had never met most of them, and I would make up what I thought they were like.

When my brothers were at school or off with their friends, I played by myself. There was so much to do in our back yard I was never bored. Sometimes I would bring my dolls outside and pretend they were my friends. They always wanted to do what I did, and I thought that’s what it was like to have friends.

I wasn’t allowed outside my yard unless I was taking the dolls for a walk. Then I could walk along the side yard between the front and back, but not in the street. (There were no sidewalks in our town.)

A boy named Billy lived across the street. He would play in his yard, and sometimes he talked to me. He was my friend but I used to say he wasn't because I wasn’t allowed to have friends who were boys. I didn’t know why. He wasn’t allowed in the street, either, but sometimes he would run across the street to steal my dolls. That’s all he did; then he’d run back to his yard, so he wasn’t a street urchin. But I wasn’t allowed across the street, so I couldn’t get my dolls back.

Billy liked to take the heads off my dolls, fill them with stones and throw them back across the street. He didn’t actually throw them at me. He wasn’t trying to hit me, just give me back parts of my dolls. Sometimes he wouldn’t give the rest of the doll back, and I’d have to get my mother to make him give them back. She never yelled at him. She knew it was just his way of being friendly. She’d just say, “Come on, Billy, that’s not nice. Give her back her doll.” He wasn’t really mean, so he would – until next time.

One of the best things was when we went downtown to get new clothes. We would be all dressed up, and had to take the train. Before we left for the train station, my mother would say, “We’re going out. You’re to be on your best behavior. If I have to speak to you while we’re out, I won’t do anything then, but just wait till you get home!” She also told me not to contradict her when she told the train conductor how old I was. I knew contradict. It meant be quiet.

Knowing we had to be on our best behavior, I was shocked when I saw other children running around in stores and playing in the clothes racks, or screaming, or touching things they weren’t supposed to. Weren’t they afraid of what would happen when they got home?

But there were so many things to look at in the city, with sidewalks everywhere and buses and yellow taxis, I didn’t think that much about the other children. We were usually only there just before Christmas and just before Easter.

At the end of the day, we’d walk down to where my dad worked, and all the people in the office seemed happy to see us. They told us how big we’d gotten and how nice we looked.

When my dad finished his work for the day, we’d go someplace nice for dinner before going home on the train.

One thing my mother could never understand was the fact that I was convinced I was adopted. One of the children in the neighborhood was adopted, but I was never allowed to talk to him about it because I didn’t know if he knew that, and if he did, if it would hurt his feelings if I mentioned it. But from the time I learned about him, I was sure I was adopted.

I knew about orphanages. I had seen Shirley Temple movies. You got to sing and tap dance if you lived in an orphanage. I thought I might at least have a chance at getting tap dancing lessons in case my parents ever decided to give me back. 

My mother assured me I wasn’t adopted, and asked why I thought I was.

“I don’t look like the boys,” I replied. She looked at me like I was crazy. My brothers and I have a strong family resemblance. But that’s not what I meant. I’d seen them in the bath. I did not look like them.

I never got the tap dancing lessons, and they never gave me back, so I guessed I was supposed to be there.

It wasn’t always easy being four, but it was fun most of the time.

 

 

Music

 

It is said that people generally form their musical tastes about age 14.

I have never conformed to my peers, and unfortunately, I turned 14 in 1969, a year I considered perhaps the worst in musical history since the advent of Buddy Holly (and I’ve never liked his music). Many will disagree with me on this.

1969 was during the peak of psychedelia. While Sgt. Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour and the White Album were released a year or two earlier, they were hailed as the Beatles’ coming of age masterpieces, inventing a whole new kind of music. And I didn’t like any of them. 

When those albums came out, I turned my back on the Beatles, and decided it was time to find someone new to love. I didn’t want Bearded Beatles with shoulder-length hair and psychedelic clothes. I may have been 14, but emotionally, I was about 10. I wanted my mop-tops, the Beatles I used to see in 16 Magazine. At that point, Herman’s Hermits fit the bill.

The background music of my childhood had been the Beatles and the rest of the British Invasion. Now they were turning into hippies and chanting with maharishis in India.

Other musicians hitting their stride at the time were Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, and a variety of others who at least wanted to appear to be drug-induced acts. Yes, the Beatles used all sorts of drugs, even in the early days, but I didn’t know that then, and it didn't ruin their ability to sing.

While Jim Morrison could sing, and I even liked a few of his songs, The Doors were not a band whose records I’d ever buy.

The yowling screeches of Janis Joplin and the slurred mumbling of Jimi Hendrix were not something I could call music, much less appreciate.

While oddly, my favorite Beach Boys song was “Good Vibrations,” and my favorite Tommy James and the Shondells tune was, “Crimson and Clover,” in the main, psychedelic music, especially endless guitar solos and guttural voices singing songs that took up an entire side of an album, like “Inagodadavida” by Iron Butterfly, were anathema to me.

14 was not a good time in my life to begin with. I was a short, fat, humiliatingly over-developed brunette in a world of tall, thin blondes. I hated me, and wanted desperately to find music that I could become. While everyone else seemed to embrace this travesty in music, I retreated to songs that were more closely aligned to what I had loved when I was eight. As far as I was concerned, 1969 was not a good year for music.

My high school years continued to be a musical wasteland to me. My only access to music was AM radio. My classmates may reminisce about how great music was in the ‘70s, but I can’t see it. I describe ‘70s music as ick (Carole King, The Carpenters, Tony Orlando and Dawn), glitter ick (Elton John) and disco.

Finally, the ‘80s arrived and brought a return to really good music, with the likes of Duran Duran, Split Enz, The Cure,  Soft Cell, The Thompson Twins and Tears for Fears.

But looking through my 45s and LPs – mostly from the ‘70s, after the Monkees and Herman’s Hermits albums – I can find music I still  sort of like. I spent most of 1971 listening to all four sides of The Who’s Tommy album on a nearly daily basis, an oasis of the '60s. And later, Quadrophenia, or at least “Love, Reign O’er Me” affected me as much.

The Grass Roots, Three Dog Night, and pre-disco Bee Gees are in my collection.  I have nearly every Moody Blues album they ever recoded – many of them now on CD – and during my college years, I finally had a radio with FM, which was no longer exclusively the domain of classical music. I not only listened to Carly Simon, Janis Ian, Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot and the band, Renaissance, but I also played a number of their songs on guitar and still sing them. That also applies to Simon and Garfunkel, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Dan Fogelberg and Cat Stevens. But that's pretty much as much of the '70 as I could ever stand.

So,  while the 1970s weren’t quite the wasteland I remember, I still prefer the ‘80s to most of what was being played on the radio in the ‘70s. I certainly didn’t share the musical tastes of my Carole King/The Carpenters-loving peers.

There are other bands, like Genesis, The Moody Blues, King Crimson, Styx, Roxy Music and David Bowie that I continue to enjoy. Even though they were making albums in the 1970s, I don’t think of them as ‘70s performers. I didn’t discover Roxy Music until the 2000s. The others transcend any one decade, so I don’t associate them with the ‘70s. To me, they belong to that misty, ethereal “decade between the ‘70s and ‘80s.”

I consider myself a child of the ‘80s because that’s where I came into my own – and made all of the mistakes my peers made in high school. It was the decade I was at my best. I was an independent adult, and I had music that thrilled me. Everything about my life in the ‘80s just seemed so much better – we just won’t look too closely at the social aspects of that life.

You Don't Know Me

 Auhor's note: This piece stemmed from my reaction to the daily shootings/mass shootings/beatings, etc. that currently happen unabated in the U.S. My reaction each time is, "What is wrong with people?" This is my attempt to figure out the mindset of those who do violence.

You don’t know me. I’m nobody. I've been told that often enough to know it’s true.

            You come from a family where arguments between parents are the norm. You’re not a huggy-kissy family. “I love you” isn’t something said. If you say it, you’re looked at as if you’ve just announced you’re from planet Earth.

            “Well, of course we love each other; we’re family.”

So, you choke it down, longing to be swept up in a hug warm enough to take your breath away. But it never happens. And sometimes choking down the words makes you feel like you're dying.

            Maybe you grew up fearing Totalitarian regimes and the threat that someone would drop the bomb on us, or perhaps that a plane you’re on might be hijacked and used as a weapon. 

            Your religion was of an angry God of Commandments: Thou shalt not. A God who threw Satan at you like a banana peel that could slip you up and trick you into sin. And the faithful, those who had chosen Jesus as their "personal" Savior, prayed over you in the hope that you would accept their version of Jesus. And they cursed you if you didn't.

             Maybe you were accused by teachers for things you didn't do. Maybe your parents blamed you for whatever troubles happened. Perhaps your classmates saw this and marked you as an easy target, never knowing the real you. And eventually the real you died.

                You don't know me.

             Maybe friends or younger relatives that you knew fairly well were nice enough in the presence of adults, but then said things that stabbed you in the soul when the adults weren’t around. You would never let them know. Rule 1: Never, ever give someone the satisfaction of knowing they’d hurt you. If you did, they won.

They were like the bullies on the street, in the schoolyard, in the lunchroom and in the school bathroom. The so-called friends who would pick a fight just so you would go away.

There were always bullies. Sometimes they took your lunch. Sometimes they simply called you names. But sometimes they threw rocks at you, stole from you or told lies about you, just to make you squirm. You could never understand how they knew you were the one they could bully, how they could see that target on you. And if they saw your pain, you made their day.

And so you played alone, digging in the sandbox until you dug too deep, and one of those hairy bugs with a million legs came scampering out of the hole and frightened your little self, forcing you to play somewhere safer.

            “I’m your friend,” someone says. Yes, they are, in forced places like the school yard or at a party where they socialize with you until the burden of your friendship proves too much, and they excuse themselves to talk to people of lighter acquaintance.

            And yet, and yet, and yet. They consider you a good friend, even though they’ve left you alone with a beer, to wander around, drinking too much to forget that you don’t know how to socialize. They’ve left you floundering. That makes you grin. You picture a flounder at a party: a fish out of water. That’s who you are. And you have a private laugh at that.

            You don’t know me.

            There were other relatives, too, the ones you don’t know so well or at all. The grandparents, who always seem vexed at something. The great aunts and uncles you’re expected to know even though they haven’t seen you since you were a baby. All get the obligatory kiss. Sit down, be quiet, don’t break anything, and for heaven’s sake, don’t touch anything with sticky fingers.

            The mother says the grandmother doesn’t mind having you visit since you behave. There are other grandchildren who jump on her furniture or open drawers they shouldn’t.

            But that doesn’t sound like TV grandmothers, or ones on social media who think grandchildren are the best part of life, who distribute hugs and kisses for the slightest cause, who freely say, “I love you.”

            And the great aunts and uncles you’re obliged to kiss and pretend you know,  the step-relatives, what of them? Didn’t parents teach you not to talk to strangers, not to take candy from strangers or get in their cars? These are strangers to you, yet you’re obliged to bestow the Judas kiss on the cheek.

            And yet, and yet, and yet, it isn’t the stranger who presents the danger. It is in the home. Come, take a look at this, and while you obey to observe some photo or new discovery, what was once a casual arm over the shoulder becomes an unwelcomed grope. And you are not allowed to say no because it’s a parent. The Commandment God says you must obey your parents. And you do not have the right to say no. Disobedience would surely  condemn you to hell. You stop believing in a future hell because it's here, now.

            Your one sanctuary, your room, is violated late at night when you awaken to find groping hands invading your clothes. He realizes you’re awake when you try to escape those hands. They are withdrawn and he soundlessly leaves, perhaps hoping that you’ll think it was just a dream.

            And you say nothing. Who can you tell? Who would believe you? The mother must know. She married him. She knows what he is like, so she is to blame as well. She didn’t protect you. Rule 1: never ever give anyone the satisfaction of knowing they’ve hurt you. Rule 2: never ever take private family business to outsiders. Rule 3: if someone has done something to you, you must have done something to deserve it.

            And yet, and yet and yet, other people don’t seem to have these experiences of family.

            Maybe he has a nickname, like Sly Fox. Various people call him that. You don’t know where the name came from, but they laugh when they mention it. They know.

            You become a cutter. Not with a razor blade; that would be a sin, and surely destine you for that other hell. No blood must be drawn. Instead, some sharp-edged plastic toy that, when rubbed roughly against the childish skin, will cause friction burns or blisters.

            It’s supposed to let the anger out, but all it does is cause more pain. So, you stop. Plenty of others are happy to inflict pain without you  helping them. Instead, the anger builds.

            You don’t know me.

            Anger can do many things. It could make you give up and end things. It could make you take revenge on even the tiniest perceived slight. It could make you take vengeance on those others consider innocents. After all, you were once an innocent. You were the one that all of the bullies saw as a target. But do two wrongs or a multitude of wrongs ever make a right? Do you have the skill to reason that far, or are you simply an instrument of vengeance?

            You secretly wonder if you’re like him. That suspicion is like that furry bug with all of the legs, living in the pit of your soul. You don’t want it to come out; you don’t want it to be there. You don’t want to be anything like him or the bullies. Sometimes, something clumsy you say or do – or even think – makes you suspect you are like him. If you are, you deserve everything that’s done to you. And maybe you want to take as many people out with you as you can.

            Perhaps one person holding out a hand, saying, “I’m your friend,” can make all the difference. Perhaps the meaning of “I’m your friend” is calling the authorities to tell them about things you’ve done or said before you wreak your vengeance.

            And yet, and yet, and yet.

            You don’t know me.

The Invisible Twin: Epilogue

 

 

            When Amy entered the house, no one was home. She looked around and noticed everything was as tidy as a museum; this wasn’t at all like the cozy home it had been when she and her younger twin brothers were growing up.

            The only thing besides the worn, folded blanket on the back of the sofa that spoke of a lived-in home was the book on the side able. She looked at the title, and recognized the book Kit had forgotten from his visit. Since she’d be in Cardiff at the end of the week, he’d asked her to stop by for it. She had deliberately chosen a time when her mother would be out and her father was still at work.

            While she loved visiting her parents, today she had quite a bit to do, and simply didn’t want to be delayed.

            As she picked up the book, what looked like a letter fell out of it. She stooped to pick it up and saw, “To Brynn Michael Evans from Christopher Morgan Evans, Bangor, Wales.” scrolled across the empty back page . The handwriting wasn’t the scrawl of his childhood, but his adult penmanship.

            She wondered when Kit would have even needed to write to Brynn. She couldn’t think of them ever being apart for more than the length of a class in school or one of Bryn’s football matches. Once Kit left for University in 1983, Brynn was gone.

            Curiosity got the better of her, and she opened the pages and read.

                                                                       

 

                                                                                                            17 April, 1990

Dear Brynn,

            To anyone reading this, I must surely seem mad. I was told by wiser heads that in order to move on, I need to confront my demons.

            Strange as it is for me to even think this, much less write it, you have been my demon for the last seven years. It’s only now that I can tell you what has disturbed me since the accident.

            Of course, regaining consciousness after my injuries to find you had not survived was the most exquisitely unbearable pain. For several days, despite my hopes and dreams for the future, I had no desire to remain on this earth since you were not on it.

Your hopes and dreams had been crushed by a vehicle driven by one who had no business behind the wheel. There was no satisfaction in knowing that driver had also perished; he had led a long and distinguished life.

My lack of desire for life was no match for the medical prowess of the doctors. Their refusal to allow me to give up kept me alive.

But before the hospital, before the crash, the two of us were happy knowing our own secrets, suspecting each other’s. I hoped a certain girl I’d met at the party where you lost your virginity – I knew that before you admitted it – would be at the one we were going to that night. Having read some of your journals since, I know you had similar expectations of seeing someone that night. Whether or not our expectations would have been met, I’ll never know.

            As the headlamps hurtled toward your door, I screamed, not from pain – yet – but horror at your being mangled. What I never told anyone, no matter how they pushed or why, was that you screamed, too. Your head was turned toward the car bearing down on ours. The doctors said that was why your spinal cord was severed. An internal decapitation, they called it. But in the seconds before impact you screamed, “Duw, dwi ddim eisiau marw! Kit, helpa fi!”

            I didn’t understand why you said, “God, don’t let me die! Kit, help me,” in Welsh. You seldom spoke Welsh, even to me.

            And in the interminable instant just before impact, we both reverted to our secret twin speak, the language everyone insisted we’d left behind before we started nursery. But we both know better. Simple phrases, the odd word, remain with us, even today. Someevie – our expression for “I love you,” came out of both of our mouths – or perhaps we only thought it to each other. I can hear, even now, your 17-year-old voice saying it. Someevie, Kit. Someevie, Brynn. Ekee nom: Be awesome.

            But as toddlers, we didn’t know the word awesome. Ekee nom was “be the whole world.” Only when we were older did ekee nom mean “be awesome.” You told me that every time before I went onstage. I still hear you say it every opening night, or before the first table read for a film or telly show.

            And as I was slammed against the side of the car, and you were crushed by the attacking car, I knew the instant your soul left your body, even though I told everyone I didn’t remember what happened. There was a horrid attempt for you to take a breath that couldn’t come because the nerves that allowed it had been severed, the moment you knew you were dying. A broken rib punctured one of my lungs, and as I tried to take a breath, I had a similar experience, although not from the same cause.

            And in that instant, my head was flooded with more twin speak words than I thought I knew, yet I understood it all. Someevie, Kit. Ekee nom alegat. Be awesome for us both.

            There was much more, far more than anyone outside the two of us would have accepted as possible in that instant. Yet, it was like someone was trying to fill a pitcher with the tap opened full, trying to fill it before the water was cut off. I know the things you said, and they were not things I would have thought to say. It’s still too painful to recall it all at once, much less translate it from twin speak.

            Your insistence at my being awesome likely had a good deal to do with my failure to die in the first few weeks.

            Surviving without you, trying to figure out a way forward, was sometimes more painful than my physical injuries. Mr. Mac, the psychologist I went to, was a great help. Yet, despite his having also been a twin who lost his other, sometimes he simply didn’t know what he was talking about. Actually, I was surprised Mam and Da even allowed me to seek psychological help.

            I started to read your journals to try to learn what I didn’t know about you as well as to find meaning in everything you poured into the instant before you died. If only I’d read certain entries early on, I could have avoided some emotional pain from others.

            I made the mistake of being taken in by Tegan Davies, your twin groupie nemesis. Had I only known about her from your experiences, I could have avoided her. Still, she burrowed in when I was most vulnerable, so any kindness, no matter how evilly intended, I drank in without a second thought.

            Even when I seemed to be moving forward, my desperation to protect you made me make the most egregious mistakes socially. But then, we both know I was the one without social skills.

            It took a few years of walking into emotional walls before I realized I was angry. Mr. Mac knew it – he’d gone through the same loss under different circumstances – and tried to get me to examine who I was angry with.

            I thought it was Mam – you were her boy as I was Da’s – and she was never comfortable with the things I did to heal. I frequently made her cry, although I didn’t mean to. 

            Sometimes I thought it was everyone. Perhaps Tegan. Perhaps a girl at Uni who did something similar to what Tegan did. But the girl at Uni was reacting to my cavalier behavior. In hindsight, I’m not proud of the way I treated her.

            But the anger stayed long after I’d healed from those experiences. Mr. Mac proved to be right in that instance. I was angry with you.

            I was angry with you for dying. I was angry because I felt I didn’t know you as well as I should, especially when several people – including Mam – said things about you that I didn’t think were true. And I began to doubt my understanding of you at all.

            I couldn’t tell any of those people the twin speak things you’d said. I began to doubt you’d said them at all. It might have been simply wishful thinking on my part. Maybe you didn’t say them. Perhaps you’d simply stolen my soul and left me with nothing.

            No, you were never like that in life. You couldn’t be that way in death, a death over which you had no control.

            When I recognized that, I finally started to heal.

            I confess I didn’t come to those conclusions on my own. Nancy made me recognize that.

            I don’t know if you knew Nancy. She’s the girl you teased me for snogging at the infamous party. She came back into my life at the end of Uni, and has continued as my Cariad to the present. No one else knows, but I intend to propose later this year.

She was supposed to be my date to the BAFTAs, but had to have an emergency appendectomy the day before. I asked Mam to go with me, but she didn’t think it was appropriate for a boy to take his mam. So, I asked Amy, and after some coaxing, she agreed. It turns out she wears the same size clothes as Nancy, and was, as she put it, going elegant in Nancy’s gown – Nancy insisted. Oh, and I won the BAFTA – for my first film, too – in case you were wondering.

            So, now I think I’ve got over being angry with you. None of it was your doing. I’ve been trying to make my life something of which you would be proud – since I’m living for us both.

            Do you remember when we used to laugh when people would ask us what it was like to be a twin? We always said we didn’t know what it was like not to be a twin. Well, now I do.  I can’t say it holds a candle to being a twin. I don’t know if singles-from-birth feel the loneliness. That’s the hardest part. It’s a loneliness that no one else can fill.

            You were the best brother. Diolch yn fawr.

            And in case you didn’t know, Someeve, Brynn. Ekee nom.

            Love from this side of the abyss,

            Kit

 

            Amy folded the pages of the letter, and returned them to the back of the book.

            She thought, after Brynn’s death, that she and Kit had become closer. Some people even suggested she was a surrogate for Brynn. Now she knew they were wrong.

            Kit’s openness in what he’d written – perhaps believing that no one would ever see it while he was alive – was shocking. She wasn’t sure she could take it all in. And she’d have to pretend she didn’t know these things. He wouldn’t tell anyone, especially if he hadn’t told Mr. Mac.

            She did wonder why he’d committed this information to paper. Brynn had been so good at keeping a journal, and Kit had been so rubbish at it. Perhaps bursts of candor were the closest he could come.

            Armed with the book Kit had asked for, she left the house.