The Tipple Twins and the Gift

by Michelle Cordara

  The blackbird flew from Mrs Tipple’s shoulder and tried pulling the twins back with its beak. ‘Oh look, it’s trying to help,’ she said, pulling the bird away by its wings and pushing the girls out of the door.

  But the bird wasn’t trying to help. In fact, it was trying to do the opposite. Jenna and Jessica realised that, as much as their mum hadn’t. But they couldn’t work out why. In all their years they had never known the birds to act in such a way. Yes, they confused the neighbours; yes, they repulsed the postman to the point where Bacton Square had a different postman almost every week. But had they ever tried to stop the girls from leaving Bacton Square? Never.

  Finally, making their way through the birds outside, they each put up their umbrellas.

  ‘That’s not fair. I have one umbrella and they have two.’

  ‘But Beatrice, they have one each, and two between them!’ Mrs Tipple shouted from inside.

  Beatrice stormed off ahead, her trousers now splitting as they made way for her growing body.

  As the twins passed Mr Wilson’s house, he was outside talking to Mrs Griffins about his breakfast. ‘I had cornflakes this morning… soggy ones.’

  Mrs Griffins had then snapped at the girls to run along and to never darken her doorstep again. ‘Shoo! shoo!’ she said, waving her hands as if they were birds themselves.

  Moving along quickly, the twins left the square with one, two, three, and many more blackbirds leaving the rooftop to fly above them. This wasn’t normal behaviour, but the twins ignored it all the same.

  For people that didn’t know the twins, it would seem that they didn’t notice the ‘MISSING’ posters of Caitlyn posted on the red phone boxes and lamp posts. But this was far from true. Just reading the name ‘Caitlyn Tipple’ stabbed them in places they never knew they had. They had no choice but to keep their heads down and ignore such things.

  They pretended to not see the pointing and whispering that came from others as they walked in time with each other.

  To the Tipples’ surprise, the blackbirds flying over them suddenly swooped down, landing on the pavement in front of them. The Tipple twins tried dodging and stepping over the birds but found it difficult. This only seemed to aggravate the birds more, as they were now squawking and flapping their wings harder.

  Moving along through a huddle of birds, and occasionally bumping into strangers, the birds started pecking and pulling at their blazers and umbrellas.

  ‘Oh these bloomin birds!’ Jenna shouted, as Jessica tried frantically to pull them off them both.

  A baby in a stroller pulled out its dummy and pointed at them. ‘Mamma… tramps!’ it said before it and its mum hurried off. Jessica felt this was aimed at her, mainly due to the fact she hadn’t brushed her hair properly that morning. It was hard for some people.

  Both uniforms were now ripped, their shoe laces tangled up and birds pulled at their shirts, nearly strangling them, causing Jenna and Jessica to bump into a lamp post and land in a muddy puddle, with one of Caitlyn’s missing posters landing on top of them.

  ‘That won’t get her back, you know, ripping the posters down,’ said a snotty passer-by.

  Jenna and Jessica couldn’t possibly turn up to Chumsworth looking like this on their first day, so they both went into the nearest shop, birds and all, and desperately tried to sort out their now ragged appearances. They had at least managed to shoo the birds away and ditch their umbrellas in a corner before the owner prodded them violently with his walking stick and they got thrown out. He chased them halfway down the street before they reached their destination: Chumsworth.

  Chumsworth School was a grand building situated behind tall iron gates and railings in thick fog. The word ‘CHUMSWORTH’ was boldly displayed on top of those iron gates, which the twins found intimidating, to say the least.

  They stood in front of the gates for at least a minute or two with their eyes and mouths open wide. There were blackbirds on the roof of the school. They told themselves it was just blackbirds that had followed them from their home, but no, they couldn’t be, for these blackbirds had a more ghostly appearance than the ones at the Tipple house. They’d never seen blackbirds as ghostly as these before. But still, there was a possibility they could be birds from their house. That was the story Jenna and Jessica were sticking to. Then the gates opened on their own…

  Swiftly moving through the gates and accepting it was perhaps their magic moods causing them to move, they made their way into the building, and it felt very odd to the twins, because, yes, it was raining and damp outside, but it wasn’t freezing. And the minute they walked into the building it was so cold their legs were shaking and they found themselves blowing warm air into their hands to warm up.

  They stood in the reception area of the school. A great school that achieved great things. And didn’t this school know how to show it.

  There was thick emerald-green carpet in all the corridors. The walls were decorated with some of the top work from the pupils, sports trophies, spelling contest trophies, school of the year trophies, and even a ‘school to have the most trophies’ trophy stood smack bang in the middle of them all, gleaming against the rest.

  It wasn’t long before they were disturbed by the school secretary, who they learned was called Mrs Greenose. She was a very orderly woman who had a rather large nose. She enjoyed her long nose, as it meant she could look down it at all the pupils.

  ‘I take it you’re the new girls,’ she said, wiping a smudge off her glasses, but before Jenna and Jessica could answer, she continued. ‘And I take it you’ve been told about room thirteen?’

  ‘No, Miss,’ said Jenna stiffly. Jenna and Jessica were suspicious of Mrs Greenose. In fact, they were suspicious of any stranger. Strangers had disappointed them. PC Dilks, for example, when he first entered the Tipple house, said he had high hopes of finding Caitlyn, as she wasn’t a twin. Yet, years later, he had let them down. The whole world had let them down.

  ‘Not one person has told you about room thirteen?’ said Mrs Greenose impatiently, before waiting for an answer the twins didn’t give. ‘Oh dear. It appears there’s a lot to catch up on then. I shall start by telling you very quickly that room thirteen… well, what can I say… You must not enter it, talk about it or have anything to do with it. No matter what goes on in this school, you must stay away from room thirteen.’

  ‘But where is room thirteen?’ the twins asked together.

  ‘Uh! You just spoke about it. But to answer your question, I don’t know where it is. That’s one answer I haven’t got,’ Mrs Greenose said, ruffling through some papers. ‘Nor has anybody, for that matter. Nobody knows where it is…’

  ‘But—’

  ‘No buts about it, girls… and you are still speaking about it. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t punish you right here, right now.’

  Standing speechless, the twins decided they wanted to get away from Mrs Greenose as quickly as possible, so they changed the subject and asked where their class was.

  Mrs Greenose checked her papers yet again and paused for a moment. ‘Oh, how funny,’ she said, sifting through them one by one. ‘It says here you’re both in the same class, but that can’t be. You can’t be the in the same class unless you’re the same age. And to be the same age you have to be twins…’

  ‘But, Miss, we are twins,’ Jenna said, correcting her.

  Mrs Greenose looked up slowly from her papers and studied the girls. ‘My word! You are, aren’t you. But not identical…’

  ‘Yes, Miss, identical.’

  ‘Identical twins at Chumsworth? But it can’t be…’ said Mrs Greenose, ruffling through her papers even more than before, until she gave up. ‘I’ll have to take your word for it, although Miss Snippings will despise this immensely. No twins have been allowed in here since the disappearances started. Miss Snippings won’t have anything to do with them… it can hinder Chumsw
orth’s reputation a great deal,’ said Mrs Greenose, walking them up one of the long corridors to their class. They came to a halt when they finally reached it. ‘Your teacher is called Mr Smith. He doesn’t like lateness,’ she said as she finally opened the door to let them in. ‘So sorry, Mr Smith, I have the new girls, Jenna and Jessica Tipple. They are twins, sir… identical twins.’

  ‘Yes, I know of the Tipple twins, thank you,’ said Mr Smith before Mrs Greenose left the room. ‘Girls, if you could come and stand at the front with me,’ said Mr Smith, showing them the way. Mr Smith was a slender man with short, thick, wavy grey hair. He didn’t care about the girls being twins, nor did he care they were a Tipple. Jenna and Jessica wished that everyone was more like Mr Smith.

  ‘Now, before we start, I’d like everybody to get to know Jenna and Jessica Tipple. Now, girls, are you okay to talk about yourselves… maybe for the class to ask you some questions?’

  ‘Yes, okay,’ said Jenna, pretending to be calm and casual.

  ‘And Jessica, what about you? Are you okay with this?’

  ‘Well, all right then,’ said Jessica without much thought.

  ‘I’ll start!’ said a small boy at the back of the class.

  ‘Now, Tommy Grinch, you need to stick your hand up first.’

  ‘But I am, sir… See, I’ve got both hands up,’ said Tommy, reaching his hands up as high as he could force them.

  ‘Well, Master Grinch, fire away then.’

  ‘You’re those Tipple twins everybody talks about, ain’t ya? Are ya? Well?’ Tommy said, leaning forward impatiently. ‘Is it true you’re the only ones left? Are you scared of the black figure? Do you think you’re next? I would if that were me.’

  The twins shrugged awkwardly and looked at Mr Smith for reassurance.

  ‘Now, Tommy, try and not talk about personal things, please.’

  ‘But it’s hard, sir. That’s the stuff we want to know.’

  ‘Okay, let’s look at it like this. We all know about the black figure, but we want to know about Jenna and Jessica. The question you want to ask is… who are Jenna and Jessica?’

  ‘The black figure, sir!’

  ‘Okay, Tommy, considering you’re adamant about this subject, maybe it would do the class some good if we had a group discussion about the black figure, but not singling our newcomers out. We all know this black figure exists and we don’t really understand it, which is probably what scares us the most about it, which is okay because we as human beings find that if we don’t understand something we get scared, and it’s not just children that it happens to. Even we adults get scared of things that make no sense to us. Now, hands up… who is scared of the black figure?’

  Jenna and Jessica looked around the room and saw that everybody had put up their hands. Everybody except for Tommy Grinch.

  ‘I think I’ve seen the black figure before,’ said Tommy, casually brushing his hair away from his eyes.

  ‘Sir, Tommy’s lying. He’s not even a twin. Everybody knows the black figure only takes twins,’ said a girl named Ruby, who was sitting at the front of the class.

  ‘Now, Ruby, don’t be so quick to judge. If Tommy has something to say, we need to listen.’

  ‘The black figure doesn’t just take twins. Caitlyn Tipple wasn’t a twin, was she,’ said Tommy angrily.

  ‘Sir, Tommy’s being personal, and you said we aren’t allowed to say personal things,’ stated Ruby quickly.

  ‘Tommy, if we can just stick to your own experience, please,’ said Mr Smith, who was now leaning against his desk.

  ‘I swear I’m not lying! I saw it staring at me one night when I was eating my dinner. It was outside, it was. What have you got to say about that then, Ruby?’

  ‘Carry on, Tommy,’ said Mr Smith.

  ‘I was like, “Oi, you there watching me eating. Yeah, you!” It didn’t answer, so I stared at it with beady eyes. My mum asked me what I was doing and I told her I was seeing to a problem she needn’t worry about.’

  ‘So what happened next then, Tommy?’ asked Ruby nastily.

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you what happened next. The black figure was no black figure any more. It had disappeared. And I finished my chips and treated myself to some more ketchup. I’m the man of the house and I’m not letting something that doesn’t even seem to have a face or a real name put me off my food, thank you very much. Especially chips. Especially fish ’n’ chip shop chips.’

  ‘Well, thank you, Tommy, for your experience. I’m sure it’s nice to know Jenna and Jessica aren’t on their own when it comes to the black figure.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Tommy proudly.

  Jenna and Jessica eventually got to sit down with the rest of the class and began to settle in, until they noticed something quite peculiar. It wasn’t something they saw but something they smelt. If they’d had to describe it, they would have said it was a damp and musky sort of smell. A kind of smell that went straight up your nose and never came out again. A kind of smell that made Jenna finger flick.

  They tried to snort the smell out and asked Tommy about it when he had them engrossed in ghost stories about Chumsworth as they sat in the corner on the carpet at the end of the school day.

  ‘That’s what that smell is,’ said Tommy. ‘It’s ghosts.’ Tommy was in his element, his green eyes wide. He told the twins stories about Miss Snippings. He said no one ever sees her and she is merely just a name above a door. And come to think of it, the twins had gone through the whole day and not seen her. They had no idea what she looked like or even what she sounded like for that matter.

  Tommy raised his hands and scratched his face, which made the twins jump, and he told them Miss Snippings only came out at night to scratch on the doors of the children that had misbehaved that week in her school. Jessica said he was lying about that part, so he said he’d prove it one day by showing them the three scratches on a separate door inside room one – the caretaker’s room.

  ‘Jessica, I’ll cross my heart and hope to die. I’m telling you, those scratches are indications of Miss Snippings’ actions. She got hold of a child in room one and those scratches were all that was left of him. I wonder what’s behind that second door.’

  Tommy told them that if you did see her you had to turn around and touch the ground three times to get rid of a curse she might put upon you. He then scrunched his face and said, ‘I reckon she’s well ugly. I bet her toenails are as dirty as the day is long.’

  But it was Jenna’s and Jessica’s faces that were scrunched when he mentioned, ‘The hole of black’.

  ‘The hole of black?’ asked Jessica. ‘What’s the hole of black?’

  ‘Oh, girls,’ said Tommy in a condescending tone. ‘The hole of black is Chumsworth’s most feared punishment. No one, and I mean NO ONE, wants to get sent to the hole of black.’

  ‘But what is it exactly?’ enquired Jenna, who now felt so terrified she was unsure if she even wanted to know.

  ‘It’s exactly what it sounds like. A black hole in the ground. If you are naughty enough you get chucked down there… for hours… maybe even days.’

  ‘Stop,’ the twins said together.

  ‘Some people come out of there not speaking. Some are too disturbed to even remember how to talk.’

  ‘Stop!’ they said again.

  Tommy laughed. ‘Okay, I’ll stop. But just be warned.’

  It was now quarter past three in the afternoon, and when Mr Smith had got the class silent, he asked the twins if they’d had a good first day and if they had any questions.

  Jenna stood up first and asked if Miss Snippings was going to scratch on her door for being late that morning. Tommy put his head in his hands. ‘Ah mate,’ he mumbled to nobody.

  Jessica then asked why there were blackbirds on Chumsworth’s roof.

  Mr Smith aimed his answer to the whole class and
said, ‘For the fiftieth time, Miss Snippings does not scratch on people’s doors, and Jessica… there are no blackbirds on the roof.’

  That night, Jenna and Jessica lay on their bedroom floor doing homework, but Jessica got distracted by the horrid thought of twins not normally going to Chumsworth.

  ‘Maybe if we find Miss Snippings before she finds us… you know… to explain ourselves…’

  ‘Jessica! We’re not explaining to anybody about us being twins.’

  Jessica shrugged it off. She thought her own opinion was fair enough. Then she realised she was falling behind with her work and decided to copy what Jenna had written for the rest of it.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  *

  MEET MISS SNIPPINGS

  Despite London being so miserable and bleak since Beatrice had moved to Bacton Square, there was a peculiar spell of sunshine over the weekend due to her mood lifting.

  Of course, she’d had more parcels delivered to Bacton Square, so many that Mr and Mrs Tipple had trouble finding places to put the boxes before the binmen came. They shoved most of them up the chimney and under the stairs. The rest went on the roof and down the toilet.

  Reports also came flooding in on the radio due to the abnormality of the hot weather. One was about a local girl who managed to catch some sun despite the odds being against her as she was classed as a typical pale Brit.

  ‘Local Suzy Diphole is to be hailed as Britain’s Got Talent winner even though she took no part in the show.

  ‘Suzy Diphole, who is aged thirty-four, has been announced as next year’s winner on the popular talent show for catching the most amount of sun in a rare seven-minute episode of clear skies. Suzy’s husband has said that, “Nobody manages to catch that amount of sun, even when sunning it in Benidorm…”

  ‘Suzy herself is also very pleased, as she has referred to herself as just a regular girl from London and never imagined she would achieve something as great as this. She said, “Just being a Brit and managing to get as tanned as I have during those seven minutes is a miracle – you know – because Brits normally only get burnt.”