Twin Tales Read online

  Twin Trouble first published in Great Britain 1994 Connie and the Water Babies first published in Great Britain 1996

  by Egmont UK Limited

  239 Kensington High Street

  London W8 6SA

  This edition published 2010

  Text copyright © 1994 and 1996 Jacqueline Wilson Illustrations copyright © 2006 Catherine Vase

  The moral rights of the author and illustrator have been asserted

  ISBN 978 1 4052 5460 1

  eBook ISBN 978 1 7803 1166 1

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by the CPI Group

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

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  Contents

  1 Double Shock

  2 Name Games

  3 Wailing Whimpers

  4 Blue Beads

  5 New Grannies

  6 Purple Puddles

  7 Fun Mums

  8 Best Friends

  9 Growly Bears

  10 Baby Blue-Eyes

  1. Double Shock

  ‘We’ve got something wonderful to tell you, Connie,’ said Mum.

  ‘You’re going to be so thrilled,’ said Dad.

  Connie blinked at them both. Their faces were pink. Their eyes were shining. They weren’t teasing.

  ‘What? What, Mum? What, Dad? Tell me!’ said Connie.

  ‘Can’t you guess?’ said Mum.

  ‘It’s what we’ve always wanted,’ said Dad.

  Connie’s heart started thumping inside her T-shirt.

  ‘Oh, Mum! Oh, Dad! Are we going to Disneyland?’ she said.

  Mum and Dad blinked back at her.

  ‘What?’ said Mum. ‘Oh, Connie, this is better than a trip to Disneyland.’

  ‘Better than seeing Mickey Mouse?’ said Connie, doubtfully.

  ‘Mickey Mouse is only pretend. This is real,’ said Dad.

  ‘Am I getting a real mouse?’ said Connie, perking up. ‘Can I have a white one, please? And a black one too? And then they could maybe have babies, and they might come out in black and white stripes like very weeny zebras.’

  ‘Do stop burbling, Connie,’ said Dad. ‘We’re not talking about mice having babies. It’s Mum.’

  ‘Mum?’ said Connie. ‘Mum’s having baby mice?’

  ‘Oh, Connie,’ said Mum. ‘I’m having baby babies.’

  ‘Baby babies?’ said Connie. She didn’t just sound doubtful now. She looked it too.

  ‘Don’t look so worried,’ said Mum, laughing. ‘I’m not having lots and lots. Just two. Twins.’

  ‘Isn’t it marvellous?’ said Dad, and he gave Connie a little nudge so that she’d say yes.

  Connie didn’t say anything. She was thinking. She wasn’t sure she liked babies very much. Connie’s best friend Karen had a baby sister called Susie. Susie looked sweet enough, but when Connie had picked her up to give her a cuddle Susie had been sick all down the front of Connie’s best teddy bear jumper. Connie had never been very keen on Susie after that. Come to think of it, Karen wasn’t very keen on Susie either. She screamed a lot. That was just one baby. Two would be twice as bad.

  ‘Hey, Connie!’ said Dad, giving her another nudge. ‘You know how we’ve always longed for more children.’

  ‘Have we?’ said Connie.

  ‘That’s why I had all that special treatment at the doctor’s,’ said Mum. ‘So I could give you a baby brother or a baby sister, Connie. And now I can give you both all in one go.’

  ‘It’s going to get a bit crowded round here then,’ said Connie. ‘Where are they going to sleep, these twin babies?’

  Mum and Dad looked at each other. Connie started to get suspicious.

  ‘They’re not going to come in with me, are they?’ she said. ‘There won’t be room for three of us.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Dad. ‘So Mum and I have had this really good idea.’

  ‘What?’ said Connie. She wasn’t so sure about Mum and Dad and their ideas now.

  ‘We thought we could make you a special new big girl’s bedroom,’ said Mum. ‘Then the twins could have your old room.’

  ‘A new big girl’s bedroom?’ said Connie slowly. She thought about the extension at the back of her friend Karen’s house. ‘Ooh, are we going to build an extension?’ she said hopefully, imagining a huge glass room jutting right out into the garden.

  ‘Come off it, Connie, you know we couldn’t afford it,’ said Dad, and he sounded a bit grumpy. ‘First it’s Disneyland, then it’s extensions. We’re not made of money, you know. And when we’re a family of five we’ll have to be really careful with our money.’

  Connie wasn’t at all sure she wanted them to be a family of five. They’d managed beautifully in the past being a family of three.

  ‘We thought the junk room would make you a lovely new big girl’s bedroom,’ said Mum.

  ‘The junk room!’ shrieked Connie. (She didn’t actually say it. She shrieked it.)

  There were three rooms upstairs, not counting the bathroom. There was Mum and Dad’s bedroom. There was Connie’s bedroom. And there was the little junk room at the front of the house. It was called the junk room because it was jammed up with junk; suitcases and an old broken sofa; cardboard boxes of books and an old bike; and heaps of toys that Connie didn’t want to play with any more. Connie was starting to feel like one of the tired old teddies or droopy dolls. Mum and Dad seemed to have got fed up playing with her. They wanted a shiny new set of twins now. It was time to shove Connie in the junk room.

  2. Name Games

  Connie thought she might have to balance her bed on top of all the junk in the junk room and sleep crammed against the ceiling. But Mum and Dad sifted through all the junk and threw a lot of it out. When the room was bare they painted it deep blue and stuck shiny stars up on the ceiling. Mum made Connie a new pink and blue patchwork quilt to go on her bed and Dad made shelves all the way up one wall for Connie’s books and games and videos. By the time they were finished it certainly wasn’t a junk room. It was a beautiful big girl’s bedroom.

  Connie couldn’t help but be pleased, but she still didn’t like seeing her old bedroom turned into a nursery for the twins. They didn’t just have new paint and a new quilt and new shelves. They had new everything. Twin cots. Twin prams. Twin baby chairs. The twins weren’t even here yet and already they seemed to be crowding Connie out.

  Mum was getting big and tired and needed lots of rest. She couldn’t dance to pop videos with Connie any more and sometimes when she was reading a bedtime story she nodded right off to sleep as she was speaking.

  Dad was getting worried about money and kept doing sums on bits of paper and sighing. He didn’t often feel like having a tickling match with Connie nowadays and didn’t go swimming with her on Saturday mornings because he was working overtime.

  ‘It’s not any fun round here any more,’ Connie said darkly. ‘It’s all because of those boring babies. Who wants to have twitty old