“Come on, let’s push the pace,” Astrid said to her twin. “We want to win our events in the Inter-Home Sports Day, don’t we? We’ve got a reputation to keep up!”Kerridge House was the smallest of the three children’s homes in the area, built at the very end of the nineteenth century by a wealthy manufacturer who wanted to do something good with his money. It had been an up-to-the-minute-modern children’s home back then, run on the cottage style with houseparents in charge of each ‘family’ of a dozen children, and generously endowed by Ebenezer Kerridge himself. It wasn’t so up-to-the minute now, so for training the girls headed for the local gym.
“We so have a reputation to keep up!” Stella agreed, laughing. The Modise twins – one or the other of them - had won all the track events for their age group since they were old enough to compete. Beginning with the egg and spoon race and the three-legged race.
“Thank goodness I’ve bumped into you both!”“Aunty Janet! What’s wrong? Has something happened to one of the others? Tara, or Pablo or the little ones?”
Their housemother didn’t do panic as a rule, so it must be serious.
Janet calmed herself down with a visible effort.“I wanted you to hear this from me first. And there’s no way to make it an easy hear. They’re closing Kerridge House.”
It was all the home – and Janet all the mother – that the twins had ever known, and it was hard news. But their desire to cheer Janet up cut in hard.
“Oh, Aunty Janet.” Stella’s arms went round her in a warm hug. “That’s really sad. But it’ll be okay. I guess they’ll send us all to either Fernburgh or Davis House. Will you be coming too?”“No. I’m to retire. The money’s nearly run out – the endowment hasn’t kept pace with inflation. If they close down now, there’ll be enough to cover pensions where they’re needed, and the trustees felt that was Ebenezer Kerridge would have wanted. He never left his employees penniless in their old age.”
“But we can still visit you, and you can see us. We’re not going to lose sight of each other for ever.” It was Astrid’s turn for a hug, and she felt Janet stiffen as she spoke.“There’s more isn’t there? What?”
“You six aren’t going to Fernburgh or Davis House. There isn’t enough space. You six are going out of state. To Darkwood House. I have a friend who used to work there, and I don’t like what I heard from her. I wanted to prepare you both.”
They listened as she talked.“They don’t support you going to university? But we could get scholarships. We’re both bright enough!”
“They’re really strict? But how will Tara cope?”
“No privacy at all for the younger ones? Paolo will be so miserable!”
“They’ve already got someone who wants to adopt Marie, but not Pierre? You can’t separate twins! Can you?”
And then finally, “But what can we do? Where else could we go?”
“What can we do about this?” Always before, Janet had been able to help them solve their problems. Now she’d basically just said…we can’t.“I mean, all that stuff about, if you could do this, or if you could do that. What use is that?”
“I know! ‘If you’d had somewhere else to live, like that holiday home in the woods…’ Do you remember that place? I think we went once, but I don’t know why it was only once.”
“I do remember it! There was a ride-on horse and something else. And a seesaw, but we were too little to go on it. And bikes for the older ones as well. They cycled everywhere! I know why we went. We went when the cottage was being spring-cleaned. But the next year, there was an empty cottage, so we just moved into that one. If we had a place like that to go to…”
“I know! If, if, if! What are we supposed to do with all these ifs?”
“Are you sure we should be doing this?” Stella asked nervously.“Yes. All those ifs? Didn’t that sound like a plan of campaign to you? If we could hack into the records system and make it seem as though we’d been sent somewhere else together…See if you can find Tara’s and Pablo’s paper files. Someone ‘forgot’ to lock the filing cabinet tonight.”
And it was either go along with Astrid’s plan (had Janet really been suggesting this?) or go to Darkwood House tomorrow and say goodbye to everything. Including their own futures, Marie and Pierre’s relationship with each other, Pablo’s sanity – and what Janet had found out about the strictness of the regime there made it sound like Tara would never see the light of day. Until they broke her spirit.
“There.” Astrid finished what she was doing as Stella put all the files neatly away again. “Paper trail erased and altered. We can get at our savings.” They didn’t have a lot of money, but they did have some from summer jobs, and the younger ones had pocket money too.“And I’ve sorted out a fictitious adult relative for us as well. And an address – we’ll need those. And I’ve downloaded the maps, booked our tickets to pick up at the station.” Darkwood House hadn’t been planning to send anyone to pick them up. Astrid and Stella were supposed to be old enough to get themselves and the other four there.
“Tomorrow, we’re going in search of a home of our own. And if it all goes horribly wrong…well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Okay, the place didn’t look quite like Astrid and Stella remembered it. Twelve years of neglect and three major storms had done a lot of damage. Even Tara was silent, and it took a lot to shut her up.“If this doesn’t work, we can do something else. Go to Darkwood House after all, and just blame it on a computer blip. Let’s look inside first. The roof’s still on part of it.”
Roof yes, doors no. And the sunny, cheerful nursery the twins could just remember seem to have its own indoor jungle. Two dilapidated cots and an ancient potty were all that remained of its furnishings.
But there was a toilet. And it still flushed.
Though any showers they took would be bracingly chilly!
“There’s a firepit out there.” Tara wasn’t afraid of a challenge. “Pablo can catch fish for us. It’ll be like being on a desert island.”“Not quite…” Stella said. “You’ll still be going to school."
Tara’s face fell noticeably!
“But what about school?” Pablo asked anxiously. “Are you and Stella going to teach us?”“No. You’re going to go to school. I’ve already got us enrolled.”
“But what about you and Stella?” Pablo knew how bright – and determined – the twins were. Stella wanted to be a doctor, Astrid an astronaut. You needed exams for that!
“We’re going too.”
“But what about Marie and Pierre? Who will look after them?”
“We will.”
“But how?”
“We’re twins, remember? One of us will go one day, one the next…we both want to study sciences, so that’s not a problem. At school, we’ll both be Astrid-Stella Modise.”“But won’t you both have to have the same hairstyle?”
“Aaargh!” Astrid’s wail of despair was her realisation that she was going to have to adopt her sister’s far more conservative style.
“Right. This is it. Off you lot go to school. And tonight we’re going to have to change my hairstyle!"You can download the house and family here
https://www.thesims3.com/assetDetail.html?assetId=9379354
This renovacy has an extra rule: Astrid and Stella can only go to school on alternate days. Even when Pierre and Marie are at school themselves. And they can't go out anywhere together either, as people believe that there is only one Modise girl.
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