It would become a running joke over the years. Some days it would be less funny of a joke than others.
In some ways it was inevitable, although in others it was a miracle. Susan Norris and Gillian Ng’s first encounter was over a seat they both tried to claim upon walking into the classroom for the first time before their teacher assigned them their seats (alphabetically, which meant they were still next to each other), and their opinions of one another were not helped by the fact that both were the only ones to raise their hands for every preliminary question. It all came to a head at morning recess when they got into a tug-o’-war that nearly ended in a fistfight over the only skipping rope without blue or green handles in the paltry selection of playground equipment, and indeed it had the potential to be the genesis of a deep seated blood rivalry that, Susan later said, would make Jeffrey Archer think he needed to dial back the intense obviousness of its inception. Fortunately, the teacher assigned to watch the schoolyard that day was not one of the authoritarian ones who would have confiscated the rope from both girls and threatened to send them to detention on their first day, but a wiser head who offered to teach them to jump double. By the time the bell rang to send them back to their classroom for the second half of the morning’s lesson, they had managed a clumsy count up to twenty-seven on a skipping rhyme and forged a bond that would last a lifetime.
They had enough in common that, had they not become friends before starting to compare histories, they would have become either too bored or too annoyed with one another to make the attempt. Both were only children with no nearby relatives and no real friends; both had taught themselves to read in order to escape into fantastical worlds where they were less lonely, and to their mutual delight, both not only liked the same kinds of books, they had read most of the same ones. They both favored red, liked autumn best out of all the seasons, and enjoyed the thrill of solving mathematical equations. They were close to the same height and build and even had the exact same red jumper and grey skirt, which they wore to school that first Friday and pretended to be twins.
As Susan later indignantly explained to the headmaster when they were called up to the office, it wasn’t the fact that the other girls insisted they weren’t actually twins that was the reason she had to fight them—of course they knew they weren’t actually twins and didn’t look that much alike—it was the fact that the girls had referred to both of them using words that were clearly meant to hurt, even if they’d never heard them specifically before.
Gillian’s parents were both immigrants, working long hours to keep their restaurant going and thriving; their only child had been a surprise, not necessarily an unwelcome one, and the fact that they lived in a little apartment directly over the shop meant they had very little time to spend with her once she started school. Susan, on the other hand, was the only child of a single mother who struggled to hold down a job and moved frequently when she could get away with it, often skirting with homelessness; her father had never been in the picture, and indeed her mother couldn’t even say who he was, other than that—based on Susan’s grey eyes and skin tone several shades lighter than hers—he was almost certainly white. It made both of them markedly different, which probably meant they would have ended up thrown together anyway, but it was lucky they’d decided to be friends before it was forced on them, really.
It became a regular thing for Susan and Gillian to go home after school together, and for Susan to stay for supper. At first Susan went home to her empty flat and tried to tidy it up on afternoons when Gillian had dance class, but it didn’t take more than a month before Gillian gripped her hand when she tried to walk away after school and eagerly told her that her teacher had said it was all right if Susan sat in the waiting room with the mothers while she had her lesson.
“But why would they let me?” Susan asked, practically. “I’m not your mum. I’m not anyone’s mum. I’m five.”
Gillian shrugged. “I said you were my sister and you didn’t dance, but since Mama and Baba have to work, you’re home alone all the time, and she said that if you promise not to sneak into classes without them paying you can wait for me so I don’t have to walk home alone either, because she gets worried about me.”
Susan hugged her tightly, and they ran all the way to the dance studio.
Gillian had already decided she wanted to be a prima ballerina assoluta when she grew up, brushing aside potential concerns that there had never been a Chinese ballerina in the Royal Ballet; she wasn’t going to spend her life plucking chickens and rolling noodles like her parents. Susan didn’t know what she wanted to be, not exactly, other than successful, until the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen came into the studio to pick up one of the other dancers, looking neat and pressed and powerful in her suit and heels and clutching a leather briefcase and using words that sounded smart. The next lesson, she was there earlier, and Susan plucked up her courage to sit next to the woman and ask her questions. When Gillian emerged with her practice dress and shoes stuffed into the battered case and took her hand, she proudly told her best friend that she was going to be a solicitor one day.
“What’s that?” Gillian asked, tugging Susan out the door.
“Someone who goes to court and fights for people to get what they deserve, and does lots and lots of research in the meantime.”
“Does it take lots of schooling?”
“Yes, and two whole years of training after, but I’m going to do it. Your friend Emma’s mum is one.”
“She’s not my friend. She hates me.” Gillian looked both ways before stepping cautiously into the street. “You’re my friend. And you’re going to be an amazing solicitor.” She paused. “Is there a book with a character who’s a solicitor? So we can see one in action?”
“We can ask Mrs Parker tomorrow. Have you done your maths homework yet?”
Mrs Parker, the school librarian, could only come up with one book featuring a solicitor, and since it was Halloween week, she allowed the girls to check out a copy. Susan and Gillian spent the next week thrilling themselves silly over the adventures of Jonathan and Mina and their friends, Jack, Arthur, Quincy, Lucy, and dear Doctor Van Helsing. And from then on, both girls had a purpose in life.
Through a combination of luck, nobody else wanting to deal with them, and Gillian’s parents insisting Susan stay with them when her mother got evicted from her latest flat or had to go away for a while—which happened with increasing frequency as they got older—Gillian and Susan continued to not only be at the same school, but in the same classes, all the way through the end of their compulsory schooling. Gillian’s sixteenth birthday was a few weeks before they graduated, and exactly halfway between their birthdays, Susan got a letter telling her she had won a place—and a scholarship—to Harrogate Ladies’ College. She was worried about leaving Gillian behind, especially since Gillian had been rather quiet on her post school plans, but when she showed her the letter, Gillian exhaled and pulled out her own letter—a letter confirming that she had passed her audition and been accepted as a member of the corps de ballet for a small but respectable touring ballet company, the Dubrov Ballet, and that she was to report to the Century Theater in London the same day Susan was to head up to Harrogate. They celebrated Susan’s sixteenth birthday together, and Gillian’s parents actually closed the restaurant down for a farewell dinner that Susan’s mother probably wouldn’t have been sober enough to attend even if they’d been able to locate her. The next morning, they parted at the station—Susan with her hair wrestled into two tight braids and lugging the red trunk Gillian’s mother had brought with her from China, Gillian with her hat at a jaunty angle on her dancer’s bun and carrying all those worldly belongings she wished to take with her in a carpetbag—and headed off to their next adventures with promises to write often.
Less than two weeks later, they were both back, Gillian collapsing into Susan’s arms and sobbing as they rejoined one another at the station before Susan, practical even in her own grief, led her over to the solicitor who would explain to them both what was to happen now. The fire, he assured them, hadn’t been deliberate—it looked as though there had been a problem with the stove—and thankfully the restaurant was well insured, so Gillian would have little to worry about on that front. He seemed surprised at Susan’s astute and pointedly legal questions, but answered them readily enough, and Gillian was a bit calmer when they left the office. It still wasn’t easy to bury both of her parents, but at least she had her best friend at her side when she did it.
They made it more than another year—a year of studying and gossip and worrying about her mother for Susan, a year of dance classes and performances and learning to disguise her facial features for Gillian—before the next tragedy struck. The company was putting on the Nutcracker, and Gillian had actually managed to secure the part of Clara—which she had confided to Susan in a letter was a relief, as she’d otherwise been afraid she was going to be cast as the Chinese doll—and they were back in England to boot. Susan, gifted free tickets as a “friend of the company” and the only person Gillian had to invite, had good seats for every single performance, and she was worried. It was difficult to tell under the makeup, but Gillian seemed…tired. And when they went back to the hostel they were lodging in together, she looked even more so, but she brushed Susan’s concerns off with the insistence that she was just putting in too long hours in the studio. At the final performance on Christmas Eve, however, Susan’s fears could no longer be denied. Gillian collapsed during the finale of the ballet and had to be carried off the stage, and Susan spent Christmas day sitting at her friend’s bedside, holding her hand and too anxious to eat.
They’d known since they were small children that Gillian had a chronic kidney disease, but they hadn’t really realized how bad it was getting. After two days of testing, they finally told Gillian that the progression of her condition had worsened to the point that she no longer had the strength to dance, not with the intensity she had been doing up until then. She would need to resign her position with the Dubrov Ballet Company.
Susan was almost as distraught as Gillian, but this time it was Gillian’s turn to be practical. Once she had allowed herself to grieve the loss of her dream, she found a vocational school near enough to Harrogate Ladies’ College that she and Susan could get a place to live together and enrolled, beginning on the fourth of January. While she’d never been as studious as Susan, she could apply herself well enough, and she completed her course at almost the same time Susan graduated from Harrogate Ladies’ College. Credentials in hand, she was lucky enough to land a junior secretary position at an engineering firm in London.
“The best part is,” she told Susan gleefully, “I’ll only be an hour from you by train. We can still spend breaks together—”
“And even better,” Susan completed, “we might be able to share a place. Either live in Cambridge and you commute, or live in London and I commute, or live somewhere in between.”
“Ooh, I never thought of that! Let’s see what we can find in between.”
To their mutual delight, they managed to find a flat exactly halfway between the University of Cambridge and Trescott Engineering that they could afford on Gillian’s salary, and Susan announced her intention (over her friend’s objections) to get a part time job waiting tables to help out with the bills. Gillian, kitted out in a smart red suit and heels, with her hair still back in a dancer’s bun, began her duties at the firm at the end of August; a week later, Susan took the train to Cambridge and commenced her university studies towards an eventual law degree.
It was a shame there was neither a playground nor a skipping rope at Cambridge, Susan told Gillian that night, because in their absence she was definitely not inclined to be fond of the boy in front of her. Antony Robert King, as he had introduced himself during their first lecture, had got Susan’s back up almost right away; he looked exactly like every preppy rich prick from every film ever set in a university, he spoke in a high toned upper class accent that was so affected it sounded fake, and he seemed to feel the need to one-up every single thing Susan said. Gillian congratulated her on her nemesis, and Susan bitterly said it was one thing she could do without. She was even less thrilled when they got placed into study groups and she got paired up with Antony and two other upper class young men who made it clear that they didn’t believe Susan, by dint of skin or gender or both, deserved to be in their class, let alone practicing law. It only made her more determined to succeed.
Two weeks later, Susan managed to grab the wrong bag before rushing out the door; Gillian noticed and, since she happened to have the day off, grabbed it and followed about an hour behind. She caught up to her best friend just as she was preparing to sit down at an outdoor table for study group. It just so happened the only person who had arrived so far was Antony, who put on a devilishly charming grin, bowed to Gillian theatrically, and asked in the sultriest of tones if she was the newest member of their group or if she was simply looking for a good time. Gillian, as sweetly as she could, told him exactly where he could stick it and under what precise circumstances she would consider him a “good time”, which would be both statistically unlikely and anatomically impossible.
Five months after that, on Valentine’s Day, Gillian finally caved when Antony asked her out properly and Susan assured her that he’d been substantially less of a prick lately.
Much like she had with Susan, as soon as Gillian started talking to Antony, they just…clicked. Despite his airs—and despite having been educated at Eton—he turned out to be a very down to earth, humble sort of fellow from a far less privileged background than his haircut and tie suggested, who’d put on an act to seem less out of place; he had already begun to feel guilty about the fact that he could do that when Susan so obviously couldn’t and deserved to be there even more than he did. He was interested in Gillian’s past as a ballerina and her work as a secretary, and he sympathized with her about her illness and her parents’ death. The discovery that their birthdays were only five days apart seemed almost like proof that they were, despite how they began, meant to be. He and Susan were able to work together much better after that, and the three of them became surprisingly close friends, even if Gillian and Antony were also dating (or, as Susan put it, making goo-goo eyes at one another).
Antony stuck around during the summer, much to his parents’ surprise and mild displeasure, and he and Gillian decided to plan a special party for Susan’s birthday—a dinner out at a restaurant they normally couldn’t have afforded, complete with a special cake for the waitress to bring out. Instead, to Susan’s—and Gillian’s—surprise, she brought over a shot glass full of a shot glass full of vodka and who knew what else rimmed with icing and sprinkles and set it down in front of her. Susan stared at it, then up at Gillian and Antony in confusion and more than a little concern. Gillian, at least, should have known that Susan emphatically did not drink and shouldn’t have ordered it. Before she could voice that, though, the waitress came running back, red faced and clearly mortified, and snatched up the shot, then returned moments later with the small cake Gillian had brought and a flurry of apologies for the fact that it had been cut into.
The manager comped their meal as an apology for the confusion—despite both Antony and Gillian insisting it wasn’t necessary—and then a tall, muscular man with an aquiline nose and a military haircut stopped them just outside the door and asked which one of them had made the cake.
“You’ve got far better friends than I do,” he told Susan with a chuckle. “That was definitely preferable to a ‘vodka cupcake’. I’m not a vodka man anyway and my mates know that.”
“I almost thought I didn’t. Have better friends, I mean,” Susan said, and Gillian looked wide-eyed at the broad smile on her face. She held out a hand. “Susan Norris.”
“Paul SiMs Lance Corporal Paul SiMs It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Norris.” Paul gave Susan a warm smile. “I won’t insult you or your friends by asking to walk you home, but may I buy you a cup of tea tomorrow? As an apology for taking the cake?”
Paul turned out to be the oldest of the four by a year. Like Gillian, he hadn’t chosen to stay in school past sixteen, and despite his mother’s objections had joined the British Army and qualified as a paratrooper. He wasn’t a braggart about his service—it wasn’t until Susan saw him in uniform and asked about the ribbons that she learned he had seen service in the Falkland Islands War, and not until some months later that she learned he’d been injured in battle—and he also wasn’t stupid. He proved exceptionally kind, also. When Susan received word, midway through her final year at university, that her mother had died of an overdose, he asked for and obtained a leave of absence to support her—and Gillian—through the process. As he said when she protested, even if they’d done it once, that didn’t make it any easier to do a second time. Especially since there was no one to reassure her that it had definitely been an accident.
Paul’s unit deployed on a mission he couldn’t talk about just after Christmas; Susan would have moped about it excessively if she hadn’t had her exams to study for. She and Antony pulled each other through it, Gillian quizzing them both around their kitchen table every night, and managed to graduate with Firsts. To their mutual surprise and delight—for all four had become extremely good friends—Paul was there with a bouquet of flowers for both of them and a huge grin. Antony’s parents, who were meeting all three of their son’s friends for the first time, insisted on paying for a celebratory dinner for them. Antony turned brick red when his father, several beers in, turned to him, gestured to all three of the others, and asked how many of them he was actually dating and if the Army was okay with that in Paul’s case.
The other three agreed they would spend the rest of their lives not letting him live that one down.
Paul turned twenty-two that year, which technically meant he could separate from the Army if he wanted to. Instead, he told the others when they gathered for his birthday dinner that he’d chosen to sign on for at least another four years.
“Darn, I was looking forward to giving you a ‘so long, sergeant’ shirt for your birthday,” Susan deadpanned. “So what do you want instead?”
“I’ve thought about it, actually. The only thing I want for my birthday…” Paul dropped to one knee and pulled a small velvet box, then opened it to reveal a twisted band of silver surmounted with a simple diamond solitaire and finished, “…is your hand in marriage.”
The only thing cheesier would have been if he’d dropped the ring in a glass of champagne, and yet it was simultaneously so sincere and so straightforward that Susan couldn’t have turned him down if she wanted to, which she didn’t. She threw her arms around him, socked him when he asked if that was a yes, and let him slide the ring onto her finger. It fit perfectly, which of course it did.
Once she was settled back in her seat and reaching for her wine, she teasingly asked Antony, “So, O Sheik of the Harem, when are you planning to propose to Gillian?”
Antony turned bright red. “Well, I didn’t want to overshadow anyone’s birthday, but…”
The box he pulled out of his pocket, and the ring inside it, were almost identical to Susan’s except in gold.
They held a double wedding on the twenty-first of December, the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year—or, as the magistrate who performed the ceremony (much to the disapproval of Paul’s mother, who firmly believed that a wedding that took place outside a church was not a valid one) pointed out, the night the light began winning out over the darkness. The two couples spent Christmas together, but Paul hadn’t been able to get enough leave in time to take a honeymoon right away, and Antony and Gillian opted to defer theirs to the following summer as well; as Gillian said later, it gave them a bit more time to save up for someplace really nice, and also meant they weren’t traveling at a time when everyone and their brother was trying to visit family—or to avoid them.
Antony, who had chosen to be a barrister rather than a solicitor, began his pupillage at chambers the same day they returned to England; two weeks later, Susan accepted a two year training contract with a solicitor’s office not far from where Paul was stationed when he wasn’t on deployment. Except for the death of Antony’s mother from pneumonia that November, the year passed relatively uneventfully.
Three days after Antony learned he had been officially admitted as a barrister, Gillian came over to Susan’s house for lunch, Susan having been given the day off for her birthday, and greeted her with a hug.
“I have a great present for you this year,” she told her.
“Oh? What’s that?”
Gillian kissed Susan’s cheek and smiled broadly. “You’re going to be a godmother.”
Susan burst out laughing and actually picked Gillian up, swinging her around in a hug. Setting her down and clasping her shoulders, she said gleefully, “So are you!”
Having told the important people, and happily chirped about plans and potential names and future play dates over lunch, they didn’t bring it up again until five days later, when Antony and Gillian came over for Paul’s birthday tea. The look on his face when he opened his gift from Susan to find a shirt that read “DADDY-TO-BE” in curly gold letters was almost as priceless as the look on Antony’s face when Paul opened his gift from Gillian to find a shirt that read “UNCLE-TO-BE” in the same script.
Almost from the start, Gillian had a harder time of it than Susan. By Christmas, she was too tired to even help put up the decorations, and not long after the new year, her doctor diagnosed pre-eclampsia and put her on strict bed rest. Susan, whom Paul already realized he was going to have trouble stopping from working right up until her due date, took to bringing her work over to Gillian’s in the afternoon and sitting with her to make her feel better. It only did so much, and Susan worried about the effects on Gillian’s kidneys.
The doctors did, too. When she went for her checkup on the fifteenth of March, she was informed that she was being scheduled for a Cesarean section six weeks out.
Susan, only a week from her own due date at that point, insisted on being in the waiting room, especially since Antony’s superiors wouldn’t allow him to take the whole day off even with six weeks notice, meaning he would be getting there a bit later in the procedure but hopefully in time. Hiding the slight discomfort she’d been feeling off and on for most of the day, Susan hugged her friend and wished her luck, then settled down to finish the blanket she was knitting while she waited for news of her godchild.
Forty-seven minutes later, Paul, whose commanding officer was far more reasonable than the barrister Antony reported to, nearly broke down the front door of the hospital and demanded the receptionist tell him where Labor and Delivery was and which room his wife was in.
Despite the nurse’s prediction that “first babies always take their time”, Susan was in labor for less than four hours before a solid push brought her firstborn child squalling into the world—feet first, of course, because this was clearly a child that was destined never to do things the easy way when the hard, dangerous way was quicker. Susan laughed and cried and kissed her baby over and over, and Paul kissed her and kissed the baby and obediently left the room when the nurses shooed him out to go notify the family.
It wasn’t to the phone to talk to his parents he went, though, but to the waiting room, his pace quickening as he moved. Halfway there, just outside a picture window, he ran smack into the man he’d been coming to see and grabbed Antony’s shoulders.
“It’s a boy!” he practically yelled.
Antony laughed and grabbed Paul’s shoulders in reply, then parroted back to him, “It’s a girl!”
Paul laughed, too, and the two of them got to laughing so hard they had to hold each other up. Just as they managed to get themselves under control, he realized where they had stopped—directly in front of the nursery. There were several bassinets already lined up, occupied by tiny bundles in blankets topped with tiny stocking caps in pale colors, with their fathers’ names printed proudly at the foot. As they watched, two more were wheeled in and added to the lineup—a blue blanket with a yellow hat and a sign that said SIMS, a pink blanket with a white hat and a sign that said KING. The other babies were sleeping, but these two were wide awake and staring.
And even though he knew they couldn’t see that far yet, Paul couldn’t help but notice that if they could, they’d be looking directly into one another.
Antony shook his head, smiling as he stared at the pair. “Not even born yet and they still can’t bear to be separated, even for a minute. You’ll never find one going where the other doesn’t follow.”
Paul also shook his head with a smile. “God help us all.”