‘Pete,’ she said. ‘Why is the floor wet?’
‘It’s because of that water running down the wall,’ said Jack.
Uncle Pete turned, and his eyes went wide. Water was coming in through the ventilation grilles even faster now.
‘Jeez,’ said Uncle Pete. ‘That shouldn’t be happening.’
Other family members murmured in agreement.
‘Quick,’ said Uncle Pete. ‘Turn all this gear off.’
He and Uncle Rob dashed around, switching all the equipment off.
By the time they’d finished, water was gushing in. It was up to Jack’s ankles.
‘Everybody out,’ said Uncle Pete.
He stabbed a button on the remote. The door stayed closed. He pushed several more buttons. The door didn’t open. He pounded all the buttons. Nothing.
‘That’s the one problem with the 87659SLK Quad,’ said Rakesh. ‘Doesn’t work if it gets damp.’
Uncle Pete sloshed over to the door and dried as much of it as he could with his shirt tail. He wiped the remote as well. Then he pressed all the buttons again. And again. And again.
The door still didn’t move.
The water was nearly up to their knees.
‘Don’t panic,’ said Mum to Jack. It’ll start draining away in a sec.’
‘No, it won’t,’ said Uncle Pete. ‘This room is completely sealed. I didn’t want any humidity warping my turntable.’
‘I’ll ring for help,’ said Aunty Anthea, fumbling with her phone. ‘What’s the number for the State Emergency Service?’
‘Don’t bother,’ said Niall. ‘Bolivian clay totally blocks phone signals. It’s got tiny particles of mica in it. The CIA use it in all their buildings.’
The family members all stared at Uncle Pete.
‘I had to use it,’ protested Uncle Pete. ‘Phone signals can affect blu-ray picture quality.’
‘Why’s the air in here starting to smell stale?’ said Uncle Rob.
Aunty Sue sniffed.
‘Shouldn’t be,’ she said. ‘It’s air-conditioned.’
‘I put in a three-phase industrial-quality air-management system with anti-static pollen filters,’ said Uncle Pete.
He waded over to the only ventilation grille that didn’t have water gushing out of it, reached up and held his hand in front of it.
‘Poop,’ he said. ‘The water must have shorted the air-con motors.’
Aunty Sue gave a sob.
The water was over their knees.
And Jack’s waist. He looked frantically around the room. No windows. No more doors. Not even a fire escape.
‘We’ll have to dig our way out,’ said Uncle Rob. ‘I’ve seen it done. The workers at the hospital in Africa had to do it when they were building the staff squash court and some scaffolding collapsed. Most of them survived.’
‘They only had to dig through low density African clay,’ said Niall. ‘Bolivian clay goes hard as steel when it gets wet.’
‘We’re trapped,’ sobbed Aunty Sue. ‘We’re all going to suffocate.’
‘Calm down, woman,’ said Uncle Pete. ‘There’s enough air in here for hours. We’ll drown long before the air runs out.’
Everyone sloshed over to the door and started clawing at it. And kicking it. And trying to smash through it with items of electrical equipment. They kept trying until all Uncle Pete’s speakers were floating around them in fragments.
The door didn’t budge.
Mum screamed.
Jack knew why. The water was over her waist, and nearly up his chin.
‘Jack,’ yelled Mum. ‘Hang on to something. Pick him up somebody.’
Dad grabbed Jack and lifted him up. Jack hadn’t realised Dad was so strong. Though now he thought about it, the stationery shop didn’t have a forklift, so Dad must get a lot of exercise carrying all the boxes by hand.
‘A chair,’ said Aunty Sue. ‘Get him a chair.’
The adults splashed around for ages until somebody found a chair under the water. Dad carefully helped Jack stand on it.
The water was only up to Jack’s waist now.
But it was up to everyone else’s chest.
Then the lights went out.
There was quite a lot of shouting and screaming. After a while, Mum yelled at everyone to be quiet, and after another while, they were. Mostly because, as Jack saw in the faint light from Aunty Anthea’s phone, which she was holding over her head, the water was up to their chins.
‘There must be another way of getting that door open,’ spluttered Uncle Rob. ‘A mechanical override.’
‘There is,’ gasped Uncle Pete. ‘But it needs a tiny allen key, and the builders lost it.’
Aunty Sue started crying again.
Then Jack had an idea.
‘Dad,’ he said. ‘Have you got a paperclip?’
Dad frowned as he thought about this.
‘Paperclip,’ he said. ‘Paperclip …’
Then his face brightened.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘One of the new Ezyglide Anti-statics. I brought it home to show Mum.’
He rummaged around under the water, and Jack guessed he was going through his pockets.
‘Please,’ murmured Aunty Anthea desperately. ‘Please find it.’
Dad raised his hand out of the water.
He was holding a paperclip.
‘Thank God,’ sobbed Aunty Sue, and then gurgled as her mouth filled with water.
Jack watched Dad move slowly towards the door, paperclip held high.
Dad reached the door, took a big breath of air and ducked under the surface of the water.
Jack stood on tiptoe to keep the water away from his mouth and counted the seconds.
Forty.
Fifty.
Sixty and still Dad hadn’t come back up.
Jack prayed that correction fluid got spilled a lot in stationery shops. The stuff that gave off pongy fumes. Which meant Dad would have had lots of practice holding his breath.
Seventy.
So he wouldn’t drown.
Eighty seconds.
Suddenly there was a clunk and a gurgle and a loud sucking sound, and the door started to slide open.
The water level dropped immediately, and the family members screamed and cheered and spluttered and sobbed.
Then the water level stopped going down.
Jack saw why. Outside the door, the steep concrete steps going up to the garden were preventing the rest of the water from flowing away.
But it didn’t matter. The door was open now and daylight was coming in, and fresh air, and the distant sound above them of an automatic pool cleaner sucking itself dry in an empty pool.
And there was Dad, head and shoulders out of the water, staring at the paperclip in his hand with relief and gratitude.
Dad wasn’t the only one doing that.
The whole family was gazing at the paperclip that way. And at Dad. And not just with relief and gratitude. With awe and admiration and respect as well.
Jack grinned, careful to keep his mouth closed because with so much panic somebody was bound to have done a wee in the water.
OK, he said to himself as he swam over to Mum and Dad. I admit it. Big family get-togethers aren’t so bad after all.
Big Mistake
It all started with bosoms.
When me and Imelda were babies, Mum used to breastfeed us. I loved those meals. I loved them even more than I love spicy sausage pizza now.
Until Imelda spoiled everything.
Even nine years later I can still remember what happened. Me sucking away happily on Mum’s left side as usual. Imelda doing the same on the other side. Until suddenly Imelda stopped sucking and glared at me across Mum’s valley.
‘Donald’s bosom is bigger than mine,’ she wailed.
Mum didn’t know what Imelda’s wail meant, of course. But I understood. And Imelda was completely wrong. No way was the bosom in my mouth bigger than the one in hers.
‘No, it’s
not,’ I wailed. ‘Hers is bigger.’
I’d never compared Mum’s bosoms before, but now that Imelda had introduced the topic I could clearly see that my bosom was actually smaller than Imelda’s bosom.
‘Not fair,’ I wailed. ‘Hers is much bigger.’
‘Rubbish,’ wailed Imelda. ‘His is.’
Mum didn’t have a clue what we were on about. But she could see we weren’t happy, so she burped us and checked our nappies for recent visitors and tickled us under our chins and got us sucking again.
Imelda didn’t make any more wild accusations that day. Or that year. But every mealtime as she sucked grumpily and glared at me from her side, I could see what she was thinking.
His is bigger.
I glared back.
I was thinking the opposite.
Hers is bigger.
When you’re a twin it’s very important that the other twin doesn’t get more than you. You probably have to be a twin to understand how important that is. How very, very important.
I knew it wasn’t going to end with bosoms.
It didn’t.
On our first birthday Dad made us a cake in the shape of Thomas the Tank Engine. Me and Imelda both loved Thomas, so we were very happy.
At first.
All our aunties and uncles and grandparents were there and they helped us blow out the candles. We had one candle each. Exactly the same size. I checked and Imelda did too.
Mum cut the cake and gave us half a Fat Controller each.
Imelda’s face went red with distress. She pointed at my plate and said her first word.
‘Bigger.’
Mum had cut the Fat Controller so we each had one side of his body, including half his bottom. Imelda was saying that my Fat Controller buttock was bigger than her Fat Controller buttock.
Which was rubbish. Hers was bigger.
I pointed at Imelda’s plate and said my first two words.
‘Bigger buttock.’
We both burst into tears.
All the grown-ups tried to make our birthday happy again. Mum offered us exactly half a coal truck each instead, then realised that one of the coal truck’s eyebrows was bigger than the other. Auntie Pauline explained how most people in real life don’t have perfectly matching buttocks, and pointed to Uncle John’s as an example. Dad got a bowl of icing and a brush and painted some extra underpants on the Fat Controller’s buttocks to try and disguise their size, but me and Imelda saw through that.
Poor Mum and Dad.
Every birthday it was the same.
When we were five, me and Imelda both asked for exactly the same birthday present. A tape measure. Mum and Dad gave us one each.
Identical tape measures.
Or so they thought.
Imelda measured my tape measure with hers, and I measured hers with mine, and soon we were both in tears.
‘His is .06 of a millimetre longer,’ sobbed Imelda.
‘Hers is .0003 of a millimetre thicker,’ I wailed. ‘And her wrapping paper is wider too.’
When we started school, they put Imelda in one class and me in another. It didn’t work.
‘His teacher is bigger than mine,’ wailed Imelda. ‘I measured them.’
‘Only round the tummy,’ I sobbed. ‘Hers is taller and has got much bigger feet.’
Every day it was the same.
‘His fish fingers are bigger than mine,’ sobbed Imelda one evening.
‘Hers are,’ I wailed.
‘They can’t be,’ shouted Mum. ‘They’re made in a factory. With millions of dollars worth of equipment scientifically designed to make sure every fish finger is exactly the same size. That’s why we have fish fingers four times a week.’
Imelda and me thought about this.
‘It’s the way you cook them,’ wailed Imelda. ‘You make mine shrink.’
‘Mine shrink more,’ I sobbed.
Mum grabbed our plates and dumped the fish fingers onto the chopping board.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re each going to cut your fish fingers exactly in half. I suggest you use your tape measures. Then you’re each going to choose which halves you want, one piece at a time, taking it in turns, so you both end up with exactly the same number of halves, which each of you will have chosen yourself.’
Mum gave a weary sigh.
‘Let’s see you find a reason for squabbling then,’ she said. ‘I should have thought of this years ago.’
Mum handed us a knife each.
Me and Imelda grabbed our tape measures and measured the knives.
‘His is bigger than mine,’ sobbed Imelda.
‘Hers is,’ I wailed.
The years passed. Nothing changed. Except Mum and Dad got wearier. Sometimes I felt guilty, but I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t give in. I couldn’t let Imelda get more than me. You can’t do that, not when you’re a twin.
Whenever I thought about the future, I realised life would always be the same in our family. Until Mum and Dad got old and so weary they died. Then the undertaker would send us their ashes, and Imelda would claim I got a bigger share and I’d say she did.
That was our future.
Until last week, when we went on holiday.
I think it was the motel muesli that was the last straw. (‘He’s got bigger bran flakes than me.’ ‘She’s got bigger particles of hydrogenated kelp.’)
Or maybe the last straw was at the service-station cafe. (‘She’s got a bigger straw than me.’ ‘His 275-ml carton of chocolate milk is bigger than my 275-ml carton of chocolate milk.’)
Or maybe it was the drive up the coast. (‘He spilt more chocolate milk on the car seat than I did.’ ‘She did a bigger sick in the glove box than I did.’)
Whichever it was, at lunchtime everything changed.
We were having a picnic in a carpark near the highway. Sandwiches (‘hers is crustier’) and bananas (‘his is more bent’).
‘For the love of Pete,’ said Dad wearily. ‘When are you two going to grow up and stop whingeing and complaining?’
I looked around at the other families having picnics. Happy laughing families with kids who weren’t squabbling and parents who weren’t weary and miserable.
I looked at their cars. None of them had luggage on the roof like ours. Probably because they didn’t have an extra bag full of tape measures and rulers and microscopes and weighing scales and surveyor’s tripods and portable laser measuring devices.
Suddenly I felt weary and miserable too.
I wanted our family to be one of the happy ones.
We’d eaten most of our picnic. There were just two bananas left. You didn’t need a measuring device to see that one was big and one was small.
Mum and Dad were pretending those bananas didn’t exist. I could see they were hoping me and Imelda would do the same.
I picked up the big one and held it out to Imelda.
‘Here,’ I said. ‘You have it.’
Imelda stared at me, stunned.
So did Mum and Dad.
‘You want me to have the big banana?’ said Imelda, amazed.
I nodded. I could see Imelda’s mind working fast. Her eyes narrowed. I could see she was looking for the catch.
Then she grinned.
‘No thanks,’ she said. ‘I don’t need it.’
I was confused. Was she saying she wanted me to have it?
Before I could decide, Imelda jumped up, grabbed hold of my hand and dragged me round the other side of a big parked truck.
‘I don’t need your banana,’ she said sweetly. ‘I’ve got a bigger banana than you’ll ever have.’
I stared.
In front of us was a gigantic banana. It must have been at least 30 metres long. And three times as tall as a grown-up. It looked like it was made of plastic. On the side of it was a sign.
The Big Banana, Coffs Harbour, NSW.
‘I win,’ said Imelda.
For a moment I hoped this was just a
silly game. That we were having fun like the other families. But Imelda was looking at me in a very mocking way and I could see from her eyes that she was deadly serious.
I realised what had happened.
Imelda had listened to Dad and decided he was right. We were too old for whingeing and complaining. Now we were ten, she’d decided, we were old enough for gloating and winning.
Everything had changed, and nothing had.
She’d won with the banana. I knew there couldn’t be a bigger banana anywhere in Australia. But that was only Round One.
Later that afternoon, further up the highway, we passed The Big Prawn and I spotted it first, which made it mine.
‘I’ve got a bigger prawn than you,’ I gloated.
Imelda seethed.
In the front of the car, Mum and Dad, who’d been feeling a bit light-headed from three whole hours without any whingeing and complaining, sagged into their seats.
The rest of the week was a nightmare.
As we toured around on our driving holiday, me and Imelda couldn’t relax for a second. We hardly dared blink in case we missed something.
I got The Big Peanut, The Big Crab and I was in the middle of gloating to Imelda that I had a bigger bottom than her when Mum wearily pointed out that what I’d just seen wasn’t The Big Buttock, it was a haystack covered with pink plastic.
Imelda got The Big Pineapple, The Big Cow and what she claimed was The Big Swimming Pool, which it wasn’t because it was a lake.
‘Cheat,’ I sneered at her.
‘Jealous,’ she sneered back.
‘Please,’ sighed Mum wearily.
We’d never been more unhappy.
I started imagining big things and desperately hoping they’d be round the next corner so I could see them first and win.
The Big Flyscreen.
The Big Teabag.
The Big Blood Clot if we passed an abattoir.
Nothing.
Dad started going out of his way to avoid big things. He saw in a tourist brochure that the next town had The Big Tow Truck, so he took a dirt track through a swamp to keep us away from it.
We got bogged in the mud.
While Mum and Dad tried to get us out, me and Imelda gathered dry grass and branches to put under the back wheels. Except Imelda wasn’t doing much gathering. She was too busy gloating.
‘I’ve got bigger bosoms than you,’ she said in a very cocky voice.