I kept telling myself I was going to enjoy this week at the Ocean View Hotel at Seahampton, although I know it was not the kind of holiday I would have chosen. I shouldn’t have been here at all if it hadn’t been for Fiona.

 

Let me explain. Fiona is my twin sister, but we’re not a bit alike. Fiona is bubbly, blonde, and full of self-assurance, whereas I am small, dark, and shy. People look at me and murmur, “So you’re the quiet one…” and then go off in Fiona’s direction.

 

For Fiona always seems to be the centre of some excitement or other. She has a great job as a personal assistant to an engineering consultant. It takes her all over the world – lucky Fiona – whilst I am a teacher and have never got further than St. Luke’s Primary at Merryfield. Still, I love it, and it’s what I always wanted to do.

 

It was solely because of Fiona that I was on the train for Seahampton now. At the last minute, Fiona had had to fly to New York where her boss was attending a convention and therefore had to postpone her annual holiday for the time being. The trouble was, she had already made the booking.

 

“You’ll enjoy it, Flip,” – my name is Felicity, but Fiona always calls me Flip – “It’s time you shook the chalk of 3A off your fingers, and found the real you.

 

“Now, don’t argue,” she said, brushing aside my protests about a dearth of funds and lack of suitable clothes, “These tickets will only be wasted, and Sandy (her boss, Mr. Sanderson) is footing all the bills.

 

So here I was in my plain navy-blue suit (we were very conservative at St. Luke’s and I hadn’t time to buy anything else) and feeling more and more nervous as I got nearer and nearer my destination. Fiona, I knew, would have got someone to drive her down and would have arrived in style. As for me, as soon as the train drew into Seahampton station, I made a dash for the ancient taxi waiting outside in the station yard. The driver seized my navy blue case, one of an identical pair that Mother had given to Fiona and myself on our joint birthday, loaded it into the boot, and we were away.

 

When we arrived at the huge Ocean View Hotel my worst fears were realised. A porter in splendid uniform took possession of my bag, raising his eyebrows when he saw it was all I had; the receptionist looked at me condescendingly but reluctantly had to acknowledge that the booking had been made, and a third flunkey, even more magnificently attired, led me over acres of red carpet to my room on the first floor, overlooking the hotel swimming pool.

 

It was a hot day, and the water below looked cool and inviting and I half promised myself a swim when I had unpacked, but when I saw the slick chicks in their satin bikinis round the pool, and thought of my own one-piece navy-blue swimsuit (we weren’t allowed bikinis at St. Luke’s) my courage began to trickle away.

 

Impatient with myself, I grabbed the blue suitcase, snapped the locks and gave a gasp of dismay, not realising for the moment what had happened. Then I saw it all. This was Fiona’s case. She had been all packed and ready for this holiday, when the commandeering Mr. Sanderson had whisked her off to New York and was now probably sitting in her New York Hotel dressed in my gear, looking like some super Mary Poppins.

 

One thing was clear to me, however. I was stuck with Fiona’s things for a whole week, so I had to make the best of it. I opened the case again. Right on top of the neatly folded clothes was a red bikini and beneath it was a white towelling beachrobe. I thought again of the sparkling water of the pool. Fiona wouldn’t, couldn’t possible object to my borrowing her things if she knew it would spoil my holiday to go without them. So I showered, slipped into the red scrap of satin, covered it with the beachrobe and went down to the pool.

 

Someone found me a deckchair, and I put on my sunglasses and lay back enjoying the sunshine. Somehow, the red bikini gave me confidence, and I didn’t feel nearly so out of things as I expected.

 

Presently I got up, and took a modest header into the pool. After the heat, the coolness of the water was delicious. In sheer delight, I turned on my back and floated gently to the middle of the pool.

 

“Can you dance as well as you swim?” asked a man’s deep, laughing voice beside me. I found myself looking into the dark brown eyes of another swimmer, a tanned young man of about my own age.

 

Before I could give him the brushoff for his cheek, he announced without formality, “My name’s Alan. Alan Maitland. Have you just arrived?”

 

He spoke so naturally that I found it impossible to snub him, and when he proposed a race to the end of the pool, I accepted the challenge.

 

Swimming is one of the things I do really well – the other is cooking, but he wasn’t to know that – and he gave me a hard race up to the end of the pool, only beating me by inches.

 

He looked at me, his brown eyes twinkling with fun.

 

You’re a mermaid in disguise,” he accused me. “Will you have dinner with me tonight? I’ll order boiled crab and seaweed, I promise.”

 

“Well, I was quite looking forward to having dinner with Alan, and it was not until I returned to my room that I realised I should have to wear something of Fiona’s. Her clothes were hanging in the hotel wardrobe and I went over to them. There on the hanger, the colour of the new leaves below my window, hung a pale green trouser suit. As I slipped it off its hanger I kept telling myself, “Remember, you are the quiet one…the quiet one.” Yet as the silk slid over my head and shoulders I had to admit it really did something for me. I not only looked different, I felt different, and as I came down the hotel stairway and met Alan’s admiring glance I could not suppress a thrill of delight.

 

The feeling of looking so exactly right and of being with exactly the right person, was so new to me that I began to feel a little giddy. For a few minutes I almost sparkled, then reality took over. If Alan found out who I really was, a primary school teacher in an out of the way village, wouldn’t he find me dull and uninteresting?

 

Quickly I swapped my normal semi-serious look for a fierce, bubbling gaiety and worked hard to sparkle with the sort of charm that only my electric twin sister could produce.

 

Alan, however, seemed to want to keep the conversation on a more serious level and told me he had been sent by his engineering firm to supervise the repair of some machinery at Seahampton, and now, the job being done, he had been lucky enough to be given the week off and had managed to book into the Ocean View Hotel.

 

Talking to him seemed absolutely so natural and right that I felt tempted to tell him of my own ambition to open a little school for dyslexic children in my own village, but suddenly, I caught myself up, as that line of conversation wasn’t at all like this new me.

 

So I invented myself a glamorous career as a dress designer, a penthouse flat in Chelsea, and a number of talented boyfriends, none of whom I had yet chosen to marry.

 

So far as this last flight of fancy was concerned, none of my dates had been more exciting than a trip to the British Museum with the fourth form’s history master, followed by a ride home on the bus.

 

However, I was enjoying myself with Alan and for my part the evening could have gone on and on for ever. When the sleepy waiters began tentatively to put out the lights we both reluctantly got up to go to our rooms.

 

“How about a walk to the headland tomorrow?” asked Alan when we finally made our way to the stairs, “We can take a picnic lunch and stop out until dinner time.”

 

“Super,” I murmured, and went up to bed on cloud nine.

 

The following day was a lovely one and certainly called for the white silk frock bordered with huge red poppies, and there was a pair of high-heeled red sandals in Fiona’s case which I put on, although it would have been altogether more sensible to have worn the flat-heeled clumpies I had travelled in.

 

However, the red sandals seemed more like the new me, so I put them on and teetered delicately over the rough, sandy track that lead to the headland.

 

A mile or so further on I had to admit that my ankle had begun to hurt and Alan immediately insisted on stopping, and for the rest of the time we sat on the cliff top watching the sea roll and unroll itself on the sunbaked sands below.

 

Alan that afternoon told me about his own family, about his widowed mother, his young clever brother still at grammar school, and his new baby sister, born after his father’s recent death, and I was just about to tell Alan about Dad’s job as a clerk on the railway and Mum helping with the school dinners when I suddenly realised how deadly dull it would all seem to him, so I began to invent the sort of family he would like me to have.

 

“Dad’s got a well-paid job with a transport firm and Mum’s in the catering business.”

 

Well, it wasn’t far out, was it?

 

“And I was very spoilt as a child, absolutely pampered.”

 

I hoped it sounded as though I was very, very precious.

 

As for Fiona, I hardly knew why, but I left her out of the conversation altogether. I just wanted to keep Alan to myself.

 

So the week went by, Fiona’s case everyday providing clothes which, I told myself, were building up the Real Me, yet I was not happy.

 

A day of reckoning was coming but, I told myself defiantly, I would carry the deception through to the bitter end. I would go home in some of Fiona’s stunning gear, say a final goodbye to Alan at the station, and that would be that! He would never know the truth.

 

We were both going home on the Saturday, Alan to London, and me to London with him, then on to Merryfield, but before we left we were both going to the hotel dance on the Friday evening.

 

At the very bottom of Fiona’s case, packed in layer upon layer of tissue, was an evening gown, a froth of white organza with tiny silver straps.

 

I had planned to make this evening the best of all, and when we got back from the beach that afternoon, I went up to my room, showered, made up lightly but with great care, then slipped on the beautiful white dress and looked at myself in the glass.

 

I should have looked marvellous, but somehow it had all gone wrong. This wasn’t me, this girl in the white dress. This was just a plain girl disguised with make up, a girl so desperate for affection she would lie about her own family, and a girl who was afraid to proclaim her own genuine and worthwhile ambitions.

 

Sadly I took off the lovely thing and, as if to punish myself, put on my navy suit I had travelled in a week ago. Might as well make a good job of it. I grabbed a tissue and fiercely wiped off what was left of my makeup. If Alan came, he should see me as I really was.

 

A knock came at the door, and Alan was there waiting for me.

 

He looked surprised. “Not ready yet, Felicity?” he exclaimed.

 

“Not coming,” I answered abruptly, then quite suddenly burst into tears.

 

It all came tumbling out then, about how Fiona and I were twins, and how I was the plain one, how I had deceived him with Fiona’s clothes and how I lived at home with my Mum and Dad, and how Dad…then I stopped.

 

I stopped because had taken me by the shoulders and was kissing me.

 

“I love you Flip, and I want you to marry me.”

 

For a moment I was so surprised I couldn’t speak, then I managed to stammer, “But you don’t understand, Alan. I’m just a teacher in a tiny village school.”

 

“Sweet idiot, I knew all the time. When we went to the headland, you dropped this from your shoulder bag. He opened his hand in which he held a snapshot of myself surrounded by some children in the playground which Fiona had taken last year. He stooped down and kissed me again.

 

“Listen he said, the band’s starting. Wipe your eyes, put that dress on and I’ll wait for you downstairs.”

 

When he had left, I flew to the bathroom and splashed water on my hot cheeks, then I slipped on the dress again and turned once more to look in the glass, and the person I saw reflected there was so unexpectedly, so utterly different  from my former guilty self that I gave a gasp of surprise.

 

For this was a face that had come alive – the face of a woman who loved and was loved.

 

When I got my breath back I leaned forward and whispered softly, “Are you the Real Me?” but there was no need of an answer, for I knew this was the real me at last.

 

I skipped down the broad stairs to rejoin Alan smiling blissfully.