“Hero brother saves his twin sisters… see, I told you, you’re a hero. It’s there on the front page of the country bumkin gazette. It must be true,” Ava said to me the first morning we arrived at the cottage.
“Ava, stop it. I’m no hero.”
“James, are you warm enough?”
“Yes, thank you, Isla. And what’s with calling me James all of a sudden? You sound like Mum.”
“Sorry, Jim.”
“Have you taken your tablets?”
“No, I need to eat something first.”
“Breakfast is almost ready. I’ll leave the newspaper for you.”
“Thanks.”
As much as I appreciated my sisters’ diligent care it could be a bit stifling, they had good reason though. I’d discharged myself from the hospital far earlier than the doctors wanted, but there was no other choice, it was too dangerous to stay there any longer. Ava and Isla, my older twin sisters, whisked me away in the middle of the night to the holiday cottage in the country that our parents own.
I suppose this needs a bit more explaining.
I remember a scene from a film (bear with me here), this character tells a story that goes something like…
“There is an old Taoist farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbours came to visit. "Such bad luck," they said sympathetically. "Maybe," the farmer replied.
The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. "How wonderful," the neighbours exclaimed. "Maybe," replied the old man.
The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbours again came to offer their sympathy for his misfortune. "Maybe," answered the farmer.
The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son's leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbours congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out. "Maybe," said the farmer.”
That sums up my life quite well of late, up and down and very unpredictable.
I’m an apprentice carpenter and at my age, nineteen, the pay is shit, less than half the minimum wage. I pick up private work here and there in the evenings and weekends that I stash in the bank so I can save up for a van. Mind you, a driving licence would be handy as well.
Anyway, one Friday afternoon I was fixing a dodgy door at my sisters’ workplace. They are both trainee accountants at a firm in the City of London and the guy that owns the company is too tight to get any regular maintenance done. When he found out from Ava and Isla that I’d do the work cheaply because I was still learning the trade he leapt at the chance to save some cash. I finished the job just as the office was closing for the day and left to journey home with my sisters. Then all hell broke loose.
We were walking down the road towards the tube station when two men got in a scaffolder’s truck, and for reasons I still don’t understand, they reversed it straight through the scaffolding they’d just erected. Four stories of the stuff began to fall down, right on top of us.
We had been walking under the scaffolding that spanned the pavement, with the building to our left and wooden hoarding to our right preventing us from using the obvious escape route out onto the street. Our options were limited, we didn’t have enough time to either run backwards or forwards and couldn’t go left or right.
Instead, we took the only option available. The three of us dropped flat on the floor, next to one of those tall, raised curbs that are about two feet high and separate the cycle lane from the traffic. Just in front of us was a sturdy metal City of London bin. The curb and the bin weren’t much in the way of cover but they were just enough to save our lives.
The first few pieces of debris had fallen across the bin and the curb and protected us from the majority of the other material that came crashing down. We still took a few painful hits here and there though. After the initial crash, the falling debris slowed to a trickle and we took our chance to get free.
I managed to brace the weight of the crap above us just long enough for the twins, who were closest to the road, to wriggle through the damaged hoarding and onto the street. I was trying to follow the twins out through hoarding when another load of debris came crashing down and that was the last thing I remember. I woke up the following day in the hospital.
I had a broken leg that was in a cast from knee to toe and a broken arm in plaster from elbow to hand, both on the left side. I also had a nasty cut on my head that needed twenty-four stitches and loads of small cuts and bruises. The doctor shaved off all my hair to get to the cut so I was sporting a ridiculous-looking bandage on my head. When my hair grows back it’ll cover the scar but for now, I was stuck with the wounded action-man look.
So this is bad news, right? I mean, almost being killed by tons of falling metal would generally be considered unfortunate. This is where our friend the Taoist monk’s wisdom comes in.
My spirits were lifted no end when two days later I got a visit in the hospital from the health and safety guy who was investigating the incident. I told him what I knew. he took it all down, I signed off my statement and that was that, or so I thought. What had cheered me up was the massive compensation payout he said I was due. The building was owned by a big bank who was likely to be very keen to avoid bad press. My injuries weren’t permanent and I should have enough money for driving lessons and a van with the payout. I thought, naively, that my bad luck had turned good, but you guessed it, the Taoist monk was back again.
That same afternoon I had another visitor. It was the man who owned the scaffolding company, together with his younger brother, the guy I saw driving the van. They fit the stereotype beautifully. Tall, muscular men with shaved heads and shit tattoos. Their skin was dark with tans gained from working topless in the sun all day. There is an unwritten rule in the UK that all scaffolders have to work topless in the summer. Anyway, after some very weird small talk, where they enquired about my health and even gave me grapes of all things, they got down to business, their words, not mine.
They gave me a choice, take a fat envelope of cash and keep my mouth shut or they kill me and the twins. I’m a Londoner from a rough part of town, I know how this shit works. For these guys to turn up and pay me off like this means they’ve got form, there’s no way they were first-timers at the gangster shit. All I had to do was shut up and I’d have fifteen grand in cash. Quite what shut up meant I wasn’t sure, nobody had asked me much yet, the health and safety guy just asked some basic details that any of the witnesses could have told them. I presumed they meant don’t appear as a witness in court or whatever but I wasn’t really sure and wasn’t going to ask.
I had no problem with their offer. I should have, but I didn’t.
Nobody else was hurt, only me. Even the twins got away clean. Although plenty of people saw the scaffolding fall, as far as I could tell there were no other witnesses that actually saw them backing the truck into the scaffolding. Ava, Isla and myself were the only real threat to these guys.
Even after I’d split the cash with the twins, when added to the payout from the bank I’d have enough money to go self-employed and start my own business. It was a life-changing opportunity, so yeah, I took the money willingly. I wrapped the cash in a carrier bag and put it in the drawer next to my bed after they left. I was fifteen grand better off so all was well again, right? Not a chance, the Taoist monk wasn’t done with me yet.
The next day the police came to see me. There was no grapes or small talk from them though. They were not normal police either; This was the Serious Organized Crime Agency - it’s sort of like a British version of the FBI. These were the heavy mob. Well, two skinny men and a plump woman but they deal with all the big crime stuff. They sussed me out straight away. They’d been following this guy and guessed what had happened when he came to see me. I just told them the truth, sort of. I played down my willingness to accept the cash and exaggerated my fear of the repercussions if I refused them.
The cops took the cash as evidence and took statements from me and later on the twins. They told me this bloke and his brother were seriously bad news and we were now all in mortal danger and should run for our lives. Okay, they took half an hour to say all that and were more subtle but that was the bottom line. The best they could do was offer me a guard while I was in the hospital, after that, I was on my own. They advised me to take ‘sensible precautions for my safety and dial nine nine nine in an emergency’.
Thanks a fucking bunch then.
The copper in charge told me, off the record, to get away and lie low for a few weeks. He gave me his card and promised to keep me updated but said most likely within a few weeks they’ll be able to take him off these guys' streets. These coppers are at the top of their game, they deal with all the big cases of organised crime they do not scare easily. So if they are telling you to hide for a few weeks then you would do well to take their advice.
The police then very kindly scared the shit out of my sisters and parents by telling them exactly what was happening. Now the thing is, my parents may look like Mr and Mrs average I.T. geek but they met in the army and have got their shit seriously together.
The hastily made plan was for me and the twins to go to our family holiday home in the rural Cotswolds and lay low. Meanwhile, our parents would make a big deal of telling everyone the whole family was going on holiday and hooked up our caravan and headed off to Cornwall. The idea was to follow the route we took on our holiday last year. They would use a clever mix of new photos of just them two and old ones of all of us from last year to post on social media and make it look like we were touring Cornwall, when actually me and twins will actually be in the Cotswolds. I never knew any of this until it was all underway. The first I heard of the plan was when I was in my hospital bed, staring at the ceiling and musing over the fucked up situation I’ve got myself into when a seriously pissed-off doctor came in with my sisters. He very reluctantly discharged me on the condition I did not get out of bed for four or five days.
It was a good job their charm worked on him. If it hadn’t, the twins would have put their judo black belts to good use and tied him in knots. Did I mention they get a little bit protective over their baby brother? The girls bundled me out of the hospital and into a BMW borrowed from a friend. The car was full to the brim with pillows, duvets, bags, food and all sorts of crap. When we set off we even took detours and kept stopping and turning around just in case we were being followed, which was no doubt some of Mum and Dad’s input into the plan. It was all very Jason Bourne. We arrived at our cottage in the picturesque Cotswolds in the middle of a cold, wet, November night.
~~~~~~
Besides their Judo skills, Ava and Isla are chess genius maths geeks who just happen to be ‘model level twin cunny’ as my pal Chris puts it. Pity he hasn’t got the bollocks to say that to their face. His less than polite description translates into ‘intelligent, beautiful, blue-eyed, raven-haired, twenty-one-year-old ladies’. With all these talents you’d think they’d have been popular at school and uni but they tend to be quite reserved and keep to themselves. Being the captains of the maths and chess clubs was as outgoing as they got. At least that’s what I thought.
That first night and the next two days in the cottage were a bit of a blur. I hadn’t realised just how much the journey would take out of me so between the exhaustion and the heavy-duty painkillers, I was sleeping all day and night, waking only briefly to eat and go to the loo. I’ve literally not got out of bed, even at the hospital, since this all happened (except for the journey of course). Needless to say, the twins intended to follow the doctor’s instructions to the letter and keep me in bed for the full four days, if not longer. But I had to answer calls of nature. This being a one hundred and fifty-year-old cottage our parents have furnished it with lots of stuff they got from local antique shops. Handily, one such item is an old chamber pot, quite a fancy china one with a blue Chinese style pattern.
