Downshire is a relatively small English
county but that didn’t bother its inhabitants, the may not have been the
biggest, but they were in no doubt that it was the best and that belief was no
truer than in the southern town off Abbottsford which was Downshire’s
administrative capital and the seat of the Downshire government.
It was also a place of learning thanks to
the Downshire University, it could also boast that it was a Cathedral City, was home to Abbottsford
Town football club and benefitted from the renowned Winston Churchill Hospital, and Twin sisters
Ariadne and Scarlet Shakespeare were both nurses at the Churchill.
They were
identical twins, Ariadne was the older of the two by an hour and was five
feet eight with bobbed brunette hair and an olive complexion and hazel eyes,
while Scarlet was two inches taller than
her sister and had more hair.
The girls were both foot lose and fancy free and liked to party and had no
intrest in tying themselves down, but on the occasion of their 27th
birthday, on New Years Eve, that all changed, when they met best friends Marcus
Birkin and Gareth Clare.
They both worked for Bramstock, Goodman, Crossfield and Bushe solicitors
in Abbottsford, although they hailed from Turnoak-Under-Hawthorne,
a large rambling village, originally settled in the 12th century on
the sparsely wooded slopes on the Northern fringe of the Finchbottom Vale about
5 miles from Purplemere, and it was everything you would expect from a
Downshire Village.
The Birkin and Clare families had lived in the village for many years and
were of the landed gentry and the boys were public school and Cambidge
educated.
Abbottsford was a world away from
Turnoak-Under-Hawthorne and socially the Shakespeare girls were a world away
from Marcus and Gareth and their meeting on New Year’s Eve was purely by
chance.
The twins were travelling from home after
getting ready to party into the New Year, and the solicitors were in Marcus’s
car travelling in the opposite direction from work when the two vehicles
collided.
It wasn’t serious just a bit of minor
damage, but Marcus had only had the car for a month so an angry exchange
between him and the cab driver ensued, which Gareth tried to cool, to no avail,
but when the two-leggy drop
dead gorgeous brunette girls emerged from the Taxi, the two adversaries’ and the
peacemaker all went quiet.
They were both stunningly beautiful and
wearing low cut party outfits and when Marcus first saw the one with the bobbed
hair, he was smitten, and the fender bender was no longer of any importance to
him, whereas Gareth felt the same about the taller one.
The taxi driver, who had been at fault for
the accident, took full advantage of the distraction and got in his cab and
sped away.
“Hey come back!” Ariadne shouted
“What are we going to do now?” Scarlet
asked as the Cab disappeared around a corner
“Don’t worry” Marcus said “We’ll get you
to your destination”
“You don’t know where we’re going” Ariadne
pointed out
“You could tell us and then we would”
Gareth said
“Problem solved then” Scarlet added and
gave her sister a look that said “just get in the car”
Ariadne complied because it was obvious
her sister fancied the drivers friend, and she thought the driver was ok, and
he was posh, and she liked posh.
They were on the way to a New Year’s Eve
Party at the Hospital, and by the time they got there the twins had persuaded
the guys to join them at the party rather than just drop them off and go their
separate ways, not that it took too much persuading, and the old year ended
with the two couples kissing on the dancefloor at midnight.
In the following months the four of them
spent a lot of time together, and the relationships between the two couples
growing and their feeling were deepening, but it took some freak weather and a
freak accident to take things to the next level when a late snow storm ground Downshire
to a halt and made children of every adult with a snow day, and then an
accident on a snowy hill put Marcus and Gareth in hospital, the former with a
broken ankle and a dislocated knee and the latter with a broken collar bone and
wrist.
When the family arrived, they were more
appalled by the two common, overfamiliar nurses that were hanging around the
boys, than they were at their injuries, but when they did remember why they
were there they completely blanked the girls, and even when addressed directly,
they ignored them, and when the girls were sleeping all day after a night shift
they were spirited away in a private ambulance to a nursing home, to get them
away from their clutches.
However, the families underestimated the Shakespeare
girls because they tracked them down, with the help of some allies and when the
four of them were reunited it lead to universal declarations of love.
The girls went to visit the boys early on their
last day at the Nursing home because they knew that once they were back home in
Turnoak they wouldn’t be able to see them, so they planned on meeting them
early and then leaving Withery before the Birkin’s and the Clare’s arrived to
pick them up.
Marcus was laying on his bed with Ariadne
sat beside him holding his hand and Scarlet and Gareth were in the Garden
enjoying the spring sunshine, and for both couples the conversation was
strained.
“I’m going to miss you” Ariadne said
“I’ll miss you too” he said “But we can
skype and facetime everyday”
“It won’t be the same” she said
“I know it won’t, and I want this to be
the last time we have to be apart” he said “When I get back to I want to…”
Outside in the sunshine it was just as
tortuous with each syllable feeling like a pulled tooth.
But finally, Gareth killed the
conversation stone dead when he began his sentence
“I think we should….”
Five minutes later the two girls rushed
towards each other down the corridor uttering a language, if that’s what it
was, that only they could understand and when they were face to face they said
in perfect union
“You’ll never guess what’s happened?”
“You first”
“No, you first”
“Ok”
“We’re getting married!”
And then there was complete silence for
thirty seconds and then they screamed out a cheer in others face and began
dancing around in circles like a demented waltz.
After the proposals were accepted, there
was the question of when and where they would marry, none of them wanted a
particularly long engagement, in fact the opposite was true, the wanted to do
it as soon as possible.
They wanted a double wedding, that was a
given, and a church wedding was preferable but not practical given the
timescale, so it was decided that they would marry at Abbottsford Registry
Office and they would have a blessing at St Hilda’s Church as soon as they
could accommodate them.
The length of the wedding planning
discussions meant that they stayed at the Grange longer than they intended, and
their visit was almost discovered by the families, fortunately the girls were
in the appropriate uniforms so when they arrived all they saw were two nurses
walking away.
When they got back to Abbottsford, Ariadne
and Scarlet went straight to the registry office to find out what dates were available,
and they discovered that a significant date was free which they took as an
omen, so they went for that day, so the date for the wedding was set for April
23rd which was appropriately Shakespeare Day as the brides were both
namesakes.
After booking the registry office, came
the fun part, shopping, outfits, lingerie, shoes, accessories, the full Monty.
Once they had shopped till they dropped,
it suddenly occurred to them to tell their parents and friends.
The day before the Wedding, courtesy of their
mum and aunties, they spent the whole day at
Mazzone’s and had the full range of treatments on offer, including having their
hair done, along with a premium Buffet lunch and copious quantities of
champagne.
They were pampered and preened
all day and when the giggling overexcited and slightly tipsy Shakespeare’s were
manicured, pedicured, coiffured, waxed, buffed, threaded, tweezed, perfumed,
painted, and powdered to the point of perfection.
On the day of the wedding Ariadne and
Scarlet looked stunning and were indeed radiant and had permanent smiles on
their faces, but when Marcus and Gareth arrived their faces did not to show the
same level as happiness, in fact they tended toward the grave end of the
spectrum, so the girls rushed straight over to them.
“What’s wrong?” they asked
“We need to tell you something” Marcus
said
“Something important” Gareth added
“You’ve changed your minds, haven’t you”
Ariadne stated
“Is that it? You don’t want to marry us
anymore” Scarlet said
“No, no, it’s nothing like that” Marcus
replied reassuringly
“But you might change your minds when we
tell you what’s happened” Gareth said
“Oh God, you’re already married” Ariadne
exclaimed
“Were you already engaged when you
proposed to us then?” Scarlet asked
“Absolutely no” replied Marcus
“Very definitely not” Gareth concurred
“Then what?” They asked
“We’re not the prospects you thought we
were” Gareth began
“We have been told that if we go ahead and
marry you we will be disinherited” Marcus concluded “The family will disown us”
“That’s it?” Ariadne asked and smiled
“That’s what the long faces are for?”
“Yes” Marcus replied
“If that’s all it is then we don’t care”
Scarlet said “we didn’t fall in love with your “prospects” I fell in love with
you”
“So, you don’t mind?” Marcus asked
“Of course, not” Ariadne said and kissed
him
“As long as you get to keep the car” she
added and laughed
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