Читать книгу The Person Controller - David Baddiel - Страница 7

Fred and Ellie Stone were twins. But they were never sure whether or not they could call themselves identical. They certainly shared exactly the same birthday (20th September, eleven years ago) and they had the same mum and dad (Eric and Janine). But their names were Fred and Ellie. And a boy and a girl are, clearly, not identical.^fn1

Yet they felt identical. They sometimes even felt that they knew what one another were thinking. And, even if they were 200 metres apart, they could mouth words at each other and always know what the other one was saying. They did look pretty identical too. They both wore glasses and, most of the time, their school uniforms (even though uniform wasn’t compulsory at their school). And they both, at the point at which this story begins, had braces on their top teeth.

They also both liked the same things. These included: superheroes; Japanese fantasy animation films; comics; maths (yes, they actually liked maths – sometimes they played a game called ‘Who Can Name More Decimal Places of Pi?’); and, most importantly, video games. All video games, but their favourites were FIFA, Street Fighter, Super Mario and Minecraft. The one thing they would save up their not-very-much pocket money to buy was the most up-to-date versions of these games. Ellie, though, was better than Fred at video games.^fn2 Which Fred didn’t mind. He knew she had quicker fingers and better hand-to-eye coordination. And, even though he sometimes got frustrated at losing, other times he just liked watching her fingers speed across her controller, as if she was playing a classical concerto by heart. And, when I say her controller, I mean her controller. Ellie and Fred always used their own ones. Ellie in particular was always very definite about which one was hers. The feel and the weight of her controller – even if, to the untrained eye/hand, both of them may have looked/felt exactly the same – suited her style perfectly.

Which was why what happened to it was quite so upsetting.