The twins, one blue-eyed, one brown, sat cross-legged on the top bunk, each wrapped in a duvet.
They knew nothing of squatters' rights, or bailiffs or estate agents or divorce proceedings, but they knew if the furniture wasn't shifted, the move couldn't take place. And with the conviction of their shared seven years, they knew they wanted to make a stand.
Their father, Adam, had the same idea. He sat, cradling his guitar, in his favourite armchair ' black leather with a retractable footstool ' staring at the space where the television used to be. Their mother, Cordelia, was directing the men in brown overalls who carried boxes and took apart wardrobes. She had a list in one hand and a phone in the other. Her long fair hair was tied back in a ponytail and her raw pale face looked tired. Cordelia, she had told them, was the name of a princess in a fairytale. Their father used to accuse her of being a drama queen. Now he had stopping talking to her. She wasn't talking to him either.
The twins were still wearing pyjamas. They could hardly be expected to leave the house if they weren't dressed. Adam was dressed. Adam was wearing an old pair of trousers, a stained tee-shirt and the jacket of his suit with some buttons missing. Cordelia didn't care that his clothes weren't fit to be worn on the street, because she wasn't going anywhere with him again. She wasn't letting the twins go with him either, not after the business of the kidnapping.

Sometimes, on the top bunk, they would play aeroplanes, sometimes castles, but the twins' favourite game was pirates. They'd tie scarves around their heads and rattle plastic cutlasses through the wooden safety bars. They had a treasure chest that had once been filled with chocolate coins. When they'd eaten all the money, they borrowed Cordelia's jewellery and she spent some time anxiously searching for her pearl drop earrings, coral beads and chain link bracelets. Their father liked to play pirates too. He could hop on one leg, roll his eyes like marbles and deepen his voice to a throaty roar that made his children squeal.
He told them it was part of the game when he strapped them into the back of his car, pulling the seat belts so tight they protested. No softies on my ship, he said. You're my captives and you're lashed to the mast here. Got to show a bit of bravery when you walk the plank. Any screaming and I'll have to gag you.
At first it was hugely exciting. The car ploughed through the streets as if cresting waves, sailing past slower vehicles, taking corners at such speed they had to lean into the wind. But then, as the journey lengthened, as it began to get dark, as the twins started to feel hungry and tired, the adventure lost some of its glamour. Ben, the brown-eyed one, bit his fingernails. Sophie, the blue-eyed one, asked: Are we nearly there yet? Their father merely whistled.
When it became completely dark, when there were no comforting houses or shops to be seen, when the street lamps were left behind and they arrived on the cliff top, the car finally stopped. Only faint shading in the distance indicated where the land ended and the horizon began. There was also the tang and the crash of the sea. Adam opened the glove box and pulled out a silver hip-flask. He tipped it into his mouth and then, still clasping it, he got out of the car.
Where are you going, daddy? Ben asked, quite reasonably, he thought.
To see which way the wind's blowing, said Adam. He staggered a little, as if the wind were fierce, and was then swallowed into the blackness.
Are we going to walk the plank here? Sophie wondered, disturbed that the story had taken a wrong turning. How could they be rescued if nobody knew where they had gone? She undid the catch and wriggled out of her seat belt. They couldn't open the back doors of the car because of the child locks, so she had to crawl across to the front seat. The Bridge, their father had called it, when he'd been careering out of town and calling Ahoy there! to the oncoming traffic. Now he was making his mysterious preparations outside somewhere, invisible.
The glove box was still open. Inside it a phone began to ring. The twins were too young to have mobiles of their own, but they'd watched the process often enough and the controls were just the right size for their fingertips. Sophie pushed the green button and heard her mother's frantic gasp. We're playing Pirates, she told her. Daddy's Captain Hook and he's captured us. Do you want to be Peter or Tinkerbell?
Where are you? Cordelia's voice sounded as though it was being stretched on a wire.
We don't know. We can't see anything. The sense of darkness hit Sophie suddenly, like someone throwing a blanket over her head. She started to cry. Ben could hear his mother's shouts and leaned into the front of the car to wrestle the phone from his sister. The instrument slipped into a hole between the seats and disappeared. They could still hear Cordelia's voice but they didn't know how to get her back again.
Sophie stopped crying. Now she can be Tinkerbell, she said.
When, later, they were surrounded by the bright beams of police cars and Adam had his driving licence taken away, they pretended it was all part of the game.

Their mother played lots of games with them when they were younger, before she needed to go back to work and earn more money. They had a big dressing up box with cloaks and hats and face paints in it. Their father would come home at the end of the day and pretend he didn't recognise any of them ' that his adorable son and daughter and their beautiful princess mother had been stolen by aliens or fed to the wolves and replaced by these strange, frightening apparitions. He'd hold up his hands and scream until one of them whipped off the disguise and returned to normal. And Adam would run his hands through his hair, which was very short and dark in those days, and shake his head and say, What would I have done if I'd lost my wonderful family?
And Cordelia would say ' in a voice that was mostly teasing, but sometimes had a little chink of worry in it ' Have you been drinking, darling?
And Adam would pick up Sophie and whirl her around by the legs until she was nearly sick with screaming and the sensation of flying through the air. I've been working all the hours God sends, he'd say, putting her down. You don't begrudge me do you, kiddo?
And all of a sudden the excitement would drain away and they'd have to wash the coloured paint off their faces and put on their pyjamas, because their parents wanted to talk about the stupid letters that kept arriving from the bank.

The twins loved to hear the story of how their bedroom had been especially created for them, how for years it had been ready: a perfect capsule for a perfect baby. And then, said Cordelia, after all that waiting, there were TWO of you! We had to go out and buy another one of everything! They hadn't been told ' and maybe they never would be ' about the ghost babies who had failed to develop or survive, or were still frozen in a little cupboard somewhere. They knew only that they had grown up in this home, in this room, with these toys, with these parents. They didn't see why they should leave, why any other family had the right to move in.
While the twins mutinied in their bedroom, Adam played music, not on his guitar, but on the CD player which was still plugged into the wall next to his chair. The table it used to stand on had already been removed. The song was called You Can't Always Get What You Want and he turned the volume up loud. At the same time he drank some more vodka. He used to hide the bottles all over the place: behind curtains and cushions, under cupboards and chairs, until the twins became proficient at finding them. They wished he might hide something more appealing ' like sweets or pennies or chocolate bars ' but nowadays he'd stopped being so furtive. My sperm count doesn't matter anymore, he told Cordelia. So what do you care?
The removal men were rolling up a rug and lifting it onto their shoulders. Their shoe leather squeaked on the beech strip flooring. Cordelia had wanted wooden floors throughout the house but they hadn't got around to laying any others. They had to make do with the carpets put down in the early days, before the twins had spurted into life in their little glass dish, when there'd still been money for such things.
The men's shoes squeaked on the stairs too. They came into the bedroom and lifted up the chest with the delicate pattern of leaves stencilled on its drawer fronts. Ben shouted at them to stop it but they ignored him. Some minutes later they came back for the small matching desks and chairs. We are not going, yelled Ben at the top of his voice. Sophie could see right inside his mouth, which was red and angry.
Cordelia came over to them and leaned her arms on the wooden safety rail.
You have to get down now, she said. You have to get dressed.
But we don't want to!
No, she agreed. But it isn't your choice.
They watched her walk over to the window. From the window they used to be able to see the climbing frame, which also made a pretty good pirate ship, but it had been dismantled yesterday. Cordelia was looking out onto muddy grass and a garden that had been battered by an assault of ball games, treasure hunts and tricycle rides. She could just remember the perfume of the roses before they'd been scrubbed up for their thorns, the glorious colours of the peonies, delphiniums and lilies she'd so carefully staked. She could remember this room ' they had called it the nursery as soon as they'd moved in ' when it was pristine and silent. She remembered, halfway through painting these walls, Adam putting down his brush, putting his arms around her, telling her they just needed patience; everything would be all right.
She would not turn round until she had stopped crying. Not for one second did she want the twins to think she regretted what they had cost her.

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