Author's Solution
It's now time to reveal the answer to the mystery of which two Skins Series 3 characters were dancing in my 'story'. In fact there are two answers to the puzzle and, to my mind, there always were two completely different answers.
The first answer is that the two characters are in fact whichever two you imagine them to be, as one reviewer very perceptively picked up on. There really is no one single right answer, since each reader is free to interpret the story whichever way he or she chooses. The reader can argue that particular lines or images in the narrative conjure up an image of a certain person in his/her mind which may be completely different to how another reader sees it but that doesn't mean that one of you is right and the other one is wrong.
Everyone is entitled to take whatever they want out of a piece of creative work, be it a story, a poem, a song, a painting or whatever. If that is how they see it, if that is what it says to them, then who on earth has the right to tell them they have misunderstood what it is all about.
I threw in a few clues which I hoped would suggest various different characters from the series and was happy top leave it up to each individual reader to interpret the whole piece however they wanted.
For me, however, the couple dancing were Emily and Katie, although I was tempted initially to make it all about Emily and Naomi. The bits about being 'chained together' and the reference to an 'exclusive magic circle' were meant to hint at a very special relationship, one which still today carries a certain amount of mystery to a lot of people who will never know what it's like to have a twin.
Then I went and put in deliberately a couple of things which could have thrown people off the scent of that pairing like mentioning the couple 'brushing seductively against each other' and being 'in perfect harmony'. I tried to make as many combinations as possible all equally feasible without ruling out too easily any one combination –whether I succeeded or failed in this attempt is up to you to judge, but at least I gave it a go. The whole piece was outside my 'comfort zone' but then I wanted it to be; it was an experiment after all and most experiments go wrong at the beginning!
As for the anagram aspect of this piece, they were pretty difficult, I have to admit but here they are for those of you who tried to look for them;
Line 5 contains the words 'like dynamite, a stick of dynamite'. 'Like dynamite, a' is an anagram of 'Emily and Katie.'
Line 6 ends with 'as high as a kite'.' A kite' is of course an anagram of 'Katie'.
Towards the middle there is a line that ends 'sometimes the occasional smile'. The next sentence begins 'You are as one…..' Smile. You – you can now see 'Emily' contained in that – I accept that is ridiculously difficult and obscure!!
Finally, near the end are two anagrams of Megan Prescott and Katherine Prescott, the two actresses playing Katie and Emily. They are 'contempt rages' and 'heart-stricken poet'.
If any reader did find any of those anagrams, then seriously well done! I f you didn't, so what? It was only a bit of fun on my part and the least interesting point of the whole thing. If you enjoyed reading it that's great- I did it for a bit of a challenge and to do something different with the Skins characters. It probably didn't work as well as I would have liked, but that's normal. I f you don't try anything new, then you'll never learn anything, will you?
