Presently, Mother appeared under the tree again. “Tarnia, Timothy – I know you’re both up there and I know what you did. I’m not risking my neck to haul you down but you’d better believe that whenever you come down from that treehouse, the paddle will be waiting for your bottoms!” With that, she went back into the house.

We held out for some time, probably a couple of hours as I recall. Mother kept an old Fli-Back paddle for our misdemeanours. It produced a hot, stinging bottom and a whole bunch of tears, and I had no doubt we would be ending up getting a taste if we went down immediately. Timothy reckoned if we held out for a bit, Mother’s anger would subside and we might get away with just a good scolding. In actuality, of course, our deliberate disobedience and delay was only making a few good swats of that paddle ever more sure.

Eventually, it started to rain. The tree house wasn’t really very waterproof, and our clothes soon started to soak through with the wet. We were both wearing jeans and denim in particular is a miserable material to wear when wet. I finally turned to Timothy. “Come on, we better go get this over with. At least we’ll get warm and dry.” Just where we were about to get warm was another matter, of course! Anyhow, by now Timothy was as fed up as I was and we skulked through the back door into the kitchen.

Mother wasn’t there but the first thing we both noticed was the paddle out on the table ready. We heard the downstairs toilet flush and Mother came into the kitchen, having evidently gone for a pee. To our dismay, there was no sign that her anger had diminished in any significant way.

“So you decided to come down and face the music at last, like honest ones would? Well, better late than never. I think you had better go and change into some dry clothes first – no sense in you dying of pneumonia. As soon as you’re ready, get your butts back down here in the kitchen – the paddle is waiting for them.”

We scurried up the stairs and dispersed to our respective bedrooms. I took off all my clothes – even my panties were soaked through, I remember – towelled myself down a bit then changed into a fresh, dry set. The last thing on earth I wanted was to go downstairs for a spanking, but I knew it made no sense to keep Mother waiting any longer.

When I got back down, Mother had put two kitchen chairs out, side by side, in the centre of the room. She already had the paddle in her hand. She tapped the furthest away chair with it. bend over there.” Timothy had yet to arrive but I could hear him coming down the stairs,

I heard Timothy’s step on the kitchen floor. Mother must have pointed at his chair, because I heard no tap this time, just: “bend over the chair.” Timothy came to stand by me Then his face appeared next to mine, as red as my own probably was, and we briefly glanced at each other.

“Timothy, move closer to your sister “Right – hold still while I dish this out, and I hope it teaches you both a good lesson!”

There was a pause and then we both simultaneously gave out a yelp, and Mother’s strategy at making us bend over close was now clear, as the first swat was shared evenly between my left buttock and Timothy’s right. For a few hot, tearful minutes, Mother paddled us efficiently and without mercy, varying the target as she went. Sometimes just one of us would get it right across our bottom cleavage; sometimes there would be a single, hard whack to our outer buttock, then Mother would come back to the centre again and the sting would be shared between both our bottoms.