After having read it all, Wallace went to see the twins in a detention center where they were being held before their transfer to Broadmoor. Attendants lifted the girls into the interview room. They appeared catatonic, stiff, no muscle moving. Lowered into chairs, they stared at the ground.
``Out of nervousness I started babbling about their writing, about how hard it was to write,`` Wallace recalls. ``These girls had decided to make something of their lives, after all. They were determined not to be mediocre. ``Well, with that, the dam burst. They were like desperate little animals anxious to talk. `What do you think about it?` one asked. `Was it any good?`
The other twin broke in: `What about mine?` ``
Soon, the girls gave Wallace their prison diaries, which were literally black with minuscule, perfectly neat Bronte-like script. Each page held about 4,000 words, and Wallace would spend months deciphering it.
``These diaries were the key to the twins,`` she says. ``I`d sit and compare each day`s output, seeing what each twin thought about the other. It was like a treasure hunt, because the mundane was mixed with the lyrical. For instance, one would write, `I had three soda chips and two sausages for lunch today and this dark shadow is robbing me of my sunlight . . .` and go on from there. It`s all mixed up. The recurring subject was how the other twin had tried to ruin her life.``