The Sister Surprise

by Abigail Mann

  Mum sits on the front doorstep with a doleful Babs on her lap, who tucks her wings in and wiggles her corpulent backside into a more comfortable position. Mum runs a hand over her speckled back and smiles.

  ‘It’s like she’s had a lobotomy,’ I say, just as disturbed as Kian. ‘I haven’t managed to get within two metres without her launching a talon at my throat.’

  ‘Do you think I could squeeze a coop in the back garden?’ says Mum, smiling down at Babs.

  ‘Probably, but there wouldn’t be space for much else.’

  ‘It’s the foxes I’d worry about.’

  ‘Really? I doubt they’d know what to do with a live chicken. They’re too busy working through the bins behind KFC to bother with something they’d have to actually kill.’

  I lean sideways to allow Moira past, as she carefully steps out of the front door balancing a tray of tea. She places it on an upturned terracotta trough, each mug billowing with steam in the chilly afternoon air.

  ‘Are you going to stop pacing for five minutes to drink this? Kian? Kian!’ says Moira, motioning to the mug in her hand. He drags his eyes up and joins us by the front door, his nervous energy spilling tea over the lip of his mug.

  The noise of wheels splashing through puddles reaches us from across the yard. ‘If we don’t get the grant, it’s fine. I’m not bothered. I’ll start on your business plan anyway, Ava. If we look at next month’s invoices, maybe we can get by without—’

  ‘Would you stop with your contingency plan?’ I say, as Jacqui’s car trundles across the concrete drive. Before she’s got her door fully open, Jess the border collie leaps over her lap and greets us by crouching down to release an over-excited wee. Nice.

  ‘All right, are we?’ says Jacqui, her raincoat crinkling as she gets out of the driving seat. ‘Thought I’d come by for the big news. Going by the state of your knees knocking together, you haven’t heard yet, Kian?’

  ‘No, not yet,’ he says, rocking back and forth on his heels.

  Jacqui pulls two weighty loaf tins out of a plastic bag and presents them to him. ‘If it’s not the news you’re wanting, I made a lemon drizzle to console you. If it’s a celebration, you’ve got pineapple and whisky.’

  ‘Ah, Jacqui, you’re a peach,’ he says, planting a kiss on her cheek. She waves him away, her dimples on show.

  ‘Ah, go on wi’ you,’ she says, bending down to pat Jess, who sits with her ears pricked up, eyes darting between the sheep in the distance. When Kian’s phone pings with an alert, we all jump.

  ‘Oh God, I can’t cope. My insides feel like a cement mixer,’ says Moira. Kian tries his best to look cavalier, but his expression is oddly vacant, like he’s just this moment wondering who put the alphabet in alphabetical order.

  ‘Open it, lad!’ says Jacqui, kicking the toe of his boot. Roused from a stupor, he takes his phone out and walks away with it at arm’s length as though it’s a grenade with the pin removed.

  ‘What do you think?’ I whisper to Moira. ‘Oh …’ My gaze follows hers to where Kian stands, his foot propped on a broken lawnmower. He buries his face in his hands, shoulders up by his ears. My heart drops to my stomach where it dissolves into deep, slick disappointment. I knew the grant application was a long shot, especially considering how quickly we’d pulled together a two-year plan from a decade of poorly kept files, but we couldn’t have done any better. I couldn’t have done any better.

  ‘Shit,’ I say, scolding myself.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ whispers Moira, stepping towards Kian.

  Just as Moira reaches a hand out to rub his shoulder, he turns and pumps the air, his eyes bright and triumphant. He scoops Moira into his arms and spins her with such velocity that one of her wellie boots flies off like a shotput, narrowly missing Jacqui. Mum stands up to perform a jaunty box step with Babs clutched to her chest, her feathered head bobbing like she’s grooving to a song no one else can hear.

  ‘Did you get it?’ I shout, somewhat redundantly.

  ‘We got it! Ninety grand! Get in!’ he shouts.

  Jacqui and Mum explode into a cacophony of whoops and cheers, joined by Jess, who shows her support through a fit of frantic barking.

  ‘See this!’ says Kian, grabbing my forearm and pulling me over. We lean down to get a good look at the screen, foreheads touching. ‘“The strength of your application was supported by apt facilities and scope for growth, which together with exceptionally thorough records make Braehead Farm an ideal partner for the next two academic years,”’ says Kian.

  ‘Well, you can relax now, eh, Kian?’ says Jacqui.

  ‘Hardly,’ he says, one hand on his hip, the other swung round Moira. ‘There’s the guest bedrooms to sort out, turning the north field, new piglets, finding an ethical shearer to come and do the sheep … That’s it. Ava – I’m not letting you go back to London. You’ve got to stay here and help me, or I’ll sharpen Babs’s talons and pack her in your suitcase.’

  ‘You don’t need to convince me. I’d already decided to stay.’ My heart thrums in my chest.

  ‘Hang on, you’re what?!’ squeals Moira.

  Kian laughs, but it putters out when he scans my face and sees that I’m serious. Moira stands squarely in front of me, her eyes wild with half-restrained glee.

  ‘I want to stay,’ I continue. ‘For a bit longer, anyway. I haven’t thought about the details yet. I’ve only scratched the surface here, what with you guys and the farm. I’ve spent so many years not knowing I had a sister. The thought of stepping back into my old life feels weird, like squeezing into shoes that don’t fit anymore. Besides, there’s so much we haven’t covered yet.’ Moira bites her lip as though she’s trying to restrain her smile from being quite so broad.

  ‘Like watching the director’s cut of Titanic?’ she says, sidling alongside to bump her hip against mine.

  ‘Exactly. I want to eat Ben & Jerry’s until we’re sick.’

  ‘And borrow each other’s tops.’

  ‘Then leave passive-aggressive comments on each other’s Instagram posts when we spot the other one wearing it,’ I add in a dreamy voice.

  ‘We haven’t even made up a secret handshake,’ Moira says. I laugh and hook her around the waist. ‘Got to make up for lost time, haven’t we?’

  ‘There’s no part of me whatsoever that wants to go back into the Snooper office. I want to work at Braehead. I can liaise with the university, do the filing, management stuff, you know? At least until you find someone more permanent. I’ll even write you a press release when you’re featured on Farming Today as Scotland’s Face of Ethical Farming,’ I say, catching Kian’s eye.

  ‘That’s my girl,’ says Mum, squeezing Babs a little too hard, going by the slight bulge in her eyes. A warmth floods my chest and settles beneath my ribcage like a trampoline, bouncing each heartbeat up my throat until I want to laugh.

  ‘Oh, and your place doing horse dentistry down in Surrey? You need to take it up,’ I say to Moira.

  ‘She’s right,’ says Jacqui, although she doesn’t meet my eye when she says it. She pulls Jess’s silken ear through her hand, a flash of conflict on her face.

  Moira glances between us, her smile wavering. ‘I can’t afford it …’

  ‘So take my room,’ I interject. ‘I’ve been thinking about it for ages. If I’m here, you can be there, learning how to be the best horse dentist Kilroch has ever seen.’

  Moira bites her lip and draws a staggered breath, her face contorted in angst as she looks between us. She zips her fleece up and over her chin, as though disappearing inside it might make her decision easier.

  ‘Don’t worry about us, we’ll be here when you get back,’ I say, squeezing her fingers. ‘There’s a few months before the course starts anyway. Plenty of time to get sick of me.’

  ‘Am I going to do this?’ she says, peeking at me with one eye.

  ‘Yes, you’re going to do this!’ says Kian, clutching her to his chest from behind. She hooks onto his forearms lik
e she’s clipped into a rollercoaster.

  ‘I’m going to do this,’ Moira repeats.

  ‘You’ll have to come down before your course starts. Get acquainted with the place and all that jazz,’ says Mum, smiling at Moira.

  ‘I’ll come and give you a crash course in How to Be a Londoner. If you spend your first day standing on the wrong side of the escalator, you’ll be ejected beyond the M25.’

  ‘Really?’ says Moira, doubt flashing across her face.

  ‘Nah, just kidding. Although you might get a few passive-aggressive tuts. We’ll do all the naff touristy stuff as well. I’ll even take you to M&M World, but bear in mind you can only visit once before consigning it to the ninth circle of hell, where it belongs.’

  ‘Sounds horrible,’ says Moira, her dimples set like two full stops either side of her lips. ‘I can’t wait.’

  ‘And you’re set on staying?’ says Mum, jiggling Babs up and down like she’s soothing a newborn.

  I nod and look out towards the field, conscious of the sheer amount of space around me that I’m not ready to swap for zebra crossings, beeping train doors, and swathes of people walking in a thousand different directions.

  ‘I’m staying,’ I say.

  ‘My Ava. On a farm. Couldn’t have predicted that one,’ says Mum, a smile pinching her mouth.

  Everyone slips into chatter: Moira with her head tilted towards Kian like she’s in Gone with the Wind, Jacqui talking with her eyes on the horizon, Mum nodding. I look at them and smile: my new, muddled family.

  My pocket buzzes. I pull my phone out and see a message from Max on the lock screen:

  You ready?

  I type a message back, my thumbs slow and clunky from the cold:

  I’m ready.

  Chapter 41

  I climb up onto the bottom rung of the gate and swing my leg over, the metal rattling on a rusty hinge. There’s a chance this won’t work, but the wind is quite literally blowing in the right direction, so if I don’t do it now, I might not get another chance.

  As I march up the sheep trail that follows a line of thick gorse bushes, my phone buzzes.

  Duncan’s in a meeting. Not sure for how long. You’ve got a window.

  I take a staggered breath, partly from nerves, partly from the incline, which hasn’t gotten any easier to hike no matter how many times I do it. As I crest the hill, the sun breaks a sharp line through inky clouds that have tickled the hill all morning, sending sunshine across the patchwork fields in a Mexican wave of light.

  I turn around. A gaggle of sheep scatter, their eyes bulging behind a fringe of tightly curled wool. I find a good spot and pull out my phone, open Snooper’s home page, then paste the log-in details that Max sent me. As curiosity takes over, the sheep form an audience around my knees, bleating and jostling like a football crowd.

  I flip my camera on and hold the phone aloft. My pink cheeks are mirrored back at me, the wind whipping my hair back and forth. My multiple scarves are wound so tightly it’s like I’ve donned a neck brace, which will be useful if I stack it on the way back down to the farmhouse. I close my eyes, breathe, and press ‘go live’. It’s only now I realise that I haven’t got a script, but at this stage, I don’t need one. Numbers count down like an old-fashioned Hollywood reel: five, four, three, two, one …

  I’m in. A red button blinks above the image of my face. Viewer numbers steadily click through but I try my best to ignore them as my stomach flip-flops. Boy, do I regret pouring unpasteurised milk in my coffee this morning. I grin at the camera but the wind is so sharp it makes my gums hurt. There’s no turning back now.

  ‘Greetings, from a hilltop in the Highlands! It’s Ava here. You might remember me from a previous live stream – the one who did a DNA test and found out she has a secret sister? And then spewed everywhere? Yeah, you got it, that’s me! It was such a laugh, wasn’t it? I know a bunch of you have been reading my diaries and waiting for the big reunion, so I’m sorry it’s taken this long, but hey, whoever said families were simple?

  ‘The thing is – confession time – those diary entries weren’t exactly authentic.’ A sheep head-butts my thigh and I stumble. I stroke a mad tuft of wool from its face and look back at the camera, my heart thrumming like a diesel engine. ‘OK, I’ll be honest, they were a complete fabrication and that’s down to Snooper’s delightful editor-in-chief – drumroll, please! Duncan Wyatt! You probably don’t know who he is, but if you can imagine Mr Tumnus crossed with a particularly droopy basset hound, you’re in the right ballpark. That’s the thing, isn’t it, Duncan? It’s not nice to be held up for a cheap laugh, is it?

  ‘As you once said to me, “Journalistic integrity is the bread and butter of our industry,” which is why I’ve made a complaint to the Press Standards Organisation. I won’t list all the clauses that were broken when you decided to butcher my diaries before publishing them online, so let’s just say that you’d get a decent Countdown score if I penned them on a whiteboard.

  ‘I’m sure there was something else … Oh, yeah. I quit.’

  One of the sheep emits a low, guttural baa, setting the others off in a chorus of bellows that reverberates around the farm like off-kilter church bells. I raise my voice.

  ‘That’s Ava Atmore, not reporting for Snooper ever again. Over and out!’

  I press the red button to close the stream and bury my face in my hands. Adrenaline floods my chest like I’ve been pumped full of helium. My phone buzzes. I squint at the home screen and bite my lip as messages flood in, the first from Max:

  I’ll miss our dumpling dates. You made a good choice.

  I stand on the hill for a few minutes as the sheep nudge me to get at the grass beneath my feet. For once, I know exactly where I’m supposed to be.

  Acknowledgements

  Wow – we’re here again! I can’t bloomin’ believe it!

  I heard tales of The Difficult Second Book and didn’t believe it until I found myself staring into the void of my laptop screen having completely forgotten how to write a novel. Every book is its own beast, as they say. The trick is to learn how to conquer it. Thankfully, I have some exceptionally brilliant book tamers who pushed me back into the ring and bolstered my confidence when I needed it.

  The majority of this book was written during lockdown, so although we couldn’t dine out on white chocolate mash (seriously – try it) the brilliant Team Fajita took to Zoom instead. To put it mildly, a global pandemic hasn’t been the easiest context in which to write a comedy novel, but my agent Hayley Steed and editor Tilda McDonald made the process fifty thousand times better. Hayley is a relentless cheerleader for my work and has helped me understand who I am as a writer, which has made such an impact on how I approach fiction. The goodest of eggs is she!

  I feel incredibly lucky to work with Tilda, whose insight and clarity when it comes to story wrangling really is second to none. I genuinely feel excited when I get notes back from her. Somehow, she just gets it, you know? Thanks for letting me know when I’m genuinely being funny and when I’ve taken it too far. It’s not always clear when you spend hours each day in a basement trying to make yourself laugh.

  Huge thanks go to my copy editor, Sharmilla Beezmohun. When you’ve spent weeks trying to figure out dates and timelines, copy editors really do feel like fairy godmothers. Your insight and clarity had me blinking in awe.

  Is it possible that the One More Chapter team contains the nicest people in publishing? I think so! Thanks to Claire Fenby, Melanie Price, Bethan Morgan, Charlotte Ledger, and everyone else who has championed the book. Also, huge thanks to Sabah Khan, who is a total boss when it comes to publicity. I can’t wait to sip fizzy wine with you all again!

  There are only a few people who witness the rough points of writing as well as the highs, and Joe has seen it all. Thank you for dragging me away from my desk and pushing me outside when I was being a worry worm. It’s not easy to make me laugh when it’s 10 p.m. and I’ve still got 1,000 words to write, but you manage
it somehow.

  To Mum and Dad – wahey! I did it again! My love of farms and rural life has largely come from the summers spent at The Buzzards growing up. I have a confession: it was me who let the piglets escape. But, hey! It inspired a scene in this book, so …

  To Linford, Rachael, and Cassidy. Thank you for all your advice over the past year and for always having onion rings ready when I come round. I love you all immensely.

  To The McKibbens, who have allowed me to be a writing gremlin in their basement for the past year. Thanks for letting me off dinner duty when I was close to a deadline and celebrating with me when I hit a milestone. Extended thanks go to my pet housemates, Wally the cat and Maddie the border collie. You might be able to spot them in this book …

  I’ve got some stupidly brilliant friends whom I often spam with questions and extracts from dodgy first drafts. So, huge thanks to my Norfolk Girls, who are relentlessly funny, supportive, and kind. I bloody love you guys. Also, thanks to Emily. I will always have a Choco Leibniz in my heart for you.

  I want to say thank you to all the authors in the Debut 2020 group. Being published is full of unknowns, but we’ve banded together in what has arguably been the most difficult year (ever??) to bring out your debut. Our community is so special and I hope we’re still supporting each other for mannnnnyyyy years to come.

  Finally, thanks to my readers. This wouldn’t be here without you. I’m eating a box of Tunnock’s Tea Cakes in homage to you.

  Keep Reading …

  If you enjoyed The Sister Surprise, don’t miss Abigail Mann’s laugh-out-loud debut

  Read on for a sneak peek …

  UK readers, click here to buy now.

  US readers, click here to buy now.

  Chapter 1

  I’ve come to accept that I am honestly and truly terrible at my job. Like, seriously bad. Until recently, I thought I’d naturally ‘come into my own’, like one of those women who gesticulate wildly in front of a flip chart with red nails and swishy hair fresh from the blow bar. I’ve had jobs where I’ve been decidedly average, like the bakery gig I had at university (I overstuffed the baguettes), or the two bar shifts I managed at the campus club (I self-diagnosed sleep deprivation and had to quit), but never wholly incompetent. Ironically, I’m not even earning a wage at this internship and it’s where I feel most out of my depth.