The Sister Surprise by Abigail Mann (book series for 10 year olds .txt) 📕

Sorry, morning,’ he says, his brow an angry furrow. He scratches his neck and shifts papers on the table, glancing behind me to look at the clock.

‘Do you need any help?’

‘No. Yes. I can’t find something. I wrote stuff on an envelope. Sums. I need to type them up for the bank before I go.’

I turn away to hide my face and take a mug down from the shelf. I can’t trust my track record for maintaining lies, because I can say with ninety-eight per cent accuracy that I chucked it in the recycling bin when I first started out on Mission Mega File.

‘Do you need it today?’ I ask in my best attempt at a neutral voice.

‘Yes.’

‘Definitely, definitely?’

‘Pretty much, yeah. My meeting is in Inverness and I was planning on finishing up an Excel on the train. That envelope had the profit and loss margins from the last quarter, so … I’d say it’s crucial, yeah.’ Oh dear. He looks very stressed, like he’s either going to cry or punch something, possibly at the same time. ‘I’m going to miss the train now, so as well as looking incompetent, I’m also going come across like I don’t give a shit about the farm getting repossessed.’

We both have lessons to learn here. I shouldn’t throw things away without saying something first, and Kian should learn that envelopes and cereal boxes are inappropriate items on which to record your business finances.

‘Let me drive you.’ Kian takes a ragged breath, closes his eyes, and paces the length of the hallway. ‘Hey, try and relax,’ I say, although I’m hardly one to be making such unreasonable demands. ‘You can’t be stressed before 7 a.m. It’s a universal rule. Let me take you down to the station. That way you’ll look forgivably incompetent, but sharp, like this is one of many meetings you have planned so they better listen up because you and that suit have got places to be.’

I follow Kian as he dips and darts around the room, waiting for a reaction that doesn’t come.

‘So … shall I get the keys? Or I can piss off if you’d rather be alone? I won’t take offence,’ I say.

‘Yeah, sorry. A lift would be great.’

‘Right, just let me put some proper trousers on and we’ll be out the door.’

I take the stairs two at a time, and shove jeans on over the top of my fleecy pyjama bottoms that have grown a little baggy. Who’d have thought black pudding sandwiches were synonymous with weight loss? Just before I head back down, I grab my laptop and shove it into my rucksack, tugging at the zips. After ignoring my calls last night, I need to increase my firepower against Duncan without annoying him so much that he fires me. With Kian in Inverness and Moira at college, I can spend an uninterrupted morning hitting redial. I don’t want to reach my last resort: holding out until I’m back in London to fix things from there.

Kian grabs the keys from the nail in the porch and opens the door to an unusually still day. I dart past him, he locks up and chucks the keys at me (amazingly, I catch them), and I get in, swinging my rucksack behind the front seat. I try my best to avoid the potholes at speed, which results in Kian nearly clashing his teeth on my forehead as the Jeep bounces down the lane. The car radio comes in and out of tune with club songs that it’s far too early for. I switch it off, but if anything the silence is worse.

We drive alongside the harbour, the colour of the sea merging with the sky through layers of fog. I snatch glances at Kian. He wipes condensation off the window with two fingers and looks out across the firth, his hands balled in his lap, shoulders round. He looks younger, like a teenager on the way to parents’ evening who knows his reports are going to be poor at best, damning at worst.

‘Hey, you should tell the bank about the grant application. It’s got to earn you some brownie points, right?’

‘I doubt it. I may as well tell them I’m expecting to win the lottery.’

Ah, I see. We’re rolling in pessimism this morning.

‘Shall I buy a lottery ticket on the way back? Just to cover our bases.’

Kian catches my eye but doesn’t laugh. Shit. Things must be pretty serious.

I swallow, clacking my nails on the steering wheel. ‘I saw a sign for a dolphin reserve just back there. What’s all that about then?’ My heart races. It’s a blessing I never went into criminal journalism. I can’t even ask about the animals that eight-year-old girls have as bedroom posters without feeling light-headed.

Kian breathes in with barely suppressed impatience.

‘That’s a divisive one,’ he says, scratching the razor burn on his neck. ‘Kilroch has a bunch of tourists now who bloody love the dolphins, but they’re the reason a bunch of mad bints went bananas in the Nineties over the oil rigs. Granddad used to go on about it all the time. The rigs got decommissioned and my dad lost his income. He wasn’t so quick to blame the booze, which was arguably worse.’

I nod, the news clipping of Mum flashing across my mind. I can see why she might have achieved a poor reputation and that’s without including the illegitimate baby issue.

We finish the journey in silence, the engine clunking like there’s something loose inside it.

‘I’ll see you later then,’ says Kian, opening the door before I’ve slowed the car down properly. I pull the handbrake. We jolt to a stop. He squats, popping his head back inside as an afterthought. ‘Whatever happens, thanks for all your help.’

‘No worries. Hey, is everything OK?’

‘I’ll talk to you about it later,’ he says, the line in his brow set deeper still. He slams the door. I flex my fingers around the steering wheel, gripping it until my knuckles turn white. Something has