The Sister Surprise by Abigail Mann (read full novel TXT) 📗

‘Ava – stop. Just go and see Duncan. Please.’

I try very hard to swallow my pride, but it feels like a gobstopper stuck in my throat.

‘Fine,’ I say, hitching my backpack higher on my shoulders. Max ruffles his hair, steers me towards the corridor, and holds open the door with mock chivalry.

‘Do you know what’s really unfair?’ I say, turning back to face him. ‘That you can rock up after an all-nighter and still look like you’re shooting a Rolling Stone cover. Is there no justice?’

Max winks. ‘Laters, treacle,’ he says, saluting me as the doors ping closed.

***

My stomach rumbles.

‘You hungry?’

‘I am a bit, yeah.’

‘Why don’t you crack those pastries open?’ says Duncan, leaning back in his chair. He crosses his feet at the ankles and props them on the corner of his desk, arms folded over an ugly knitted tank top.

I try and read his expression. Is he being nice, to soften the blow? Or is he just hungry and time poor?

I pull out the paper bag and slide it across the table towards Duncan, who peers inside like he’s a police detective inspecting particularly gruesome evidence.

‘No pain au raisin?’ he asks.

‘No.’

‘Shame.’

He pulls out a cinnamon swirl, rips off a chunk, and dunks it in his tea.

‘Here’s the thing,’ he says, his words muffled as he sprays pastry flakes across the table. ‘You know as well as I do what the problem is here. I get it,’ he says, raising his hands in admission, ‘it’s a generational thing isn’t it? You lot grew up with tick box exams, participation prizes, toys in cereal boxes, all that “follow your dreams” rhetoric. I have to dangle carrots to get writers your age to take risks. Don’t take it personally, you can’t help it.’

I open my mouth to say something, but hold back because I’m so confused about the direction this is going in.

‘Point being—’ He takes another bite and sucks his fingers clean. ‘You’ve got my attention now.’

Duncan sits back in his chair and starts tapping on his phone. He places it down on my side of the table and swivels the screen to face me.

‘Site traffic for the past twenty-four hours. Have a guess at the precise moment you blanked. Oh, and vomited on camera. Can’t forget that. Go on.’ This feels like the time I got pushed off a twenty-five-foot diving board at the leisure centre. The free fall was horrific but knowing that all that water was rapidly coming up to smack me in the arse was worse.

A graph unsubtly tracks a huge peak in web traffic at midday that only briefly dipped in the early hours of this morning. I knew the live stream was a total bloody car crash, but the scale of the pile up has only just hit me.

‘Umm, I can explain,’ I say, my neck hot.

‘Can you explain how every single area of the website saw the biggest jump in click-through traffic since last year?’

‘Because I spewed like a Catherine wheel? But in my defence—’

‘And that’s where I’m gonna stop you. Max said you’d try and deflect, but—’

‘With all due respect, Duncan, if I’m getting fired, can it just happen already? The past twenty-four hours have been … a total nightmare. I know Max is a far better presenter than me, but considering the circumstances, I was hardly going to outperform him. I was bait for the piece, wasn’t I? I like working here, but it’s felt like Groundhog Day for the past couple of years. In short, I can’t write any more variations of “23 Jack Russells That Look Like Leonardo DiCaprio” or I’m going to be sick,’ I say, immediately regretting my choice of words.

‘Bit late for that, isn’t it?’

‘If I can’t work here anymore, can you tell me straight? Because then I can start emailing out the dozens of pieces you’ve rejected over the years so that someone, somewhere, can pay me for them.’

‘God, I should have switched to coffee before this,’ says Duncan, wincing as he rubs the back of his neck. He looks exceptionally like a basset hound today, right down to the rheumy eyes.

‘We’ve had more advertising revenue come in overnight than we have done in the whole of the last quarter. Two major lifestyle brands want to run homepage campaigns and, collectively, we’ve gained …’ He picks up his phone and scrolls for a moment, the white light from the screen illuminating the unshaved salt and pepper bristles on his chin. ‘Nineteen thousand subscribers to our live stream, and three times that across all our social media platforms.’

‘Oh, Jesus. This is because I made a total tit of myself on camera, isn’t it?’

‘It’s safe to say that you made an impression.’

I concentrate on jiggling my foot up and down because I can’t bear the thought of shedding even one single tear in front of Duncan in what is so far the longest conversation we’ve had in the six years I’ve worked here.

‘Have you looked at the comments?’

‘God, no. I’m completely mortified, Duncan.’

‘I’ll give you a flavour of what we’ve had,’ he says, clicking through pages on his iMac until a thumbnail of Max and me appears on the screen. My stomach swoops like I’ve been pushed off a swing.

Duncan clears his throat. ‘“Where have you been hiding her? She’s HILARIOUS!” That last bit is typed in capitals, by the way,’ Duncan adds, breaking the high-pitched voice he’s adopted to characterise them. ‘“This reveal was a ride! Where the hell is Kilroch and why isn’t she on her way there to find her sister?!” There are a few that focus on the vomiting, but objectively it was funny, even if the studio smells like a bad coach trip.’ Duncan rocks forward in his chair, grinning. He puts the tablet down, leaving the comments hanging in the air between us.

‘I know you’ve got some issues with how we set this up, but the results speak for themselves,’ he says, gesturing to