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

have so far included a portly rook that I swerved around as it pulled squashed rabbit innards from the middle of the road.

Kian waggles his hand out of the window as we reach the high street, so I turn in towards the green and pull up. In fear of the eggs sliding into the footwell, I let the car’s momentum run out naturally before squeezing the handbrake on. I wonder if I should shove a wooden block beneath the back wheel before leaving it on any sort of incline?

‘God, that was exhausting. I feel like I need a lie-down.’

Kian unclips his belt, gets out, and slides the rusted machinery off the back seat, his hands streaked with oil. He taps on the window, mouth tight with strain. I wind it down.

‘You got the addresses?’

‘Yep,’ I say, tapping the clipboard that I’ve rearranged and highlighted in order of delivery.

‘Great. I’ll be a couple of hours, but if you finish before me go into the post office and tell Jules to send Dot round the back. She’ll give us a yell over the fence. And don’t crash the car.’

Kian slips down an alleyway as I scan the list on my lap, low-key anxiety fluttering in my stomach at the thought of meeting so many people without Kian acting as my social crutch. Back in Dulwich, Mum scans the neighbourhood for new additions and pulls them into her inner circle, where they debate the politics of intimate waxing, swap tagine recipes, and organise fundraisers so that the kids can have reindeer in the playground at Christmas. The husbands? Entirely surplus to requirements.

Mum has novelty eyelashes on the front of her Vauxhall Corsa, sunbathes in the front garden, and knows the best spots in Trafalgar Square to be seen with a placard. It’s a bit much for London, let alone somewhere as small as Kilroch. Her time here with The Earth Mamas signalled the end of teenage rebellion and the start of adult responsibilities that I can’t imagine dealing with myself. Did I take her away from that?

I lock the car and look down the cobbled high street, my clipboard in hand. Something here drew a line in the sand that she couldn’t step back over. The question is, what did Moira’s family have to do with it?

Chapter 15

It’s pushing four o’clock and I’ve only gotten round to a measly three houses. Honestly, all this to shift a few dozen eggs, and I’ve only collected six quid off the punters. Most of them claim to have a tab going with Kian and gave me the odds and sods from their larders instead of actual money. On the seat next to me is my hoard: a roll of butter that looks like pre-packed cookie dough; three tins of pilchards; and half a leg of lamb roughly wrapped in butcher’s paper and quite possibly leaking blood onto the upholstery.

I look up from my clipboard and peer out of the window. If people put house numbers on anything round here, it would make delivering the bloody eggs they’ve requested a lot easier. After ‘Arbuthnott Farm’, ‘Merry Meet House’, and the choicely named ‘Bushy Gap Cottage’, I’m now outside a house that Kevin McCloud would describe as ‘handsome’ with an ‘ergonomic outlook that wrestles with a chaotic vista’.

I leave the car in first gear, as instructed by Kian, and walk up to the house, which is joined to the church on one side and a village hall on the other. Ivy links all three together, snaking in a lattice between bricks and wound across window panes. The doorway is only just visible behind a curtain of vines that haven’t managed to squeeze their roots into cracked mortar. Although my experience of religion is limited to church hall jumble sales and amateur pantomimes, I gather that this cottage must be where the priest lives. Or is it a vicar? Parson? God, who knows. Actually, that’s exactly who would know.

Going by the state of upkeep, I don’t bother with the bell and rap my cold knuckles on the door instead. Whilst I wait for an answer, I kick the heels of my wellie boots together like a bumpkin version of Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. Unless a village of this size is fanatical enough for two priests, it’s got to be Ross who lives here.

‘Coming!’ says a voice from behind the door, throaty and low. He doesn’t sound like a priest.

‘Sorry, I can’t find the keys. Hang on.’ There’s jingling, scraping, and I hear a word that sounds very rude but can’t be, because priests don’t swear. They’re bashful and a bit awkward. When they were young, they were probably the kid who ate paper at the back of the classroom and cried when thunder and lightning struck over the school.

The door opens, the wood sticky in the door frame. Ross stands in front of me looking flustered in a thick jumper pushed up to his elbows and a black shirt unevenly buttoned to the collar. Holy Jesus. The only ecclesiastical box he’s ticking is that his face is so well chiselled, he looks like a Baroque painting of Jesus, one that nuns would direct their gaze towards during periods of concentrated prayer.

‘Hi, you’re … eggs,’ says Ross, his gaze dropping to the tray in my hands.

‘Eggs. Yes. These are eggs. I’m not an egg. Obviously. Although I suppose I was one at some point. Depends on whether you believe life starts at conception, or … some other time. Jury’s out. Ha, ha, ha!’ I say, swallowing.

I stare at a cobweb in the gap between two bricks and feel a simmering heat build from my chest up to my hairline. I’m broken. I need a system restart on this whole encounter.

‘Aye, yes. An interesting debate, but not one to have on the doorstep, I’d say,’ says Ross. ‘Do you want to come in?’

‘Yes,’ I reply, far too quickly. It’s only when I step on the doormat that