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

applied here: money needs to come in more frequently than it’s going out. From the looks of things, Kian’s granddad kept things ticking along through a refusal to open incoming mail.

Despite us being the same age, I’m barely reaching adolescent levels of responsibility in comparison to Kian. Discovering I’m not an only child was a shock, but at least I haven’t had to quit my job to revive a family business. Personally, I’d sell up and be done with it. At least then he can go back to building fertiliser farm bombs, or whatever he was researching back in Edinburgh.

The back door swings open and Kian stomps his feet on the mat, his cheeks ruddy and red.

‘Hey, what have you done here?’ he says, tucking his hands into the pocket of his hoodie.

‘I … umm. I got a bit carried away, but don’t thank me. I find this kind of thing far too enjoyable to count it as work,’ I say, zipping up my pencil case. I used up my chisel-tip highlighter on Braehead’s last financial year, so I’m hoping he’s a tiny bit grateful. ‘Don’t worry, I didn’t read anything. Nothing much.’

‘Oh, aye. No bother,’ says Kian, rubbing the back of his neck. ‘I’m not so good with the numbers stuff myself. I’m more of a “do first, think later” kind of guy.’

‘Excellent, because I’m a “think too much and never do it” kind of girl.’

‘Except for now, right? No one travels 500 miles to dish out chicken feed on a whim,’ he says, a dimple appearing in his cheek.

I jump. Both our phones go off in overlapping bleeps, mine inside my pocket, his skitting across the table.

‘Told you, you can’t predict when the wind will blow this way,’ he says, his voice unusually upbeat. He fills the kettle with one hand and opens his messages with the other. I wiggle my phone free. This is a nod from Out There, back where there are chicken shops and nail salons on every high street.

When I open my message app, my stomach drops like someone’s cut the counterbalance in a lift. Of the many notifications that have pinged through, one name stands out: Duncan. A caps-lock-filled text draws my eyes to a message sent at 9.21 a.m.

I slip outside and shoo a hen off a mucky, upturned bucket so I can sit down.

Duncan’s text loads, each shouty, double-spaced word of it.

AVA. SISTER UPDATE PRONTO. IF YOU HAVEN’T FOUND HER, START DOOR KNOCKING. CUT THE EGG CHAT. EGGS ARE A HARD FUCKING SELL. THNX.

A scratching sound comes from the hen house, as Babs, aka The Bantam Menace, strides down the ramp, her eyes sharp and mean. Chicken memories must last longer than I thought.

Chapter 17

Date: Friday 18th October

Location: Back against the Aga for warmth, laptop on knees

Sleep: Six hours and twenty-three minutes. Not bad.

Cups of tea: Three

Sister sightings: 0

Three hundred people doesn’t sound excessive for a village, but I think I’d quickly get a reputation if I went up to every woman under forty asking if she’s my long-lost sister. Thus, my main investigative tactic involves observing people from afar to see if I can recognise my own features on someone else’s body. Unless I want to further ostracise myself, I’ll keep my pocket binoculars out of sight. The milk-churning, prairie-dress-wearing fantasy I entertained before has curdled like cottage cheese, but village life hasn’t passed me by entirely unnoticed.

Five Misconceptions of the #FarmcoreLifestyle:

No one meanders through a forest picking mushrooms with a wicker basket hooked round their elbow. I value my kidneys too much to risk eating anything growing from a tree stump, whatever the guidebook says.

If you leave a freshly baked loaf of bread on the window sill, the crows will have decimated it by the time it’s cooled down.

Drying clothes outside sounds wholesome but be prepared for them to freeze on the line.

Little old locals are cute until they bark indecipherable insults at you in the street for walking on the wrong patch of pavement.

Don’t bother asking for the following items in the corner shop unless you want to be laughed at: avocado, hummus, oat milk, halloumi, guacamole, or anything gluten-free.

***

Kian asked for a hand with something this afternoon, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it was. At the time, I was only one coffee down and at the very least I need two before my senses work in unison. At Snooper, ‘lending someone a hand’ usually meant they wanted me to check their content piece for grammar, but at Braehead Farm it’s far more literal. Kian suggested that I dab surgical spirit into my blisters because ‘the calluses harden up quicker’. Depending on how well my search goes, I might not be around long enough to put that theory into practice.

In a series Duncan is indelicately calling ‘Just My Loch’, my diary entries have jumped up the ‘most viewed’ bar on Snooper, settling into second place below a listicle featuring Gigi Hadid’s best bikini pics of the year. I understand the need to feed the fire whilst it’s hot, but it’s a struggle to keep up. It might be because I barely last twenty minutes tapping away on my laptop before I’m asleep with my mouth slack and a trickle of drool on the pillow. It’s the emotional tightrope that’s most exhausting, not to mention how physically demanding farm work is.

Guilt from lying to Mum flares up like eczema I’m not allowed to scratch. Combined with the anxiety of bumping into Jacqui again, it’s safe to say I’m not exactly feeling mellow.

Every time I pass someone in the village, I scan their features for similarities in case I accidentally walked past a cousin, aunt, or grandma. I never thought I looked much like Mum, but perhaps that’s because I look so much like him, whoever he is. Does he have the same chin dimple as me? Is he to blame for my strawberry blonde hair?

First impressions tripped off my fingers easily, but