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

That, or there are a number of Moiras dotted about the isle. Did she know him when she was little? Does she have any siblings? Which, of course, means: do I have any more siblings? Ones that haven’t logged their details on The Ancestry Project?

I turn around and slide down the wall, the concrete floor cold through my jeans. This was the whole point, wasn’t it? Answers are surfacing, so why do I feel like folding myself into a piece of human origami? This sisterhood project feels so untidy, especially when you factor in the diary entries I’m still being asked to write for Snooper.

In my bullet journal, I have a clear line down each weekly spread; one for work, one for life. I’ve got no idea where to place things now; everything is scrawled across the middle. This was never just about my job, like my conveyor-belt life in London was never really about preferring the comfortable option. If you never try to change anything, you can’t expect anything to change.

If I’d known about Moira as a kid, I could have presented her with a matching friendship bracelet and offered to badly French braid her hair; aka Friendship 101 when you’re eight years old. We could have sent each other letters written with scented gel pens. We could have met in the summer holidays and gone camping. We’d have bought ice-creams with two balls of chemically flavoured chewing gum in the bottom and swapped transfer tattoos. It would have been like The Parent Trap, except neither of us are rich and ‘summer camp’ would likely be a caravan site on a blustery clifftop near Skegness.

We’re not kids. I don’t know how to do the family thing with anyone other than Mum. I’ve had years of being an only child. In public, anyway. Let’s face it, vomiting on the internet is going to be pretty hard to beat, but I still don’t want Moira to be blindsided like I was.

I pick at the orange nail polish that has clung on since my last full day at Snooper. Chipped flakes fall to the floor, garish against the mud like radioactive lice. I’ve speculated about the moment I found Moira, but every time it was detached and clichéd, like shaking up a snow globe and watching the scene settle from a distance.

If instinct feels like anxiety, mine is so intense it’s like a shard of broken glass lodged between my ribs. Finding Moira is my opening paragraph, metaphorically speaking. I can’t dash out the rest of the story without thinking about the consequences. I’m not a cupcake. I can’t just spring myself on her and expect a good reaction.

‘Ava?’ says Kian. He can’t see me tucked round the corner. I pinch the skin between my thumb and index finger. My body feels tightly wound, like I could cry or laugh or scream, maybe at the same time.

‘I’m here,’ I say, stepping out.

‘Great. We’ve still got fifteen to go. It’s anarchy out there,’ he says, like he’s taken reprieve from hand-to-hand combat in a war zone.

I push my sleeves up, swing my leg over the fence, and hop back inside the pen. Moira is standing in the middle like a ringmaster, the pigs jostling in a circle around her. I clap my hands, surveying the scene. This fizzy energy has got to go somewhere.

‘We can do this,’ I say. ‘Kian, pass me that board. Moira –’ the name catches on my lips like I’m talking with my mouth full ‘– pull that fence in tighter. I’ll funnel them in the right direction. When you’ve jabbed, I’ll mark them. Kian, chuck that here.’

He takes the spray can out of his pocket. ‘Are you demoting me?’

‘Sorry. But not sorry,’ I say, catching the canister. I want to keep analysing Moira’s face for similarities, but don’t want to come across as a massive weirdo. We stand, elbow to elbow, the top of her head an inch or two below mine.

We work through the remaining pigs until I’m so hot I’ve had to de-layer to my T-shirt and jeans. My bra feels clammy and my arms are a delightful shade of corn-beef purple, a look I last exhibited during unenthusiastic netball matches at school. Kian is covered in straw, his jogging bottoms loose at the waist, whereas Moira looks no different, as though catching pigs is her favourite past time.

‘Last one!’ I call. We face into the pen, a tank-like sow between us.

‘A word of warning – Edith is hormonal,’ says Kian.

‘What do you mean?’ I ask.

The only kind of hormonal I recognise involves eating a family-size bag of Doritos and curling up in the foetal position, all whilst my uterus attempts to punch its way out of my stomach. What do pigs do? Cry into their potato peelings after promising yet again to only eat one trough’s worth of dinner?

‘Edith’s having a phantom pregnancy. She thinks she’s carrying piglets, but there’s nothing in there. Makes her over-protective,’ says Moira.

Oh God. That’s really sad. I shiver as the wind draws warmth from my damp skin. Edith looks from one of us to the other, her trotters tapping on the concrete. She grunts on an outward breath.

‘Shall we just let her through?’ I say. ‘Herd immunity?’

‘I can’t risk it. It’ll be worse if she gets sick. Can’t do much about it if that happens,’ replies Kian.

‘Come in slowly,’ says Moira, ‘that’s it.’

Kian and I pad across the barn. I smile at Edith, hoping she’ll take reassurance from it. It takes less than three seconds for our tentative approach to fail. I squat, but she must interpret this descent to eye-level as a hostile move, because what happens next has all the co-ordination of a dyspraxic moth in a cyclone.

Edith launches forward like a porky battering ram and headbutts me with the full force of a skull two inches thicker than mine. My eyeballs feel like they’ve been knocked to the floor. I clutch my face to check that