The Sister Surprise Read online

  The Sister Surprise

  ABIGAIL MANN

  One More Chapter

  a division of HarperCollinsPublishers

  The News Building

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2021

  Copyright © Abigail Mann 2021

  Abigail Mann asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Ebook Edition © 2021 ISBN: 9780008393694

  Version: 2021-03-01

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Acknowledgements

  Keep Reading …

  About the Author

  Also by Abigail Mann

  About the Publisher

  To Joe

  For all the laughing and walking that brought me back to myself

  Chapter 1

  At twenty-seven, I should have outgrown the act of picking glitter from my cuticles, but then again, being Lorrie Atmore’s daughter comes with its own set of obligations. Today, I’m covertly multi-tasking. If you were to part the wind chimes at the back door to peek inside our tiny kitchen, you’d see me blasting oak leaves with a hairdryer, using my elbow to pin down the stack that I’ve already washed and dried. In my head, however, I’m running over lines from the script I’ve spent every lunchtime working on for the past week.

  Mum launches into an anecdote about a supposedly malicious gluten scandal between the PTA mums as I silently mouth the words that I’ll present on a live stream tomorrow morning. After five years at Snooper, I’m a little too well-adjusted to my role as sub-editor, or Captain Comma, as my colleague Max so often calls me. The Oxford A-Z of Punctuation is my Bible and I can reference it with the passion of a born-again Christian. It’s not the legacy I thought I’d have, so when I was offered a chance to front something of my own, I said yes immediately. Seeing as Snooper claims to be ‘on-the-pulse media for the anti-news generation’, I should have expected that career progression would be unconventional, but going from an editorial desk to a spotlit studio is decidedly out of my comfort zone, not that I’ve admitted it.

  Mum, however, relishes being at the centre of a community that hums around her. She’s been the chairperson at Dulwich Green Primary since 1999, a position she refuses to relinquish, despite the fact that I stopped attending fifteen years ago.

  I hold two glittery acorns to my chest like I’m plucking the cherry from an iced bun. She frowns, her cheeks dimpled in a barely suppressed smile.

  ‘You look like a burlesque dancer. A really cheap one,’ she says.

  ‘Mum!’ I shout, as she chugs with laughter like a faulty diesel engine. I flick the acorns across the table, stretch high above my head, and let my mind tick things over. I’ve been on the cusp of telling her about my work assignment all week, but every time I open my mouth it’s like a claw drags the words back down my throat. ‘So …’

  ‘Mmhm?’ She threads a silver bead down the stem of an oak leaf.

  Now. Tell her now.

  ‘How many more do I have to do? My fingers hurt,’ I say, falling back on topics I know to be conversational safe zones.

  ‘Don’t be silly. It’s too early for that. You’ve got no idea what a hardcore session with half a dozen placards and paint tubes looks like—’

  ‘Back in the day …’ I say wistfully, pre-empting her speech. Thanks to her terrible aim, the acorn she throws in my direction misses by a foot and tinkles as it hits a porcelain teacup on the dresser behind me.

  ‘Cheeky cow,’ she says, using her glasses as an Alice band for her mess of over-permed hair. ‘But yes, back in the day we’d pull all-nighters with the fabric paint. That red blob by the fireplace is a symbol of resistance. And sleep deprivation.’

  ‘The one that makes the living room look like a crime scene?’

  ‘That’s it. “You Otter Be Ashamed” painted over four bed sheets. We made the front page of The Sunday Times with that one. Best day of my life,’ she says, wistfully.

  ‘Thanks …’

  ‘All right, second-best day of my life,’ says Mum. ‘Before you came along, obviously.’

  I push my chair back to let our pot-bellied cat vault onto my lap. He purrs, kneads my thigh, and looks up at me with sleep-drunk eyes.

  ‘Tea?’

  ‘All right, but then I’ve got to go to bed. Big day tomorrow.’

  I rub my stiff knuckles and knead my temples, tucking a lock of hair behind my ear. I glance at the clock and check my phone through a squint. If I go to bed now, I might be able to get six hours in before I have to travel to Holborn for the hair and make-up appointment that was booked for me. Personally, I don’t think my twice-yearly trim needs updating, but apparently when you’re asked to present on a live stream it requires a look that’ll ‘stop the kids from scrolling’, whatever that means.

  I think back to the steps that led to me presenting tomorrow and struggle to credit it to the Rolodex of self-help books I listen to on my commute. To get ahead at work, The Career Doctor suggested ‘socialising with your superiors outside the office to build rapport’, but Duncan – our Editor-in-Chief – didn’t even attend his own birthday lunch, so that was off the cards. Take the Reins details a five-point-plan for success that includes ‘say yes to everything’, but that led to working late on Christmas Eve, checking for typos in a recipe for vegan pigs in blankets.

  Snooper frequently gets sent PR products to review, so when Duncan handed out genealogy kits in the conference room for this week’s ‘Hot in Tech’ feature, I didn’t think much of it. That was until we each unboxed a plastic vial with instructions to fill it with saliva. The meeting was undignified, to say the least;
lots of hacking, spitting, and wiping of chins. Like always, everyone in editorial had to pitch for features linked to the product, and like always, I expected my idea to turn up on someone else’s desk. When I let slip that I didn’t know who my father was, Duncan sat back and rubbed his jowls, a sign that he was listening.

  The notion that I’ve been given this chance purely because there’s ambiguity over my parentage has crossed my mind, but I’m not going to jeopardise it by asking any questions. Opportunities like this are rare; like getting through a day without seeing a single Kardashian in your Twitter feed. Mum still takes pictures on a disposable camera, so there’s no chance she’ll watch the live stream, but the idea that I’m going behind her back to find answers to questions she never wanted to answer makes me a feel a bit … squirmy.

  Mum plugs in a hot glue gun and taps the worktop, waiting for the kettle to boil. She’s always liked the idea of me being a journalist, but new media is a step down from the kind of writing she thought I’d be doing. This is largely due to her fervent mistrust of the internet. Basically, if it’s not in print, she doesn’t think it legitimately counts; although the same logic doesn’t apply to Henry, our elderly neighbour, who writes, prints, and delivers the community paper on his electric scooter.

  My stomach squirms like I’ve swallowed a sandwich bag full of baby eels. For the umpteenth time, I’m within arm’s reach of asking about my dad. Mum’s in a good mood, so the risk factor is fairly low. Then again, I don’t know why it would play out differently today. It’s like the very first time I noticed that we weren’t like the families around us, the ones with 2.5 kids and a car big enough to fit camping gear in.

  I was six years old in the bakery section of Sainsbury’s, which would soon become synonymous with traumatic moments I’d rather forget about. Seeing as I’d just been given the part of narrator in the school play, I wanted to show off, and picked up the nearest greeting card to do so. The words confused me, so I patted Mum’s leg.

  ‘Does “father” mean the same as “dad”?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, looking elsewhere.

  ‘Why do fathers need a day?’

  ‘They don’t,’ she replied. ‘Put it down.’

  ‘We could send it. To my dad.’

  ‘We can’t. You should only send cards to people you love.’

  ‘Why don’t you send it then? Mums and dads love each other.’

  She squatted down, kissed my head, and gently peeled my fingers off the cellophane wrapper. ‘Some do, but lots of mums and dads don’t, and that’s OK too. Because I’m both, aren’t I?’

  This was wildly confusing to me, but I didn’t say so.

  ‘So, he doesn’t have a house?’

  ‘No, sweet pea. He’s in the same place Grandma and Granddad are. Shed his mortal coil, so to speak.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  Mum pulled me to one side, away from the wheels of someone else’s trolley. ‘He’s dead, my love.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Ava. Sorry. Can we not talk about this now? I only came in for milk.’

  I thought I was in trouble, so did what most six-year-olds would and started to cry.

  ‘Shit.’ She hauled me into her arms and walked us round to the bakery, where rows of birthday cakes sat covered in thick factory icing. ‘Pick one.’ Thus distracted, I forgot about the conversation and we went home with a ten-person sponge covered in candy bracelets and gummy sweets.

  This routine persists; I bring him up, Mum snipes at me, drags me along for the food shop, and we come back with a disproportionately large celebration cake.

  I think about it now and feel a bit sick. We’ve not done the bakery run for a few years.

  Mum pours hot water into our mugs and picks up a glue gun, wielding it with the dexterity of a cowboy in a shootout. ‘How are you feeling about it, then? Being on camera.’

  ‘Absolutely horrible, to be honest. And excited, in a way. It feels like a really long time coming. I’ll finally be delivering the content I write, y’know? It’s just the thought of everyone watching my face.’

  ‘You can hardly wear a paper bag.’

  I snort and a smile pulls at the corner of my mouth, despite the headache sitting heavy on my brow. Mum runs a hand through her hair, glittery dandruff falling on the table. ‘I think we’ve rehomed half of south London’s woodlice by bringing all this lot inside, don’t you?’

  ‘Pickles is too lazy to chase them out, so they’re essentially lodgers at this point.’

  Mum snorts and squints at the calendar tacked by the door. ‘You still all right to take photographs tomorrow? For the Harvest Festival? If you’ve got something on, I can find someone else.’

  ‘Nah, it’s all right, I’ll be there. Did Ginger say if Rory was going?’

  ‘I don’t think she is, no. Apparently she’s busy doing a “Wagamama’s crawl”, whatever that is.’

  ‘Really? I thought that was just a distraction technique after she broke up with Myles,’ I say, sliding a silicon mat under the glue gun before a globule of molten plastic lands on the table. ‘I didn’t think she’d still be going after – what has been now, a month?’

  ‘She sounds like her mother when it comes to break-ups.’

  ‘Katsu curry is for Rory what Malbec is to Ginger.’

  ‘Your generation. Honestly.’

  Mum and Ginger became friends at playgroup when Rory and I were babies, and we’ve been solid fixtures in each other’s lives ever since. Whereas Mum is stubbornly independent, the same isn’t true for Ginger, who has welcomed countless boyfriends and five fiancés into their house over the years. Rory and I started to make bets on how long they’d last, with a sherbet Dip Dab awarded to the closest guess within a week.

  ‘I’m surprised Rory hasn’t moved back in with Ginger whilst she’s in between flats. All that money she could save,’ says Mum, wistfully.

  ‘She wants to be independent. I don’t blame her, to be honest. Ginger keeps telling her to forgive Myles, but why should she when he has a propensity for Thursday evening cocaine and can’t say where he spent the last three nights? Anyway, I don’t think that Rory finds living with Ginger particularly … calming.’

  Mum scrapes her hair into a top knot, rubs her neck, and looks at me from beneath a puff of fringe.

  ‘What about that one you went out with? Dan? Demi?’

  ‘Drew.’

  ‘The American. Any more dates on the cards?’

  ‘Pfff, absolutely not. He told me he hates cats because “they have no concept of the alpha male”, which is really … disturbing.’

  I slide Pickles off my lap. He lands on the floor with a sizeable thud owing to his near spherical shape, achieved by eating three dinners a night thanks to neighbours who fall victim to his feigned cry of starvation.

  I pull out a plastic wallet containing the script I wrote for tomorrow’s live stream, my lines neatly highlighted in pastel green. As I re-read it, a band of tension tightens across my forehead. The lines I wrote to sound authentically casual now read like I’m trying too hard, which, of course, I am. Mum puts her hand on the back of my chair and cranes forward. She smells like hemp hand cream and sandalwood smoke.

  ‘Want to practise with me?’

  ‘No,’ I answer, folding the page in half. She holds her hands up, as though absolving herself from a crime.

  ‘Sorry for asking! What’s it about anyway, this TV thing you’re doing tomorrow?’

  I pull one leg up, hug my knee, and peek through my overgrown fringe. ‘It’s not on TV, it’s the internet.’ I breathe in slowly. It feels like a moth is fluttering in the core of my chest, tickling up my throat until it’s between my teeth, ready to be spat out.

  ‘Yes, well, near enough.’ Mum rubs her eyes. ‘Go on then, tell me.’

  ‘We’re going to have our DNA profiles revealed,’ I say, my heartbeat pulsing in my neck. Mum dangles a tea towel in front of her. Pickles lazily bats it with his paw. The
kettle flicks off, but she doesn’t move to pour it. ‘Max and I posted samples to a lab. Well, so did everyone, but we were chosen to lead the feature.’

  ‘What does it tell you, this test?’

  ‘Err, well, something to do with our nationality based on shared genes.’

  ‘Oh!’ Mum flicks the tea towel onto a worktop and picks up the kettle. ‘Fashion changes all the time. I expect the feature won’t age well with the rate that trends move on these days.’ She puts a mug down on the table and screeches. ‘Ah! That bloody animal! Shoo! Go on, off!’ She swats a hand in front of Pickles, who howls and shakes his paw, having stepped on a sticky leaf that he’s now wearing like a ski.

  ‘No, not like that. It’s DNA stuff. The science-y bits that make up a person. We find out … we find out—’ I stutter, tiptoeing around the edge of a conversational landmine. ‘We find out where our DNA is traced to, so there’s a chance that my paternal data is—’

  A rapping noise turns our attention to the back door, where Ginger is just visible through the window. I can tell she’s on tiptoes; the strain is visible in her eyes, wide, wet, and husky blue.

  A throaty squeak breaks through chugging sobs that accompany her entrance. Ginger shrugs herself out of a faux fur cape and lets it drop to the floor before collapsing into a kitchen chair with renewed trumpet-like sobs.

  ‘Ginger! Whatever is the matter? Oh, Ginger! Let me get some wine. Ava, a bottle of white. Ava?’

  I open the fridge and slide a bottle off the top shelf as Ginger tries to talk through guttural tears. ‘I’ll get out of your way,’ I add, not quite loud enough to be heard above the cooing and sobbing coming from the table. Going by the state of her, I can safely assume that I’ve won the sherbet Dip Dab this time, but I’ve missed my last chance to ask Mum about my father before tomorrow.

  I leave them to it and plod upstairs, take off what little remains of my make-up, and practise my ‘camera face’ in the mirror whilst I sweep rosewater serum over my neck. An article I’d read on Refinery29 said that three litres of water a day and botanical toners would get rid of the dark circles under my eyes, but even after buying every product listed and teaching myself Japanese facial techniques, I haven’t seen a change.