The Sister Surprise Abigail Mann (most difficult books to read TXT) 📖

Everyone slips into chatter: Moira with her head tilted towards Kian like she’s in Gone with the Wind, Jacqui talking with her eyes on the horizon, Mum nodding. I look at them and smile: my new, muddled family.

My pocket buzzes. I pull my phone out and see a message from Max on the lock screen:

You ready?

I type a message back, my thumbs slow and clunky from the cold:

I’m ready.

Chapter 41

I climb up onto the bottom rung of the gate and swing my leg over, the metal rattling on a rusty hinge. There’s a chance this won’t work, but the wind is quite literally blowing in the right direction, so if I don’t do it now, I might not get another chance.

As I march up the sheep trail that follows a line of thick gorse bushes, my phone buzzes.

Duncan’s in a meeting. Not sure for how long. You’ve got a window.

I take a staggered breath, partly from nerves, partly from the incline, which hasn’t gotten any easier to hike no matter how many times I do it. As I crest the hill, the sun breaks a sharp line through inky clouds that have tickled the hill all morning, sending sunshine across the patchwork fields in a Mexican wave of light.

I turn around. A gaggle of sheep scatter, their eyes bulging behind a fringe of tightly curled wool. I find a good spot and pull out my phone, open Snooper’s home page, then paste the log-in details that Max sent me. As curiosity takes over, the sheep form an audience around my knees, bleating and jostling like a football crowd.

I flip my camera on and hold the phone aloft. My pink cheeks are mirrored back at me, the wind whipping my hair back and forth. My multiple scarves are wound so tightly it’s like I’ve donned a neck brace, which will be useful if I stack it on the way back down to the farmhouse. I close my eyes, breathe, and press ‘go live’. It’s only now I realise that I haven’t got a script, but at this stage, I don’t need one. Numbers count down like an old-fashioned Hollywood reel: five, four, three, two, one …

I’m in. A red button blinks above the image of my face. Viewer numbers steadily click through but I try my best to ignore them as my stomach flip-flops. Boy, do I regret pouring unpasteurised milk in my coffee this morning. I grin at the camera but the wind is so sharp it makes my gums hurt. There’s no turning back now.

‘Greetings, from a hilltop in the Highlands! It’s Ava here. You might remember me from a previous live stream – the one who did a DNA test and found out she has a secret sister? And then spewed everywhere? Yeah, you got it, that’s me! It was such a laugh, wasn’t it? I know a bunch of you have been reading my diaries and waiting for the big reunion, so I’m sorry it’s taken this long, but hey, whoever said families were simple?

‘The thing is – confession time – those diary entries weren’t exactly authentic.’ A sheep head-butts my thigh and I stumble. I stroke a mad tuft of wool from its face and look back at the camera, my heart thrumming like a diesel engine. ‘OK, I’ll be honest, they were a complete fabrication and that’s down to Snooper’s delightful editor-in-chief – drumroll, please! Duncan Wyatt! You probably don’t know who he is, but if you can imagine Mr Tumnus crossed with a particularly droopy basset hound, you’re in the right ballpark. That’s the thing, isn’t it, Duncan? It’s not nice to be held up for a cheap laugh, is it?

‘As you once said to me, “Journalistic integrity is the bread and butter of our industry,” which is why I’ve made a complaint to the Press Standards Organisation. I won’t list all the clauses that were broken when you decided to butcher my diaries before publishing them online, so let’s just say that you’d get a decent Countdown score if I penned them on a whiteboard.

‘I’m sure there was something else … Oh, yeah. I quit.’

One of the sheep emits a low, guttural baa, setting the others off in a chorus of bellows that reverberates around the farm like off-kilter church bells. I raise my voice.

‘That’s Ava Atmore, not reporting for Snooper ever again. Over and out!’

I press the red button to close the stream and bury my face in my hands. Adrenaline floods my chest like I’ve been pumped full of helium. My phone buzzes. I squint at the home screen and bite my lip as messages flood in, the first from Max:

I’ll miss our dumpling dates. You made a good choice.

I stand on the hill for a few minutes as the sheep nudge me to get at the grass beneath my feet. For once, I know exactly where I’m supposed to be.

Acknowledgements

Wow – we’re here again! I can’t bloomin’ believe it!

I heard tales of The Difficult Second Book and didn’t believe it until I found myself staring into the void of my laptop screen having completely forgotten how to write a novel. Every book is its own beast, as they say. The trick is to learn how to conquer it. Thankfully, I have some exceptionally brilliant book tamers who pushed me back into the ring and bolstered my confidence when I needed it.

The majority of this book was written during lockdown, so although we couldn’t dine out on white chocolate mash (seriously – try it) the brilliant Team Fajita took to Zoom instead. To put it mildly, a global pandemic hasn’t been the easiest context in which to write a comedy novel, but my agent Hayley Steed and editor Tilda McDonald made the process fifty thousand times better. Hayley is a relentless cheerleader for my work and has helped me understand who I am as a writer, which has made