It Started With A Tweet(22)

I figure that we’ve been so focused on me and my problems that I haven’t even asked my sister anything about what’s going on in her life.

‘No, not really,’ she says stirring the saucepan. She’s giving it the attention of a cordon bleu meal rather than a packet of dried pasta and sauce. I might not have spent a lot of time with her over the last few years, but I can still tell when something’s wrong. Perhaps there’s trouble in paradise.

‘Is everything all right with you two?’

Her hand spasms a little and a chunk of pasta falls onto the white hob and blends in with the rusted patches where the paint has flaked off.

‘We’re fine,’ she says, giving me the impression that they’re anything but.

Interesting .?.?. I’m about to start digging but I decide I’ll bide my time. We are here, distraction free, for a whole week after all.

‘And what about work, are you looking for another job?’

My sister hasn’t always been a kept woman. After graduating with a first she worked for various finance companies, never seeming to settle, and she got made redundant from the last one a year ago. I kept expecting to hear tales of a great new job from my mum, or to hear that she was pregnant, but it’s been a year and neither a bump nor a new business card have been forthcoming.

‘I’ve got projects on the go,’ she says, not elaborating.

I’m about to ask her more about it when my bag starts to move across the floor. I jump up immediately, ecstatic that my phone is vibrating, and it’s only when I pick up the bag and there’s a squeak that definitely isn’t electronic that I remember my phone is down a well.

I drop the bag down onto the floor and squeal as a little brown mouse goes scuttling under one of the cupboards.

Rosie’s eyes follow it but she doesn’t flinch. ‘Mouse poison,’ she says, nodding. ‘I’ll add it to the shopping list.’

I creep slowly back to my chair and balance my feet on the rung of another; I don’t want anything running over my feet. I’m no stranger to mice, I once shared a flat in Clapham with a whole family of them, but I still don’t want them anywhere near me.

Rosie places a steaming bowl of pasta down in front of me, and as I tuck into the food it takes me right back to my childhood holidays, which is apt as, although we technically have a roof over our head, we might as well be camping, for all the facilities on offer here.

My first thought is to take a photo for Instagram, with some witty caption about my old school dinner, but I can’t, and instead I tuck straight in, getting my food hot for once.

‘This is actually pretty good,’ I say through a large mouthful.

‘Well, it was this or pot noodles, and I ate too many of those as a student to stomach them again.’

‘Oh God, yeah, those and cup-a-soups. Just the thought of that stodgy undissolved mixture at the bottom makes me retch.’ We both laugh.

‘I’m still quite partial to a tomato cup-a-soup though,’ she says. ‘Good job I didn’t bring those out for tea, then.’

‘Very good job, or I would have been walking down the hill to that pub.’

‘Hmm, you’d struggle getting home. It’s really dark up here at night without a torch.’

‘I’ve got one on my phone – ah,’ I say, realising the problem. ‘So you’ve been here before, then? You seem to know what it’s like when it’s dark.’

She looks flustered for a second before she regains her composure. ‘Well, not here here, but nearby. It’s all the same up this part of the country. No streetlights but an amazing starlit sky.’

A normal person wouldn’t have noticed the slip in composure, but I do. I played enough board games with her when I was a child to know when she’s lying. There’s something odd about this whole thing, and I can’t quite figure out what it is.

‘So tonight’s plan,’ she says, noticeably changing the subject, ‘according to the people, is for meditation. Preferably in a candlelit environment.’

‘Well, that shouldn’t be too difficult,’ I say, looking up at the ceiling and noticing that there’s no bulb in the kitchen. Do you have candles?’

‘They’re in the cupboard,’ she says, standing up and going over to the tall larder in the corner and pulling out a bag of tea lights and some matches.

‘How did you know that?’

‘Says so, in the notes for this place,’ she says coughing and hovering in the doorway to the lounge. ‘How about we go next door to light the candles and sit in the rocking chairs?’

‘Don’t you have to meditate sitting cross-legged on the floor?’

I’ve only ever done the type of meditation at the end of a yoga class where you lie down on your mat, and usually I fall straight to sleep only to be woken up by the prodding of the teacher.

‘I’m sure this will be fine – besides, we’d probably end up with piles if we sat on the concrete floor.’

‘I’m sure that’s on old wives’ tale Mum used to tell us,’ I say rolling my eyes.

‘Well, you’re welcome to sit on it, if you want.’

I take one look at it as I follow Rosie into the pigeon poo-splattered lounge and opt for a rocking chair, just in case. It’s going to be bad enough going to the toilet in such primitive conditions, let alone making it more difficult for myself with a new medical condition.