12 Avraham Lincolin, at your service
12
Avraham Lincolin, at your service
Ava
‘Colin!’ my brother’s voice launches my longest-running nickname across the concourse of Waterloo Station, turning a few heads in the process.
Max’s nicknames for me have a habit of warping and evolving, picking up debris as they move through the years like a snowball tearing down a slope. The current iteration is a take on what was once Avraham Lincolin.
‘I’m so sorry.’ I reach up on my tiptoes to hug him, inhaling the familiar citrussy smell on his plaid shirt that never seems to fade. Pretty sure he’s been using the same shower gel since we were teenagers. He prolongs the hug by squeezing me and I duck out of his grip. ‘I can’t believe I’m late.’
His eyebrows rise behind messy hair. ‘Really? I can.’
‘Hilarious,’ I say, rolling my eyes. I’m not exactly known for my punctuality, and frankly, neither is he, but I hate that I missed him arriving. I made a promise to myself years ago to be there whenever he needed me.
As we walk, I notice he’s not putting his full weight on his right leg, which I haven’t seen him do in a long while. It’s barely perceptible, and I know him well enough to know he won’t want to talk about it.
Instead, I shield my eyes as if I’m looking up at the sun. ‘Were you always this tall?’
‘Were you always this short?’
‘Stop, you know I have a complex about that.’ I spent years taller than him, shooting up to five-ten and a half (the half is important) before most other kids at school had figured out the truth about Santa. But then at fifteen I swear Max came out of his room one day and suddenly he was six-five.
‘How was the train?’ It’s about an hour by train to the nondescript Kent town we grew up in, with its dilapidated high street, nosy neighbours and multiple ‘Spoons in a mile radius. Max always seems too big for it, which is probably why he spends so much time in other places.
‘Dead, thank god. Got a table seat all to myself and managed to finish a video I was editing.’ He swerves out of the way of a man shooting past to get his train and looks down at me. ‘Mum and Dad send their love, by the way. But you knew that. And Dad wanted me to tell you that he’s finally figured out Spotify so can you please send him that playlist you were talking about.’
Max is a travel content creator, and after a couple of years paying rent on a flat he hardly ever spent time in, followed by some health issues, he moved back in with our parents. This means that any of his free time between trips is spent eating Mum’s vegan Bolognese and listening to Dad’s one-hit wonders from the eighties.
We catch up on the Tube. Any time he moves the conversation over to me, I push it back his way, reminding him that I am essentially a hermit and nothing about my life has changed since we last saw each other.
I eat up his stories the way I did when we were younger, when he’d bring me on his adventures to imaginary kingdoms. In his imagined worlds, I could be as bold and brave as him. I’d join him, because that’s what we did. Both of us fighting the same villains and making it out alive.
In real life, he’s just come back from a road trip around Scotland and is raving about the beaches. ‘Got this to commemorate it,’ he shows me, rolling up his sleeve to show me yet another tattoo – the tiny head of a Highland cow near his elbow. It joins an ever-growing selection of entirely random images he’s inked on his skin. ‘Honestly, it’s so underrated. I’m gonna tell everyone to go.’
‘Isn’t that what you were paid to do?’
‘Yeah, well, I’m gonna influence the fuck out of this one. Seriously, I wanna bring the whole family back. I was thinking earlier about when we used to go camping.’
‘Remember that one time with the sheep?’
‘And the wheelbarrow?’
‘I genuinely thought we were going to die.’
We speak our own language, coded by a nonsensical concoction of joint memories and inside jokes and references to niche pop culture quotes that no one else would ever remember. When it’s just the two of us, I could almost believe we’re back in the sticker-adorned bunk bed of our childhood room; the wooden planks on the top bunk dented with teeth marks because for some inexplicable reason he liked biting them. It feels like nothing’s changed since those days, though of course, everything has.
We reminisce about the numerous ridiculous experiences we had as children in our parents’ very lax care all the way back, until Max switches topic as we’re exiting Stockwell station.
‘You could always come with me on a trip sometime. It wouldn’t have to be one of the outdoorsy backpacking trips, you know. I’m offered other things too.’ We make our way across the road. ‘I can imagine you on a city break somewhere. I think you’d like it more than you’d expect.’
‘I wholeheartedly disagree.’ I’m on a proverbial no-fly list. My name’ll flag on the system the second I do something fun like go on holiday, and I’m sure fate will come my way to take what I owe. Max groans at my response and I try to shift the focus to someone else. ‘I reckon Josie would take you up on the offer if you’ve got any luxury resorts on the cards.’
‘I’ll convince you one day, Col. But wait, speak of the devil.’ He points at a figure slightly ahead of us on the pavement, accompanied by a canine-shaped shadow. He calls Josie’s name, drawing the attention of everyone around us. I really need to start hanging out with quieter people.
A smile spreads across her face as she turns, and her free arm moves around Max in a hug. ‘God, I’ve missed my favourite Monroe sibling.’
‘I love that we can be so honest with each other,’ I say, stepping on to the road so the three of them can take up the whole width of the pavement.
‘How were the Highlands, Max?’ Josie asks as she pours one, two, three, four shots’ worth of rum into a tall glass vessel that I’m wholly convinced is a vase, but she’s dubbed the Cocktail Carafe.
‘Some of us have work tomorrow, Josie. Including you.’
She ignores me and adds more rum.
‘Amazing, it’s one of my new favourite places.’ Max is sitting on one of the stools, leaning his elbows on the breakfast bar. ‘I was telling Ava she should come with me someday.’
Josie erupts into laughter at this. ‘On a trip to the countryside ? Your sister?’ She actually has to stop what she’s doing to dab at her eyes.
‘Pot, kettle, Josephine?’ I take three glasses from a cupboard and go to the freezer for ice. ‘Can you even remember the last time you stayed anywhere that wasn’t a five-star hotel?’
‘Please, I could rough it if I wanted.’ She opens the next bottle. I don’t even know what spirit it is, and at this point I’m too scared to ask. ‘I just have a very extensive skincare regime that I simply could not perform in the wilderness.’
‘Oh, well in that case,’ I mumble, rummaging through a drawer. ‘Where are the straws?’
‘If they’re not at the back of the cutlery drawer, they’re in the one with the measuring cups,’ Josie replies. ‘Actually, can you grab those for me?’
I hand her the measuring cups and she uses them to measure out the remainder of the liquids for her concoction. Josie’s drinks are not for the faint-hearted. For someone so small, the woman sure can hold her alcohol.
‘How’s Alina?’ Max asks, flattening the pizza boxes to his left and bringing them to the recycling bin.
‘She’s really good,’ Josie says, a smile playing on her lips. Most of her and Alina’s relationship has been long-distance; they’re only just now living in the same city. ‘We’re working together at the moment, which is kind of weird, but fun. It’s unbelievable how talented she is. But what about you, how’s your love life? Weren’t you seeing that woman from Leeds?’
My ears prick up at the question. We have an unspoken agreement that started as teenagers to not bring up each other’s love lives, and I guess it stuck, so I hadn’t thought to ask.
He grimaces when he replies, ‘Yeah, no. That didn’t end great. Messy. My fault, obviously.’ We pour out our drinks and head to the living area. ‘I told myself it was because I’m too busy for anything serious, but realistically it’s probably due to the fact I am fundamentally emotionally unavailable.’
‘Must be genetic,’ Josie says, taking a delicate sip of her drink.
‘Twins,’ Max sings. He holds his hand out for a fist bump, which I return with a nod.
‘The two of you need therapy.’
She’s joking, but I take an uneasy gulp of my drink at the idea as Max settles in the armchair and lazily replies, ‘Already on it, Josie. But there’s just so much to go through that I’m not even close to touching on romance yet. I’m saving that for a slow day.’
A few hours later, I’m more than a little drunk, but my stomach hurts from laughing. ‘And then,’ Max says, ‘when he finally got out of the water he was like, “Guys, guys, I think I’ve got amnesia.” He meant hypothermia .’
Tears stream down my and Josie’s cheeks as Max regales us with stories of the wild mishaps on his trips. He’s been drinking water for a while but somehow maintains the energy of someone seven drinks in; a trait I am particularly envious of.
Josie falls into another fit of giggles, but when she checks the time on her phone, she releases a groan. ‘We should probably go to bed.’
I want to stay up for five more hours. It’s so easy with these two. There’s no pretending.
But she’s right; we all need to be up in the morning, so between us, we carry the glasses and empty crisp packets to the kitchen, and then Josie leaves Max and me alone.
‘Is your spare bedding still in the airing cupboard?’ He leaves the room and returns a few moments later laden with pillows and blankets for the sofa bed. Now it’s just the two of us, my focus is drawn back to his slight limp.
‘You okay?’ I ask, watching him pull out the bed.
‘Huh?’ He straightens and looks at me, so I nod towards his leg. ‘Col, I’m fine.’
We slip into a tried-and-tested routine, putting the sheet on the mattress together and prepping the rest of his bedding in the order we’ve always done it.
When he finds a dirty glass on a side table and walks to the kitchen with it, I can’t help but ask again. ‘You’re sure?’
‘I’m sure. Seriously. I’ve just been overdoing it recently.’
I wring my hands as he grabs a tea towel from the handle of the oven. ‘You’d tell me if there was anything to tell me, right?’
‘Of course.’ He smiles, but I don’t fully trust it. ‘Come on. You wash, I dry.’
I don’t bother telling him we have a dishwasher. So I wash and he dries, just like we did when we were kids.