Chapter 12
The next morning Max’s mood has miraculously recovered.
I’m woken up by the sounds of him making pancakes and humming to the radio in the kitchen. It’s eight thirty. I only got to sleep about three hours before.
“Made it through the night, Becky?” Max calls as I sit up.
I rub my eyes. “It would seem so,” I croak. “I thought you’d be on your way to Paris,” I add, trying to sound more human.
“Train’s not for a while. Nutella? Lemon and sugar?”
“Nutella.”
Max plonks a ginormous jar of Nutella on the counter, next to a large stack of pancakes. I sit down at the table and start slurping from a mug of tea.
Max seats himself opposite me, grabs a pancake, and slathers it in chocolate.
Then he begins ranking the X-Men movies in order from one to thirteen; he knows I can’t resist rating each movie in a franchise.
We haven’t actually addressed anything from last night but I’m relieved that the frosty atmosphere has evaporated.
“So what’s on the agenda for today?” he asks, reaching for a third pancake.
“Erm,” I say through a mouthful. Trying to rearrange getting to Bali now I know that Mum’s OK?
I could potentially try to line something up and then go, so it doesn’t matter if I spent all my money on flights.
But I don’t feel as desperate to be sitting on a beach halfway around the world as I was a few days ago.
Probably because I’d convinced myself I was going to die.
The whole thing feels like a fever dream.
Now, having come face-to-face with all the mess I’ve caused, it only seems right to stay and try to clear it up.
“Not a lot,” I answer eventually.
What am I going to do now?
Christ. I remember that it is technically a workday. Margaret will have received my resignation by now. She opens all her post the minute it comes in. Oh God. What did I call her again?
“You look like you’ve just remembered you’ve agreed to some sort of group exercise,” Max comments. “Did Angie rope you into spinning again?”
“I . . .” I’m about to say I wrote Margaret a letter, but I don’t want to reference the letters, in case I can work out whether he’s read his from his reaction. “I quit my job. And . . . I said to Margaret . . .”
Max’s face lights up. “You said to Margaret . . .”
“That she was a bloodsucking sour-faced lemon?” I try to remember. “No . . . no. That she was a bloodsucker and I hoped my blood tasted of lemons. Or something along those lines.”
Max stares at me for a moment as he processes, then howls with laughter. He laughs and laughs and laughs, banging his fist on the table. “Oh my God. YES.”
“No, no no no. It’s bad. Very bad,” I say, panic setting in. But I can’t help feeling pleased that I made Max laugh so hard.
“No, no, Becky, it’s genius. What did the old crone say?”
Interesting, I think. He assumes this was a face-to-face interaction, which suggests his mind hasn’t immediately gone to letters, which possibly implies he hasn’t opened his yet? I make a mental note to search his bedroom, and the post cubby, as soon as he’s left the house.
“She didn’t say anything. It was . . . via email,” I answer.
“I’ve never been prouder of you, Becky.” Max puts his hand on his heart.
We stare across the table at each other for a moment. Max doesn’t look away. He’s observing me closely again. Or has he read it? My chest constricts.
The buzzer for the door sounds. Max breaks eye contact.
He goes to answer it and I recover my breathing rate. I can’t keep going like this. For a moment I consider just asking him outright. And then I remember I’m British.
I’m so lost in this train of thought it takes me a moment to register Max has been speaking through the intercom for quite a while. Eventually he returns looking bemused.
“Errrr . . . it’s for you,” he says.
I blink. “For me?” For a second I’m confused, until I realize it’s probably Angie coming to have it out.
I thought it was strange I hadn’t got a follow-up text or call by now.
She’s usually one to confront things, not shy away from them.
I feel relief flooding through my body. Her turning up to shout at me feels more normal, more manageable, less ominous than her silence.
It reassures me that I haven’t totally fucked up our friendship beyond repair.
“Oh, I guess I should have been expecting this,” I say. “Do you mind if me and Ang chat in here while you get ready? We’ll be quiet. Actually, I can’t promise it will be quiet—”
“It’s not Angie,” Max interrupts. “It’s your . . . sister?”
I swear to God, I do an actual cartoon double take.
Out of all the people I might have guessed, I wouldn’t have got there on my own.
I would have sooner guessed Margaret. Or Ted.
Even Jessica. Even the woman who cleans the We Work, You Win second-floor bathrooms would have been a more likely bet than my sister.
My sister is here?
My dad had another child after he and Mum split up. She’s ten years younger than me. Her name is Leila. That’s all I know.
All right, that’s not all I know. From the occasional online stalk, I know she has long, dark hair and a nose piercing.
She has a pet guinea pig. (Such a useless pet.
Not as lively as a cat or a dog but not as small and cute as a hamster.
What do guinea pigs even do?) She likes a lot of bands I’ve never heard of that make me feel old.
She goes to a lot of clubs that make me feel old.
She lives in Manchester with her mum and my dad. Her dad. Our dad?
She’s here?
“Becky. Becky.” Max waves his hand in front of my face. “You’ve been staring into space for quite a long time. What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know?” I squeak. “I can’t deal with this?”
“I pretended I didn’t know you and that I’d check with my flatmate. Do you want me to say my imaginary flatmate has no idea?”
The temptation to have Max send her away is incredibly inviting.
In all honesty, I’ve never even thought about meeting my sister.
It sounds odd because I always knew she was out there in the vague, hazy way you know that flat-earthers and Scientologists are out there.
You know they exist in theory but you’re probably never going to have lunch with one.
And now she’s here and I can’t cope. I’m right in the middle of a million other things I have to handle.
I have to check up on Mum, talk to Angie and Dami, and somehow find out if Max knows about my mortifying undying love for him.
How am I supposed to factor a sister I’ve never met into the equation?
No, no, she’ll have to go. I simply do not have the time for this today.
THERE IS NO TIME.
“Yes, yes, tell her I’m not here,” I ramble. “You don’t know me. You’ve never heard of me.”
“Becky who?” Max shrugs.
I hear him mumbling through the intercom. He returns looking triumphant. “Sorted,” he declares. “One unwanted family member dispensed with.”
I nod and smile weakly.
He leans down next to me so our faces are level. His arm is draped around my chair protectively. “How are you doing? Are you all right?”
I nod again but don’t say anything. I feel immediately guilty about having sent her away.
The aim of the letters was to start confronting things—albeit, because I wouldn’t be around to deal with the consequences—but here I am, just the same old Becky, hiding away from her life. Should I go after her?
“I think maybe I should . . . ,” I say.
“Hey, you’re OK.” Max tilts my chin up and smiles at me. Our faces are almost touching. I can count his individual eyelashes. All other thoughts dissipate.
Letter-writing Becky was an idiot. She wanted things to change. Who needs change when I can count the freckles on Max’s cheekbone?
There’s a knock at the door.
Max and I both turn our heads. “Is that her? How did she get upstairs?” Max whispers.
We stay still and silent. The knock sounds again and Max glances at me with a hint of hysteria. For a moment, I have this strange feeling we’re like naughty schoolchildren secreted in a den, being told that playtime is over and refusing to come out.
“Becky?” A young, female voice sounds. “Becky, I know you’re in there.”
Max shakes his head and gets up. “Becky, get down,” he whispers.
I hesitate. Am I really going to literally hide?
Max points behind the sofa and I give in to all my worst instincts. I crouch behind a piece of furniture to avoid my only sibling, who, presumably, has traveled all the way from Manchester to see me.
I hear Max open the door. “Uhh, can I help you?” He sounds genuinely confused.
“As I said before, I’m looking for my sister, Becky.”
At the sound of her voice I feel a huge rush of intangible emotion. I’m not sure if it’s fear, joy, shock, or just being very weirded out by being in the same room as this blood relation for the first time. Maybe it’s all at once.
“Don’t know her,” says Max. He’s putting on his “arrogant” voice, kind of like how he sounds when he’s arguing with Angie about the economy.
There’s a deep sigh from the other side of the door. “OK, sure. Do you know if she’s gone to work?”
Obviously I’ve never heard her talking before in my life, but something about the way she speaks is oddly familiar. The cadence, the tone maybe. I can’t quite put my finger on it.
“Like I said . . . ,” Max replies.
“Yeah, yeah, you don’t know her.”
She sounds exasperated. I feel even more deplorable for crouching on the floor.
“Well, if you do happen to meet her, can you please tell her I opened her letter?”
The mention of the letters lights something in me.
I’m not sure if it’s resentment, because that letter wasn’t for her, it was for my father, and the thought of her reading it makes me feel like I did the time Ted found my old Tumblr account of emo song lyrics and sent it around the whole office.
(He genuinely thought he was being nice because the songs “moved him.”) I’m not sure if it’s bravery, because I’m reminded again of how much three-days-ago me genuinely wanted to move forward.
Even if it was only because I’d lost my mind and convinced myself I was departing this mortal plane. But something compels me to stand up.
Max and Leila both look in my direction and, for the first time in my life, I’m face-to-face with my real-life sister.