‘Not as such.’
‘And you didn’t get picked to go to Mali?’
‘Would you pick the guy everybody now thinks had some kind of embarrassing, jealous crush on his senior colleague and made a twat of himself at a work event in front of all the rich donors?’ Murray’s voice cracked. ‘The thing that hurts most is that David is actually a really sweet man, and Andreas probably does like him a lot.’ His voice dropped an octave. ‘Liked him more than me. And he wasn’t ashamed to be seen out with him, unlike me, the lowly employee.’
‘What? Lowly?’ Ally wasn’t letting that slide. ‘You have no idea how much I admire what you do.’
‘You really don’t have to say that, sis.’
‘I’m not kidding. You do such important work. You change lives. And so what? Maybe you weren’t getting paid the mega bucks, and you didn’t have a lake view penthouse and live in the lap of luxury… but I’d still have killed for a job like that.’ She was riled now, couldn’t help herself. ‘You’ve seriously no idea how hard it is to have a walking talking double of yourself out there in the world doing all of this amazing, planet-changing stuff when you’re stuck at home and can’t seem to get moving.’
Murray turned in his seat to watch her, like he was learning something for the first time.
‘And I know I was lucky to have a job at all,’ she conceded, ‘but I can’t tell you how bored I was with it all. The same customer service script every day. The same clocking in and clocking out and scheduled bathroom breaks and those customers who really, really should just write their logins down somewhere and maybe they wouldn’t keep getting locked out of their own systems! God, I was so sick of the whole thing.’
‘Wow!’ Murray’s eyes had turned very big and round.
Ally didn’t mind that she was scaring him a little. She had to share what she’d been going through all alone while he was living his phoney Insta-perfect life in Switzerland.
‘I was left wondering why I was stuck. Why me? I kept thinking. And if I couldn’t blame good old-fashioned sexism, then maybe I had to face the truth. The problem was me, not being good enough.’
‘Och! That’s some nonsense, right there,’ Murray interjected.
‘It didn’t stop me getting all in my head about it. For a while I felt like everyone else had moved on and forgotten me. All my friends, you, everybody.’
‘We were all just busy, doing our own things. Having our own problems, some might say disasters.’ Murray offered a wry smile.
‘I know that now. I saw it when I met the girls. They’re all struggling too, in their own ways. Life is just hard for people our age. We have to do it all, and maybe without the same support structures or as many chances of success as some older folk had. And in this economy!’
Murray nodded like he’d never heard a truer word spoken. ‘So you figured out for yourself that you weren’t actually behind. You’re exactly where you ought to be.’
Ally settled back into the driver’s seat, uncurling her legs and slipping her feet back into her shoes before taking another donut and giving it a pensive bite. ‘I suppose I did.’
She chewed, and for a moment things felt like they used to, Ally and Murray, a little like chalk and cheese, but still undeniably twinned forever.
‘Jamie helped too. I think I’d have gotten there on my own eventually, but there’s something about him that brings out the best in me, fast-tracking me towards wanting to try new things and see things from a new perspective.’
‘Huh.’ Her brother was looking at her, thinking. ‘And you spent the other day with him, trapped in a bothy?’
Ally took another bite, hoping if she chewed hard enough he’d miss her reddening face. Not likely, the way he was examining her, a salacious smile dawning.
‘And you’re planning on seeing him again?’ he said.
This made her pause. The uneasy feeling she’d had saying goodbye to him on Friday came flooding back now.
‘What does he think about you going off to Switzerland?’
Ally was the one in the hot seat now, but there was no getting away from the fact that she hadn’t a clue where she stood.
‘When I told him I’d got the job, he was delighted for me.’
‘Okay? You say that like it’s a bad thing.’
‘You don’t get it, he was so happy for me; there wasn’t even the slightest hint of realisation that it meant I’d be nine hundred miles away from him with a full-time job for twelve whole months.’
‘Longer if they like you.’
Ally’s heart made a pained little jump.
