‘You sure this isn’t just you hiding?’ Ally didn’t want to trample his feelings, so she stepped as gently as she could. ‘I know a lot about hiding from life. This feels like we’re swapping places. I don’t like to think of you getting stuck, like I was.’
Murray put his hand on his sister’s, lifting his eyes to hers. He looked like he hadn’t slept at all.
‘I can’t face him. And I don’t want to go back to being who I was over there.’
‘Which was?’
‘I don’t know, someone’s secret boyfriend. I can’t help thinking I did as well as I did because he was showing me preferential treatment over the others. Was that why I was getting picked for projects overseas, getting promoted?’
Ally hadn’t quite figured how much her brother had got into his own head about Andreas. He’d taken a bigger hit than she’d realised, and the awful thing was, she wasn’t going to be around to help him recover now.
‘No, you got to where you were because you’re smart and capable, and you can write about…’ she checked his screen ‘…renewable energy tariffs and ecological building systems like they’re remotely interesting.’
‘Oh, they are,’ he assured her.
‘See? You got the job because you care, and because you were qualified. You were sent all over the planet because you’re a safe pair of hands.’
The last kernel of envy that had made her compare herself unfavourably to her twin all this time disappeared within her. He’d earned his achievements in the same way she was about to go out there and show the world what she was made of and earn hers too.
‘I don’t know, sis,’ he said sadly, leaning his head onto her arm.
Murray patently didn’t believe her. He’d lost his self-belief and that little spark of egotism that had propelled him through his career. Now that it was extinguished, Ally missed it, even when it had been kind of annoying before.
She tousled his hair. One thing was for sure, she’d be cautious of Andreas Favre when she was over there. In fact, she hoped she wasn’t on his team at all. How could she resist telling him exactly what she thought of him? He’d slowly crushed her brother’s self-assurance. She could see that now.
‘Somebody needs to look after Mum and Dad,’ Murray added, consoling her.
‘Be sure to hide Dad’s cut-off jorts and vest when summer comes around again, OK?’
He laughed fondly. ‘Consider them gone.’
She leaned over her brother, hugging him, the top of his head under her jaw. He hugged back.
‘OK,’ she sighed after a long moment. ‘I’d better get going.’
‘Sure you’re going to be all right?’ he said, not letting go.
Ally knew he wasn’t talking about the flight or the transfers or finding her new apartment in a strange city or even meeting the two Swiss interns she’d be flat sharing with. He was talking about leaving Jamie.
Jamie had messaged her last night from Edinburgh, saying he’d passed the physical exam and smashed the recruitment day and how he was already missing her but he knew she could do it. She was to ‘have the BEST time’.
‘He’ll be fast asleep in his old bed right now.’
‘Doesn’t seem right,’ said her brother.
Again, she knew just what he was saying. It didn’t seem right not to say a proper goodbye after all they’d been through. It didn’t seem right that they’d never see each other again, that they were clearly more than compatible and frankly made for each other, and yet they were both set on separate paths.
‘It’s not right…’ said Ally.
‘…But it is OK,’ joined Murray, smiling at his sister setting him up for a Whitney joke even when she was feeling sorry for herself. ‘You’re going to make it anyway.’
Ally kissed the top of his head and released him. Reaching for her case, she felt the stretch of that invisible elastic that connected them, and not without some pain. ‘Facetime you at eight tonight?’ She was walking away.
‘Zurich time,’ he said, flashing her a glimpse of his ridiculously fancy wristwatch under his onesie sleeve.
‘Be seeing you,’ they both said at the same moment before she pulled open the door and stepped out onto the courtyard.
The door closed upon Murray, leaving him alone at the kitchen table, and he clamped his lips tight to stop himself from crying. What the hell was he doing? He was swapping one kind of loneliness, as Andreas’s secret live-in lover in the lap of luxury in Switzerland, for another. He looked around the empty kitchen, the sound of Ally’s steps retreating on the crunching gravel outside, and he tried to tell himself it would all work out somehow.
