What’s going on with you today?”

Ruth shot her sister a glare as they cleared the table. “In a minute,” she whispered.

Hannah rolled her eyes. “Mum’s got Deal or No Deal on. She’s not listening.”

As one, the girls turned to look across the dining-cum-living room. A few metres away, their mother stared, transfixed, at Noel Edmonds’s silver bouffant.

Patience Kabbah had a serious crush.

Still, Ruth wouldn’t run the risk. She said again, her voice hushed, “Wait.” Then she piled the last of the dishes onto her arms.

“Woah,” Hannah laughed, swooping in to take most of the load. “Give me those. We don’t need to spend the rest of the afternoon sweeping up china.” She headed to the kitchen, plates balanced expertly in her practiced hands, without a backwards glance.

Ruth allowed herself a millisecond of childish resentment. She was perfectly capable of carrying plates to the kitchen, even if no-one in the world seemed to think so.

Then she remembered why Hannah was such an expert at carrying dirty dishes and wiped her mind clean of disloyal thoughts. Let Hannah be the overbearing older sister. She’d earned it.

With a sigh, Ruth collected a few glasses from the table and followed.

The Kabbah women cooked Sunday dinner together, even though Ruth was a known disaster area. She prepared cassava and sliced yam. Sometimes she peeled breadfruit, if Hannah had picked any up from the market in the city. The heavy-duty cooking was mostly left to Mum—but both daughters insisted that she sit out when it came time to clean up.

So as soon as Ruth stepped into the kitchen, her sister shut the door. Hot water was already filling the sink, and plastic Tupperware was on the counter, ready to hold leftovers.

Hannah paid no mind to anything but Ruth. She leant against the room’s narrow island, her arms folded. “Go on, then,” she said. “Tell me.”

Ruth walked carefully to the sink, sliding the glasses beneath the water, focusing on the iridescent bubbles gilding its surface.

How could something as basic as dish soap and tap water create something as wonderful as bubbles?

“Tell me,” Hannah said again, her voice firm. “You’re being super weird lately.”

“I’m always weird,” Ruth said. It was automatic. An in-joke dating back decades.

But Hannah’s mouth twisted. “Don’t say that. You’re not.”

“Yes I am.” Ruth slid on a pair of her mother’s pink rubber gloves. “And so are you. We’re the weirdos, remember?”

“Oh. Right.” Hannah laughed tightly.

She didn’t find it funny; Ruth could tell. Her sense of humour had changed. Everything about her was sterner and tougher than it had been before, and that was saying something.

With a sigh, Ruth turned off the running taps. “I’m fine, Han. I just have some things on my mind.”

“You’ve barely spoken all day.” Hannah grabbed a plate and started scraping soggy cassava into the bin. “You didn’t even notice when Mum mentioned her date.”

Ruth jolted, dropping a cup into the sink with a splash. “Her date?”

“Exactly. You weren’t listening.”

“Stop having a go and tell me about this date.” Ruth turned her most intimidating stare on her sister.

Hannah matched it with an equally unsettling glare of her own. “I’ll tell you about the date when you tell me what’s draining your brainpower.”

Sometimes, Ruth forgot who she’d learned her defence mechanisms from. The student would never outdo the master; at least, not when it came to Kabbah Bitch Face.

“Fine,” Ruth huffed, turning back to the sink. “I made a friend and then I fucked it up.”

“Okay…” Hannah sounded mildly confused. “So apologise. Check their Amazon wish list or something.”

“I don’t think I can fix it with presents. Also, it’s a real-life friend, so I—”

The sound of cutlery scraping against dishes came to an abrupt halt. “Like, a real person?”

Because, to Hannah, Marjaana and all of Ruth’s other friends weren’t ‘real people’. She rolled her eyes and clipped out, “That is what I said, yes.”

There was a pause. Then Hannah asked, sounding almost casual, “How did you meet?”

“He’s my neighbour.”

“So how did you meet?”

Ruth bit back a smile. “He came over to give me a shepherd’s pie.” She omitted their actual first meeting. She couldn’t mention Daniel Burne in front of her sister. Not ever.

“A shepherd’s pie?” Hannah echoed. Her voice was slightly shrill, as if shepherd’s pie was threatening rather than delicious. “When was this?”

“I don’t know… a few weeks ago?”

“And you’re just now telling me?” Hannah’s worried face filled Ruth’s peripheral vision. The older sister was crowding the younger, using her extra inch of height to command authority. “Look at me,” she demanded.

With a sigh, Ruth dropped the glass she was washing and turned. “What?”

Hannah pressed a hand to Ruth’s cheek. Her palms were rough. They hadn’t always been. “You have tons of friends,” Hannah said. Which was rich, since she was the one who insisted that online friends didn’t count. “And you fall out all the time because you’re snippy. It’s never made you come over all empty-headed.”

“I’m not empty-headed,” Ruth snorted.

“You didn’t even finish your yam. You are the definition of empty-headed-Ruth. Now you tell me some man has brought you shepherd’s pie. Did you eat it?”

“Yes,” Ruth grumbled.

“You didn’t tell him to fuck off and throw it back in his face?”

“No,” Ruth admitted. I saved that until last night. Pushing away her morose thoughts, she added, “If I’d done that, we wouldn’t be friends, would we?” Then, because she was feeling vulnerable: “He made me a lasagne too. He made me a lot of things. He cooks for me.”

Hannah threw up her hands. “So you are half-in love with him already.”

Ruth wondered why her first instinct wasn’t to vehemently deny those words. Disturbing. But she’d worry about it later.

For now, she focused on managing her sister. “I certainly am not. I just… I was quite rude to him yesterday, and I feel bad about it, and I’m not sure how to apologise.”

Hannah huffed, turning back to the leftovers. “Well, it’s reassuring to know that I’m not the only one you’re rude to.”

“How helpful. Thank you for that wise, sisterly guidance.” Ruth scrubbed the glass in her hands, watching light flash off of its gleaming surface.

“You don’t need guidance,” Hannah said. “You need me to tell you to apologise, because you can’t bear to do it on your own. Because you want to fix things, but you don’t think you deserve it.”

Ruth considered that for a moment, biting back the instinct to deny it. Eventually, she was forced to say, “True.”

There was a moment of disturbing tension, when the cat’s cradle of unsaid words and pent up frustrations between them seemed dangerously close to coming loose. Ruth had no idea what it would mean, if that did happen; she understood very little about the distance between she and Hannah.

She only knew that she disliked it, and was too cowardly to face it.

But then Hannah sighed. “Just put on your big girl knickers and tell this friend that you’re sorry. I can’t stand it when you’re distracted. You’re like a robot.”

And everything was okay. For now.

Ruth snorted. “You do realise that you’re just as rude as me?”

“I’m your elder, and I keep it in the family.” Hannah slid another plate into the sink with a wicked smile. “Maybe if you did too, you wouldn’t have to apologise so often.”

“Bugger off.”

“I love you, too.”