‘Fine.’
‘And how are the kids? Doing well in school?’
‘Well enough.’
‘And things with Oliver, are they good?’
She nodded.
‘Fuck me, Cerys. I feel like your mum asking about your day at school.’ I rolled my head all the way back, arms folded in frustration. ‘You’re not going to give me anything?’
Her full lips puckered into the smallest possible pout as a Christmas medley began to play through the pub speakers. I waited patiently, head bobbing along to ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’, while she stared at the wall behind my head.
‘If you’re that desperate to know, I’ll tell you,’ she said after two verses and a bridge, pouring the rest of my gin into her glass. ‘The business is struggling because we expanded too quickly but Oliver won’t sack anybody because he thinks it’s “bad optics”. We’re mortgaged up to the tits on the new house and can’t afford the three cars he insists we need but again, try telling Oliver. On top of that, I’m paying ten grand a term to put two kids through a school they hate, where they’re learning absolutely nothing other than how to come home, tell me how awful I am then turn around and demand the newest iPhone and a pony.’
She picked up her glass and knocked it back in one.
‘I’ll go and get another round, shall I?’ I suggested as she dropped her head into her hands and sobbed.
‘Yes please,’ she snuffled into her coat sleeves. ‘And make mine a double.’
The whole time I was waiting at the bar, I wracked my brains for the right thing to say. I had two degrees, spent at least two hours a day absorbing all the wisdom Instagram had to offer and as everyone who had ever met me already knew, once, at a Q&A aboutHamilton, I asked a question and Lin Manuel Miranda said I raised a good point. But right now when I was most needed, I couldn’t come up with a single helpful thing.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, handing Cerys a very full glass on my return. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’
The deafening pitch of her laughter was so loud, she not only attracted the attention of every single person in the pub, I was also fairly certain I could hear a car alarm going off in Huddersfield.
‘You want to help me?’ she wheezed, wiping at the edges of her eyes. ‘Oh, I forgot how funny you are sometimes. No, Gwen, I don’t imagine there is. It doesn’t matter, it’ll all be fine.’
‘Wow.’
‘Wow what?’
I gave her a small smile. ‘You sound just like Dad.’
She slid her glass around in slow circles, condensation from the base shining up the dull, dark wood. ‘I suppose I do. That must be where I learned it.’
‘To be self-sufficient?’
‘To live in denial.’
She didn’t know how right she was.
‘Quite good at that myself as it turns out,’ I replied. ‘I wish he’d passed on his uncanny ability to know which queue to choose at the supermarket instead.’
Cerys inhaled deeply then let out a long, noisy sigh.‘Please pretend I didn’t say anything,’ she said. ‘I’ll work it out, I always do.’
We sat across from each other, Cerys staring into her glass as though the solutions to her problems were hiding in an ice cube and me staring at the window, hoping they might fall from the sky. This had to be the wish, the reason I was stuck here. My sister needed help but what advice could I give? I was a childless, car-less woman, so bad with money, I once spent two hundred pounds on a mint condition vintage Mr Frosty on eBay when I was drunk. It wasn’t even mint condition when it arrived, there was a crack in his little blue hat. I’d never been so disappointed in my life. Still thinking about the epic crappiness of the Mr Frosty, a radical thought blew through my mind. What if, instead of trying to tell Cerys what to do, I just listened instead?
‘Would it help to talk about it?’ I asked.
She closed her eyes and pulled the elastic band out of her ponytail, letting her thick black hair fall around her shoulders, and when she opened them, it was as though someone had asked her to describe the colour of grass and she was shocked to discover it was still green.
‘It would help if you could get Oliver to listen,’ Cerys said, still a little reticent. ‘Every month there’s more money going out than coming in but he won’t have it. Every time I try to bring it up, he tells me we have to speculate to accumulate but I’m not sure that’s the sound business advice he thinks it is. The only thing we’re accumulating now is debt and I’m speculating about doing him in with a shovel.’
‘And he’s determined to keep the kids in their fancy school?’
Cerys nodded. ‘He went to Queens so the kids have to go to Queens, doesn’t matter that I went to the local comprehensive, he is insistent. I wouldn’t mind so much if they didn’t both hate it. All Arthur wants to do is sit in his room and read and Artemis would do well anywhere, she’s terrifyingly sharp. Last week she asked me whether she’d have more power if she was a billionaire, prime minister or if she married the next in line to the throne and I swear to God, Gwen, she was not joking.’