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‘The canapés?’

‘Sorted.’

‘Salmon sushi, not quiche?’ 

‘Done, Mrs Fancy Pants.’

‘I just hate the consistency of quiche – cold, wobbly egg. Reminds me of those moss-covered camping trips we went on in the highlands. Do you remember how mum used to tell us damp was, “character building”?’… What’s with the sighing?’

‘I liked those trips.’

‘And?’

‘And… I don’t think people will care much what food we serve.’

‘That’s the party spirit.’

Cass looked tired and much older than her forty-five years. Dani knew it was her fault, but it didn’t help that she never wore make-up and always smelled of wet earth – her boots leaving a trail of mud wherever she walked. She was like the old oak in the woods they used to climb – strong-limbed and serious, capable of bearing the weight of everyone around her and utterly out of place indoors. Man, the lengths Dani had to go to to stop the woman from growing roots and never leaving the farm was nuts. Cass was completely out of her comfort zone here, under the bright lights and busy lives bumping up against each other. ‘The lot of them doing nothing, ‘cept staring at their phones and eating processed meat from America,’ she’d said when arrived this morning. 

‘So, everyone knows about the dress code?’

‘Yes, but it’s so weird to insist people come “dressed in the style of Freddie Mercury,” especially the head of the Arable Council. You know how he feels about his inability to grow a moustache.’

‘Whose party is this?’

‘Yours, obviously, but –’

‘No “buts”. No glamour; no entry.’

‘Okay. Next on the agenda, the opening music.’

‘What’s wrong with the opening music?’

‘Don’t Stop Me Now?’

‘It’s a banger.’

‘It’s tasteless, is what it is. You will be moving very slowly towards a furnace; it sends out mixed messages. People will be crying.’

‘They won’t if you do what I ask.’

‘No.’

‘Come on, it’ll be funny.’

‘Nothing funny about getting involved in drugs without consent.’ 

That old chestnut, how many years had it been since they’d got caught? Twenty-five? And it was only weed Dani had been growing on Cass’s balcony. She’d been suspended from agricultural college for no more than a few weeks, but yes, she should have asked first. 

‘You’re no fun. Stick to farming; leave the after-party planning to moi.’

‘I won’t do it; it’s not right.’

‘They’ll love it at the wake when they’re all giggling and reminiscing about that time I did backflips up the aisle at Farmer Sid’s wedding. The one who ran that pheasant genocide every winter.’

‘He had a heart attack, Dani.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you were naked.’

‘God, I was. I’d come straight from Glasto and was off my trolley on acid, so it wasn’t strictly my fault.’

‘It never is your fault, that’s half the problem. What if Father Giles eats one of your infamous cookies?”

The sisters had always shared the same sonorous laugh, but now the sound was quiet as a bird trapped inside a hollowed-out tree – its roots shrivelled by shock and living-grief – one nudge, and they’d watch the tree topple. They stared, not at each other, twins that no longer bear any resemblance cannot gaze at their unbalanced reflection – one looked at the ceiling and the other at the dressing gown that lay swooned on the end of the bed. It smelled of dog and children and whatever else had clambered on her during that final week at home. Might there have been the two rabbits? Or was that just a hallucination? They had been coming on more frequently lately. 

‘That beeping does my head in,’ stated the one who could get up and walk out whenever she felt like it. 

‘You get used to it.’

The noise was like that digital alarm clock she’d found buried at the bottom of a box of trinkets after she and Jonathan had finally settled back in England. It used to wake her in the night, but she was so relieved to be there and so tired that she let it beep itself out. The beeping told her that she’d joined the grown-up world of time-keeping – of possessions, of safety offered by bricks and Blighty. The last thing she wanted was for the beeping to stop here. Once that happened, the party would really be over. 

‘Seriously though – ’

‘What?’

‘Queen?’

‘Don’t stop me now, I’m having such a good time, I’m having a ball,’ Dani half-sang.

‘It’s sick, is what it is.’

‘Like me.’

Dani’s big sister (‘by three whole minutes’) didn’t laugh. That was the greatest worry, who would make her smile when Dani was gone? 

‘The world looks heavy today, Princess Cassandra,’ her mother used to say when the girl came into the kitchen carrying Dani on her back, as if it wasn’t her responsibility to lift some of that weight off, instead of mocking it. But then their mother had been no different from a Merino ewe in lambing season. If it gave birth to twins, it walked away from the second lamb. No love there. No loss. Dani’s twin had chosen her over the mother, which must have been quite a price to pay, especially when the lamb turned out to be a black sheep. 

‘What are you thinking about?’ Cass asked.

‘Merino maternal instinct.’

‘Mum, then.’

‘Yup.’

‘She never ran things properly.’ Cass said as if that was a greater crime than abandonment.

‘But you do.’

‘Yes, I do. Busy, busy, busy, full-time job. Wouldn’t have been if you hadn’t buggered-off to Thailand, or wherever.’

‘Japan.’

‘Yeah, wherever.’

‘Cass, it’s a sheep farm; I’m a militant vegetarian.’

‘Alien, more like,’ Cass smirked, and in doing so her furrowed brow – nine thin lines cut so deep they’d make their old plough feel inadequate, softened. Such a pretty face when she wasn’t worried about everyone but herself.

‘Scrap the music.’

‘Thank you.’ Cass’s relief was so palpable they both breathed it in.

‘Spoilsport.’

The pink winter sun outside turned everything a shade of candyfloss: the sky, the car park, even the hospice bedsheets. ‘Too much will make you sick. Knowing your limits is the key,’ their mother used to say, but she never said what too much looked like. She just left them to find out like any good wild animal would. It was always Dani who had been brave enough to investigate for them both. Turns out the limitations were in Tokyo, away from hay and hooves and treatment.

‘Should be moving the flock from field nine today.’

‘That’s good. Jonathan helping?’

You’d have thought his name was a pollen, the way she coughed. Cass fussed; puffed up Dani’s pillow and tucked the white sheet around her sister’s skeletal frame by way of an answer. 

‘That bad?’ 

‘Worse. He smells of lemons or some such and the sheep don’t like it, nor do the dogs. We had a blocked drain yesterday and I caught him calling Dyno-Rod. Can you imagine what the lads in The George and Dragon would have to say about that?’

Dani put her bony hand on top of her sister’s. She wanted it to be less ugly, less cold, but bones and paper-thin skin was all she had left to offer. Perhaps Cass wanted to pull away until Dani could replace it with last year’s hand, the one that was plump and pink, like the sky outside, flush from running after the children in wet leaves. ‘Don’t do that! You’ll startle the flock!’ Cass had shouted in a voice more startled than any of the white fluffballs could ever be. The children ran into the field regardless. The animals remained non-plussed as the girls screamed, ‘Clouds!’ and they only stopped chewing when the youngest tried to ride the ram. 

Cass had always been startled: by slamming doors, “boos” in the corridor, their mother’s fury, but worst of all, by vulnerability and adventurousness. That scared the living shit out of her. And that was all Dani’s fault. 

‘You do so well with lambs. You have three thousand head or so. What’s three more?’

Cass picked at the laundry label on the bedsheet, trying to tear the H off the word Hospice. 

‘Human offspring are not easy. I can’t get rid of their ectoparasites once a year, shear them or eat them. They are useless.’

The tree of laughter shook its leaves and a nurse, hearing the unusual sound, paused as she passed their room. She waved through the window, a gesture of concern turning to solidarity as Dani gave her the thumbs up – all smiles, to stop her interrupting such a critical moment. Her sister was listening and, better yet, actually talking back. Progress.

When eyes had been wiped and water sucked through a straw, Dani gathered all her courage. ‘Well, you won’t be alone. You’ll have Jonathan.’

‘Dani –’

‘Shussh!’ The drugs made her so sleepy, and the tone of her name, whispered from her sister’s mouth, was too sticky with stress and guilt. 

“Do you remember the year Mr Roseman’s fat goose stood in the road and refused to move? Caused a tailback all the way to Cricklade. Police came, sirens blaring down the A419 – must have been ten of them. All those men in uniform, chasing that bird, it was the funniest thing, but the goose outran them and sat back in the road. No-one could catch it. People driving in the other direction were laughing until they saw the queue and then they thanked their lucky stars it wasn’t their days being disrupted by the fat goose. Well, this issue is our goose and we need to discuss it, shove it out the road so we can carry on moving forward. I have a man who will need caring for, I have a sister I love, who will need caring for, and children – ‘

‘Stop it. Just stop it! I’ll leave now if you say another word.’

‘What and never come back?’ Dani laughed. ‘Who do you think will feel worse about that in the long-run, you twat? This is about sharing. We were always shit at that. You’ve always wanted him, ever since the night we found him, all pensive and particular in the library. Well, I’m giving you my blessing. Actually, I’m begging. We both know he is fucked without you.’

‘But I am going to fucked without you.’

‘These are my toys, and I am ready to share them.’

‘But I am too busy with the farm for your toys. There’s tupping in the autumn and lambing in spring, the shearing in summer. Twenty-four-seven, my time is taken up. I simply won’t be able to manage a bloody widower as well. And then of course there is the issue of those kids, I don’t know what I am doing. I haven’t read a manual or studied. What if they get foot rot, or need worming?’

‘They don’t get foot rot. You won’t have to de-worm them; they are not animals.’

‘I don’t know, have you seen Kate these days, with that hair over her eyes? Makes me get shear-twitchy.’

Please want them, Dani nearly screamed but her voice was too hoarse.

‘I’ll take the lambs.’

‘Your nieces.’

‘Yes, but not the man. What use have I for a man?’

The flush in her sister’s cheeks said what use he could be. Cass had always been alone and there was good reason for it – lying in a hospital bed. That stupid competition, how long ago now? They were no more than fifteen when it happened; you’d think people got a second chance when you made mistakes that young. Dani had lost the bet. She had been the one to run through the sheep dip as a forfeit. 

“Organophosphate exposure,” the doctors had called it. 

“Long term consequences,” the experts had frowned. 

Dani had been the one to wait to get Grim Reaper sick; Cassandra had been the one to carry the guilt. After all, it was her idea. 

‘Cass, I think we both met the right person, the same person.’

‘I haven’t met anyone Dani, and your poxy poet of a husband, with his red wine and reading glasses that slip down his nose when he should be sorting out the animal feed is not the bloke for me, understand? His girlie fingers and stupid singing – however pretty, is not for me. I’m sorry. He can’t even drive a tractor and he’s a fucking vegan.’

‘There is something to be said for poxy poetry on a cold night.’

‘One more word out of you, one more, and I will leave. Understood? One.’ 

Cass held up her palm in threat; Dani slapped it down with a grin. To make clear all debate was over, Cass picked up her newspaper and carried on with the cryptic crossword that had eaten anxious hours while her younger self had slept. Dani reached for the notebook tucked down the side of the mattress and finished the conversation her sister refused to have. 

Dear Cass,

You are an arse. 

You have been in love with J since I fell in love with him. He, by the way, always wanted a go-getter prison warden type. I am too like him. Who the hell will you mother once I am gone? Apart from my children (really sorry about that). No-one gets out of this trip without at least one broken heart. I hate the fact that it is me and you who is breaking it. Look after each other when I am gone. I never was very good at sharing, but I am doing it now.

Love you, you arse.

D xx 

P.S. The Purple Rain album is all yours too. Its hidden in barn three, under the floorboards.

‘Bahhh!’ Dani impersonated a sheep, making Cass jump.

‘Right, that’s it!’ She got up and made a performance of putting on her coat. ‘I’m going to the canteen for one of their disgusting cups of coffee. Want one?’

‘Only if you agree to have my husband.’

‘For fuck’s sake. I’ll think about it, you weirdo.’

‘And Cass.’

‘What? I’m thirsty.’

‘Everyone comes in the style of Freddie.’

‘Got it.’

Photo by Kyle Arcilla on Unsplash