We walked for hours, nothing but pavement, shops and glass. The clothes were hanging on the line and we couldn’t, for the life of us, figure out why. I told my sister that we couldn’t possibly keep up this façade for much longer, someone was bound to find out - and then there’d be trouble.

“Don’t worry” she said, “they’ll never know the difference – the clothes will be dry by then and…”, but by that time I was already somewhere else. I wasn’t sure exactly where but I had a feeling I’d been there before. Not much light there, not really much of anything there.

Money was an issue for her, I knew this for certain. She took something from her purse. It wasn’t money, I knew what money looked like and this wasn’t it. It was not exactly smooth either, it was fat and glossy, like a round woman. This I took to be a sign that something wasn’t quite right and told her I thought we should leave while we still can.

“Relax!” she said, “what could possibly go wrong?”. I found it hard to argue with her, her face seemed set in stone, no, more like plastic - but matt. She reminded me of something I longed for. The clothes were now dry and we folded them up carefully, so that they wouldn’t crease. It wouldn’t do to have to wear creased clothes.

Hope for the day I always wanted. Your not here right now, but that’s ok neither am I for that matter. My sister was nowhere to be seen and I panicked for a moment, before realizing that there was really no call for alarm – my sister had never really existed. That was OK then. With this reassurance I proceeded to try and wrangle the clothes problem from a different angle.

There was still plenty of time. In retrospect I think I could have done things a little more slowly and carefully, but they worked out fine in the end. There was no need to continue at this point, since I’d already heard what I was going to say and what’s more, found myself disagreeing. “You’re never around when I need you, you know that?”. But no one was listening anymore, least of all myself.

The end.