Read The Sleeper for Free Online Page B

nails. ‘So how was the first day back in the grand career?’
    ‘It was fine,’ I tell her, and inevitably, I start babbling. ‘Actually it was great. Straight back into it. I spent the day checking the planning permission, which I always used to do. It was exactly like old times. But how about you, Olivia? How’s work with you? And how’s everything else?’
    ‘Oh, you know. Not dramatic. Humdrum.’
    I laugh. ‘You have the least humdrum life. You know that.’
    ‘That’s not the way it feels from inside it. But anyway. The parents want to see you. They’re coming up for dinner on Wednesday. Dad’s booked Pizza Express. Obviously. As there is no other restaurant in London.’
    ‘Oh. OK.’
    I sit and smile a frantic smile. She pulls her feet up so she is curled in the chair like a cat. She is very skinny, I notice. I try to calculate how offended she will be if I go and fetch the wine I just bought, open it and pour both of us a large glass. She is ignoring it on purpose. She flashes a sarcastic smile back at me.
    I am the older sibling. I am, as she has insisted for as long as I can remember, ‘the golden child’. Golden children can take charge.
    ‘Are you hungry?’ I offer. ‘I’ve got some bits of food. I can cook something, if you like.’
    She will say no, but at least this gives me an opening to go into the kitchen and do it myself.
    ‘I’m out tonight, actually.’
    ‘Oh. Cool.’
    ‘Cool? Yes, it is “cool”, isn’t it? Nice flat to yourself.’
    ‘That isn’t what I meant! I meant “cool” as in “totally fine”. Where are you going?’
    ‘Oh, just out.’ She tries to twiddle a piece of hair around her finger, though her hair is not long enough for that, and chuckles privately.
    I stand up.
    ‘OK,’ I say. It never takes long for this to happen, though I think this encounter marks a record. A big wooden carriage clock, the sort of thing I would pass over at a car boot sale because it looks naff, but which is somehow stylish in this setting, tells me that it is ten to eight. It is still light outside. ‘I’ll get myself some food then, if you don’t mind. And some wine.’ With a deep breath I force myself to be friendly again. ‘Can I pour you a glass before you go out?’
    ‘Sure.’ She looks terminally bored.
    My bedroom is the box room, which is also known as ‘the study’. Over the years it has hosted various of Olivia’s arch and unknowable friends, and in between tenants it becomes a dumping ground for anything she doesn’t want to look at.
    I push the door open and, because I want so much to be friends with Olivia, I am genuinely touched by the fact that she has cleared it, and cleaned it, for me. I three-quarters expected to find the floor covered with paperwork and boxes and things she was thinking about throwing out. Instead, the floorboards are perfectly clear, the single bed (this is a room that definitely could not host any other sort) is made with a duvet in an embroidered white cover, and two pillows. There is even a folded pale pink towel on the end of the bed. A clothes rail has hangers on it for my stuff, and there is a built-in cupboard for the rest of my things.
    ‘Thanks for the room, Olivia,’ I call. I wish I could call her Liv or Oli as her friends do. Some of them call her Libby or Libster or Ols, and the further the variation gets from her actual name, the more intimacy there is in it. I have never been able to attempt anything other than the full ‘Olivia’.
    It is not a dilemma that works in reverse. There is no obvious shortening for Lara. Only one person, in my whole life, has attempted one. Rachel used to call me Laz. I swallow, and push the memory away.
    Even my mother has never gone off piste with so much as a ‘La’ (which would, admittedly, sound stupid). Nor has Sam. I am Lara, and people call me Lara, and that is that. I am not my sister, and unlike her, I cannot use my name as a weapon.
    ‘You’re welcome,’ she calls back