“If you hadn’t thrown everything in, you wouldn’t be in this situation now.”

“Being a graduate isn’t everything, you know. There are thousands of graduates who can’t get jobs.”

“Exactly. So why would an employer pick someone like you? You have to give yourself an edge, Martha, and you just don’t have that much going for you.”

She had no edges.

That sounded uncannily like the insult Steven had just thrown at her.

“I liked the job I had.”

“You can’t spend the rest of your life working in coffee shops or animal shelters. You should have studied for a profession like your sister, although you’re far too old now, even if you did go back to finish your degree.”

“I don’t want to go back to college. And I’m only twenty-four.”

“Ellen’s daughter is twenty-four and she has qualified as a doctor. She’s saving lives! And what are you doing with your day?”

“I’ve put in a hundred applications in the last four months, but there are thousands of people applying for every job. Most of the time people don’t even reply. It’s soul destroying.”

“All the more reason why you should have done a proper training like your sister, but you’ve missed that boat now.”

Martha had a mental image of a flotilla of boats floating into the distance. She badly wanted to be on one of them. Preferably sunbathing while someone poured her an iced drink.

“Thanks for making me feel better.”

“Well, if your own mother can’t tell you the truth, who can? But there’s no point in sitting around and moping about the bad decisions you made. You should go running with your sister.”

Running with her sister would be another bad decision. Not only would it mean leaving the house, which meant bumping into Steven, but Martha would lag behind, which was pretty much the story of her life. She’d always been ten steps behind her sister, and there was no chance of her forgetting that.

Martha knew she wasn’t as pretty as her sister. She wasn’t as thin as her sister. She didn’t make great choices like her sister.

She knew all the things she wasn’t but wasn’t sure what she was, apart from sturdy.

She made a great cappuccino and was good at talking, but that was more of a flaw than a skill. Martha would talk the hind leg off a donkey her mother would say, a statement accompanied by an exaggerated eye roll. If there was an award for who talked the most, Martha would win it.