Tasha Dhanraj has to put up with sibling rivalry

My parents are going away on holiday tomorrow for a few days without me or my sister. I wouldn’t mind, except they only told us yesterday. This is typical of my parents. They are lovely generous people, who are utterly terrible at communication. If they were air traffic controllers, Heathrow airport would have a lot more to worry about than adverse weather conditions. Planes would spend half an hour circling the runway, unsure as to whether it is safe to land, just because my mum would assume that they knew it was probably OK.

Since my sister and I have both reached ages where it is legal to leave us at home, my parents have gone on holiday more often than my dad cleans the oven. Suddenly, without having to spend twice the money by taking a family of four, they are living the middle class dream of cheap flights around the world and offsetting their guilt by paying an extra pound towards planting a tree in Africa and allowing their children unlimited access to their retirement fund, by giving us a credit card linking to their bank account. This just so happens to be the same week that I opened up my first eBay account. Bad move, parents. Bad move.

“She’s quite intentionally leaving toothpaste in the shower”

Now, there’s only one problem. My sister and I haven’t been getting along too well lately as we’ve both been so stressed. In truth, we don’t get along very well usually, but now we’re not even bothering to try to not be constantly passively aggressive towards each other. She’s quite intentionally leaving toothpaste in the shower and I’m intentionally eating cereal in front of her, knowing that because of her current diet she can’t eat any carbs after 6pm. Spending a week alone with her is certainly not an option if our parents want to return to two daughters with full heads of hair.

To conquer this conflict, I am having my boyfriend over to stay. In the presence of a guest, we will automatically be more polite and will be less likely to have extended conversations between each other.

The only flaw in this genius plan is that my boyfriend has a full time job, which means the currently ‘in between jobs’ Tasie and the ‘revising’ me have to put up with each other during the day. Maybe it’s a good thing our parents gave us such little notice – it gives us less time to plot elaborate ways to annoy each other in some Home Alone style of attack.