I limped slowly through my living room, reaching for and collapsing into my leather armchair with a sigh.
‘You’re being dramatic,’ my sister said, following after me with an armful of groceries.
‘You don’t know my pain,’ I hissed at her. ‘You don’t understand!’
I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I heard her roll her eyes. She set the bag down and began to unload the cold goods into the fridge. I briefly thought I should get up and help, but a twinge from my toes quickly killed the idea.
‘Where do these go?’ she asked me, waving a handful of vegetables at me.
‘Bottom tray of the fridge,’ I said, waving in its general direction. ‘Wait, where do you keep your—’
‘What did you do to your foot anyway?’ she cut me off, dropping into a crouch and pulling out the drawer. ‘You were fine yesterday at the beach, weren’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I grumbled. ‘I don’t know what I’ve done, really. What does athlete’s foot look like?’
‘It’s not athlete’s foot,’ my sister said, accompanied by that tell-tale eye-rolling sound.
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I saw your feet yesterday!’ she stressed. ‘I think I would have noticed if you were cultivating a fungus!’
‘Maybe it’s a fast-growing variant,’ I frowned at her. ‘Or some sort of immaculate conception.’
‘You think you have the fungal equivalent of Jesus growing on you?’
‘I’m saying it’s a possibility!’
Silence settled between us for a moment, as she drew out a packet of chips and stored them on the wrong shelf of the pantry.
‘We’ll take you to a place in Cheltenham that sells foot care products sometime tomorrow,’ she said eventually. ‘Or a podiatrist, I suppose.’
‘So they can diagnose my miracle disease?’
‘Or chop off your toes?’ she said, with the mock excitement that every sister in the world somehow learns independently as they grow up.
I lifted my aching foot onto an ottoman, and didn’t dignify her with a response.