"You sure this is a good idea?"
Sarah rolled her eyes at her clone. "Course it's a good idea Cos, what could go wrong?"
"Someone could see us!" Cosima shot back as if it were the most obvious thing in the world (well actually it was pretty obvious that that was the flaw in all of this).
"So what!" Sarah brushed off with a shrug. "People have seen us together before, no big deal."
"Sarah, when people see us together it's usually me and you in a bar somewhere or walking around Felix's neighbourhood… we're outside Alison's front door," Cosima needlessly reminded her double.
"And?" (Cosima was 99% sure Sarah was being this blasé just to annoy her at this point).
"And, the likelihood of me and you being sisters or something is plausible, the likelihood of Alison having a punk rock sister and a sister with dreadlocks on the other hand…"
"Yea but let's face it, what is plausible is that she'd try and hide us so no one would know," Sarah pointed out.
"Sarah…"
"Okay, okay, look I know," Sarah cut the other woman off before she started to get on her nerves. "But what am I supposed to do, Alison told us to pick her up so now here I am, waiting for her to get her shoes on, or whatever the hell she's doing," she shrugged.
"You could drive around the block?" Cosima suggested casually.
"What the hell am I, her bloody chauffeur?!" Sarah scoffed. "Plus last time I checked it wasn't you paying for my petrol," she added as an afterthought.
Cosima was about to reply when Alison emerged from the house and motioned that she'd be one more minute before retreating back in and shutting the door behind her.
"She's not serious, is she?" Sarah dead panned, still starting at the front door.
"Maybe she has trouble with laces?" Cosima quipped, also staring at the spot Alison had been motioning from a second ago.
Sarah turned back to her clone, laughter already falling from her lips when she stopped dead mid turn. Cosima's face turned to confusion as she watched Sarah's eyes go wide and look off at a point just behind her head.
"Shite…" Sarah whispered.
Cosima felt fear consume her, and she turned slowly. Her first thought was that they'd been followed here by prolethians. The reality however was much, much worse. She watched helpless as Sarah (who'd had a split second longer to accept their fate) lowered her passenger window from the control panel on the driver side of the car.
"Hi," Cosima squeaked, her hand rising in an awkward wave that didn't manage to break any of the tension that seemed to have spilled in the now lowered window.
"You uh… you can't park here…" the woman replied, although she was obviously pretty stunned by what she was looking at.
"We're uh… we're waiting on…"
"Alison?" The woman seemed to finish Sarah's sentence for her, though she was no longer talking to the two clones in the car. Instead she'd stood up straight again, and was now speaking over the hood of the car.
If the situation wasn't so cripplingly awkward Sarah would have probably laughed at just how shell shocked Alison looked. In fact there was a split second where she considered calling a medic just in case, though her suburban double seemed to recover herself just in time to rule that out as a necessity.
"Charity…" Alison had intended to say more than one word. It seemed however that her mouth had gone bone dry (oh god maybe she was dying or something… no, don't be silly, that'd be extremely inconvenient right now).
"Should we leave?" Sarah whispered subtly to Cosima.
"No," she snapped back just as quietly (yes, god yes they should definitely leave this is so awkward and Alison was going to kill them if she didn't give herself a stroke first).
So instead they sat and watched.
"Are these… are these ladies relatives of yours?" Charity questioned, pointing to Cosima and Sarah (as if it weren't already obvious who she was talking about).
"I… uh… yes," Alison answered finally. "Yes that would make the most sense, wouldn't it."
"Oh I see," Charity nodded, seeming to let the matter go.
Alison smiled, not daring to say another word. Instead she began to make her way towards the car, her steps rigid and forced, as if at any moment she was likely to crumple under the stress of the situation.
"That's right Ali, almost there," Sarah whispered, watching each jittery step like a hawk.
"I just always thought you were an only child?" Charity ventured after a moment; obviously realising the opportunity to mine for gossip was slipping through her fingers as Alison's hand curled around the door handle.
A low wince slipped from Cosima and Sarah's lips in tandem. Both realising that this question would probably mean Alison was about to fall at the last hurdle (then again, she could always just kill her and make it look like an accident… not that she should be given ideas).
"I… am not," Alison replied slowly. "I…" she faltered, as every cuss word she knew screamed through her brain. "Well as I'm sure you know, I'm adopted, and I was a triplet and well… I'm sure you can put one and one and one together Charity." Her smile was polite, yet her eyes screamed fuck you.
"Oh, well that makes sense," Charity nodded, seeming content that she'd have adequate gossip for the next coffee morning now.
"Well of course it does," Alison smiled (again, far too politely). "I mean the only other answer is that we're clones, and that's just ridiculous."
Sarah and Cosima laughed along with Alison's joke. Both of them hoping laughter would distract from the fact that Charity had caught Alison at her 'crazy shit' breaking point, and that at any second Alison was likely to spill the beans on the fact she was part of an illegal cloning experiment.
"That would be ridiculous," Charity smiled, even laughing along at what was apparently normal Alison behaviour. "Anyway, seeing as your sisters obviously aren't a threat to the neighbourhood I'm going to keep going," she added, apparently totally oblivious to the inside joke in Alison's previous statement.
"Yes, see you tomorrow for book club," Alison smiled, waving as Charity turned to walk away.
"Nice meeting you," Cosima waved out the window, again seemingly trying to swat away the tension with her hand.
Alison slid into the car, and for a moment everything was silent. Then, "you couldn't have driven around the block?"