"What do you reckon? We could do it again soon, while we've got the chance?" Logan said, blowing a plume of blue smoke from his mouth through the open window of his bedroom in the attic of Darkdale Farm. Down in the yard below his father was carrying a bale of hay to one of the barns, Penny the dog was close by him, her coat wet from the snow and bobbled with tiny balls of snow that had collected on the fur on her legs.
Logan looked at the end of his roll-up and with a finger he had moistened with the tip of his tongue, he dabbed at the end, tempering the glowing tip as a tiny spark raced up the end of the cigarette paper. He looked at his sister who was sitting on an old and faded beanbag as she swiped at her phone screen.
Logan pulled hard on again on the baggy roll up as he waited for her response
"Yeah, ok" She said absently, looking at her phone, only half concentrating on his question until she closed her phone off.
She looked at her brother with a slight frown.
"We should stop doing it, after this, though, I know it's a laugh, but it's made everything worse" She continued, eyeing her brother as he studied the end of his cigarette.
"Things can't get any worse than they are, Maisie" Logan said, blowing another stream of smoke out into the cold winter air, watching as the particles slowly disintegrated into nothing.
"Yeah, I know but we've not exactly helped. It was a stupid idea from the start. The holiday cottage was supposed to make all the money shit go away and we've made it a billion times worse."
"It does work sometimes" Logan glared at his sister before taking another and final deep drag on his roll-up
"Maybe. But not enough to say that what we've done has helped the situation. Mum and Dad are on the edge all the time these days"
"Yeah, alright, I know; but you've got to admit it's a laugh, especially when you know how scared folks get"
Maisie frowned. "I know; it's fun, I just think we should stop, before it gets really out of hand."
"It's too late for that now." Logan dropped the stubby cardboard-ended butt of his cigarette into an old can of coke. It fizzed as it hit the dregs in the tin. He stood up and closed the window before taking a packet of mints from his pocket of which he dispensed two into his mouth.
"So, shall we do it again?" He said as he crunched on the mints
Maisie got up from the beanbag and looked out of the little attic window with a long sigh.
She looked across the snowy fields towards Darkdale Cottage. A plume of smoke was snaking out of the chimney and in the back garden of the cottage she saw two figures walking hand in hand through the deep snow, towards the back door of the cottage.
"Yeah, I suppose so" She said with a resigned but wry look at her brother.
"Just one last time. Then we stop"