The Ugly Sister (29 page)

Cleo, never one to be told what to do, comes on into the room and shuts the door behind her.

‘Abigail, listen to me. There is absolutely nothing going on between me and Richard. It’s ridiculous that you would even think it.’

Abi sighs and turns away. She’s not interested in Cleo’s self-justifications. She knows what she saw – or at least, what she felt – and she also knows that
Cleo has nothing to gain by being upfront and honest with her.

‘As if I would ever do that to you – with your boyfriend … I was so happy for you that you’d found someone,’ Cleo says, and Abi thinks, Of course, in Cleo’s mind she’s not just been cheating on her husband but she’s stolen my boyfriend too. The fact that the relationship is a scam and Abi couldn’t care less about Richard except on Stella’s behalf is neither here nor there. Cleo believed he was Abi’s boyfriend and she still went after him anyway. It isn’t lost on Abi that while she held herself back, rebuffing Jon’s longed-for advances out of loyalty to her sister, Cleo seems to have no such scruples. Family, blood or otherwise, means nothing to her.

And suddenly it’s as if Abi sees things clearly for the first time. Cleo hasn’t changed; she’s always been the same. Of course Gary Parsons had betrayed her and asked Caroline out. Abi can picture it now: Caroline had made sure that he would by smiling at him in class, taking notice of him, giving him just enough attention to allow him to get up the courage to ask so that she could go home and tell her sister that was what had happened. Of course she had insisted that she and Abigail wear the same outfits that summer, not because she wanted to show solidarity with her little sister, but because she had just realized the power of her looks and she knew they would be shown off to their best advantage when placed in direct
comparison with Abigail’s dumpier proportions. Of course she threw herself at Richard because, Abi now sees, she has to win. Life for Cleo has been one big competition that
Abi didn’t even realize she was part of. Caroline wasn’t ever her protector, her mentor, her friend. She was her rival. Just as Cleo still apparently is. No one is permitted to be more desirable, more sexy, more beautiful than Cleo. It is simply not allowed.

She fights back tears. It makes no sense. Surely Cleo must know that she had already won? She had the looks, the career (even if it was going through a rough patch), the gorgeous husband, not to mention all the material things that Abi couldn’t really give a toss about, but which she knows mean a lot to her sister. Why couldn’t she leave Abi this one little thing that she believed was real?

Abi thinks about how much more devastating this would be if Richard really was her boyfriend, if she really cared about him. And that makes her think how much worse this truly is for Jon.

‘Forget about me and Richard,’ she hisses at Cleo. ‘What about your husband? What about Jon?’

‘I told you it was entirely innocent,’ Cleo says, all big eyes.

‘Right,’ Abi says. ‘So what were you doing in there with the door shut?’

‘We were just talking. You really think I’d make a play for your boyfriend?’

‘I’m not bothered about Richard,’ Abi says,
exasperated. Actually, she is, on Stella’s behalf, but Cleo knows nothing about Stella. ‘I’ve known him five minutes. You’re married. You have kids. Why do you always have to be so fucking selfish?’

Cleo looks at her and Abi thinks she can actually see the cogs turning as her sister decides which tack to take, what will cause the least damage to herself. She knows that whatever comes out of Cleo’s mouth next will be self-justifying bullshit.

Cleo has conjured up tears from somewhere. Probably, Abi thinks, because of the fear of being found out. She blinks deliberately, forcing them out, and then looks at Abi pathetically, as if to say, ‘See, you’ve made me cry.’

Abi waits.

‘I … don’t be cross with me. I can’t bear it.’ Cleo bats her eyelashes and a couple more tears roll down her cheeks. Abi nearly laughs. Cleo’s performance is so hammy it reminds her of Scarlett O’Hara in
Gone With the Wind
. All she needs is a fan and a southern-belle accent. She won’t step in and bail her out. At the very least Cleo owes her an explanation. Cleo doesn’t seem to know how to continue in the face of Abi offering up no response. She’s used to her sister giving in immediately, always wanting to make things right between them. Not this time, Abi thinks.

‘OK.’ Cleo takes a deep breath. ‘We kissed. I’m really, really sorry. I don’t know what came over me. But that’s all. Nothing else happened.’

‘Because I interrupted you.’ Abi doesn’t know whether to believe her or not. The fact that Cleo has admitted any guilt at all makes her inclined to think she might be telling the truth, but it’s impossible to know.

‘No. I don’t know.’

‘So why did you go there in the first place? And don’t tell me Richard left something behind.’

‘It wasn’t premeditated. I admit I was attracted to him and I just had this ridiculous idea to stop by the shop to say hello. He invited me into the back room and it just sort of happened. It was stupid.’

‘And?’

‘And nothing. And then you came in.’

‘What if I hadn’t?’

‘I don’t know. God, it doesn’t bear thinking about. I should be grateful to you. It was a moment of madness and it’ll never happen again, I promise.’

Abi looks at her and feels … nothing. She ought to be angry, on Jon’s behalf, Stella’s, her own, but instead she just feels cold. Cleo reaches out and takes her hand.

‘Please don’t say anything to Jon.’

Abi pulls her hand away. ‘Do you care?’

‘Of course I care. He’s my life, him and the girls …’

‘Then why did you –’

Cleo cuts her off. ‘Jesus, Abigail, have you never made a mistake?’

Abi ignores the question. ‘You told me yourself that you didn’t find Jon very … exciting … any more.’

‘We’ve been together for fourteen years. We’ve been married for twelve. Of course there are times when you don’t find each other very exciting any more, but there’s other stuff that’s way more important. I was just sounding off the other day, it didn’t mean anything. Everyone moans about their partner sometimes. I adore Jon.’

If I had Jon, I would never moan about him, Abi thinks. But she knows that what Cleo’s saying is right. She thinks back over exactly what Cleo said about Jon – was it really that damning? She said she was a little bored, that their relationship had become a bit stale. It was hardly a declaration of intent that she wanted a divorce. But then there’s this thing, whatever it is, with Richard. Cleo is looking at her fixedly and Abi no longer has any idea whether or not she’s being played. If Cleo is being honest – for once in her life, Abi thinks, and then tries to push that thought out of her head – then what would Abi have to gain by telling Jon what she thinks happened? He’d be hurt and humiliated. What if she told him something that caused their marriage to break up, but she was wrong? The girls would lose their family. She’d never forgive herself.

In a split second she decides that she has to give Cleo the benefit of the doubt. She betrayed Jon with a kiss, but nothing else. It’ll never happen again. After
all, who is she to judge? If Cleo is to be believed, she has only done what Abi herself did just days ago. Granted Abi pulled away from Jon, made sure he understood she was never going to take things further, while who knows what might have happened between Cleo and Richard if Abi hadn’t walked in. But the crime, the intent, the betrayal is the same.

Cleo reaches for her hand again and this time Abi lets her.

‘Please, Abigail … Abi … my marriage is the only thing in my life that I’ve done right. It’s the only thing I can really be proud of. You have to believe I’m telling the truth.’

‘I don’t know what to believe,’ Abi says, but not harshly.

‘You know what?’ Cleo says. ‘Everyone thinks I’m such a success, but my comeback is a joke. Do you know what my great new campaign in America is?’

She looks at Abi for a reaction.

Abi shrugs. ‘La Vie En Rose?’ she says disingenuously. Is Cleo really about to reveal why she’s been so vague about her new job?

‘It’s Satin Silk. You know what that means, don’t you?’

Abi does. Now she understands exactly what Cleo’s problem is. La Vie En Rose makes a fairly high-end eponymous line. They also make Satin Silk. Satin Silk is a brand whose USP is to appeal to ‘real’ women. They famously don’t use models in their campaigns;
they feature an assortment of females of all shapes and sizes. Well, they say all shapes and sizes. Abi would put money on there being no one in any of their ads who is larger than a size 16 or smaller than a 10. They do use women of all ages, but they’re always good-looking women of all ages. You never get any Picassos in there. There’s not much cellulite or many stretch marks on show. But that’s not the point. The point is that we’re not talking about an elite modelling job here. We’re talking something altogether more downmarket. Beauty it may be, but not as we know it.

Abi is momentarily knocked sideways by the thought that this – Satin Silk – is the great breakthrough job that Cleo has been going on about for weeks. That this is what Cleo thinks is going to launch her back onto her adoring public. She’s stunned that Cleo even went for the job, let alone took it. Actually, Abi thinks it’s a great campaign. She’d far rather look at women who looked a bit like her on a good day rubbing lotion into their thighs than be confronted with an impossibly tall, skinny, beautiful creature who would make her feel both old and inadequate (although there is another kind of inadequacy that comes from seeing a sixty-five-year-old on your screen who seems to be in better shape than you are ever likely to be).

But this is Cleo. Status is everything. It’s not like the campaign is for Azerbaijan or somewhere where there was maybe an outside chance that no one would
get round to uploading any of it onto the internet and she could keep up a pretence that it had all been impossibly glamorous. It’s not like she wasn’t going to have to tell them at some point that her comeback was slightly (for that read totally) nonexistent. Like now, for example. Abi doesn’t know what to say.

‘Right …’

‘It’s about as low end as you can get in modelling terms. I think Falco just felt sorry for me. He certainly didn’t cast me because they wanted Cleo to be the face of the product. Far from it.’

Abi knows this is a momentous admission. Even though she had worked out for herself that something was wrong with Cleo’s tales of her fabulous comeback, for Cleo to own up to it herself is a whole different thing.

‘And do you know what? I haven’t even told Jon that because I was afraid it would make him see me in a different light. Like he’d be embarrassed for me or ashamed of me, or something. I couldn’t bear for him to think I’m past it or a failure.’

‘Jon would never think that,’ Abi says, and she knows that what she’s saying is true. ‘I don’t think that kind of thing is important to him. He just wants you to be happy.’

‘I’d never want to lose him,’ Cleo says, and the tears start again and, this time, Abi is convinced they’re real.

‘I won’t say anything to him,’ she says.

‘And I know you’re saying you don’t care about Richard, but I want you to know I’m really sorry. It was an unforgivable thing to do.’

‘Cleo,’ Abi says. ‘Do you remember Gary Parsons?’

Cleo looks confused. ‘That boy who was in my class?’

‘Do you remember when he asked me out and I said yes but then he suddenly asked you out instead?’

‘No. Should I?’ Cleo says, but she looks away as she says it, as if she’s afraid to catch Abi’s eye.

‘No. No reason. I just wondered.’

‘I was always jealous of you, you know.’

Abi can’t help herself; she snorts. ‘Yeah, right.’

‘Of course I was. You were the funny one, the clever one. You always had an answer for everything. All I had was what I looked like.’

‘I spent my whole life watching Mum boast about you and how you got your looks from her,’ Abi says, incensed.

‘Only when I wasn’t there,’ Cleo says. ‘When you weren’t around, she used to go on to people about how clever you were and how you were going to go to university. And how you inherited your brains from her, of course.’

Abi is floored. ‘Really?’

‘It used to drive me mad. I felt like all that mattered to her was how well I did in my exams. And however hard I worked I knew I was never going to do well, because that’s not who I was.’

‘I had no idea.’

‘That’s just what parents do. They don’t want to spoil you so they praise you behind your back. Only sometimes they forget to do it to your face too.’

‘I never thought you cared about not being academic. You always used to make a big joke of it.’

‘Because I couldn’t change it. I had to embrace what I had, what was me. It didn’t mean I wasn’t envious of what I didn’t have, though. And you know what? Did I deliberately flirt with Gary Parsons to get him to ask me out? Yes, I did. I’m ashamed to admit to it, but I did, because I thought that if suddenly you weren’t just the smart one but you were also the one getting the attention from the boys, then who was I? What did I have left? I was shallow and scared and insecure, OK? And I apologize for that and for all the other times I’ve treated you badly. God, I’m actually amazed you even want to have a relationship with me at all.’

Abi feels as if something’s lifted, as if all the resentments and injustices and jealousies she’s been nursing over the years have not completely gone – that’s not going to happen overnight – but they’re fading.

Another memory fills her head. The stained first-communion dress lying on the floor, Caroline standing over it triumphantly. She tries to see the angle, to work out what Caroline might have had to gain by sticking up for her, but she can’t find anything. Just the altruistic, protective gesture of an older sister who cared
about her younger sibling so much she didn’t want her to get into trouble. ‘Thank you,’ she says.

‘I’m really glad you’re here,’ Cleo says. ‘I mean it. And I’ll keep away from Richard. You don’t have to worry about that.’

Cleo is making a big effort – Abi has no doubt about it. She still spends a lot of time at the gym or the beautician or occasionally at castings, but in the evenings she stays home and they spend time like a normal family, all together, watching TV or playing games. She sits through countless tweenage performances and fashion shows and allows herself to be a guinea pig for make-up and hair-styling sessions. Tara and Megan bask in the extra attention and even Jon seems to visibly relax.