The Ugly Sister (32 page)

‘I have to be there for Cleo. I want to … And I would never have put the girls through … well, you know …’

He runs out of steam.

‘Of course,’ she says, thinking that at this precise moment she’d rather be anywhere but here. ‘It’s forgotten. I’ve forgotten it.’

She just wants the subject closed. Upstairs in her room she has been regularly indulging herself in an alternative-universe fantasy where she doesn’t break away from Jon’s embrace, where she thinks, Sod it, and throws herself into his arms, reciprocating his declarations of love. (Of course, she has to spend the first five minutes each time establishing a narrative in her head that takes Cleo out of the picture, but leaves her happy, healthy and, in the end, delighted that her ex and her sister have found love. In Abi’s favourite version she goes off and marries Richard and everyone, Jon, Stella, the girls are all delighted for them.) Abi and Jon’s relationship always progresses in the same way: the sex is amazing, a revelation; they move in together into a beautiful house that is neither too big nor too small; the girls couldn’t be happier; Abi is pregnant again; the dog is there. It kind of peters
out
after that into an un-dramatic but most definitely satisfying happy-ever-after that leaves her basking in its comforting glow. Now she presses erase. Delete. Move to trash. It’s gone.

She takes a deep breath. Tries to stay focused.

‘But the truth is,’ Jon says, ‘I’m worried about her.’

Abi doesn’t know what to say. The Satin Silk secret is not hers to give away. And the other secret, the Richard secret, is most certainly not one she’s about to share.

Jon sighs. ‘Has she said much about New York? The job?’

‘Honestly?’

He nods.

She can’t do it. ‘Not really. I … maybe it wasn’t quite the comeback she wanted.’

There’s a moment where neither of them says anything, because they’re both waiting to see what the other one knows.

Finally Jon says, ‘It was Satin Silk by the way.’

‘I know. Did she tell you?’

‘No,’ he says. ‘I found it on the internet. I still haven’t told her I know.’

‘What do you make of it?’

He shrugs. ‘It’s a job.’

He sits down in the chair furthest from her. He looks tired and miserable. Worn out with trying to live with the mess that is her sister. ‘What shall I do? Should I tell her I know and force her to confront the fact that she’s
delusional or should I just hope that she quietly gives up on her comeback and things go back to normal?’

Cleo’s self-imposed deadline of a return to fame, fortune and fabulousness by the end of the summer is rapidly approaching and it’s clear that nothing much is happening. The press are not beating a path to her door, there are no paparazzi lined up on the pavement. The great comeback campaign doesn’t seem to have brought a ship full of offers in its wake, which comes as no surprise to Abi. She hardly thinks Karl Lagerfeld is scanning Satin Silk adverts to see who he should use in his next runway show. She knows that before long Cleo is going to have to admit defeat.

‘That one,’ Abi says. ‘Don’t confront her with it. Just be there to pick up the pieces when she finally has to admit it’s not happening. She can’t keep this façade up forever.’ She closes her eyes briefly, steadies her breath. ‘And she’s going to need you.’

‘I know. And I’ll be here.’

That’s good. She knows it is. She does. ‘Good.’ The old atmosphere is back. You could cut the air with a knife. There are so many elephants in the room Abi feels as if she’s at Billy Smart’s.

‘I’m going to miss you when you leave,’ Jon says quietly. ‘Really.’

‘Me too,’ Abi says, and then she goes and calls the girls downstairs on some spurious pretext or other. There’s no point going back down that road.

She’s walking up Regent’s Park Road one morning – she’s kept up her habit of going out early on fine days otherwise she worries that she is in danger of losing herself. She spends all day with the girls (although to her credit Phoebe now often offers to take the two younger ones out without her, but Abi worries about them going too far or for too long, so she doesn’t often accept), and every evening tiptoeing around the various minefields at home and willing the hours to go by till bedtime. Walking on her own in the mornings at least gives her the illusion that she has a life away from her family, things to do and places to be. She’s an independent, strong and still youngish woman in a big city. Buy, buy, buy. Sell, sell, sell. In reality, she generally just walks up the road and back, sometimes stopping off at the bakery or the newsagent, but it’s a habit she clings to. It’s the only thing
that is uncomplicated and wholly her own. Actually, she has noticed that all her clothes feel a little looser, so there have been some positive physical effects as well as the mental ones.

Anyway, she’s having her morning stroll one Wednesday, about to turn up the hill towards Belsize Park, when she sees Richard and Stella on the other side of the street. They’re both dressed in workout gear and Stella has the two kids with her, both in a jogging-friendly buggy, although Sean, the older one, is clearly a little too big for it and trying to climb out. Abi knew that this would happen one day. London might have nine million people trampling its streets,
but it’s a small community she’s staying in here and, although she has been carefully avoiding passing the bookshop during opening hours, it was inevitable their paths would cross at some point. She has been dreading seeing Stella. Richard on his own she can cope with. His proved to be a friendship not worth salvaging and now, when she thinks about him, she thinks he is rather sad – a middle-aged would-be playboy who defines
himself by the calibre of woman he can pull. Stella, on the other hand, is a different prospect. Abi liked – no, likes – her, respects her, hates knowing more about her relationship than Stella knows herself. Would, in an ideal world, still be friends with her.

Richard and Stella haven’t seen her and her instinct is to put her head down and pretend she hasn’t seen them either. That way if Richard does look over he can look away again quickly and not feel obliged to acknowledge her. Stella, however, has no reason to think that she and Abi are on anything other than good terms still, although she must know that Abi no longer works at the bookshop and wonder why that is. Or why she hasn’t called. Abi looks anywhere but the other side of the road, but to no avail.

‘Abi!’ Stella calls across to her. There’s no way she can ignore her.

‘Hi,’ she calls back loudly. She waves and keeps on walking, hoping Stella will assume she’s in a hurry. No such luck. Before she knows it Stella is bounding
across the road towards her. Richard hangs back, making a pretence of fussing over the boys, not looking at her. Abi has no choice but to stop, and she and Stella have those awkward few seconds where they don’t quite know why they’ve stopped or what they have to say to each other.

‘Where have you been?’ Stella says warmly. ‘Richard says you left the shop and I didn’t know how to get in touch with you.’

‘Oh, you know. Phoebe came back …’

‘No!’ she says. ‘Is she OK? What happened?’

Abi fills her in on Phoebe’s story, wanting to get away as quickly as possible because there’s a limit to how long Richard can pretend to be otherwise occupied without looking rude, and he’s obviously as keen to avoid her as she is him. Stella looks over as if she has only just realized he’s not by her side.

‘Richard,’ she calls, ‘what are you doing?’

Richard looks up nervously. ‘Oh … nothing. Hi, Abi. How are you?’

‘Get over here! What’s up with you?’ Stella laughs.

Richard crosses the road reluctantly, pushing the buggy. He avoids making eye contact with Abi. Much as she doesn’t want to see him, Abi feels she needs to put him out of his misery for Stella’s sake. He’s obviously terrified she’s going to spill the beans about him and Cleo, which, to be honest, she finds a bit insulting, but anyway. She plasters on the warmest smile she can conjure up.

‘I was just telling Stella how I had to abandon you in the shop because Phoebe came home unexpectedly.’ She can almost see the fear leave Richard’s eyes.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I’ve got a sixteen-year-old part time now. Tiffany. She’s a disaster.’

They exchange banalities for a couple of minutes and then Abi begins to move off. She’s done her bit; there’s a limit to how friendly she can pretend to be with Richard these days.

‘Well, it was good to see you,’ she says.

‘Don’t be a stranger,’ Richard says, clearly not meaning it.

Abi’s about to give Stella a hug and get the hell out of there when Stella asks her if she fancies a coffee sitting outside one of the cafés while Richard goes off to have a shower and then open up the shop. She’s tempted to say she’s busy, she has things to do. She knows that there’s no future in their budding friendship. On the other hand, the thought of spending some time with someone who is an adult, but isn’t part of her family – not to mention also bright and funny and good company – is irresistible. She finds herself accepting.

They gravitate to the nearest café and take a table outside. Stella releases three-year-old Sean from the confines of the buggy saying, ‘Do you remember Abi?’ Abi is gratified when he replies that he does and gives her the sweetest smile. They keep half an eye on him as he runs round and round the other tables,
which are luckily unoccupied. Baby Rhys clearly wants to be allowed to cause havoc with his brother, but has to be content to sit and sip orange juice instead. They’re both as cute as Abi remembers them and, despite the frantic circuits, well behaved.

‘So things are better at home, then?’ Stella says once they have ordered coffees. Abi racks her brain, has no idea which of the many complications in her life Stella is talking about.

Stella must pick up on her bemused expression. ‘With your brother-in-law. You’re not having to pretend to go out with Richard any more so I’m guessing that sorted itself out.’

Of course. ‘Oh god, yes, it did. Thank goodness. It did the trick so, yes, I’m really grateful to Richard for that, and to you of course.’ She’s blathering. She forces herself to shut up.

‘Well, I’m kind of relieved it didn’t go on for too long, I must be honest.’

‘I’m so sorry I put you in that position,’ Abi says, but Stella cuts her off. ‘Oh god, it’s fine. Anyway, what else has been going on? How’s the unpaid babysitting going?’

Stella is refreshingly upfront. She has no side to her. Abi really likes that about her; she’s a breath of fresh air in comparison with the hidden agendas and unacknowledged tensions crowding the air at home. Abi has no desire to discuss Cleo with her, though, not under the circumstances, so she tells her about
her new flat and the plans she has to decorate. They chat away happily – with Stella’s attention occasionally being sidetracked by Sean wanting a drink or for them to watch him doing something or other – for almost an hour. Stella and Richard are getting more and more serious Stella tells her, although she tells Abi it’s still hard for her to go out much because she only has one friend she trusts to babysit the kids and she can’t expect her to be free three or four nights a week. Richard sometimes comes over to the flat, she says, but she won’t let him stay because Sean often
gets into bed with her in the middle of the night and she doesn’t think it would be right for him to find someone else in there too.

Abi smiles and nods, tells Stella she’s pleased for her and keeps her mouth firmly shut about everything else. If she’s giving Cleo the benefit of the doubt, then she feels compelled to afford the same consideration to Richard too.

It’s tempting to sit here all day, but she promised the girls they could all go to the zoo – Jon bought them both year-long memberships when they went last time and they’re keen to use them as often as possible – and, even though Phoebe would quite happily take them without her, she’s quite looking forward to it. Plus Stella is still sweating quietly after her run and in obvious need of a shower, and Sean is getting a bit fractious from lack of attention. So they split the bill and walk up the road together, agreeing to try to meet
up and do the same thing again in a couple of days, but not actually making a definite date. She knows it probably won’t happen. It wouldn’t feel right pursuing a friendship with Stella that had a dirty black secret at the centre of it.

Back at the house she finds Elena flapping in the kitchen surrounded by the detritus of three young girls’ attempts to make a packed lunch. She assumes they must have sneaked in there while Elena was off hoovering somewhere else, because they’re looking very pleased with themselves and the kitchen is looking like a bomb’s hit it. Abi is so touched by their sweet intentions that she doesn’t even bother pulling them up on the mess; she just gets down to it and starts cleaning it up, ignoring Elena’s protestations. In fact, what the hell, she gets a coffee from the machine and steers Elena over to the table where she puts the mug down and sort of wrestles her into a seat beside it. She’s not sure that legally it’s acceptable to manhandle the staff, but she’s hoping Elena will accept her gesture in the spirit it was meant. She looks as if she’s going to get straight up again, so
Abi wags her finger at her like Elena’s always doing to her and, in the end, Elena breaks into a smile and sits back down. She knocks back the drink in record time and then she’s back up on her feet and helping Abi, but Abi still feels it’s a bit of a breakthrough.

Once she’s happy that the kitchen is its old spotless self she gathers up the girls and they walk the
five minutes to London Zoo, the picnic in two carrier bags. By the time they’ve walked through the gorilla kingdom, seen the warthogs and the penguins, edged warily around the insect world and walked through the tunnel to admire the meerkats and lemurs she’s so hungry that even a cold mackerel-pâté-and-rocket sandwich seems palatable.

Jon has a proposition for her. He tells her this in the kitchen with the girls as human shields so that she can’t get the wrong idea for even a second.

‘What?’ she says, happy that at least Jon is finally feeling able to talk to her about something other than what needs doing for dinner or the wellbeing of his wife. They have no middle ground these days, banal and everyday or full-on psychotherapy seem to be the only choices.