The Ugly Sister (37 page)

Abi’s not sure what she was expecting but it wasn’t this. It’s a long way to come for such a swift meeting. Still, she comforts herself with the fact that Jon is through that doorway somewhere. Even if she is only in the room for thirty seconds, it will be thirty seconds with Jon. Long enough to assess how he is, whether anything has changed, whether he has found out that his wife has been cheating on him. Long enough to take him all in.

Eventually it’s her turn. She follows the older woman through the door and all the way across a huge open-plan room where several people seem to be working (if chatting, drawing on a large board and sitting with your feet up constitute working – she’s not sure), and into a glass-walled side office at the end. There are three people sitting in the room. None of them is Jon. The older woman speaks.

‘This is –’ she glances down at a long list – ‘Abi Attwood.’

The three people mutter hello.

‘So, Abi,’ the woman continues, ‘you know what this is for …?’

Abi is barely listening. Jon isn’t there. He had an opportunity to see her and he declined. In her head she had allowed herself to believe that that was what this was really all about. He had suggested she come for the casting because he wanted to know he was
going to see her again. Now she has no idea what she’s doing here.

She notices that the three people sitting down are all looking at her expectantly.

‘Sorry?’ she says.

‘Have you heard of Bargain Hunters?’ one of them says.

‘Oh yes. I have.’

‘Great, well, if you could just say this line –’ she is handed a piece of paper – ‘into that camera. Say your name first.’

A small camera is set up on a tripod in the corner. A young boy, probably on work experience, she decides, pops up from nowhere and presses a few buttons.

‘Ready,’ he says.

Abi has no time to even think about what she’s doing. She glances down at the piece of paper, she already knows the slogan: ‘Why pay for perfect packaging?’, but they seem to have extended the line, added a few extra words.

She looks vaguely in the direction of the camera, unsure of whether that’s what she should be doing or whether it’s rude not to be addressing the people in the room.

‘I’m Abi Attwood,’ she says falteringly.

‘Can you speak directly into the camera,’ someone says.

Abi forces herself to stare down the lens. ‘My name’s
Abi Attwood.’ She looks at the piece of paper in her hand. Suddenly it strikes her that the Bargain Hunters slogan might as well be some kind of metaphor for her life. She needs to get this over with and get out of there.

‘Why pay for perfect packaging when it’s what’s on the inside that counts?’

‘Good,’ a man sitting on an orange chair says. ‘Can you do it again with a bit more energy? Maybe do it like you’re holding up a damaged box of something.’

Abi feels self-conscious, embarrassed, humiliated all at once. Why is she here? How did she get herself in this stupid situation?

She waves her hand around vaguely as if she’s holding something. ‘Why pay for perfect packaging when it’s what’s on the inside that counts?’

‘And once more like you’re happy about it.’

OK, so that really does require some acting skills. Abi feels she has two choices, burst into tears and run out of the room and straight to Charing Cross station, never to return, or say the stupid line one more time with as much dignity as she can muster and then put the whole experience behind her, but at least she won’t have shamed herself too much. She chooses the latter, takes a deep breath.

‘Why pay for perfect packaging when it’s what’s on the inside that counts?’

She waits. The older woman, obviously realizing that the others must be satisfied they’ve seen as much as they need to, jumps in, waving an iPhone.

‘If I could just take a couple of pictures,’ she says, taking them before she waits for an answer.

‘Who’s your agent?’ the woman asks as she hustles Abi out.

Abi explains that she doesn’t have one, that her brother-in-law just insisted on putting her forward, but the woman doesn’t really seem interested, simply writes down Abi’s mobile number as they walk and then calls in the next candidate without even saying goodbye, leaving Abi back in the reception area where she started. The whole excruciating episode has taken about four minutes.

On the way up she had thought that maybe she’d treat herself to a gallery or a walk along the river after the casting, but now she’s here, now she’s realized what an idiot she’s been, travelling all the way up to London in the hope of getting a glimpse of her secret love object, like an adolescent, she just wants to get home as soon as she can, back to the safety of her day-to-day life. There are still things in the flat that need doing, boxes that aren’t quite unpacked, cupboards that haven’t been arranged to her liking. She can spend the evening taking care of that.

‘How low can Cleo go?’

The headline screams out at her from the computer screen. Abi is almost afraid to read the accompanying article. She has got into the habit of googling her sister since she came home, something she had always steadfastly refused to do before. She wants to feel connected to Jon, to know whether their marriage is still in one piece. Apart from regular texts and emails from Tara and Megan, which mostly contain news about them and their friends, she has heard nothing, nor does she expect to.

She stares at the screen. Every day she expects to read an exposé that Cleo has been spotted with a man who is most definitely not her husband. Although for all she knows Cleo may have broken it off with Richard on the day Abi confronted her about it. She may have thrown herself back into her marriage and be doing everything she can to make it work. Richard and Stella might be planning a wedding or going through an acrimonious break-up. Or, worst of all, Cleo and Richard might still be seeing each other in secret, a hidden bomb waiting to explode. She’s learned by now, though, that headlines for even the most mundane of stories
are written for maximum impact; she’s had heart-stopping moments before, waiting for a story to download. It’s amazing how much still gets written about even the most forgotten celebrity. Every day there are pages of Cleo-related stuff to wade through. She double clicks
and waits.

It turns out to be a blog, not even a newspaper article. Someone’s bitter and bitchy personal opinion safely hidden behind a pseudonym. She breathes a sigh of relief when she realizes it’s not the story she’s been dreading, merely yet another ‘look at poor old Cleo reduced to doing an advert for Satin Silk, well serves her right’ opinion piece. She skim reads it, still surprised to be able to feel hurt on her sister’s behalf.

On the days when she’s not at the library she’s finding that she’s at a complete loose end. She can’t remember what it was she used to do before. It can’t all have been Phoebe-related, not in the last few years anyway. Her life had seemed so busy with … what? Somehow she’d managed to fill all her days with nothing very much and she can even remember moaning sometimes that she was too busy and that she never had any time to herself. She wonders whether she should go full time in the library just to give herself something to do, but that would officially make her a librarian and she’s not sure that’s what she wants to be for the next twenty years of her life. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s a fine career.
Some people go to college with the sole aim of spending their days cataloguing books. It’s what they want. It’s
just not her. It was only ever meant to be a part-time filler till she found her true calling.

She doesn’t know why it comes as such a surprise, but she’s suddenly realizing she’s wasted her life. She deliberately sabotaged any chance she had of making something of herself, using Phoebe as an excuse. She hid behind her single-motherhood and her need to take care of her daughter, but now those smokescreens have dissipated. It’s time to find out who she really is.

Phoebe calls. As ever when her daughter’s name comes up on her phone, Abi panics that it’s going to be bad news, so she holds her breath until she hears Phoebe’s upbeat, ‘Hi!’

‘Hi! How are you, sweetie?’

‘Brilliant. We’re in Phuket. How’s things? Did you hear about the advert yet?’

‘No. Nothing.’ It’s been less than a week, but Abi is assuming no news is bad news.

‘You should ring Uncle Jon, find out what’s going on.’

No. ‘Mmm, maybe. I don’t really care.’

Phoebe tells her about the job she’s been doing, working a few shifts in a beach café.

‘When we’ve got enough money, we’re going to move on to Kuala Lumpur and try and get some work
there for a few weeks. The plan is to get to Australia by Christmas.’

‘Wow. That’s amazing.’ Christmas, thankfully, seems a long way away. Abi silently decides to check out if there is a local homeless charity who will be looking for volunteers for the big day.

They trade news of Tara and Megan gleaned from emails and texts, and then, all too soon, Phoebe has to go.

‘I love you. Be careful.’

‘Love you too, Mum. Bye.’

She’s in the crime section straightening books on shelves when she feels her phone vibrate. Mobiles are strictly forbidden in the library, but most of the staff keep them in their pockets and it’s not unusual to see something pulsing away in there as they move about their business. She has a surreptitious look at who is calling. It’s a number she doesn’t recognize. Five minutes later she’s out the back in the staff room listening to a message;

‘Hi. This is Felicity from MacMahon Fairchild. I hope this is Abi Attwood. Could you give me a call, please? It’s about Bargain Hunters.’

Abi notes down the number Felicity leaves, feeling stupidly excited. It’s not that she cares about the job – it’s the idea that anyone might think she’s the right person for any job. She’s assuming Felicity wouldn’t be asking her to ring back just to tell her she hadn’t
been chosen. There seemed to be so many women at the casting it would take days to let them all down that gently.

She tells Juliet she’s going on her break and then takes her mobile outside to call. Felicity answers almost immediately, sounding relentlessly upbeat. Abi imagines Felicity always sounds relentlessly upbeat.

‘So,’ she says once Abi has introduced herself. ‘We’d like to offer you the Bargain Hunters campaign.’

She doesn’t even wait for Abi to respond. ‘Now I see you don’t have an agent so shall I just email all the details through to you? The shoot is next Monday and Tuesday morning for the TV ad and then Tuesday afternoon for the print campaign. I see you live in Kent, so we’ll put you in a hotel for the night on Monday and pay your train fare. I’ll need you to get back to me before then to confirm that the deal’s OK. Don’t cut your hair in the meantime. Don’t get a fake tan. You’ll also need to email me your measurements. OK? Does that sound good?’

Abi waits to see if Felicity has definitely finished speaking. She’s completely unsure how to react. She has got the job. She, Abi Attwood, is going to be in the new adverts for Bargain Hunters. She knows it’s ridiculous. All she has done is look the part (attractive, approachable, friendly young mum!) and say the line with something approximating sincerity. But the truth is they still chose her.

‘Yes. Great. Thank you.’

She gives Felicity her email address, promising to get back to her once she has checked the details over. She knows there’s only one person who will truly appreciate both the enormity and the hilarity of what has just happened, so she calls Phoebe. Once her daughter has finished screaming with delight, Abi says, ‘I might get all up myself now. I might start referring to myself in the third person and demanding people leave a basket of kittens in my trailer.’

‘Face it, Mum, they’re never going to give you a trailer.’

Abi laughs.

‘I wish I was there then I could come with you. I could pretend to be your assistant and tell them all they weren’t allowed to look you in the eye or speak to you directly.’

‘No, because then I’d have to pay you and I can’t imagine they’re going to be giving me a fortune.’

‘Who cares? It’s an experience.’

‘Exactly,’ Abi says firmly. ‘And it’s about time I had a few of those.’

She can hardly wait to get home to read Felicity’s email. It has popped up enticingly on her phone, but the attachment wouldn’t open so she’s had an agonizing day of clock watching. She tells Juliet her news and she reacts as if Abi has just been cast as Lady Macbeth at the National, and announces it to everyone who comes up to get their books scanned. To be fair they’re all
very kind and no one says, ‘What’s Bargain Hunters?’ or, ‘That sounds ghastly,’ although Abi is sure more than a few of them think it.

On her walk home (she refuses Juliet’s offer of a celebratory drink in the pub, so keen is she to get home to her PC) it strikes her that Jon must have been involved in the decision-making process somehow. He is the boss, after all. She can’t imagine he sat down and trawled through the tapes and photographs, but, presumably, at some point, one of the people in charge of the Bargain Hunters campaign would have said to him, ‘This is the person we want to use,’ and asked him to sanction that choice. Whether he had an opinion about their decision or not is irrelevant. There’s no doubting he must have thought about her for a minute. There’s no doubting she’s occupied a space in his mind, however tiny, for a few moments. A nanosecond. She wonders if he’s told Tara and Megan.

Felicity’s email couldn’t be more obtuse if it tried. Abi is blinded by Basic Studio Fees and TVRs and percentages for this and that. It looks like an algebra test paper. She sits staring at it for a while, wondering what she is meant to make of it. There’s a whole separate sheet of figures that seem to relate to the print campaign for posters and point of sale. On the bottom of each sheet is a number that seems to be a total of sorts. It’s not a huge amount of money – the whole thing comes to less than £1,500, but it still seems like a fortune to her for two days’ work. She
tries to think when she’s ever had a spare £1,500. That would be never.

The second time she reads it, it makes no more sense than the first. She decides she should probably just accept whatever is on offer. There’s no way they are going to be ripping her off. Well, not too badly anyway. She goes to get a large glass of wine and then reads through it all again carefully. Just in case there’s a catch. A random clause that might mean she ends up with nothing. She potters around putting pasta on to boil and assembling a tomato and olive sauce. By the time she comes back to her computer with her meal in one hand and her glass in the other, there’s a new email in her inbox. She looks at the sender’s address:
jon@macmahon_fairchild.com
. Her heart nearly stops.