The Ugly Sister (16 page)

She looks at him and he’s looking at her hopefully. There’s nothing flirtatious or inappropriate about his look – of course not, she thinks, this is Jon we’re talking about – it’s just open and warm and friendly. She notices he has a little patch of freckles
underneath his right eye that she’s never seen before. They look unbearably cute and it’s all Abi can do to stop herself reaching out her hand and tracing them with her finger.

She suddenly realizes that she’s spent about an hour talking to him without once blushing or falling over her words. Oh god, that’s not healthy. It means she’s moved on. She’s admitted there was a stage four and it really wasn’t good. Well, she thinks, she’s there. She thinks she’s reached stage four. This is no longer a random trifling crush that makes her colour up and stutter and behave like a giggly schoolgirl. This has moved on from an infatuation that will burn itself out in a few days or weeks. This is serious.

She thinks this might be love.

As news goes, Cleo’s could not really have been more alarming or come at a worse time. She has got the job. Of course Abi is pleased for her on one level. Hooray. Good for her. Let’s celebrate! Oh? It means you’re going to New York for two weeks and leaving me – if I don’t mind, and how can I refuse? – to look after the girls because although Jon can take a couple of days off he is, of course, right in the middle of a big campaign so naturally it wouldn’t be fair to ask him to drop everything. Great! The best part of a fortnight of me and Jon in the house on our own (well, near enough). Jon, your husband, who I have just decided I have fallen headlong in love with. Perfect!

She has been avoiding him since Saturday night. Right after she had her eureka moment, she claimed tiredness and told him she really felt much better now, thank you, and went to bed. He, of course, is oblivious to her inner torment, so he just said goodnight and he was glad she had cheered up a bit and that he’d see her in the morning. Abi barely slept because every time she got close she would drift into half-conscious fantasies that would give Dr Phil a field day, and she had to pull herself together and
force more anodyne, less provocative thoughts into her head. Every now and again she chastised herself – he’s your brother-in-law, your sister’s husband, your nieces’ father, grow up, snap out of it. Never mind that her feelings are entirely unreciprocated, that nothing would – or should – ever come of them even if she did allow them to flourish, it’s still wrong to be giving them
space in her head. They deserve to be shut out.

Sunday she woke up late because, of course, she had been awake for half the night, so she spent the day hiding in her room, feigning exhaustion, venturing down to the kitchen only when she heard the family go out. At dinnertime she dragged herself downstairs before anyone (Jon) could appear at her door with a tray, made uninspired conversation for just long enough for them all to accept that she was fine, nothing wrong, just knackered, and then disappeared back upstairs with her plate.

This morning she still crept downstairs like a commando, determined to ensure that Jon had already left for work before she showed her face. She managed to grab her toast and some coffee from Elena and get back upstairs before Cleo emerged too, and then she waited to hear her sister go out before she came back down. She didn’t want to have to see her yet either. Not until Cleo had had a chance to think about the things she’d said.

The summer seemed to have vanished suddenly, to
be replaced by something altogether more wet and windy, so the girls and Abi stayed at home all day and had fun making more outfits from the charity-store bargains and some of Cleo’s cast-offs, which were destined for the second-hand shop, and doing fashion shows for each other. Even Tara seemingly enjoyed herself because Megan and Abi both realized early on that the way to keep her happy was to let her tell them what to do. Abi found it surprisingly relaxing, actually.

It’s important to her that the girls don’t pick up on any kind of atmosphere, so when it gets close to home time she makes sure they’re in the living room playing Twister like they don’t have a care in the world. When she hears the front door close, she tries to forget how undignified she looks with her backside in the air and her face smushed against the floor, and she laughs extra loudly at nothing. Look at me. I’m just fine. Everything is normal. She waits for Jon to stick his head round the door to announce his arrival and what he’s intending to cook for dinner. Instead she is hit by a rush of long-discontinued ‘Exotica by Cleo’ and then Cleo herself breezes in and, not even acknowledging that they’re clearly in the middle of a game, says, ‘So, I got the job.’

In the rush of the hysterical little-girly excitement and Cleo’s self-congratulation that follows, Abi has only one thought in her head. Cleo is going away for two weeks and leaving her and Jon together. That
can’t be a good thing. Hold on, when did she become such a master of understatement? That’s a fucking disaster.

Cleo has obviously decided that her good news cancels out any memory of their having had a row. She needs an appreciative and envious audience. Allowing Abi to sulk would ruin her moment, so she just acts as if everything is normal, and as if her sister will naturally be as thrilled for her as anyone else.

Abi has realized now that this is another way of her controlling things, of being in charge. Cleo is the one who decides when rows are forgotten and everything is back to normal. It’s all in her gift. She never says sorry or even refers back to the bad atmosphere at all, she just switches to all’s-fine mode and expects everyone else to do the same.

Abi tries to play along. Cleo is full of New York and where she’s going to stay – The Mercer, she hopes, that’s where she usually likes to be, opulent but discreet, downtown where all the hip people like to hang out, although there’s also a case for saying it’s been ruined by the hordes of tourists thronging the streets on a weekend, but still, on balance, it’s her preferred haunt – and how Falco told her agent that he picked her first of the five women who are going to be in the ads. Abi asks her what the product is and it seems to her Cleo is a bit vague, telling her it’s a moisturizer without actually naming the brand. Maybe she thinks Abi won’t have heard of it, living in the sticks and
taking as little care of her appearance as she apparently does. As Cleo suspected, there are going to be both TV and print ads, which the girls get very excited about until Cleo tells
them that the campaign is just for America so they’ll probably never even see it. Several times Cleo refers to herself as the ‘face’ of the product.

Abi is thankful for the distraction when Jon gets home. All the talk is of Cleo’s success. She has to leave for New York next Tuesday week and then she shoots from the following Monday until the Saturday inclusive and flies back overnight arriving home on the Sunday. Nearly two whole weeks for Abi and Jon to play happy families. Well, thirteen days and let’s not forget twelve long nights too. Abi has to come up with some things for them all to do, places she can go in the evenings. Displacement activities. At all costs she has to avoid spending long periods alone with Jon, because she’s not sure she can trust herself. She flinches when she acknowledges this to herself. However annoying Cleo can be, Abi is certainly not proud of herself for having these thoughts about her sister’s husband.

‘What’s the product again?’ Jon says as they sit down to eat. He is making a big show of being delighted for his wife although Abi knows he has mixed feelings.

‘Oh, it’s a moisturizer,’ Cleo says, once again avoiding saying the brand, which strikes Abi as even more
odd. Jon is not a stranger to product although happily not the slave to it she once thought he was. He would surely recognize the name even if she wouldn’t.

‘Yes, but which one?’ Jon persists. ‘I want to know so that I can boast to people. ‘My wife’s the face of …’

‘I can’t remember the exact name,’ Cleo says. ‘It’s new.’

OK, Abi’s gut tells her something’s not quite right. Cleo has told them that the product is a moisturizer so why would she be so deliberately avoiding saying the brand? She shoots a glance at Jon and he studiously avoids looking at her. Both of them have the sense not to push it, though, and Jon skilfully changes the subject. They talk about New York – somewhere Abi has never been and has always wanted to go to – for long enough that the atmosphere shifts and the question of the name of the brand Cleo is promoting is no longer hovering over their heads. She tries to think what the issue might be, but she’s stumped. She and Jon, both ambivalent, to say the least, about Cleo the supermodel’s rebirth, and, speaking for herself at least, completely traumatized by the idea of Cleo going away and leaving them more or less alone, couldn’t be acting with more enthusiasm about her trip if they tried. Abi has
no doubt Cleo is aware that they’re patronizing her, but so long as none of them say what they’re actually thinking it’ll all be OK.

A memory comes flooding back. Caroline, aged fifteen or so, defiantly bright-eyed and with a smile
plastered on that, even to Abi’s twelve-year-old self, looked fake, insisting that the reason she wasn’t performing the lead solo in the dancing-school annual show – as she had almost every year Abi could remember – was because she had chosen not to. She had told the teacher to give someone else a chance, she said. Preferably one of the less talented, often overlooked girls with thick ankles and no sense of rhythm. She was blissfully happy to be part of the ensemble.

Philippa had been all over her, telling her she was such a kind and thoughtful girl and that it was wonderful to see that even with all her natural advantages she could still think of others before herself. Caroline accepted the praise graciously, but Abi knew her heart was breaking and, while it annoyed her that Caroline was getting credit where it most definitely wasn’t due, she had also felt desperately sorry for her. Why couldn’t she just admit to failure, have a good cry about the fact that she’d been passed over and accept the sympathy that would have come flooding her way? What was so wrong with admitting you weren’t perfect?

It’s a relief that Abi has work on Tuesday because there are just too many strange vibes buzzing round the house for her to feel comfortable there. Not that she’s a big believer in vibes, but there’s something almost tangible filling up the atmosphere and making
it hard to breathe. Richard, witch that he is, says, ‘How’s things with the handsome brother-in-law?’ almost as soon as she walks through the door, so to pay him back she phones Anita, the hormonal Primrose Hill mum who left her back door open for him that time, and tells her that Richard found a pair of sunglasses in the shop that he thinks might be hers and does she want to come in and have a look?

Obviously there are no sunglasses and Abi has simply looked up Anita’s number on the shop’s computer, because, like all the hormonal mums, she orders things from time to time as an opportunity to remind Richard that he has her details should he ever choose to call. Anita undoubtedly knows that she hasn’t lost a pair of glasses, but she’s not going to pass up the chance to come into the shop and is no doubt interpreting Abi’s call as Richard sending her some kind of coded message. She’ll be in at about twelve, she laughs breathlessly.

Round one to Abi.

Does she feel bad that she’s misleading Anita like this? Honestly, no. She’s a married woman who’s trying to cop off with someone on the side. Abi isn’t trying to be judgemental – it’s more that Anita’s willing enough to make a fool of herself whether Abi helps her or not. And to be honest it will have made Anita’s day to have been given an excuse to come in.

Abi is really into her work routine now. She buys
coffees and home-made pastries from the little local bakery on her way in (for which Richard thankfully insists she pay herself back out of petty cash, because otherwise she’d be broke) and they catch up with the gossip while they mooch about tidying half-heartedly. The shop is always quiet for the first twenty minutes or so. Abi makes Richard tell her all about the adoring ladies and he quizzes her about Cleo. He’s fascinated by Cleo. Although he has never met her, he knows everything about her from the press and he’s always asking Abi is this true or did she really do that? He should be gay, really, with his love of gossip magazines. He’s desperate for Abi to get her to come into the shop, but she tells him it’s unlikely Cleo’s going to be looking for a way to spend any extra time with her. She tells Richard Cleo has a job in
New York, but when he asks who it’s for Abi is as vague about the details as her sister was.

At lunchtime, if it’s fine, she takes her sandwich to the park, usually climbing to the top of the picture-book hill to take in the breathtaking views across London. Elena has taken to shoving a packed lunch in her hand on workday mornings, as, Abi imagines, she does for the girls when they’re at school.

Abi never knows what’s going to be in there and, despite her trying to explain to Elena that she doesn’t really eat meat – apart from a very occasional piece of chicken and anything bacon related, oh, and pepperoni and Parma ham and chorizo, anyway, it’s
complicated – she often finds some kind of bloody-looking scary thing in there. No doubt it’s Kobe beef and cost a fortune, but it ends up in the bin either way.

Abi thinks Elena likes her now because, despite her protestations whenever Abi tries to do anything, Elena seems to appreciate the fact that she does try. Unlike half the household who never even remember to say thank you. Not forgetting that Abi has mastered the coffee machine and taken Elena wordlessly step by step through its advanced options. She has also been teaching her English whenever she gets the chance and Elena can already identify most of the objects in the kitchen when Abi points them out. Sometimes Abi can hear her pottering about in there on her own: ‘Plate!’ ‘Knifes!’ ‘Freege!’

If, like today, Abi remembers to check the sandwich contents before she goes out for lunch and they’re not for her (today looks suspiciously like foie gras. It’s some kind of pâté anyway and she’s not taking the chance) then she has taken to offering to swap with whatever Richard has brought. Richard, in turn, very sweetly, has taken to bringing only veggie or fishy sandwiches on the days when Abi is in, so that she is guaranteed a nutritious lunch and he will be able to enjoy the super-gourmet offering.