Still, the weeds were dealt with pretty quickly.
‘Almost a pity,’ said Clare, as I pulled them up by the roots, making sure to leave nothing behind that might be a new weed in less than a week. ‘At least they added a bit of greenery to the place.’
The yard was 100 per cent grey now, apart from some peeling blue paint on the coal-shed door. If clean and tidy, it looked sad and unloved.
‘What’s in there?’ Clare asked of the coal shed. ‘Deckchairs? A barbecue?’
‘Spiders, more likely,’ I replied. I tried to open the shed, but the handle came off in my hand. The wood was rotted through. I had no doubt that my landlady would make a note of that when it came to handing back my deposit.
We weren’t the only people who had ventured outside that day. It was Sunday lunchtime. Up and down the street, my neighbours were also making the most of the respite from the long, grey English summer. After all, it might be fleeting. Children played; dogs barked; someone drilled holes and did a lot of swearing.
‘You could make this yard really nice,’ said my sister. ‘You could have some plants out here as well as indoors. You could have terracotta pots of rosemary and lavender in that corner.’ She waved to her left. ‘It seems to get the sun. You could get some proper garden chairs and a barbecue. Maybe even a parasol.’
‘For the two really great days we get a year?’
‘Yeah. You could get some of those hurricane lamps and put them along the wall.’
‘Hmm,’ I replied. ‘Seems like a lot of hard work.’
‘You’re so lazy.’
The truth was, I’d never even considered making the yard my own in that way, because since meeting Callum, I’d been working on the assumption that all this was temporary. This yard. This flat. I had been so sure that it was only a matter of time before we got a place together. It just didn’t seem worth expending any effort or money on making my flat any more comfortable. I told Clare my theory. Her face grew serious.
‘Well, maybe Callum noticed that,’ said Clare, ‘and maybe it freaked him out, thinking that you were waiting for him to make a move the whole time.’
I didn’t want to think that I might have pushed Callum into breaking up with me by doing nothing.
‘It seems to me that the best way to make a man want to share his life with you is by pretending you’re perfectly happy to live without him.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, perhaps you should have made some effort with the garden. Perhaps you should have decorated inside. Brightened the place up. Made it look as though you were settling down to a very happy single life that he would be hard pressed to pull you away from. Men love a challenge.’
I narrowed my eyes at her to make it clear that she was getting a little close to the mark, but she wasn’t looking at me any more. She was still lazing in her chair, eyes closed, enjoying the freak summer sun. I considered responding to her words of wisdom by pointing out that she was advocating a plan of action that she hadn’t exactly subscribed to herself. Far from it. She hadn’t been living the glorious single life she wanted to push upon me when she met Evan. She had been living back at home with Mum and Dad, having had to give up her flat when she and Jake split up. She couldn’t afford the rent alone. There was no challenge for Evan in persuading her to move out of Mum and Dad’s house. She couldn’t wait to get out from under Mum’s feet. I, at least, had taken the step of renting a flat by myself rather than waiting at home for my knight in shining armour like someone out of the 1950s.
I could have said all this, but I didn’t feel like arguing. Not right then.
Instead, I seethed as Clare muttered on about the attractiveness of female independence. My mood was not improved by the fact that I had been ‘on holiday’ for five days now and still I’d heard nothing from Callum at all. Not even a one-line text to check that I was doing OK. I would have expected that from him at least. I knew that he was probably getting all my news from Hannah and Alison, but wouldn’t it have been courteous of him to enquire directly as to whether I was all right in Majorca on my own? We had been boyfriend and girlfriend for eighteen months, after all. You can’t just cut someone dead like that, can you?
‘Perhaps you need to up the momentum of your “Majorca’s great” campaign,’ Clare suggested when I asked if we could change the subject before I slit my wrists. ‘Perhaps you need to suggest that you’re having a holiday romance.’
I wouldn’t hear of it. Though Hannah had asked several times in her texts whether I had met any interesting men, I would not have told her if I had. While it seemed she had jumped to my defence when Callum and I broke up, I still wasn’t entirely convinced that I could trust her. Sure, in her emails, she was firmly on my side, but how did I know that what she said was true? She may have been telling me that she and Alison were having a great time tormenting Callum by talking about what a fabulous holiday I was having, but it was equally likely that Alison was giving Callum access to her famous ‘shoulder to cry on’ (i.e. her pneumatic cleavage) while Hannah was letting him share her secret supply of Hobnobs in an attempt to pump him for gossip about our relationship that she could use against me at a later date.
I didn’t want to give Hannah or Alison any ammunition that might suggest to Callum that I was so over him I wouldn’t appreciate any attempts he made to get back into my heart. Therefore, while I was happy to tell Hannah that I was having a good time, I would not pretend there was any romance involved. Or even flirtation. Neither would I let Clare persuade me to send a bikini shot. That was just tacky. I told her so.
That didn’t stop Clare trying to persuade me otherwise.
‘You look the best you have ever looked,’ she said. ‘If anything is going to bring Callum round . . .’
She pressed and pressed the matter until we ended up having an argument in which she reminded me, with near-fatal results, that perhaps the reason why Callum had dumped me was that I wasn’t adventurous enough and by refusing to attempt to lure him back into my arms by posing in my swimsuit, I was showing everyone that he was right.
Of course, sisterly arguments very rarely remain on topic. There’s always too much ammunition. Clare and I had grown up together. We had thirty years’ worth of grudges to dredge up at any given moment. Thirty-one, in fact: as Clare had revealed during the course of one extraordinary row we had the year before, I may have only been on the earth for thirty years, but she started hating me while I was still in the womb.
‘I fell over at my second birthday party,’ she said. ‘I cut my head open, but Mum couldn’t bend over to pick me up because you made such an enormous bump. I wasn’t in the least bit surprised you were the biggest baby on the ward. You looked like a big, fat slug. I hated you before you were born.’
Great.
Now she was picking on my gardening skills, my interior-decorating skills, the clothes that I considered ‘sexy’.
‘No wonder I couldn’t find anything worth pinching in your wardrobe. My dressing gown is sexier than the clothes you would go out in.’
Next, she suggested that my hair needed a restyle.
‘And that coming from the only woman I know who’s had a perm in the last fifteen years. There’s a reason why everyone else stopped having them.’
And then we came back to the Jimmy Choos, which Clare said showed how repressed I was, but which, from my side of the argument, quickly became symbolic of Clare’s expectation that she should be able to enjoy whatever was in front of her no matter whether she had earned it.
‘You expect everyone else to provide for you all the time. No wonder Evan gets frustrated with the way you waste money.’
And then Clare suggested that the shoes were wasted on me because I was going to turn into Miss whatsit.
‘Miss who?’
‘The Dickens one who wore her wedding dress until she died. I can see it now. You’ll never get over Callum Dawes. You’ll be telling everyone you meet that he was the love of your life, even whe
n he’s married to Alison and they’ve got three teenage children.’
‘Alison?’
‘Oh, come on. He so fancies Alison. He was all over her at your birthday party last year.’
‘He was not,’ I said, though of course I thought she had a point. If I needed to worry about anyone trying to steal my man, it was Alison.
‘You wouldn’t have noticed. You were too busy being wet.’
‘What do you mean by “wet”?’
Clare did an unflattering impression of me simpering.
Now our argument ranged from the way I was around Callum to the way I had been with other boyfriends long since gone, and that segued into the way I was in general. I thought I was sensible and careful. Clare thought sensible and careful equalled sappy. Then I tried to turn my cautious nature into a virtue by reminding Clare that I had held down a single job for almost three years, while she could rarely be found working out of the same office for more than two weeks at a time. I wasn’t in the least bit surprised Evan got exasperated with her. Did someone as grown-up and mature as Evan really want to get hitched to such a flake?
‘You can’t hold down a job.’
‘You can’t hold down a man.’
‘You only hold on to your man by being a doormat.’
‘You only hold on to your job because it’s so shit that no one else wants to do it. Public relations for a lift company? I’ve seen your blog. No wonder you got nominated for “Most Boring Blog in the World”.’
‘Oh!’
I reeled. I had told her about that dubious honour in confidence and she had sworn that she would never use it against me. I still hadn’t found out who had put forward the nomination, but I had my suspicion that it was Alison.
‘You think you could do better?’
‘I know I could. I’d use some imagination.’
‘You’re telling me. Though what you call imagination, I would call pathological lying. How did you get me into this mess? Hiding at home and lying to Mum.’
‘I was trying to help you. You could have refused.’
‘What are you doing here anyway? What kind of a marriage are you going to have if you’re happy to tell such big lies to your future husband now?’
‘You’re lying to Callum,’ she pointed out.
‘I’m lying to Callum to get him back.’
‘Well, I’m lying to Evan because . . . because . . . Oh fuck off.’
We stopped short at pulling each other’s hair, but only just. Funny how a row between sisters quickly becomes much nastier than a row between friends.
Unable to find a suitable response to my question regarding her lying to Evan, Clare stormed inside, slamming the back door behind her. She slammed the door so hard that a small piece of masonry dropped off the door frame and fell at my feet.
I instinctively looked up to see if our argument had drawn any spectators. Sure enough, the old woman who lived upstairs was peeping out from behind her net curtains. Seeing me spotting her, she darted back inside, leaving the net curtains billowing in the breeze.
‘Bloody old busybody,’ I swore under my breath.
I followed Clare inside and gave the back door a slam of my own, just for good measure. The glass in one of the four small panes cracked with the impact. That would be yet another £50 off my deposit.
From the bathroom, I heard the sound of Clare sobbing and then blowing her nose loudly. I felt like crying too.
I took myself into the sitting room to calm down, but because I was still covered in fake tan, I couldn’t sit on the chairs or the sofa, which were upholstered in cream-coloured canvas. I tried sitting on a plastic bag, but after three minutes, I knew that wasn’t going to be fun for very much longer. I had to wash the damn stuff off.
‘Clare’ – I knocked on the bathroom door – ‘open up.’
‘Go away. You’re an absolute cow.’
‘Come on. Come out of the bathroom.’
‘I’m staying here until I’ve calmed down. It may be some time.’
‘Then I’ll sit outside the door,’ I said.
‘You can sit wherever you want. I’m not coming out.’
‘You’ve got to come out.’
‘Why?’
I looked at my hands, which were covered in sticky brown gunk. What was the deal with this fake-tan stuff? I felt sure I was getting streakier by the second, but I decided against telling Clare that in case it meant she kept me waiting even longer deliberately. I wouldn’t put it past her to keep me out of the bathroom until I looked like a freshly creosoted fence. I would have to bite the bullet and apologise.
‘I just wanted to say I’m sorry.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
That didn’t work.
‘I’m really sorry,’ I said again. And again. And again. ‘And I need to wash off the St Tropez.’
‘Ah, there’s the real reason!’
Clare sounded gleeful as she kept the door firmly shut against me.
‘Clare, be fair. I’m sorry anyway. I’m sorry even if you make me stand here with this stuff on all day.’
‘You called me a pathological liar.’
‘You said I was a sap.’
‘You are a sap.’
‘Well, you’re a liar.’
‘I’m only lying to keep everyone happy.’ I heard Clare’s voice catch and couldn’t help but feel empathy for her pain, even though I was the one who had been dumped and she was the loon who’d suggested this stressful solution.
I looked at my hands again. They were going orange, I was sure. This was no time to take the moral high ground.
‘I’m sorry. I was being unfair,’ I said. ‘I know you’ve been trying to help me.’
‘Do you mean it?’
‘Of course I mean it.’
Clare slowly opened the bathroom door and confirmed that she was sorry too. She had already had a shower, I noticed at once.
‘I guess it’s just the pressure of being with each other twenty-four seven,’ I said.
Clare agreed.
‘We haven’t spent so much time together since we were children, and we used to argue all the time then,’ I added.
‘That’s true.’
‘Only you used to pinch me then too. You were horribly violent for a seven-year-old girl . . .’
‘Hang on,’ said Clare. ‘You deserved it. What about the time you rugby-tackled me so that I caught my head on the corner of the television? I’ve still got a scar.’
‘I didn’t rugby-tackle you. I was four months old. Mum put me on the floor. You tripped over me. And if we’re talking about scars . . .’
I only had to gesture towards my knee, which still, despite the fake tan, bore a thin silver line to show where Clare had once hit me with a garden spade when she lost a game of Swingball.
‘You were asking for it. You taunted me with that six-nil win.’
‘You’re my big sister. You were supposed to know better!’
Clare started to shut the door in my face. I couldn’t let that happen. I was still covered in fake tan.
‘This is ridiculous,’ I said. ‘I forgive you for my knee if you’ll forgive me for your head. We’re grown-ups now. And if I don’t get this fake tan off quickly, I’ll end up looking like a conker.’
Clare smirked. ‘That might suit you.’
‘It doesn’t suit me. Let me have a shower and I’ll make you a cup of tea,’ I suggested.
‘Of course.’ Clare accepted my Earl Grey-flavoured olive branch. ‘Can’t get nice tea in Majorca.’
It was a good job we were both ready to apologise. There was, after all, no way out of our situation for now. Clare and I were stuck together until Wednesday at the very earliest – three more nights – unless we wanted to blow our cover and reveal that we had been in the flat all along. And we didn’t want to do that. We had come so far. We only needed to hide out for a few more days before we could ‘return home’ without losing any face at all.
Whatever happened with Callu
m, whether my holiday without him persuaded him that there was more to me than he remembered or not, I did not want him ever to find out that we had faked our holiday. It wasn’t only Callum that I was desperate to keep on deceiving. The girls at the office would have a field day. And if Mum found out that we hadn’t really been to the Med, then she would have our guts for garters. We would never hear the end of it. Never! I could already hear her long-suffering sigh. She would blame me, of course, since to Mum’s mind it just wasn’t possible that her lovely, sensible Clare could have come up with something so stupid. If Mum found out, I would probably have to leave the country for real. Maybe even go into a witness-protection programme. As for Evan . . . if he found out that Clare hadn’t gone to Majorca but had spent five days just two Tube stops away from him, heaven only knew what his reaction would be. Evan was a sweet, kind guy. I think I felt most guilty about the idea of lying to him. What would he do? He might question their upcoming marriage. He would be well within his rights, Clare agreed.
No, as irritated as I was with my beloved sister, I knew we had no choice but to stay put for the sake of her engagement, my relationship, family peace and my reputation at Stockwell Lifts. We swore a vow of silence on the events of this week.
‘We will never reveal our secret,’ said Clare. ‘Not even when one of us dies.’
That thought made me shudder, but we made a solemn pact to keep the secret for ever, sealed with a handshake that involved only our little fingers. We’d developed that special handshake when we were, respectively, seven and nine years old. I was surprised that either of us could remember it, with its complicated twiddles and nods. But we did. It took me right back.
‘Whoever tells smells,’ Clare concluded.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Next morning, for the first time since she had arrived at my place, Clare beat me to the kitchen. I was still half asleep on the sofa when she pressed a mug of tea into my hand.
What I Did On My Holidays Page 12