Bad Sisters

by Chance, Rebecca

  ‘It wasn’t supposed to be a show about food you eat every day,’ Devon mumbled eventually, looking down at the articles from The Times and the Guardian which were focussed, negatively, on the nutritional value of such suggested treats as Brie and redcurrant toasties and Baileys-and-cream cocktails. The Guardian journalist had even totted up the calorie count of some of the recipes, to staggering results.

  ‘No, absolutely not,’ Bettany agreed quickly. ‘They’re really misunderstanding the point of it.’

  ‘I mean, it wasn’t called Devon’s Daily Diet,’ Devon said, warming to her theme now she had Bettany’s support. ‘You don’t eat pasta carbonara with bacon and cream every day!’

  ‘No, of course you don’t,’ Bettany echoed, not that she was Devon’s most unbiased supporter; her neck was on the line if the series was considered a disaster.

  Rory Shipman, the head of the independent TV company that produced Devon’s shows for the BBC, banged his fist down on the table, making everyone jump. He was a large, square-built Yorkshireman, pragmatic and blunt, and the clippings nearest to him scattered away with the impact of his blow. Devon and Bettany looked over at him apprehensively.

  ‘Right,’ he said bluntly. ‘If no one else will say it, I will. Devon, you look like you do eat sodding pasta carbonara every day! You’ve piled on the pounds since the last series! When you showed up for filming, there were a lot of comments, OK? I didn’t have a go at you at the time, because I thought the audience might like it. You know, woman on TV who looks like woman on the street, that kind of thing. Average woman in the UK’s what, a size 16?’

  One of his researchers bobbed her head in swift confirmation.

  ‘So here we go, lots of birds with one stone, show we’re not sizeist, bung on one of our stars who happens to have porked up a bit, get a bit of relief from all the overweight women out there who keep complaining that we’re not representing them on TV . . .’ He rolled his eyes. ‘As if TV’s there to represent people! Stupid arses!’

  All the researchers tittered dutifully at this.

  ‘But you know what?’ Rory banged his fist down on the table again. ‘It hasn’t – bloody – worked! It’s a sodding disaster! All those fat heifers out there say they want to see themselves on TV, and when they do, they don’t – bloody – like it!’ He looked around the table at his audience, none of whom would have dared to say a word to interrupt him. ‘They might keep watching the show to poke fun at you, Devon, but no one’s buying the damn book! What does that tell you?’

  Devon opened her mouth to answer him, but no words would come out.

  ‘They’ll watch you to have a laugh,’ Rory continued, ‘but they won’t shell out their hard-earned dosh to buy a book with recipes that are going to make them as fat as you! That’s the elephant in the room!’

  Devon and Bettany gasped in horror; even the researchers cringed, wide-eyed, at the spectacle of Rory pointing at Devon and using the word ‘elephant’.

  ‘Rory!’ Bettany said feebly, torn between sucking up to him and defending her star.

  ‘What?’ he snapped. ‘It’s no more than the truth!’

  ‘I’m not fat!’ Devon said in a very small voice.

  Rory rounded on her like a tiger who had been just toying with its prey up till now. ‘On TV, you are,’ he said straightforwardly. ‘And you’re not supposed to be fat. You’re supposed to be sexy, for fuck’s sake. This isn’t Two Fat Ladies, or that porky bloke on Masterchef. You’re supposed to be the girl men want to fuck and women want to be! That’s what we’ve sold you as! It’s not like you’re even a proper cook!’

  If Devon’s weight had been the first elephant in the room, this was the second. It was perfectly well known at the production company and Devon’s publishers that most of the recipes didn’t originate from her, but from the team of researchers sitting around the table. Devon was a truly gifted presenter, not just a pretty face that they put in front of the cameras and told what to say; she had a real knack for taking a basic concept and putting her own spin on it, lacing a creamy Brie sandwich with fresh sharp redcurrants, adding mint chocolate swirls to a Baileys cocktail, ideas that made a viewer genuinely excited to try them out. In her most creative moments, she’d been responsible for supermarkets selling out of ingredients the day after she’d been on TV, talking through a recipe, selling it with the charm and charisma that had made her a star almost overnight.

  ‘I am a cook!’ Devon said, outraged. ‘I cook all the time!’

  ‘Devon . . .’ Rory started.

  ‘No!’ she said furiously. ‘OK, I may not have been much of a cook when I started out, but I’ve been doing this for years now! I’m not saying I could walk into a restaurant and do a dinner service, but I do cook, and I come up with tons of good ideas!’

  ‘Icing on the cake,’ Rory said. ‘You don’t bake the bloody cake.’

  ‘I can!’

  ‘You fucking eat the bloody cake, by the looks of you!’ he said. ‘And if you don’t lose the weight you’ve put on, we won’t be commissioning you again, Devon. No one will. You’re getting like the before picture in a weight-loss ad!’

  It was like being slapped across the face – in front of a group of people who, before this awful meeting, had done nothing but crawl to Devon, telling her how wonderful she was. Total humiliation. And the worst part was that, years ago, Devon had actually had a brief affair with Rory. He’d been the producer who spotted her on Wake up UK and decided to give her a cooking show. It hadn’t been a casting-couch situation – Rory hadn’t made it a condition that she sleep with him – but, dazzled with excitement, Devon had done it anyway. The sex hadn’t been anything memorable, and nor had Rory’s pink, freckled, slightly podgy body, which looked a lot less impressive out of his smart business suits.

  He’d talked dirty, she remembered bitterly. Told her how beautiful she was. Said he couldn’t believe he was getting to do it with her, to be exactly where so many men wanted to be. He hadn’t even lasted that long, too carried away with excitement at getting to see Devon McKenna naked. It had fizzled out quite soon – just like him in bed, she thought meanly – after the initial buzz had worn off. When the sex wasn’t that great, that was what happened. There hadn’t been any bad aftertaste. Rory was all business, and it had been a mutual, unspoken decision to let things tail off.

  But now, looking at him, Devon felt her blood boil. He’s put on weight, too, she thought savagely, and he wasn’t exactly skinny to begin with. All those expense account lunches and dinners – I can tell he’s got a paunch under that posh suit he’s wearing. Bastard! How dare he call me fat!

  She stood up, pushing back her chair, all eyes in the room riveted to her. ‘I know I need to lose some weight,’ she said bravely. ‘I’ll go on a diet.’

  Every single person there sagged visibly with relief. Devon was a high-earning brand, and their careers were all closely tied to hers; if she could pull herself out of this downward spiral, diet herself back into the size 12 Devon the nation loved . . .

  ‘And,’ she said, a martial light in her eyes, ‘I’m going to go on 1-2-3 Cook. They’ve been asking me for years, and I never did it, because all you lot told me not to! Well, I can bloody cook, and I’ll show you I can!’

  It would have been comical, the way her audience’s faces gaped in horror – from happiness to tragedy in a few seconds – if their expressions hadn’t demonstrated all too clearly how little faith they had in her cooking skills.

  ‘Devon!’ blurted out the previously loyal Bettany. ‘The reason we didn’t want you to do it is . . . well . . .’

  She glanced swiftly round the table, hoping someone else would step in. No one did, not even Rory; but he gave her a sharp nod of assent, almost a command to continue.

  ‘1-2-3 Cook is live,’ Bettany went on, her voice wavering. ‘In real time. You only have half an hour to make a dish. And it’s in front of a studio audience. There are cameras everywhere. It’s really only for professional chefs – I me
an, people who’ve worked in kitchens a lot, who do cooking demonstrations – you know we’ve always steered you away from those big live shows at Birmingham and Earl’s Court, it’s not the best use of your talents—’

  ‘This is exactly what I need to do!’ Devon interrupted imperiously. ‘I’m going to go on one of those crash protein-shake diets, and in a month I’ll have lost pounds and pounds, and then I’ll go on 1-2-3 Cook and everyone will see that I’ve lost weight and that I can cook!’

  She drew herself up to her full height, looking majestic and imposing.

  ‘It’ll turn everything around,’ she proclaimed. ‘So fuck you, Rory!’ She tossed her hair back dramatically and turned on her heels.

  ‘Oh no, wait,’ she said, looking over her shoulder with perfect dramatic timing. ‘I already did.’

  She stormed out of the conference room, bosoms heaving, her hair bouncing dramatically on her shoulders, the people seated on her side of the table squeezing in frantically to let her pass. The door slammed shut behind her, and an even deeper silence fell than the one that had hung like a pall at the start of the meeting; the researchers hardly even dared to breathe, for fear of calling attention to themselves.

  ‘Oh, bugger,’ Rory eventually said, summing up perfectly what everyone was thinking. ‘We’re totally and utterly fucked.’

  Devon fumed all the way home in the taxi. Shepherd’s Bush to Mayfair was a long ride in bad traffic, but the forty minutes it took to chug along the side of Hyde Park didn’t calm her down at all; her mobile kept ringing, Bettany desperately trying to get in touch with her.

  I’m not answering her, Devon thought furiously, sitting there as the phone rang and rang, letting the calls go to voicemail, one after the other. She’s just going to be totally unsupportive, like she was in the meeting. The cabbie glanced in the rear-view mirror the first few times, wondering why she wasn’t answering her phone, but at the sight of Devon’s furious face, he sensibly avoided making a comment, choosing to slide shut the Plexiglass panel between them and turn up his radio instead.

  Every time the phone rang, Devon looked at the little screen, hoping it was Rory calling her to apologize, tell her he was sorry for the awful insults he’d thrown at her. If Rory rang, that would mean he’d had second thoughts; that he valued her as talent he still wanted to work with. The fact that he was remaining resolutely silent after her diva-esque exit from the meeting spoke volumes. He was washing his hands of her. He wouldn’t commission any more Devon McKenna cookery series.

  Her career was going down the toilet – unless she managed to turn it around on her own.

  All they did was criticize me! Devon thought, sizzling with anger. No one offered one constructive suggestion about how we could sort this out! I was the one who said I’d do a crash diet! I was the one who offered to go on 1-2-3 Cook. They shot down my ideas, but did they bloody come up with anything else that would work? No, they bloody didn’t! Useless bastards – they’ve made a shitload of money out of me, and now they’re just sitting back and watching me drown without even chucking me a lifejacket!

  She knew she still had a great deal of goodwill from the public. For everyone who mocked her weight, there’d be plenty of supporters, women who sympathized because they were struggling hard to keep slim themselves and knew how difficult it was. If she could lose the extra pounds, get back to where she’d been before, it would be a triumph. Devon had never been thin: no one would expect her to put out an exercise video, like soap opera stars or reality TV would-be celebrities clinging to their last few seconds of fame. She wouldn’t have to be photographed working out in a public park with her trainer, or standing on her doorstep taking delivery of a PowerPlate machine, dressed in workout gear to show how keen she was to get herself into shape.

  No, she’d just have to slim back to a voluptuous size 12, diet the muffin top down from the waistband of her jeans, and the Devon McKenna brand would be stronger than ever.

  Look at the singers and actors who go into rehab and make amazing comebacks afterwards! Devon told herself. And no publicity is bad publicity, surely . . .

  The cab was pulling to a stop outside the Green Street house. Devon glanced down past the area steps, to the safety-barred windows of the basement flat in which Deeley was ensconced. She sighed. Having Deeley downstairs was stirring up such a confusing mixture of feelings in Devon. She was realizing how much she had missed her little sister. They’d shared a room for their whole childhood: squabbled, made up, shared confidences and crushes, helped each other stay brave through all the turbulence of their mother’s drug abuse, and crawled into bed with each other many nights, especially after Bill’s death, when both of them had had awful nightmares for years afterwards.

  And then I finished school and shot off to London, and I was so busy working I barely even had time to talk to Deeley on the phone. And when she came down to London too, we didn’t see much of each other. Maxie said to let her go her own way, that she needed to grow up and find her feet.

  When Nicky had whisked Deeley off to LA, Maxie had said that it was the best thing that could possibly happen; she had even discouraged Devon from visiting Deeley. Maxie had assumed that Deeley would stay in LA forever, because why would anyone leave California for rainy old London? She’ll meet some rich man over there and marry him, Maxie had said. She’ll never come back. And it’s better that way. Deeley needs to forget all about us. All about Bill. Because Deeley had that stupid little girl crush on him; she always felt bad about what happened. And the one thing that could bring us down is if Deeley starts talking about it to someone.

  Sadly, Devon had agreed with Maxie. Though when don’t I? Devon thought now. When do I ever do anything Maxie disapproves of?

  She sighed again. But Maxie’s always right. She warned me that Deeley can’t keep her mouth shut, and look what happened with that magazine article!

  Anger rose up in Devon, anger and an even more powerful sense of betrayal. Deeley had been unforgivably careless, had chattered away to a journalist and skimmed the edges of the McKenna sisters’ deadly secret. Maxie and Devon had tried so hard for all those years to take care of little, sweet-faced, vulnerable Deeley, and look how she’d rewarded them: by proving that Maxie was right, that Deeley was a total loose cannon, not safe anywhere near the UK press.

  Oh, Deeley . . . Devon felt horribly torn. Between Maxie and Deeley. Between her memories of curling up on a narrow single bed with her little sister, both of them crying quietly, overwhelmed by the mess and insecurity of their lives, clinging to each other, drawing comfort from the warmth of another body, from the familiar smell and feel of their sister; and the knowledge that, so recently, Deeley had totally messed up. She hadn’t been in the UK for a week before she’d started talking to journalists and putting everything her older sisters had worked so hard for into terrible jeopardy.

  Part of Devon wanted to go down the area steps right now, to find Deeley and hug her hard, to sit down on the sofa, holding each other’s hands, and catch up on everything that had been going on in their lives for the years that they hadn’t been in contact. To confide in Deeley about what had just happened with her awful meeting, about her need to diet, about the way that she and Matt just seemed to keep going past each other, about her underlying fear that Matt and she weren’t actually that compatible . . .

  And part of her was afraid that Maxie, as usual, was absolutely right. That Deeley wasn’t a safe confidante, that she simply couldn’t be trusted, and that it would have been much better for both of them if she’d stayed permanently in LA.

  ‘Um – miss?’ The cabbie was looking at her in the rear-view mirror. ‘The meter’s still running. You getting out or what?’

  ‘Oh! Yes!’ Devon gathered her coat and bag and stepped out, settling up the fare. She hesitated for a moment, still wondering whether she should see if Deeley was in. And just then, the front door swung open. Matt was standing on the doorstep, having seen the cab draw up outside the house.


  ‘Everything OK?’ Matt bounded down the short flight of stairs. ‘I didn’t expect you back this early . . .’

  He trailed off as he saw the expression on Devon’s face: if she’d been in a comic, the graphic artist would have drawn thunderclouds clustering round her head. Without saying a word, she strode past him, heading up the stairs and into the house.

  Where she stopped dead at the sight in front of her. A waist-high silver champagne cooler stood in the centre of the black-and-white tiled hall, two lead-crystal champagne flutes on a small circular table beside it.

  I didn’t even know we had a cooler like that, she thought, dazed, as she took in the rest of the new decorations: a trail of red roses leading up the wide circular staircase, the bright crimson blooms standing out beautifully against the cream of the stair carpet, like big drops of blood. Two-thirds of the way up the stairs lay a huge bunch of roses, next to a basket which was spilling over with scarlet, velvety rose petals.

  ‘I thought I had a good hour or so at least,’ Matt said apologetically, closing the front door behind him. ‘I saw you coming from up there,’ he gestured to the long window set into the stair wall, which gave onto Green Street, ‘and shot down to welcome you – but maybe I should’ve kept going and finished the job – I was going to do a whole line of red roses, all the way upstairs and into the bedroom, and scatter the petals all over the bed – you know, like in a film . . .’

  He looked anxiously at his wife.

  ‘Is everything OK?’ he asked nervously.

  ‘No,’ Devon snapped, all the frustration and humiliation from her abortive meeting, and the tangle of confusion that surrounded her relationship with her younger sister, spilling out on her poor husband. ‘No, it isn’t.’

  She grabbed the bottle of champagne out of the cooler, sending cubes of ice clattering to the tiled floor like rough chunks of glass, scattering to the far corners of the hallway. The foil covering the cork had already, thoughtfully, been removed by Matt; she twisted off the wire in one swift, practised movement, throwing it to the floor, and eased the cork out with her thumbs with a quiet pop. It followed the wire, as she leaned over to the table and filled one of the glasses so impatiently with Veuve Cliquot that bubbles spilled all down the side, flooding onto the steel top of the table.