Sisters

by Prue Leith

  Lorato saw them too, the great pink strings flailing the screen, flying in the wind, beating the car. She screamed and plunged her face into Poppy’s neck. Then immediately jerked her head back and swiveled round to watch the brushes, her eyes wide with terror. She screamed “No. No. Go ’way.”

  Poppy said, “I’ve got to get her out of here” and opened her door. Clutching the child to her front, Poppy ducked under the giant roller, now raping the roof, and ran through a deluge of water and out of the car wash.

  Carrie leaned over and pulled Poppy’s door shut, just as the side rollers descended again for another onslaught on the sides. Through the soap-streaked windscreen she could see her sister, her hair in sodden strings, walking back and forth on the sunny forecourt, rocking Lorato like an infant, one hand over the child’s head, the other round her bum.

  It wasn’t the first time Lorato had freaked at loud noise. Carrie remembered the scene in Hyde Park when a helicopter had come over to land in the grounds of Kensington Palace, and Lorato had cowered, whimpering, between Poppy’s legs. And the time she, Carrie, had been unable to get Lorato past a pneumatic drill making a hole in the pavement. Lorato must have some subliminal memories of war in Mozambique, thought Carrie. Or maybe the noise triggered memories of her father’s death. She watched as Poppy crouched down, set the child on her feet, talked to her.

  As the great roller-brushes were hoisted out of sight, and the noise quieted, Angelina said, “Carrie, did you hear? Lorato spoke.” But Carrie wasn’t listening. She was shuffling across to the driver’s side, and wondering if she should wait for the wax and hot-air dry program, or whether to just drive out and collect Poppy and Lorato.

  Angelina repeated, “Carrie, Lorato said No, No and Go away. In English.”

  This time Carrie heard and she turned to Angelina. “Good Lord. You’re right. She did. Didn’t she?”

  Carrie looked again at Lorato and Poppy. Poppy was now sitting on the low concrete wall that ran round the perimeter of the filling station, and Lorato was standing between her jean-clad legs. Poppy was drying her glasses on a hanky and Lorato was hanging on to Poppy’s shirt as she pressed her face into her stomach.

  Carrie watched as Poppy looked up at the approach of a man in filling-station uniform. His face was anxious, fearing a complaint. Her face was shining with relief, happiness and a drenching.

  *

  Richard was becoming a pain. Once she’d fallen in love with Eduardo, Carrie had dumped him. But she hadn’t told him why.

  For weeks he had telephoned, come round, written e-mails and faxes, even letters. But finally he’d given up. Must have realized, thought Carrie, that the more he pleaded the more I went off him. Poor guy. It would have been easier for him if he’d known there was someone else. Being ditched with nebulous excuses about needing more space must be pretty hurtful.

  But now he’d rumbled the truth, and Carrie was both ashamed of herself for lying to him, and frightened. Who knew what Richard would do? A man scorned might be quite as dangerous as a woman.

  The cat had got out of the bag one day at Eduardo’s office. She’d met Richard on the forecourt as she was coming out and Richard was going in.

  His face brightened at the sight of her. Oh God, thought Carrie, he thinks I’ve been looking for him. She said quickly, “Hi Richard. I thought you were in Manchester.”

  His face clouded. “I was. Just back.” He stood still for a second, confused. Then he said, “Did you want something? Here I mean?” His head jerked at the studio and offices behind her.

  “No. No. Or rather I did. I’ve just come down to collect something from Eduardo for Poppy.”

  Richard frowned, puzzled. And Carrie realized she was carrying nothing except a minuscule handbag on a long leather thong over her shoulder—not much more than a purse. She said, rather too hastily, “A credit card” and patted the bag.

  Richard nodded. He said, “Aren’t Poppy and the children in the country?”

  Oh God, thought Carrie, I’d forgotten that. She said, walking toward her car, “Yes, they are, I’m going down there now.” She fished her car key out of the bag and turned to wave. Richard walked after her. He said, “It’s just that you said you’d come down for something. I thought you meant down from the flat . . .”

  Carrie, out of plausible responses, snapped, “For Christ’s sake, Richard, what is this? The inquisition?” She clicked the electronic key and yanked the driver’s door open with a jerk.

  Richard put out an arm to stop her sliding into the driver’s seat, and said, “Hey Carrie, I’m sorry. What’s the matter? I was only asking . . .”

  “But it’s none of your business, is it?” said Carrie, making an effort to keep her voice down and speaking through locked teeth. Richard dropped his arm at once and stepped back to make way for her to get into the car. She flung herself behind the wheel and shut the door with unnecessary force. She drove off, eyes straight ahead. Richard looked after her, perplexed.

  Two streets away, Carrie stopped the car. She fished out her mobile phone and keyed in Eduardo’s direct line.

  “Eduardo Santolini.”

  Relief flowed like cool balm through Carrie. “Oh darling, I am so glad I’ve got you. I’ve done such a dumb thing.”

  “Oh?” His voice was unruffled, rather distant. “What then? Did you forget something?”

  Carrie dashed at her story about meeting Richard downstairs.

  Eduardo interrupted her, “Calm down, Carrie. I’m sorry, I wasn’t concentrating. Can you start again? You need a credit card? Or Poppy does? But what has that got to do with Richard?”

  Carrie’s voice rose. “Eduardo, please listen. He’ll be in the office by now. Just remember you’ve given me a credit card for Poppy and I’m setting off for Oxfordshire . . .”

  But he interrupted her again, “Oh Richard has just walked in, Carrie, so he can explain . . . Richard, Carrie’s on the phone . . .”

  The fingers of one hand clutched at her scalp as Carrie, torn between shouting to make Eduardo understand and whispering to prevent Richard hearing, hissed into her handset. “No, Eduardo. Don’t talk to Richard. Don’t. Do you understand? I’ve got to explain first.”

  Suddenly there was a change in the quality of Eduardo’s voice. He sounded much clearer, less echoey, and Carrie knew at once he’d been talking to her with the loudspeaker on, and had just turned it off. He said, “Richard’s just walked out again. How odd. Carrie, what’s going on? Is there something between you two again?”

  Carrie saw it all. Eduardo, who still sometimes liked to draw in the old-fashioned way with a pencil and drawing paper on an architect’s drawing table, must have kept his private line on “hands-free”. Which meant Richard had heard everything she said. Of course he’d walked out.

  “Carrie? You still there?”

  Suddenly she felt weary and tearful. She repeated her tale, feeling more foolish every second. Eduardo said, which hurt, that maybe she should stay away from the office. Sure he liked seeing her, but she came more now than when she was with Richard and had a legitimate reason. He also thought she was drama-mongering. He said Richard had probably been as confused as he was. Just forget it, he said.

  But she couldn’t forget it. Eduardo obviously thought she’d created the situation unnecessarily. And it was true. Why had she felt obliged to tell Richard anything? She should have just given him a cheerful wave and left him standing.

  She crouched over the steering wheel, hugging her stomach and rocking in the confined space between wheel and seat-back, her mind spinning from one unpleasant thought to another, buffeting about, trying to find a way out, a solution.

  She wasn’t cut out for adultery: she hated the secrecy, the plotting, the inevitable tangled web. If only she and Eduardo could just vanish together? Or if only Poppy didn’t love him. If only Poppy wasn’t her sister. If only she didn’t love Pop
py.

  She hated what she was doing to everyone. She had hurt Richard more than he deserved. He was a good guy, and he loved her. But did Eduardo love her? He’d seemed so nonchalant about the credit card, as if it was trivial.

  Carrie rummaged for her cigarettes and lit one with shaky hands.

  He doesn’t take me seriously, she thought, anger winning the fight with self-pity. Blast him to hell, I was only dropping off a couple of left-over carrot cakes for his staff. Hardly a crime.

  But she knew it wasn’t true. She’d wanted to see Eduardo, even for a few minutes in the lift while they rode up and down escaping the two floors of glass-walled drawing office. Just to have him torment her with his hand down the back of her jeans, or her chin gripped in his fingers as he kissed her quickly and passionately, and sent her out weak with longing.

  With sudden resolution Carrie straightened up, tossing her hair off her face as she turned the key in the ignition. She could not, she would not, exist forever on the crumbs from Poppy’s table.

  Chapter 9

  Carrie knew she made Eduardo feel young and carefree. There was a new energy about him, a greater willingness to joke or laugh, and she was responsible.

  She took him to all her haunts. At first he’d been reluctant in case they were seen by some friend of his or Poppy’s. But Carrie had pouted and said, “Don’t be wet, Eduardo. If we are seen, so what? I’m allowed to go out with my brother-in-law, aren’t I?”

  He’d replied, sardonically, “Allowed by whom?”

  She’d snapped then, “Oh Eduardo. You know what I mean. We can invent an excuse—my date let me down, and I invited you to fill in . . .”

  “Hardly likely if we are lunching à deux at the Mirabelle . . .”

  Carrie’s eyes glittered at him as she interrupted, “So, I’m reviewing the place for The Dispatch, and you are along as camouflage. Or you are taking me to lunch to discuss your birthday present for Poppy.” She shrugged. “Or your firm wants mine to arrange a party to celebrate the start of the Paddington project . . .”

  “Stop. Stop, Carrie. Good God, your talents at instant deception amaze me.”

  Carrie looked at the ceiling in a pantomime of patience, then said, “I seem to remember you aren’t too unpractised yourself.” She exaggerated Eduardo’s Italian accent to quote: “‘Meet Michelle Ward, an old friend of the family.’ You didn’t seem too concerned about discretion then, did you?”

  “True,” he replied. “And look where it got me.”

  Of course, Carrie had won the argument about going out. Poppy had at last gone back to work, accepting the part of Filumena. She didn’t leave the theater until 10:15, so Eduardo and Carrie had supper together most nights. And sometimes they’d manage a late evening, or—best of all—a whole night, when Eduardo would tell Poppy he’d be out late with clients, or away on business.

  They went to clubs he’d never heard of, and where there was little chance of running into his friends or acquaintances. One night when Eduardo was meant to be in Manchester, they went to Hanover Grand. The bouncer looked Eduardo up and down, wondering, Carrie supposed, what anyone in his forties was doing there. But the bouncer knew Carrie, and must have decided her over-the-hill date looked cool enough in his mustard Armani to be admitted. They danced for hours, sweating and swaying with the crowd, drunk on the beat and the strobing lights.

  The next day Eduardo complained of calf muscles which felt as if he’d climbed a mountain, but Carrie just laughed. She bustled about, clear-eyed and energetic, while he sat, drained and foggy, over strong black coffee.

  She took him to a salsa dive in Kensington High Street. Carrie liked Bar Cuba for its seediness and for the fact that you didn’t need to know anyone. Drinks were cheap and every age, shape and race turned up and danced. The music was too loud to talk even if you’d wanted to, the floor shook to Latino rhythms and the air was thick with sweat.

  As soon as she and Eduardo were in the room, a gray-haired burly guy took Carrie’s hand and led her onto the floor. He danced so well that Carrie felt like a pro, following his every step with ease and enjoying the attention as most of the room stopped to watch them.

  After that she’d danced with Eduardo, who wasn’t bad, but he didn’t seem to enjoy it, so at the next break she left him and danced with a young black guy.

  He was great, so they kept dancing until she felt Eduardo’s hand on her shoulder.

  She turned to him, trying to hear what he was saying, then shrugged her apologies to her partner as Eduardo took her wrist and pulled her out. He’d already collected her jacket from the cloakroom, and he hustled her up the stairs.

  “Christ, Carrie, how can you dance like that with complete strangers? That black guy was practically screwing you.”

  She laughed. “Oh Eduardo, what a party pooper. It’s salsa for Chrissake. That’s how it’s done.”

  There was satisfaction in the thought that he was jealous.

  Sometimes they went to more traditional nightclubs, so Carrie could dress up and show off. Eduardo took her to Annabel’s, and she felt great—being with him in public, in his space. But she noticed that he seemed wary, a bit on edge lest he be caught with her.

  But he said he liked the classy mix of raffish old Etonians and over-fed businessmen, and that she was more beautiful than Annabel’s famous crop of stylish Sloanes. He also said, as he prevented her from slithering to the pavement at 3 a.m., that she got plastered so charmingly.

  Carrie didn’t like the music at Junk, but Eduardo, who was more relaxed in the knowledge that no one he knew would ever darken its doors, seemed to enjoy the tawdry glitz of the place. He liked the half-naked lap-dancers, and the amazingly good-looking women, both staff and customers. Carrie supposed the vulgarity of it appealed because it was so far from his civilized existence.

  There was nothing remotely vulgar about Eduardo’s life with Poppy: the penthouse on the canal was an essay in restrained minimalism; the Oxfordshire house (a mixture of good English antiques and Conran) was equally restrained country living; he bought designer suits and Italian shoes; even his cigarette lighter was an expression of quiet good taste.

  Carrie congratulated herself on providing an antidote to all that.

  She hoped, no she prayed, that it wasn’t just a holiday, a diversion from real life for him. She had to be his real life.

  But she wasn’t sure of him. If he lied to Poppy, might not he lie to her? And then she thought how often she’d lied to her lovers, and winced. But that was before she fell in love. It must be the same for Eduardo.

  *

  On a rainy May evening Eduardo was again in Carrie’s house. He was sitting at the kitchen table in his shirt-sleeves, a packet of Rizla cigarette papers, his old Zippo lighter, a saucer and pack of Marlboro in front of him. He was laughing. Carrie thought, not for the first time, how good his teeth were. Not a filling in sight, and bright white. She said, smiling in response to his laughter, “So what’s so funny?”

  “You. You are. No one else in the world would conceal marihuana between the dried thyme and the oregano.”

  “Why not?” She grinned, pleased with herself. She liked surprising Eduardo. “Best place for it. It’s a dried herb after all.” She reached the jar down from a row on the dresser and put it down in front of Eduardo.

  Eduardo picked it up, read the label, BASIL, unscrewed the top, and smelled the contents.

  “But won’t someone think it is basil and put it in the pesto or something?”

  Carrie chuckled. “Might make interesting pesto.” Then she shook her head. “No, Lulu knows what it is. And the junior cooks don’t get to invent recipes. They follow instructions. Besides, dried basil is disgusting. We’d never use it.”

  She moved behind him, and put her arms round his shoulders, dropping her head to smell his hair and mumble his neck with her lips. Over his shoulder she watched him t
ear open a cigarette and loosen the contents. She said, “Don’t put in too much tobacco. I’m trying to quit.”

  “Stop smoking?”

  “Uh huh,” she said, then, “Well, stop smoking tobacco.”

  Eduardo turned his face to brush her warm bare arm with his mouth. He said, “When I was as young and wicked as you, we used to smoke hash in a pipe, without tobacco.”

  Carrie came round and sat at the table, close to Eduardo, but diagonally across from him. She answered, “Yeah. But that’s such a hassle. Keeps going out.” Then she said, “What do you mean, “used to” When did you last have any?”

  He lifted an eyebrow at her. “Last night, remember?”

  “No, I mean, before me. Don’t you and Poppy ever have a joint?”

  She didn’t like mentioning Poppy. But she kept doing it. Poppy kept getting into the conversation.

  “Not any more. We used to, years ago. But Poppy stopped when she was pregnant with Angelina. She thinks it messes up your brain.”

  Carrie leaned back in her chair, and wound her bare feet round Eduardo’s ankles, sticking her toes up inside his trouser legs to rub his hairy calves. She said, “She’s right. But what the hell?”

  He wasn’t managing too well: he’d overfill the cigarette paper and then get tobacco on his tongue as he tried to lick the edge, or he’d put the mix in unevenly and the filter tip would fall out of the loose and lumpy spliffs. Carrie let him struggle a bit. It amused her that there was something he did badly—he did most things so competently. And she liked watching his hands. His fingers were big and brown, with dark hairs in little patches on the back, between the joints. But pretty soon she couldn’t stand it, and took the gear from him, saying, “You clumsy great lump. Let me.”

  She unraveled his half-made cigarette and tipped the contents into the saucer, then started again. She cupped a new paper lengthwise, dropped the filter tip from the Marlboro into one end, carefully sprinkled shredded pot and tobacco along the length of the joint, tamped it down, rolled the cigarette up, licked the paper’s edge, sealed it, and twisted the end. Then she repeated the process and made another.