by Jane Fallon
When Caroline and Abigail were fourteen and eleven they took a vow that they would be each other’s best friend forever. They were too squeamish to swear in blood so they used tomato ketchup instead, smearing it on their thumbs and rubbing them together, laughing at the gory mess they’d created. Abigail felt safe and secure knowing her big sister had her back, and about a week later, when a boy in Caroline’s class who Abigail had liked for ages asked her if she wanted to meet him in town on Saturday morning, Caroline had proved her worth as protector.
Gary Parsons had a haircut like Ian McCulloch from Echo & the Bunnymen and Abigail had often seen him smoking in the alleyway beside the school and thought he looked very big and very clever. She’d taken to hanging around outside Caroline’s classroom at break time (cue much shouting of ‘Why are you hanging around me all the time? It’s embarrassing’) in the hopes of reaching the dizzy heights of him one day saying ‘all right?’ and her being able to say ‘yeah, you?’ in a cool and insouciant way. She’d been practising. Anyway, to cut a long story short, they had all righted and yeah, you’d? successfully a couple of times and then one day they exchanged a couple of other scintillating words and then Gary had dropped his bombshell of asking Abigail to meet him upstairs at McDonald’s in town at eleven o’clock that Saturday.
It was her first date. She was nearly faint with excitement. She couldn’t wait to tell Caroline. Caroline got asked on dates all the time. Sometimes she went, sometimes she didn’t. She didn’t seem that bothered. But she’d mirrored Abigail’s excitement when Abigail blurted out her news, she’d indulged her in her trauma about what to wear and how to do her hair. She’d coached her in the art of captivating conversation based on her observations in class of what Gary’s interests might be.
Then, on the Thursday, just as Abigail’s excitement peaked, with the watershed that was the coming weekend – the transitional step between her childhood and the fabulous, glamorous life of an adult – set firmly in her sights, Caroline had come home from school, taken Abigail up to her tiny attic bedroom and told her that Gary was not the boy Abigail thought he was. He had betrayed her already without ever really giving their love a chance.
Caroline had found herself sitting next to him in double Biology and somewhere along the life cycle of the frog, between amplexus and the metamorphosis, he had admitted to her that it was she, Caroline, that he was really interested in and not Abigail. In fact, Caroline had said in a half whisper to emphasize how awful she felt for having to tell Abigail this, he had said that he had only got friendly with Abigail in the first place to get closer to Caroline. Then he’d asked Caroline to meet him in McDonald’s and to tell Abigail not to bother, Caroline told Abigail, a look of horror mixed with concern clouding her face. Could she believe that? The cheek of it. Caroline had turned him down, obviously, telling him exactly what she thought of him. He wasn’t good enough for either of them she’d said, so loudly that the teacher had asked her what was going on.
Abigail had cried from the sheer shame of it and Caroline had mopped up her tears and comforted her with the fact that it was far better for Abigail to have found out what kind of person Gary really was now rather than later. Rather pitifully, devastated though she was, Abigail had still wondered whether she should turn up on Saturday as arranged. That maybe she and Gary could pretend nothing had happened and he might still agree to become her boyfriend. But Caroline had talked her out of it. She wouldn’t let her sister show herself up like that, she’d said. Abigail had to keep her dignity and not go chasing a boy who was clearly far more interested in Caroline’s looks than anything Abigail’s own personality might have to offer. There must be a boy out there somewhere who valued brains over beauty and Abigail should wait for him to come along and announce himself. Despite her misery Abigail had known that she was lucky to have an older sister looking out for her.
‘The girls are at their friends’,’ Cleo says as she leads Abi up several flights of stairs. Abi nods, panting. She’s out of breath by floor two and she knows there are still more to come. It’s beyond her why you would ever need to go to the gym if you lived in a house this size. Just going up to bed at night would constitute a workout.
‘They should be home any minute. They’re dying to see you.’
Abi finds it hard to imagine that the arrival of an aunt they hardly know is going to be the highlight in the girls’ social calendar. The girls, by the way, are Tara and Megan. Ten and seven. The family Christmas newsletter that always accompanies the card generally makes it sound as if the girls are accomplished in ways you couldn’t even begin to imagine – tennis, dancing, languages, polo, international diplomacy, you name it. No doubt they’re also well versed in etiquette and could ace an exam in their sleep on which forks go where and which way to pass the port.
Abi is intimidated by the very idea of them. She hasn’t seen either girl in the flesh for a couple of years – apart from in the pictures on the aforementioned Christmas cards, which are always happy family portraits like the ones the queen sends out, only with less tartan. They had still seemed like normal little girls then, a bit overconfident, but when has that ever been a bad thing? Now their list of skills mastered and engagements attended threatens to eclipse the curriculum vitae of Abi’s entire thirty-eight-year life. To put it bluntly, they scare her.
Abi follows Cleo into a very pretty top-floor bedroom with its own bathroom next door, taking in her sister’s running commentary as they go. Mostly it seems to be about where things are from with big hints as to how much they cost. The important stuff. Even four floors above the ground, the opulence is staggering. There’s art on the walls and adorning little side tables – works of art in themselves – by people whose signatures Abi recognizes. Not old masters, not twenties of millions of pounds’ worth, but the Stella Vines and the Grayson Perrys. There’s a small scene of carnage in a Perspex box on the landing that she could swear is a Jake and Dinos Chapman. Art – modern art in particular – is a passion of Abi’s, but one which she can only indulge by traipsing up to London to the Saatchi Gallery or Tate Modern a couple of times a year. It has never crossed her mind that you could own any of it, let alone display it in what she assumes is the second-tier guest bedroom.
The bath has claw feet and stands in the middle of the room under a huge skylight. There are candles everywhere and little bottles of body lotion and shower gel like you would get in a smart hotel except that these look as if they have been bought and paid for rather than sneaked out in the bottom of a suitcase. To Abi the idea that her sister lives like this is awe-inspiring to say the least. And the fact that she can be so impressed by someone she’s related to actually buying small matching containers of toiletries, she thinks, says everything anyone needs to know about how her life has turned out.
Cleo leaves her to ‘settle in’. ‘You must treat this as your house,’ she says as she heads downstairs. Abi thinks of her tiny two-up, two-down little cottage and the even tinier flat she’s about to move into and has to stop herself from saying ‘Why? Does your ceiling leak too?’ or asking whether they should keep a plunger handy for when the toilet blocks. Both sisters are all too aware of the difference between their circumstances, there’s no point trying to make an issue of it.
Abi suddenly remembers that she has forgotten to mention the leak to her purchasers. Oh well, they must have had a survey done. She doesn’t feel it was her duty to take them round the place pointing out its flaws. She’s not even sure if they are moving in straight away or having work done first because, to be honest, the house desperately needs some TLC. If the leak in the kitchen ceiling bothers them, then she can’t imagine what they’ll make of the damp patch under the stairs or the crack in the bathroom wall. Abi, on the other hand, after fifteen years of watching her home crumble around her ears – with a few feeble attempts to stem the tide with self-taught DIY – can hardly wait to move into somewhere that has a management company you can phone and make demands of when things go wrong.
Phoebe has only met her famous aunt a handful of times in her life and is therefore able to be far more forgiving than her mother. In fact, just thinking about the fact that her sister is downstairs now makes Abi’s stomach lurch. She’s about to spend more time with Caroline – Cleo, she must remember to call her Cleo, she hates Caroline – than she has spent with her since Abi was thirteen years old, since Abi was Abigail. She can’t imagine how they are going to be with each other, what they’re going to talk about. She wishes her daughter was here to back her up. Funny, confident, couldn’t-care-less Phoebe. Someone to have a debrief with in the evenings and a laugh about Cleo’s over-the-topness. She feels out of her depth, doggy-paddling nervously, head only just above water. She’s tempted to pack everything up again, rent a flat, move into a B ’n’ B, anything. She isn’t sure she’s ready to reconnect with her sister just yet.
She’s thinking that maybe she’ll just have a soak in the big roll-top bath before she goes when she hears voices downstairs that tell her that her nieces are home. She has no choice but to go down and say hello. They’re only children, nothing to be scared of.
Standing in the living room she finds two little girls who nearly make her heart skip a beat. In the two years since she has seen them last Tara has shot up and slimmed down into a carbon copy of her mother at the same age. She has the same rich dark-brown/black poker-straight hair, the same long skinny legs, the same green cat’s eyes. Next to her, Megan looks short even for her age, plump and nondescript. Her hair neither blonde nor brown, but somewhere muddy in between, her eyes, looking at Abi warily from beneath her fringe, are a hazelnut brown. She’s the image of her aunt at the same age.
Both girls smile politely.
‘Hey, girls,’ Abi says. ‘Remember me?’
‘Hi, Auntie Abigail,’ they reply in unison.
They’re dressed near identically in what look suspiciously like Juicy Couture tracksuit bottoms and Ugg boots. Just because Abi can’t afford to buy designer clothes doesn’t mean she doesn’t recognize them when she sees them. She likes to read all the magazines at work. It’s one of the perks of working in a library. When she can wrestle them away from the homeless clientele who like to stay all day and read everything, that is. It never ceases to amaze her how long a fifty-five-year-old down-and-out with piss stains on his trousers and wearing Special Brew cologne can spend studying Grazia.
Megan fiddles uncomfortably with the hem of her T-shirt, tugging it down to try to cover her tummy. Abi flashes her a smile and Megan looks at the floor, mortified to be caught out.
‘Do you want to see my room?’ Tara says, and Abi says yes, of course, she’d love to, even though she finds the prospect alarming, but then Cleo interrupts. ‘Let Auntie Abigail have a rest first – she’s only been here five minutes.’
‘I’ll come up later,’ Abi calls to a sulky-looking Tara as she stomps off into the hall. Megan follows. Abi assumes Megan follows Tara everywhere, caught up in the thrall of big-sister hero worship. She wants to tell her not to, that big sisters don’t always turn out to be what you think they are, but she knows it would be pointless. Megan will have to learn the hard way.
An image flashes into her mind. Herself at Megan’s age, crying because her first-communion dress – Caroline’s cast off from a few years before – was too tight and too flouncy and too old-fashioned and she felt stupid and self-conscious, mutton dressed up as lampshade.
‘Take it off a minute,’ Caroline had said.
‘Mum said she has to pin the hem up,’ Abigail sniffled. She had tried to protest to Philippa that something that had once fitted her sister was unlikely to fit her, but Philippa was having none of it.
‘Just do it,’ Caroline insisted. Abigail did what she was told and then sat on the bed shivering in her vest and pants.
Caroline had laid the dress out on the floor. Then she had walked over to her bedside table and picked up the glass of Ribena that was sitting there. Abigail watched open-mouthed, knowing and not knowing what was about to happen. Unable to stop it. Not wanting to.
‘Whoops,’ Caroline said, laughing as she threw the contents of the glass over the dress. A reddish purple stain oozed its way across the bodice and down onto the frilly skirt. ‘Now she’ll have to buy you a new one.’
‘She’ll kill me,’ Abigail had said. She felt sick but she felt triumphant too. Whatever happened there was no way she was going to have to wear the dress now.
Five minutes later, once she was sure that the blackcurrants had well and truly worked their way into the fabric, Caroline had called their mother. Philippa, seeing the dress, flushed the same violet shade as the ugly stain.
‘What on earth …?’
Abigail had looked at the floor, gulped noisily. Said nothing.
‘I’m so sorry, Mummy. I didn’t mean to. I was just playing and then …’ Caroline was looking at her mother with Bambi eyes. Wet tears were working their way down her cheeks. ‘It was all my fault.’
Philippa’s time bomb had defused almost immediately. ‘Maybe it’ll come out,’ she’d said, and taken the dress off to the bathroom to soak. Caroline, behind her mother’s back, had winked at her sister, tears forgotten, and at that moment Abigail would have done anything for her. It didn’t matter that in the end their mother had declared the dress fit for church and that Abigail had ended up slightly worse off, dressed in the offending frills and trying to ignore the faint pink hue that made them stand out even more against the other girls’ virgin white. Caroline had risked life and limb and probably several weeks’ pocket money in an effort to make her happy. She couldn’t have cared less about the dress any more.
‘I just got a new Ralph Lauren duvet cover,’ Tara shouts as the girls head up the stairs. ‘It’s totally cool.’
Abi looks at Cleo who gives her a slightly apologetic eye roll.
‘She’s her mother’s daughter, what can I say?’
Well, you could say no you can’t have bed linen made by Ralph Lauren when you’re ten years old – it’s a total waste of money, Abi thinks, but of course she doesn’t say it. Instead she opts for, ‘Where’s Jonty?’
‘Work,’ Cleo says. ‘He’ll be home about six.’
‘Oh.’ Abi can’t think of anything else to say so she just sits on one of the cream leather Barcelona chairs and looks out of the patio doors. ‘Nice garden.’
‘Thanks,’ Cleo says, and then she sits down in the other chair across the room and settles back, in for the long haul. ‘It really is good to see you.’
Abi makes herself mirror Cleo’s smile, hoping it’s genuine, knowing the odds are against it. ‘You too.’
She reminds herself why she is here. Now that Phoebe is all grown up Abi needs the rest of her family, however flawed they may be. And there aren’t many of them to go round. She’s sure there must be uncles and aunts, cousins somewhere. Neither their mum nor dad had been an only child. But Abi has never really got to know them. She can hardly turn up on their doorsteps now and throw herself into their arms and expect them to love her unconditionally. Besides, there’s something about a relationship with someone you grew up with – shared a bedroom with, in fact, until they were twelve and you were nine �
� that you can’t recreate with anyone else. Someone who knew you before you became whatever you became, who remembers the raw material. Someone who looked out for you, protected you, whatever they later turned into. She knows it’s important; she just isn’t sure why.
4
Abi stares vacantly out of the window while Cleo fetches two vast glasses of a red wine that Abi’s sure must have cost a fortune but that tastes like chalk dust. She noticed that her own champagne went straight in the cupboard after Cleo had had a cursory glance at the label. She isn’t bothered. She doesn’t like champagne that much anyway. She only bought it because she assumed that it would be Cleo and Jonty’s drink of choice, although now she realizes they probably only ever drink the really expensive stuff. She’s not keen on red wine either. She’d rather have an icy cold glass of Pinot Grigio any day. Still, needs must, so she swigs it back and tries not to dwell on how foul she thinks it is. While they make small talk, Abi tries to remember the last time they did this, just chatted, the two of them, like normal siblings. And then it comes to her. Their mum’s funeral. While all the friends and relations were eating pizza slices and chicken legs downstairs, Abi and Cleo sat in Abi’s old bedroom and reminisced, not just about their memories of Philippa but about when they were little and growing up in the house. Funny how funerals will do that to you; it’s as if they open the gate a fraction to let out all your remembrances of the person who’s died, but then the flood takes over and everything else comes cascading behind: having tea with Grandma before tap class on a Wednesday, hanging around the park trying to pretend they were ignoring the boys on a Saturday afternoon, Cleo still very much Caroline languishing in bed with chicken pox and crying because she thought her face might be disfigured by the spots. Actually, maybe Abi should have realized then that Caroline’s looks meant an awful lot to her.
She remembers being touched that it was all still in there somewhere. Cleo hadn’t completely erased her family history from her thoughts. Her official story of her upbringing had been somewhat eroded over the years through misquotation and embellishment both by her and by journalists too lazy or uninterested to check the facts. Just being an average girl from an average family clearly hadn’t been exciting enough for the papers so Cleo had been edged closer and closer to coming from poverty and lack of a future until her home life had started to sound like something out of Dickens. It used to drive Philippa to distraction. She’d spent so long bragging to her friends that her oldest daughter was a top model, that even though she was calling herself Cleo she really was our Caroline, so every time an article came out, chronicling Cleo’s rise to fame from almost Third World deprivation to glory, she would die a thousand mortified deaths at the thought of those same friends reading it. She used to beg Cleo to put it right next time she did an interview, but, Abi has always believed, Cleo had secretly liked the street credibility she thought it brought her. So it had been good to know that she still remembered the fun they had had as children and the way that their mum and dad had worked hard to make sure they’d had everything they wanted.