The Ugly Sister

by Jane Fallon

  ‘It’d be lovely to have the company, actually,’ she says, and she sounds like she means it so Abi agrees, promising to pick up a bottle of wine on the way. Stella tells her not to eat before she gets there so that they can order a delivery from You Me Sushi on the Marylebone Road. Frankly that couldn’t suit Abi better (both the not having to eat dinner at home and the fact that Stella is suggesting sushi, her favourite food in the world) so she makes a note of the address and promises to be there by seven. Coward that she is, she has a shower and gets ready and only stops by the kitchen on her way out of the front door to tell Jon and the girls that she’s out again for the evening. It suits her story, obviously, to have him believe she is seeing Richard, so she doesn’t mention where she’s really going.

  ‘You’re never here any more,’ Megan whines, and Jon tells her to leave Auntie Abi alone – she’s entitled to have some fun after spending all day with you. Abi hugs both girls and promises them all kinds of adventures next week. As soon as Cleo gets back she is intending to announce the demise of her relationship, if anything just so she can have a few nights in. Once that farce is over with, she fully intends to devote all her time to her nieces again.

  ‘Have a good time,’ Jon says, smiling although it looks like it hurts.

  She feels like a complete bitch.

  Stella’s flat is in Marylebone – a twenty-minute walk across Regent’s Park – in a large, probably Edwardian, redbrick mansion block that stretches along the main road and down several of the side streets leading back from it. Abi eventually finds the right entrance and Stella buzzes her up to the fourth floor where it takes her another five minutes of taking wrong turns to discover Flat 451. When she gets there, Stella is standing at the open door laughing, because, she says, it’s always a gamble to see whether her guests will actually persevere or whether the rabbit warren of corridors will defeat them and they’ll go back down to the front door and ring her entry phone again demanding more specific directions.

  ‘I’m glad I passed the test.’ Abi hands over the bottle of Pinot Grigio that she bought in an off-licence round the corner and Stella gives her a hug hello.

  ‘Thanks. The sushi’s on me.’

  Stella shows her through the hall into the small living room, a mix of stylish furniture and scattered children’s toys. Abi’s surprised actually that her place isn’t bigger. Only because she remembers Stella saying that her husband went off with the au pair, which led Abi to assume they had a certain kind of lifestyle. Not that this place isn’t lovely. It is. Stella obviously has good taste and it’s surprisingly quiet up here considering the location.

  Stella must read Abi’s mind because as she opens the wine she says, ‘I didn’t want anything from the divorce. He pays maintenance for the kids, but I wanted to buy my own place with my own money.’ Abi kicks herself for having given away what she was thinking.

  ‘It’s lovely, though.’

  ‘Lovely but small.’

  ‘It’s still bigger than my house,’ Abi says, which thankfully Stella takes for the genuine comment it is. Abi would hate her to think she was being judgemental. On the contrary, she admires Stella’s independence. She never took anything from Phoebe’s dad either. Mind you, he never offered her anything. He gave her gonorrhea once before she got pregnant, but that was about the extent of his generosity. And actually he gave her Phoebe, so she probably shouldn’t complain.

  Baby Rhys and his three-year-old brother, Sean, are looking unbearably cute in their little SpongeBob pyjamas with their faces rosy, scrubbed clean and with that gorgeous smell that only comes from small-child-meets-bubble-bath. They play with their toys on the floor like models of good behaviour while Stella and Abi peruse the menu from You Me Sushi, and then Stella asks her if she minds calling the restaurant while she gets the boys ready for bed. When neither of them protests, Abi can’t help expressing her surprise and Stella tells her that she followed some rigid regime or other that she read about in a book from when they were both born and consequently their routine runs like clockwork. Abi gets the impression everything in Stella’s life probably runs like clockwork. She’s one of those people with enormous willpower who thrives on self-imposed timetables and discipline. In fact, she’s one of those people Abi has always fiercely wanted to be, but she’s never quite managed it.

  ‘You’re scary,’ she says, and Stella laughs.

  ‘I have two settings, order or chaos. To avoid the one necessitates being obsessive about the other.’

  ‘Will you come and organize my life? It’s a mess.’

  ‘Don’t ask me because I just might. Let me get these two to sleep and then you can tell me all the gory details.’

  Sean, who has known Abi for all of twenty minutes, comes over to kiss her goodnight in a way that makes her stomach flip, because it’s such a visceral reminder of Phoebe when she was that age. Fifteen minutes later Stella’s back refilling their glasses, the flat is quiet and Abi is dividing the sushi – she’d swear the delivery boy rang the doorbell before she’d even put the phone down – between two plates.

  ‘So,’ Stella says, curling her legs up under her on the sofa, ‘what’s going on?’

  Abi’s reluctant to bang on about herself and her own problems so they chat about other stuff for a while. Stella tells her about her ex-husband who worked in the City and who was, by all accounts, a bit of a flash bastard.

  ‘I’ve never been impressed by men with money,’ she says. ‘In fact, honestly, the ones who don’t have so much are usually nicer.’

  Abi couldn’t agree more. Wealth, power, status, she’s never found any of those things an aphrodisiac. Now she comes to think about it, maybe she could have made her life easier if she did. She likes the fact that she and Stella have the same priorities when it comes to men: funny, smart, loyal, good with kids. Not that Abi has actually managed to ensnare a man who had all those attributes in living memory, but if you asked her who her ideal mate was on paper those are the boxes she’d tick.

  Later on Stella presses her again so Abi fills her in with the whole sorry story, leaving nothing out, because actually she’s decided that she can trust Stella and she would genuinely value her insight. She starts way back on that day in Covent Garden in 1985 and brings her right up to date with what’s happening at the house right now.

  ‘But don’t tell Richard. Not the bit about Jon telling me he’s in love with me.’ She doesn’t think she could handle the teasing, let alone the fear of what Richard might say to Jon in the name of humour if he ever bumped into him again.

  ‘Of course I won’t. Can you imagine how merciless he’d be?’

  ‘And I’m sorry again for getting you both involved in my mess. I was put on the spot and I just didn’t know what else to do.’

  ‘I won’t pretend I’m thrilled about it, but I completely understand. And, for the record, good on you for doing whatever you had to do to stop this thing with Jon in its tracks. It must have been incredibly difficult given how you feel about him.’

  ‘That would be an understatement.’

  ‘Not to mention how you feel about your Cleo.’

  ‘That’s the thing. She may be a nightmare, but she’s still my sister. The only one I’ve got. I would never hurt her like that.’

  ‘And that’s exactly why she should appreciate you more.’

  ‘It’s complicated.’

  Is it? Abi’s not sure it is, actually. Stella’s right – Cleo could do with recognizing that in her sister she has a loyal and supportive ally a bit more. But, cathartic as it is offloading on Stella like this and as much as Abi truly thinks she can trust her, she’s not about to stick the knife deep into Cleo yet. And do you know why? Because she’s exactly the loyal and supportive sister Cleo doesn’t appreciate she has.

  ‘You shouldn’t let her treat you the way she does,’ Stella is saying, and Abi starts to worry that she’s told her too much. She’s pretty much filled her in on the whole story of her and Cleo’s relationship since she
was thirteen. It felt like a relief saying it out loud.

  ‘I hate to say it, but I always thought she seemed like a bit of a bitch,’ Stella continues, and Abi immediately snaps into defence mode. It’s OK for her to think that Cleo is mean and self-obsessed and, sometimes, downright unpleasant, because she’s also hardwired to love her unconditionally. This always happens. On the rare occasions when Abi offers up her whole personal story, warts and all, she begins to backtrack as soon as the person she’s speaking to has got the message that Cleo is a bit of a monster. It’s like she wants them to know, but she doesn’t ever want them to acknowledge it. Because someone else voicing out loud what Abi knows in her heart makes it real. And once it’s made real it’s difficult to justify why she doesn’t do anything about it. Stand up for herself. Have it out with her. Stop kidding herself that she can force Cleo into a normal sisterly relationship, whatever that is. It’s a step too far for Abi to deal with. Once this conversation is over, she wants to be able to retreat into her own little world of pretending everything is fine when it suits her.

  ‘No,’ she says, ‘she just has a funny way of showing affection, that’s all. I feel sorry for her, really. She’s been on show her whole adult life. Everyone treats her differently because of who she is. It’s hard for her to know what normal relationships are.’

  Luckily Stella takes the hint that Abi doesn’t really want to talk about her sister any more. ‘If you say so,’ she says, yawning as she fills Abi’s glass up again. ‘Although I’m beginning to wonder whether you should just go for it with Jon anyway. Not that I’d ever recommend a woman try to steal another woman’s man, but in this case I think everyone would understand.’

  Abi knows she’s half joking, but she can’t let it lie. ‘I’d never do that. Never.’

  She looks at her watch. It’s nearly ten thirty and she has no idea where the time went.

  ‘Oh god, I should go. Sorry. You have to get up early.’

  Stella, Abi found out this evening, has a consultancy business. After her seven-thirty run in the morning, she’ll drop the boys off at nursery and then dress up in a power suit and go around advising big corporations on productivity and streamlining operations. Tomorrow she will be addressing a room full of pharmaceutical executives on a weekend retreat. It couldn’t sound like a more fantastically high-powered or scary occupation to Abi if it tried. Of course, being Stella, she has it all worked out beautifully, and she crams five days’ worth of work into three so that she can spend more time with her kids while still raking the money in. Aside from buying her flat she is ploughing most of the money she makes back into the business. She has a long-term strategy for expansion and probably world domination, and Abi has no doubt she’ll succeed.

  ‘No, don’t rush off. Drink your drink first and then I can call you a cab.’ Stella looks as if she’s going to fall asleep on the spot. Abi hopes she hasn’t bored her to tears with her personal worries, but, to be fair, Stella did keep asking her questions.

  ‘Tell you what, give me the cab number and I’ll call then finish my wine while I’m waiting for it to arrive.’

  When Abi leaves, Stella says, ‘Let’s do this again. I’ve had a really nice time. Apart from the nights I see Richard, I don’t get much adult company outside of work.’

  In the taxi on the way home Abi realizes she is smiling to herself. It feels good to have made a friend. She feels pleasantly tipsy. When she gets home, the house is dark and quiet. She tiptoes up the stairs, holding her breath as she crosses the landing outside Jon and Cleo’s bedroom. When she reaches her own little attic, she brushes her teeth and then locks her door again before she gets into bed. Just in case. She can’t even lie to herself; she knows it’s to keep herself in more than to keep Jon out.

  17

  Cleo’s return is as much of a production number as you might imagine. Firstly Elena is roped in for an extra few hours to clean the house from top to bottom. Abi insists that the girls do their own rooms and they agree without too much fuss when she tells them that Elena almost certainly had plans to have breakfast with her own family this morning, but she couldn’t say no to coming in for fear of losing her job. And all because they’re too lazy to clean up after themselves. She almost reduces them to tears, actually, so convincing are her descriptions of Elena’s humble home and her sick husband and skinny, undernourished children. She’s making it all up, of course. She has no idea if Elena is even married, but she always wears a very nice line in cashmere cardigans so Abi thinks she does OK and she seems perfectly happy to have signed up for an extra shift. Plus the chances of her having children under the age of about eighteen are pretty slim and, if she does, she’d be in the Guinness Book of Records. Despite Abi’s misgivings about having someone wait on her hand and foot she has no doubt Elena is well compensated and that this is a pretty good gig as far as unskilled labour goes. Still, it doesn’t hurt to try to instil the beginnings of a social conscience into her two nieces.

  Jon left at the crack of dawn to go and get the car checked over before heading off to Heathrow, or so the girls tell Abi. She suspects he’s probably hiding in a café somewhere, keeping out of her way until he returns with her sister as ballast. She’s grateful to him. The less they are alone together the better. She and the girls do a quick sortie down to the deli to stock up on all Cleo’s favourite essentials and then there’s nothing to do but wait for them to return. Abi tries to keep occupied to stop herself from imagining their reunion, Jon kissing Cleo hello, telling her how much he missed her. Despite his profession of love for Abi, he has never said that he didn’t still have feelings for Cleo. And she wouldn’t have wanted him to. What kind of a person would she be if she did?

  They finally turn up at about quarter past one, hours late because the flight was delayed. Cleo is her usual brittle, bright self. A little too desperate to have them all believe how wonderful everything was. The hotel may have been in Midtown, but it’s the new hip young place to be seen, she and the other ‘girls’ ate at Le Caprice and the Park Avenue Café and A Voce and drank cocktails on the roof terrace at 60 Thompson, she even got papped when they were filming on the High Line, which just goes to show she’s still got it.

  Cleo has an old habit, by the way, that she thinks Abi doesn’t know about, of having one of her people tip the paparazzi off about where she is going to be and when. In her heyday she even cut a deal with one of them to give him exclusives and split the profits. The photographer once gave this away to Abi after he had seemingly randomly popped up outside a café in which they’d been having lunch. Cleo had made a big show of being annoyed, but as she had climbed into a cab ahead of Abi he had tapped Abi on the shoulder and said, ‘Tell her to give me a call later and I’ll let her know where I’ve placed them.’

  She didn’t say anything to Cleo then and needless to say she doesn’t bring it up now, but she’s a little suspicious that the New York wandering paparazzi brigade have nothing better to do than amble around Manhattan randomly in the hope of bumping into a washed-up former supermodel. Still, she’s glad Cleo’s in a good mood and seemingly completely oblivious to the rampaging hormones that are infecting the air. Plus the girls are clearly thrilled that she’s back, which makes it fine by Abi.

  They settle down to lunch. She can tell that Jon has gone into overdrive to show both her and Cleo that everything is fine, business as usual. He chatters away about all the stuff that’s happened in the days she’s been away (with one notable exception), making them sound like the Brady Bunch’s slightly more wholesome cousins. Abi starts to wonder if, in fact, she’s living in a parallel universe, one where this man didn’t declare his love for her only days ago. She’s even less prepared for what he says next.

  ‘So, Abi’s got a new boyfriend.’ As he says this, he looks round at the others triumphantly.

  ‘Abigail!’ Cleo says, amazed, and why wouldn’t she be?

  Tara and Megan start giggling. ‘Who is he?’ Tara says. ‘Is it Richard?’

&nb
sp; Great. Still, Richard is the only man other than their father that Tara and Megan have seen her speak to since she’s been here, so it could have been a lot worse. She shrugs.

  ‘Who’s Richard?’ Cleo will be delighted at the prospect of Abi, her weird loner sister, dating.

  ‘It is, isn’t it? It’s Richard!’ Megan squeals.

  Oh god, is she really going to have to keep this up?

  Jon turns his manic grin on her. ‘That’s right. Abi is going out with Richard.’

  ‘Who is Richard?’ Cleo laughs, and looks at Abi. ‘Tell me!’

  ‘He’s Abi’s boss at the bookshop, isn’t he, Abi?’

  She nods miserably.

  ‘We’ve met him. He’s nice,’ Megan says.

  ‘He’s hot,’ Tara adds helpfully. ‘Considering he’s so ancient.’

  Abi can’t help it; she looks at Jon. He doesn’t look at her.

  ‘So,’ Cleo says. ‘Tell me everything.’

  This is torture. ‘There’s really nothing to tell.’

  ‘That is so typically you. I go away for less than two weeks and when I come back you’re seeing someone, but you try to make out there’s nothing to tell. There must be a story behind it. Did your eyes meet across a pile of books? Did he seduce you in the stock room after you closed up one night? What?’

  ‘Yuk, Mum!’ Megan pulls a disgusted face.

  ‘No,’ Abi says. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Well, what then? Something must have happened. God, I can’t believe you’ve met someone.’

  Abi feels a prick of resentment. Why is it so hard to believe? She tells herself not to pick a fight with Cleo on her first day back.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it. It’s early days. It’ll probably come to nothing.’

  ‘Naturally, because that’s your default way of approaching a relationship. Write it off before it’s even properly begun. Save yourself the heartache later on.’