The Ugly Sister

by Jane Fallon

  The prosecution asks that the jury take the following into consideration:

  The fact that Cleo was there at all, shut in the back room with Richard, a man she has only met a couple of times and flirted with excessively (circumstantial).

  The silence (circumstantial).

  The heavy atmosphere (circumstantial).

  The fact that they couldn’t quite get their stories straight (actually, this piece of evidence might just be admissible).

  The look in both Cleo and Richard’s eyes (circumstantial, but she doesn’t care. This one most of all told her all she needed to know).

  Cleo and Richard? They’d been flirting, of course they had, but surely that was just how both of them operated? Just because someone was a flirt didn’t mean that they would cross the line given the opportunity. After all, Richard seemed to have been having no problem remaining faithful to Stella despite his full-on love-ins with the local ladies. Abi pushes the thought of Stella to the back of her mind. She’ll deal with that one later. And Cleo, of course, had Jon. Could she really be cheating on Jon? Sweet, kind, funny Jon. There were cracks in their relationship, that much was obvious, otherwise Abi didn’t believe Jon would ever have thought – let alone admitted – that he had feelings for her. But underneath it all Abi had firmly believed there was something solid, something real, something worth saving in her sister’s marriage.

  She presses rewind and brings up the image of Cleo and Richard again. Not touching, but too close to each other to have been just having a casual exchange. If Cleo really had just been returning something Richard had left at the house (what? Where had he left it? Why not just give whatever it was to Abi to give to him?) then why were they shut in the room? Why were they standing so close? Why did they look so guilty?

  Whatever is going on can’t have been going on for long, Abi thinks. That’s some small consolation at least. In fact, she has no doubt that today was the first assignation. Did they set this up on Saturday night somewhere in the middle of their flirty banter? Did one of them call the other? Or did Cleo just show up at the shop uninvited and insist on seeing Richard in private? Miranda had clearly known something amiss was happening back there.

  The question that haunts Abi most of all is did she arrive after the event or before? Were they fully clothed because they hadn’t got as far undressing each other yet or had they just finished putting their clothes back on?

  Her head is genuinely beginning to hurt from the rush of images fighting for space in her brain. She closes her eyes, willing it all to go away. She doesn’t know how long she lies there. Smells from dinner waft up from four floors below and she pictures the happy family sitting round the kitchen table, none the wiser. Well, three of them anyway. The other one is presumably living in fear that her secret will be exposed. That’s if she cares and Abi has to believe that she does. Her sister may be a monster, but she loves her children; she’s a good mother. Her twelve-year marriage has to mean something. Abi doesn’t feel hungry even though she hasn’t eaten since lunch. She couldn’t eat now if her life depended on it. Great, you might lose some weight, some joker in her subconscious says.

  Some time later, she doesn’t know how long, she hears footsteps on the stairs. She locked the door behind her when she came in and now she’s silently grateful. There’s no way she’s going to give Cleo the satisfaction of being able to explain herself. If anyone knocks, she’ll ignore it, claim in the morning that she took a sleeping pill in an effort to sleep off her migraine. She lies as still as she can and waits. There’s a tentative tap and then another a little louder. Abi doesn’t respond. Then she hears voices, loud whispers, a ten-and seven-year-old’s attempts to talk quietly.

  ‘Let’s just leave it outside. She can eat it when she wakes up.’ This from Megan.

  ‘No, stupid. It’ll go cold.’

  The girls must have brought her up dinner despite her protestations. She tries to ignore them, but it’s more than she can do. She waits just long enough to make sure it’s just the two of them and not either of their parents, and then she opens the door, feigning just-woken-up sleepiness.

  ‘Oh no, did we wake you up?’ Megan says. ‘Dad said we mustn’t.’

  Abi gives her a hug. ‘No. I’d just woken up anyway and I was starving so this is a real treat.’

  Tara is bearing a plate covered in silver foil. She offers it up. ‘We knew you’d be hungry,’ she says smugly.

  Abi takes the plate from them and Megan produces a knife and fork from somewhere and some salt from her pocket.

  ‘That’s really thoughtful, girls. Thank you.’ Abi’s worried they might want to stay because even though the food smells delicious she has no intention of eating it. The girls hover in the doorway. ‘Are you coming in?’ Abi says eventually.

  Tara grabs Megan by the hand. ‘Dad said we weren’t to disturb you.’

  Abi kisses them both and says goodnight then freezes as she hears someone else coming up the stairs. Whichever of them it is, Jon or Cleo, she doesn’t want to have to talk to them now, but short of bundling the girls out and locking the door again she doesn’t know what she can do. She’s backing into her room, thinking she might just have got away with it, when she hears Cleo’s voice. This is the last thing she needs.

  ‘I’m just going to chat to Auntie Abigail for a bit.’ The girls obviously think this is the cue for them to stay put because then Abi hears Cleo say, ‘On my own. I’ll be down in a little while.’ Tara and Megan moan and whine, but they comply and the next thing Abi knows there’s Cleo in the doorway and there’s nothing Abi can do short of telling her to go away. Actually, that’s a plan.

  ‘I don’t want to talk to you at the moment, Cleo. Sorry.’

  Cleo, never one to be told what to do, comes on into the room and shuts the door behind her.

  ‘Abigail, listen to me. There is absolutely nothing going on between me and Richard. It’s ridiculous that you would even think it.’

  Abi sighs and turns away. She’s not interested in Cleo’s self-justifications. She knows what she saw – or at least, what she felt – and she also knows that Cleo has nothing to gain by being upfront and honest with her.

  ‘As if I would ever do that to you – with your boyfriend … I was so happy for you that you’d found someone,’ Cleo says, and Abi thinks, Of course, in Cleo’s mind she’s not just been cheating on her husband but she’s stolen my boyfriend too. The fact that the relationship is a scam and Abi couldn’t care less about Richard except on Stella’s behalf is neither here nor there. Cleo believed he was Abi’s boyfriend and she still went after him anyway. It isn’t lost on Abi that while she held herself back, rebuffing Jon’s longed-for advances out of loyalty to her sister, Cleo seems to have no such scruples. Family, blood or otherwise, means nothing to her.

  And suddenly it’s as if Abi sees things clearly for the first time. Cleo hasn’t changed; she’s always been the same. Of course Gary Parsons had betrayed her and asked Caroline out. Abi can picture it now: Caroline had made sure that he would by smiling at him in class, taking notice of him, giving him just enough attention to allow him to get up the courage to ask so that she could go home and tell her sister that was what had happened. Of course she had insisted that she and Abigail wear the same outfits that summer, not because she wanted to show solidarity with her little sister, but because she had just realized the power of her looks and she knew they would be shown off to their best advantage when placed in direct comparison with Abigail’s dumpier proportions. Of course she threw herself at Richard because, Abi now sees, she has to win. Life for Cleo has been one big competition that Abi didn’t even realize she was part of. Caroline wasn’t ever her protector, her mentor, her friend. She was her rival. Just as Cleo still apparently is. No one is permitted to be more desirable, more sexy, more beautiful than Cleo. It is simply not allowed.

  She fights back tears. It makes no sense. Surely Cleo must know that she had already won? She had the looks, the career (even if it was
going through a rough patch), the gorgeous husband, not to mention all the material things that Abi couldn’t really give a toss about, but which she knows mean a lot to her sister. Why couldn’t she leave Abi this one little thing that she believed was real?

  Abi thinks about how much more devastating this would be if Richard really was her boyfriend, if she really cared about him. And that makes her think how much worse this truly is for Jon.

  ‘Forget about me and Richard,’ she hisses at Cleo. ‘What about your husband? What about Jon?’

  ‘I told you it was entirely innocent,’ Cleo says, all big eyes.

  ‘Right,’ Abi says. ‘So what were you doing in there with the door shut?’

  ‘We were just talking. You really think I’d make a play for your boyfriend?’

  ‘I’m not bothered about Richard,’ Abi says, exasperated. Actually, she is, on Stella’s behalf, but Cleo knows nothing about Stella. ‘I’ve known him five minutes. You’re married. You have kids. Why do you always have to be so fucking selfish?’

  Cleo looks at her and Abi thinks she can actually see the cogs turning as her sister decides which tack to take, what will cause the least damage to herself. She knows that whatever comes out of Cleo’s mouth next will be self-justifying bullshit.

  Cleo has conjured up tears from somewhere. Probably, Abi thinks, because of the fear of being found out. She blinks deliberately, forcing them out, and then looks at Abi pathetically, as if to say, ‘See, you’ve made me cry.’

  Abi waits.

  ‘I … don’t be cross with me. I can’t bear it.’ Cleo bats her eyelashes and a couple more tears roll down her cheeks. Abi nearly laughs. Cleo’s performance is so hammy it reminds her of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind. All she needs is a fan and a southern-belle accent. She won’t step in and bail her out. At the very least Cleo owes her an explanation. Cleo doesn’t seem to know how to continue in the face of Abi offering up no response. She’s used to her sister giving in immediately, always wanting to make things right between them. Not this time, Abi thinks.

  ‘OK.’ Cleo takes a deep breath. ‘We kissed. I’m really, really sorry. I don’t know what came over me. But that’s all. Nothing else happened.’

  ‘Because I interrupted you.’ Abi doesn’t know whether to believe her or not. The fact that Cleo has admitted any guilt at all makes her inclined to think she might be telling the truth, but it’s impossible to know.

  ‘No. I don’t know.’

  ‘So why did you go there in the first place? And don’t tell me Richard left something behind.’

  ‘It wasn’t premeditated. I admit I was attracted to him and I just had this ridiculous idea to stop by the shop to say hello. He invited me into the back room and it just sort of happened. It was stupid.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And nothing. And then you came in.’

  ‘What if I hadn’t?’

  ‘I don’t know. God, it doesn’t bear thinking about. I should be grateful to you. It was a moment of madness and it’ll never happen again, I promise.’

  Abi looks at her and feels … nothing. She ought to be angry, on Jon’s behalf, Stella’s, her own, but instead she just feels cold. Cleo reaches out and takes her hand.

  ‘Please don’t say anything to Jon.’

  Abi pulls her hand away. ‘Do you care?’

  ‘Of course I care. He’s my life, him and the girls …’

  ‘Then why did you –’

  Cleo cuts her off. ‘Jesus, Abigail, have you never made a mistake?’

  Abi ignores the question. ‘You told me yourself that you didn’t find Jon very … exciting … any more.’

  ‘We’ve been together for fourteen years. We’ve been married for twelve. Of course there are times when you don’t find each other very exciting any more, but there’s other stuff that’s way more important. I was just sounding off the other day, it didn’t mean anything. Everyone moans about their partner sometimes. I adore Jon.’

  If I had Jon, I would never moan about him, Abi thinks. But she knows that what Cleo’s saying is right. She thinks back over exactly what Cleo said about Jon – was it really that damning? She said she was a little bored, that their relationship had become a bit stale. It was hardly a declaration of intent that she wanted a divorce. But then there’s this thing, whatever it is, with Richard. Cleo is looking at her fixedly and Abi no longer has any idea whether or not she’s being played. If Cleo is being honest – for once in her life, Abi thinks, and then tries to push that thought out of her head – then what would Abi have to gain by telling Jon what she thinks happened? He’d be hurt and humiliated. What if she told him something that caused their marriage to break up, but she was wrong? The girls would lose their family. She’d never forgive herself.

  In a split second she decides that she has to give Cleo the benefit of the doubt. She betrayed Jon with a kiss, but nothing else. It’ll never happen again. After all, who is she to judge? If Cleo is to be believed, she has only done what Abi herself did just days ago. Granted Abi pulled away from Jon, made sure he understood she was never going to take things further, while who knows what might have happened between Cleo and Richard if Abi hadn’t walked in. But the crime, the intent, the betrayal is the same.

  Cleo reaches for her hand again and this time Abi lets her.

  ‘Please, Abigail … Abi … my marriage is the only thing in my life that I’ve done right. It’s the only thing I can really be proud of. You have to believe I’m telling the truth.’

  ‘I don’t know what to believe,’ Abi says, but not harshly.

  ‘You know what?’ Cleo says. ‘Everyone thinks I’m such a success, but my comeback is a joke. Do you know what my great new campaign in America is?’

  She looks at Abi for a reaction.

  Abi shrugs. ‘La Vie En Rose?’ she says disingenuously. Is Cleo really about to reveal why she’s been so vague about her new job?

  ‘It’s Satin Silk. You know what that means, don’t you?’

  Abi does. Now she understands exactly what Cleo’s problem is. La Vie En Rose makes a fairly high-end eponymous line. They also make Satin Silk. Satin Silk is a brand whose USP is to appeal to ‘real’ women. They famously don’t use models in their campaigns; they feature an assortment of females of all shapes and sizes. Well, they say all shapes and sizes. Abi would put money on there being no one in any of their ads who is larger than a size 16 or smaller than a 10. They do use women of all ages, but they’re always good-looking women of all ages. You never get any Picassos in there. There’s not much cellulite or many stretch marks on show. But that’s not the point. The point is that we’re not talking about an elite modelling job here. We’re talking something altogether more downmarket. Beauty it may be, but not as we know it.

  Abi is momentarily knocked sideways by the thought that this – Satin Silk – is the great breakthrough job that Cleo has been going on about for weeks. That this is what Cleo thinks is going to launch her back onto her adoring public. She’s stunned that Cleo even went for the job, let alone took it. Actually, Abi thinks it’s a great campaign. She’d far rather look at women who looked a bit like her on a good day rubbing lotion into their thighs than be confronted with an impossibly tall, skinny, beautiful creature who would make her feel both old and inadequate (although there is another kind of inadequacy that comes from seeing a sixty-five-year-old on your screen who seems to be in better shape than you are ever likely to be).

  But this is Cleo. Status is everything. It’s not like the campaign is for Azerbaijan or somewhere where there was maybe an outside chance that no one would get round to uploading any of it onto the internet and she could keep up a pretence that it had all been impossibly glamorous. It’s not like she wasn’t going to have to tell them at some point that her comeback was slightly (for that read totally) nonexistent. Like now, for example. Abi doesn’t know what to say.

  ‘Right …’

  ‘It’s about as low end as you can get in modelling terms. I th
ink Falco just felt sorry for me. He certainly didn’t cast me because they wanted Cleo to be the face of the product. Far from it.’

  Abi knows this is a momentous admission. Even though she had worked out for herself that something was wrong with Cleo’s tales of her fabulous comeback, for Cleo to own up to it herself is a whole different thing.

  ‘And do you know what? I haven’t even told Jon that because I was afraid it would make him see me in a different light. Like he’d be embarrassed for me or ashamed of me, or something. I couldn’t bear for him to think I’m past it or a failure.’

  ‘Jon would never think that,’ Abi says, and she knows that what she’s saying is true. ‘I don’t think that kind of thing is important to him. He just wants you to be happy.’

  ‘I’d never want to lose him,’ Cleo says, and the tears start again and, this time, Abi is convinced they’re real.

  ‘I won’t say anything to him,’ she says.

  ‘And I know you’re saying you don’t care about Richard, but I want you to know I’m really sorry. It was an unforgivable thing to do.’

  ‘Cleo,’ Abi says. ‘Do you remember Gary Parsons?’

  Cleo looks confused. ‘That boy who was in my class?’

  ‘Do you remember when he asked me out and I said yes but then he suddenly asked you out instead?’

  ‘No. Should I?’ Cleo says, but she looks away as she says it, as if she’s afraid to catch Abi’s eye.

  ‘No. No reason. I just wondered.’

  ‘I was always jealous of you, you know.’

  Abi can’t help herself; she snorts. ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘Of course I was. You were the funny one, the clever one. You always had an answer for everything. All I had was what I looked like.’

  ‘I spent my whole life watching Mum boast about you and how you got your looks from her,’ Abi says, incensed.

  ‘Only when I wasn’t there,’ Cleo says. ‘When you weren’t around, she used to go on to people about how clever you were and how you were going to go to university. And how you inherited your brains from her, of course.’