The Ugly Sister

by Jane Fallon

‘No,’ Abi says, somewhat huffily. Why is that the first conclusion anyone would come to? ‘Actually it was me who finished it, if you must know.’

  ‘Wow, Mum, I’m seriously impressed.’

  Is she? ‘Are you?’

  ‘Yes. You finally got a boyfriend. It’s about time.’

  Abi always thought Phoebe would be upset at the thought of her seeing someone. She doesn’t know why. That’s why she never told her about any of the others. It never occurred to her that Phoebe might actually be happy for her, relieved even. That maybe it would make her daughter feel less responsible for her.

  ‘So …’ Phoebe says, looking at her expectantly, ‘what happened?’

  This time Abi can’t help herself. She glances at Jon, who busies himself at the sink.

  ‘It just sort of fizzled out, you know. Nothing dramatic.’ She so wants to change the subject, but she suspects Phoebe would have none of it.

  ‘No, but before. How did you get together? What was he like? Tara said he’s totally hot.’

  ‘For an old man,’ Tara says hurriedly.

  Jon coughs and wipes his hands. ‘I’ll be in the living room if anyone wants me.’

  He’s gone before anyone can stop him, so Abi gives in and tells Phoebe as much about Richard as she has to to make it sound convincing. She leaves out the bit about Richard supposedly cheating on her, obviously, and just brings their relationship to a very pedestrian conclusion. She tells Phoebe that she left her job voluntarily, because she didn’t want things to be awkward between them.

  ‘Good old Mum,’ Phoebe says when Abi gets to the end. ‘Back in the saddle after eighteen years.’

  ‘I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you and Richard,’ Jon says quietly to her later when she passes him in the hall. ‘But you shouldn’t have to leave your job because of it. Do you want me to go down there and talk to him?’

  Abi doesn’t know why, but she lays her hand on his arm and they both nearly jump from the shock of the physical contact. She withdraws it quickly, looking to see if it has left an imprint, a burn.

  ‘No. Thank you, but it’s fine. It was my idea to leave,’ she whispers and then she runs upstairs to the safety of her room.

  22

  Cleo’s advert is out in America, so she tells them at dinner one evening, and the feedback her new agent has been getting has been fantastic. She doesn’t make eye contact with Abi when she says this, and Abi knows that Cleo is hoping she will keep up the charade that Cleo is now the face of something high-end and glamorous. She will. She has nothing to gain from telling anyone what she knows. Jon asks Cleo if she has seen any of the artwork for the print campaign and she says she has, in her agent’s office, and it’s fabulous. Megan asks if she can see it and Cleo says she’ll try to remember to bring a copy home next time she goes into town. Abi wonders why no one suggests Cleo ask the agent to email it, but luckily they don’t, and she stays quiet. The whole thing has become this ridiculous farce of Cleo pretending everything is amazing and Abi blindly colluding with her in that lie. Head in the sand; it’s the Attwood way.

  Actually, Satin Silk aside, Cleo genuinely does seem to have been a different person since she and Abi had their heart to heart. Underneath it all she’s still the old Cleo, of course, with all her ridiculous self-aggrandizement and sense of entitlement, but now there’s something else Abi can see there too. Something more real. Plus she seems to be trying, really trying, to reconnect with her family, Abi included. It’s definitely progress, a big step forward, a giant leap for mankind.

  Now she doesn’t have a job to go to Abi can spend her days having fun (although without spending any money) with her daughter and her two nieces. Tara and Megan are so enamoured with Phoebe that they agree to do all sorts of things that would have been branded uncool before. On fine days they play pitch and putt or softball or just take a picnic to Regent’s Park or down to the river somewhere. When it rains, they do a tour of the charity shops in Camden (Tara is getting into the spirit of it with the rest of them now, although she always still has a cursory glance around in the street first to check none of her friends are watching) and dress up and put on plays and fashion shows with their newfound bargains. On the day when Tara announces at dinner that she no longer wants to be a model, but that she’s planning on a career in fashion design just like her cousin, Abi almost cries with pride. She casts a sneaky look at Jon and he’s beaming with pleasure too.

  ‘Really? Are you sure?’ Cleo looks confused. Not want to be a model? Her daughter? That can’t be right. Why wouldn’t she want to be just like her fabulous mother?

  ‘Shoes,’ Tara says. ‘I’m going to design shoes.’

  ‘You know you’ll have to work hard. You’ll have to go to college,’ Jon says quickly, keen to keep the conversation on track.

  ‘I know that, stupid,’ Tara says. ‘Like Phoebe. She’s going to show me round the London College of Fashion when she starts her course.’

  ‘How about you, Megan?’ Abi asks. ‘You changed your mind again?’

  She nods. ‘I want to work in the Marie Curie Hospice shop,’ she says proudly, mentioning the shop where most of their clothing bargains are discovered, and they all tell her that’s a great ambition and none of them mention the fact that she’ll have to get another job somewhere else too to earn some money.

  Jon still comes home to cook every night and the three of them all help. Even Cleo has been known to lift a perfectly manicured finger on the odd occasion. Phoebe announces to Abi that she thinks Jon is both ‘hot’ and ‘cool’, two very high accolades, and, cornered, Abi stammers that, yes, he has turned out to be very nice after all.

  The day is rapidly approaching when Abi’s new home will be all hers and ready to move into. While part of her is aching to go back to Kent and her new little flat and undemanding job, another part would like to put the move off indefinitely. She’s on the verge of having the relationship she’s always wanted with her sister. Every day things seem more relaxed between them. She’s worried that when she leaves the momentum will be lost and the next time they see one another they’ll have to start all over again. Not only that, but she has got used to living in a house full of people and life. She’s not sure how she’ll cope with being on her own full time – Phoebe has already announced her plans to rejoin her friends once they reach India in September. And, to be honest, Abi’s not sure how she’ll deal with not being around Jon. He was almost certainly more hurt and embarrassed by her rejection of him than he let on. They have still not completely regained their old easy way of being together. Even when she does ever meet up with Cleo again in the future – and Abi’s now allowing herself to think when, not if – it’s doubtful he’d come along. Honestly? Abi is scared she might never see him again.

  ‘I hope the girls can come and stay with me sometimes after I go back,’ she says to him one evening as she’s washing the leaves for the salad. This is a genuine request, by the way. She loves the girls now, properly loves them in an unconditional way, not just because she thinks she should, and she’s going to miss them. She’s not asking just because she’s hoping that if they ever did come to visit then their father would bring them down. That would be a – huge – bonus, but it’s not her prime motivation. Tara and Megan both squeal with excitement.

  Jon gives Abi a warm smile that makes her go weak at the knees. ‘Of course they can.’

  ‘Maybe at half-term?’ Abi says, and she spends most of the next hour or so fending off questions about what her new flat is like and how near the sea is it and can they go out on a boat?

  ‘I might get a dog when I get back,’ Abi says at one point for no other reason than the idea has just popped into her head that a pet really might be a good idea and a cat for a single middle-aged lonely lady is just too much of a cliché. They argue for most of the evening about which breed would be good and whether a big or a small dog is more trouble.

  ‘Mum, have you seen this?’ Phoebe calls from her little bedroom one evening whe
n Abi heads upstairs at about eleven. She’s sitting on her bed looking at her laptop. Abi’s heart sinks because she just knows what Phoebe’s going to show her and, indeed, she’s right because there on YouTube is Abi’s sister, barely visible in the middle of a crowd of other women, in an advertisement for Satin Silk Body Moisturizer.

  ‘I’m not imagining it, am I?’ Phoebe says. ‘They’re the ones who make all those boasts about using real women and not models in their campaigns?’

  Abi exhales. Knows she should be feigning surprise, but can’t quite get up the energy. ‘They are. But, who knows, this is a new campaign. Maybe they’ve changed tack?’

  ‘Doesn’t really look like it, does it? Still, I actually really like the ethos behind the ads. I just can’t believe that Auntie Cleo would think the same. You know what she’s like.’

  Abi does. She could write a book about it. Instead she just says, ‘I know.’

  Phoebe pulls a face. ‘I just got curious to see what it was. I put in Auntie Cleo’s name and this came up.’

  Without thinking, Abi scrolls down to the comments below. Luckily the ad has not had many viewers online so there aren’t too many posts, because the ones that are there are all pretty awful. Basically along the lines of ‘is that Cleo third from the left and if so she’s clearly desperate or broke or both to be participating in a campaign like this’. A few are downright mean about the way she looks or what a bitch they’ve heard she is, so it’s no wonder she can’t get any proper work. One claims to have inside knowledge that she slept her way to the top in the first place, so what does she expect?

  ‘We can’t tell her we’ve seen this,’ Abi says, and Phoebe looks at her as if she’s simple and says, ‘Well, obviously.’

  Abi sits down on the bed. ‘Let’s just try and forget about it. Don’t even say anything to Uncle Jon.’

  ‘Of course not,’ Phoebe says. ‘Though I don’t really understand what all the fuss is about.’

  ‘It’s important to your aunt, OK?’

  She finds it hard to sleep. It’s ridiculous, really. Abi would bet that all the other women in that advertisement were bursting with pride to be chosen. She’d bet they trawled YouTube, sat their families down as soon as they could find it and made them watch it over and over again. But, then again, she’d also bet their families aren’t anything like her own.

  What’s so stupid is that if Cleo had come home that day and just said, ‘Oh, I’ve got a job advertising Satin Silk,’ Abi would probably have said, ‘I love Satin Silk,’ and left it at that. She might have thought it a little strange that Cleo would take a job like that. Actually, she almost certainly would have thought, Good on her. But instead Cleo built it up into the comeback of the century and now they are all being forced to collude in her delusion.

  She’s ridiculous, Abi thinks, irritated now, but then she feels sorry for her all over again. How sad to have to live your life pretending to be something you’re not, because you think that you have to impress the people around you. The people who love you unconditionally, even if sometimes they don’t actually like you. The people who really wouldn’t care either way if you were a famous supermodel or not. Maybe that’s what being so successful at a young age does to you. You become defined by your success. There’s no time to put a back-up plan into place or even to fully develop a personality that’s not shaped by being rich and famous and spoilt. Maybe it’s better to be the one no one has any expectations of. Better to be a nobody than a failed somebody. At least Abi can’t disappoint.

  She finds herself counting off the days. Not only until she has to leave London but until Phoebe – who has agreed to accompany her back to Kent for a few days – will be heading off into the unknown again on a bargain flight generously paid for by her aunt and uncle.

  In her preoccupation about her daughter’s imminent departure, Abi has forgotten that she was trying not to be left on her own with Jon if she could help it and one evening when she’s been reading in the living room while everyone else is off doing other things she suddenly looks up and there he is.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asks nervously.

  Abi nods anxiously, looks for an escape.

  ‘Abi … I’ve been wanting to talk to you.’

  That’s not good. Someone saying that can never be a good thing.

  ‘What I said to you that time about Cleo and I having problems, I should never … well, the truth is of course we have problems now and again – what couple doesn’t? I wouldn’t want you to think I was being disloyal.’

  ‘It’s OK …’

  ‘What happened between us – well, I’m sorry.’ He raises his eyes to the door as if checking no one is in earshot. ‘I should never have kissed you. I wouldn’t want you to think I go around hitting on women behind your sister’s back. Because I don’t. It’s never happened before. There’s no excuse except that I temporarily lost my mind.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Abi says, and although she knows that it’s good they’re clearing the air she feels like a little bit of her has died. Even though she didn’t want Jon to fall in love with her, knowing he thought he had had made her feel incredible.

  ‘I have to be there for Cleo. I want to … And I would never have put the girls through … well, you know …’

  He runs out of steam.

  ‘Of course,’ she says, thinking that at this precise moment she’d rather be anywhere but here. ‘It’s forgotten. I’ve forgotten it.’

  She just wants the subject closed. Upstairs in her room she has been regularly indulging herself in an alternative-universe fantasy where she doesn’t break away from Jon’s embrace, where she thinks, Sod it, and throws herself into his arms, reciprocating his declarations of love. (Of course, she has to spend the first five minutes each time establishing a narrative in her head that takes Cleo out of the picture, but leaves her happy, healthy and, in the end, delighted that her ex and her sister have found love. In Abi’s favourite version she goes off and marries Richard and everyone, Jon, Stella, the girls are all delighted for them.) Abi and Jon’s relationship always progresses in the same way: the sex is amazing, a revelation; they move in together into a beautiful house that is neither too big nor too small; the girls couldn’t be happier; Abi is pregnant again; the dog is there. It kind of peters out after that into an un-dramatic but most definitely satisfying happy-ever-after that leaves her basking in its comforting glow. Now she presses erase. Delete. Move to trash. It’s gone.

  She takes a deep breath. Tries to stay focused.

  ‘But the truth is,’ Jon says, ‘I’m worried about her.’

  Abi doesn’t know what to say. The Satin Silk secret is not hers to give away. And the other secret, the Richard secret, is most certainly not one she’s about to share.

  Jon sighs. ‘Has she said much about New York? The job?’

  ‘Honestly?’

  He nods.

  She can’t do it. ‘Not really. I … maybe it wasn’t quite the comeback she wanted.’

  There’s a moment where neither of them says anything, because they’re both waiting to see what the other one knows.

  Finally Jon says, ‘It was Satin Silk by the way.’

  ‘I know. Did she tell you?’

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘I found it on the internet. I still haven’t told her I know.’

  ‘What do you make of it?’

  He shrugs. ‘It’s a job.’

  He sits down in the chair furthest from her. He looks tired and miserable. Worn out with trying to live with the mess that is her sister. ‘What shall I do? Should I tell her I know and force her to confront the fact that she’s delusional or should I just hope that she quietly gives up on her comeback and things go back to normal?’

  Cleo’s self-imposed deadline of a return to fame, fortune and fabulousness by the end of the summer is rapidly approaching and it’s clear that nothing much is happening. The press are not beating a path to her door, there are no paparazzi lined up on the pavement. The great comeback campaign do
esn’t seem to have brought a ship full of offers in its wake, which comes as no surprise to Abi. She hardly thinks Karl Lagerfeld is scanning Satin Silk adverts to see who he should use in his next runway show. She knows that before long Cleo is going to have to admit defeat.

  ‘That one,’ Abi says. ‘Don’t confront her with it. Just be there to pick up the pieces when she finally has to admit it’s not happening. She can’t keep this façade up forever.’ She closes her eyes briefly, steadies her breath. ‘And she’s going to need you.’

  ‘I know. And I’ll be here.’

  That’s good. She knows it is. She does. ‘Good.’ The old atmosphere is back. You could cut the air with a knife. There are so many elephants in the room Abi feels as if she’s at Billy Smart’s.

  ‘I’m going to miss you when you leave,’ Jon says quietly. ‘Really.’

  ‘Me too,’ Abi says, and then she goes and calls the girls downstairs on some spurious pretext or other. There’s no point going back down that road.

  She’s walking up Regent’s Park Road one morning – she’s kept up her habit of going out early on fine days otherwise she worries that she is in danger of losing herself. She spends all day with the girls (although to her credit Phoebe now often offers to take the two younger ones out without her, but Abi worries about them going too far or for too long, so she doesn’t often accept), and every evening tiptoeing around the various minefields at home and willing the hours to go by till bedtime. Walking on her own in the mornings at least gives her the illusion that she has a life away from her family, things to do and places to be. She’s an independent, strong and still youngish woman in a big city. Buy, buy, buy. Sell, sell, sell. In reality, she generally just walks up the road and back, sometimes stopping off at the bakery or the newsagent, but it’s a habit she clings to. It’s the only thing that is uncomplicated and wholly her own. Actually, she has noticed that all her clothes feel a little looser, so there have been some positive physical effects as well as the mental ones.

  Anyway, she’s having her morning stroll one Wednesday, about to turn up the hill towards Belsize Park, when she sees Richard and Stella on the other side of the street. They’re both dressed in workout gear and Stella has the two kids with her, both in a jogging-friendly buggy, although Sean, the older one, is clearly a little too big for it and trying to climb out. Abi knew that this would happen one day. London might have nine million people trampling its streets, but it’s a small community she’s staying in here and, although she has been carefully avoiding passing the bookshop during opening hours, it was inevitable their paths would cross at some point. She has been dreading seeing Stella. Richard on his own she can cope with. His proved to be a friendship not worth salvaging and now, when she thinks about him, she thinks he is rather sad – a middle-aged would-be playboy who defines himself by the calibre of woman he can pull. Stella, on the other hand, is a different prospect. Abi liked – no, likes – her, respects her, hates knowing more about her relationship than Stella knows herself. Would, in an ideal world, still be friends with her.