The Ugly Sister

by Jane Fallon

  Cleo’s nostrils flare. ‘Shallow? Is that what you think?’

  Abi feels Phoebe press against her leg under the table. Calm down. Don’t give yourself away, not in front of Jon and the kids.

  ‘Sorry, that came out wrong. I just meant I’ve never thought posing in front of a camera would be that challenging.’ Oh good, well done, that’s lightened the mood.

  Cleo arches her perfectly groomed eyebrows. ‘And working in a library is?’

  Abi knows she should back down, quit while there’s still a possibility that they can avoid a fight. And not just any fight but one where undoubtedly when backed into a corner she will feel the need to launch her weapon of mass destruction. But the recklessness is intoxicating. She feels a sense of freedom and abandonment she hasn’t felt for years. She could just explode the whole thing, blow apart everyone’s lives once and for all. It would almost be a relief.

  She can feel the tension in the air. She’s vaguely aware that next to her Phoebe is fidgeting anxiously, but everything is fuzzy round the edges. It’s as if she’s watching them all on an old-fashioned black-and-white TV. This is it. This is the moment. Full-on nuclear war or unilateral disarmament.

  ‘I’d love to work in a library.’ A small voice pipes up from across the table. ‘You could read all the books and you’d never have to pay for them.’

  The mist clears as quickly as it came. Abi’s eyes come back into focus and she sees Megan smiling sweetly at her. She looks at Tara happily eating her pizza, oblivious. Of course this is not the time. Of course she’s not going to initiate the apocalypse with her nieces and her daughter sitting in the fallout zone. She squeezes Phoebe’s hand under the table. Deactivate. Defuse. Surrender.

  ‘It’s not as much fun as it sounds,’ she says, feigning a lightness she doesn’t feel. ‘Your mum’s right. It’s not very challenging.’

  ‘Well, a bookshop, then,’ Megan’s not giving up. ‘Maybe I could get Richard to give me a job.’

  Abi can’t help it. At the mention of Richard’s name her eyes flick to her sister. Cleo doesn’t even have the good grace to show a trace of guilt.

  ‘What a good idea,’ Cleo says, smiling. ‘We should go in and ask him.’

  Abi breathes deeply. Counts to ten. Tries to swallow her food. Fails.

  25

  Abi can’t seem to find a moment to get her sister on her own, or maybe she could but she’s not trying as hard as she should because she knows exactly how the conversation will go and she can’t face having to listen to any more of Cleo’s bullshit. She knows that she has to do something, though, because the sight of Cleo, dressed up to the nines at eleven in the morning, leaving the house claiming she is going to a casting, is almost more than she can stand. Now that she knows what Cleo has been up to it’s impossible not to interpret her every move as calculated. For all she knows her sister could genuinely be going to meet for a job, but something in the way she’s styled her hair, the perfume she’s put on, the hint of a smile when she says goodbye, says otherwise.

  Abi can’t contain herself any longer. It’s her last whole day in London and she’s been pretending not to notice that Tara and Megan have been holed up in the kitchen all morning preparing a surprise farewell dinner for her and Phoebe. She could just let it go; after all, in less than twenty-four hours, she will be out of here for good but, hearing the front door close, knowing where Cleo is going, she decides she has to act now.

  She risks a look at Phoebe as she goes and she can tell that her daughter knows exactly what she is going to do. Abi gives her a reassuring smile, tries to convey with her eyes that everything is going to be OK. Phoebe smiles back warily.

  ‘I’ll only be a minute,’ Abi says quietly and, she hopes, reassuringly.

  She catches up with Cleo outside Odette’s, the fabulous-looking restaurant that she has yet to go into. Cleo jumps when she sees her and then makes a show of looking up and down the road as if she had really been on the lookout for a taxi the whole time. Abi knows she has to be quick. She’s not prepared to have a showdown standing on Regent’s Park Road; she just wants to drop her bomb and then go straight back home. There’s nothing Cleo could say in justification of her actions that she would want to hear at this point.

  ‘Abigail?’

  Abi sees that Cleo is flustered, but is doing a fairly good job of covering it up, consummate professional that she is.

  Abi dives off, head first, no safety net. ‘I know you’re still seeing Richard. I know he was at the house on Tuesday and all that stuff you told me about it being a one-off was bollocks.’

  She barely even pauses for breath. She doesn’t want to give Cleo the chance to respond. Doesn’t want to risk being sucked back into her vortex.

  ‘I’m just telling you this so you know I know. I’m still not about to say anything to Jon. I’m not going to tell you to finish it or else. It’s nothing to do with me any more. You can fuck your life up as much as you like. It’s all up to you now. If you decide to go ahead and carry on, then I hope you can learn to live with the consequences. You have a beautiful family. If you think that this … thing … with Richard is worth losing them for, then that’s your own funeral. You don’t deserve them anyway. You’re a crap wife, a crap mother and a crap sister, for that matter. Oh, and you were a crap daughter too, by the way. Mum and Dad might have idolized you, but deep down they knew you didn’t really care about them. You’ve only ever really cared about yourself. I hope you’re happy, Cleo, I really do.’

  She turns on her heel and starts to walk back towards the house. She feels light-headed, exhilarated almost. Braver than she has ever dared to be.

  ‘Given that’s how you feel about me, I’m amazed you wanted us to spend the whole summer together.’

  Despite herself, Abi turns. Cleo is still standing where she left her. She’s speaking too loudly given where and who she is. People are turning to look.

  ‘But then I suppose being able to sponge off your family for a couple of months at least saves you having to get a proper job.’

  On the other side of the road Abi can see a young man, phone held aloft, no doubt recording the whole scene for YouTube. She takes a few steps back towards her sister. She speaks as quietly as she can.

  ‘I thought you wanted to build bridges. I thought you wanted us to have a proper relationship. Like family.’

  ‘Poor old Abigail, living her lonely dull life in the sticks, desperate for crumbs from the family table.’

  ‘You invited me, remember. I didn’t initiate this.’

  ‘Mooning around after my husband. Don’t think I haven’t noticed you hanging on his every word, blushing like a teenager every time he speaks to you. It’s pathetic.’

  Abi is stung. Has her infatuation really been that obvious? ‘Jon’s a good man. You’re lucky to have him.’

  ‘Maybe I am, but do you know what? It’s none of your business. What I choose to do with my life is up to me.’

  Abi can see that the young man has given up and gone, hopefully frustrated that he couldn’t hear what looked to be a juicy argument. People are still going about their business, walking their dogs, drinking coffees, chatting to their friends, oblivious, while her own world is blurring, melting around her.

  ‘You know that’s not true, though. You have a husband, children, responsibilities. It can’t just be about you.’

  ‘You know what, Abigail? When you have managed to make a half-decent life for yourself, then maybe you can comment on mine. You’re jealous of me, my life, my career, even my husband. You always have been. And I’ve always had to feel guilty about that. As if it was my fault that I made something of myself and you didn’t. You’re pitiful actually. Do what you like, tell Jon about Richard if you want. That would suit you, wouldn’t it? Throw a hand grenade into my life and then run away. Well, if you want to ruin Tara and Megan’s lives you do just that. And then you can live with the consequences.’

  ‘I’m not the one threatening to destroy your fam
ily. You’re doing that all on your own.’

  ‘You want to get revenge on me for being prettier, more popular, Mum and Dad’s favourite? Here you go. Now’s your chance. Although I should warn you that whatever you do it’s unlikely Jon is going to notice you. You’re really not his type.’

  Abi is momentarily stopped in her tracks. She hates this Cleo, the one who will say anything, however cruel, to win an argument, the one she now knows is the genuine article. All the other versions were just smoke and mirrors. But she knows she won’t do it. She does have a hand grenade, but she’ll never pull the pin.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to say anything to Jon. I’ll leave that to you and your conscience.’

  ‘Gosh, thank you, I’m so grateful,’ Cleo says disingenuously. ‘Is it cold up there on your high horse?’

  Abi tells herself not to rise to it, not to waste her breath. ‘If the girls hadn’t planned the dinner for tonight, then I’d leave now. As it is I’m going tomorrow anyway so I’d suggest we just keep up the pretence that everything’s fine till then.’

  She turns and walks away before she can say anything she truly regrets. Unfortunately Cleo has no such qualms. ‘Oh, and, Abi, you know you thought I only invited you up here because the nanny had left? You were right. I needed someone to take care of the kids for the summer and then I thought of you.’

  And Abi knows, unequivocally, that whatever remnants of the Caroline she remembers that were left are now dead and gone. Who knows, maybe that Caroline only existed for the one brief moment when Abi was seven and hated her first-communion dress. Maybe her sister was always a nightmare in the making, the chrysalis of a monster, and now she has simply completed her metamorphosis.

  Abi spends the afternoon packing. Not that there’s much to pack; she hasn’t acquired anything that doesn’t fit in the rucksack she arrived with. Phoebe has taken over from Elena in supervising the girls – she had to pretend to walk in on them unawares and then persuade them to let her in on their secret – who are now, she tells Abi when she pops upstairs to check she is OK, decorating the kitchen for the big event, so Abi gathers up whatever she can find of her daughter’s that is clean and puts it in a pile beside her rucksack.

  Her plan is to leave straight after breakfast tomorrow. She should be able to collect the keys to her new flat around lunchtime and then, after a quick trip round B&Q, start painting in the afternoon. Or at least cleaning the place from top to bottom, ready for decorating on Saturday. She focuses on thinking about her new home, how it will look, how she’ll feel living there, how comforting it will be for her life to go back to a version of normal.

  As she piles her things out of the chest of drawers and onto the floor, she comes across a bag she had stuffed in the back of one of them on the day she got here. She knows what it is. It’s the gift she brought with her to give to Cleo and Jon when she left. A thank-you-for-having-me present. She pulls it out of the bag. It’s a small ornate silver photo frame, made by her friend Kate who has a stall at a local market and who sold it to her at a rock-bottom price. Inside Abi has put her favourite photograph of her and Caroline when they were young, probably nine and six, grinning unselfconsciously for the camera, arms round one another, laughing. It was taken in Broadstairs one summer holiday. She can remember thinking that it would make Cleo laugh. She can remember imagining the moment when her sister opened the bag and took it out, the hug that would follow, the newfound closeness they would have developed over the summer enveloping them. She can remember how optimistic she felt.

  It was a stupidly inappropriate present, she realizes now. It’s impossible to picture the little frame jostling for position with all the exquisite, expensive works of art that are so carefully placed around the house. No room for sentimental tat here. Plus she’s hardly going to leave Cleo a thank-you gift now. It occurs to her that she has nothing for the girls. In anticipation, the summer had been all about Cleo; she had barely given the others a thought. And then in the last few days she has been too preoccupied to think about anything other than her own miseries.

  She looks at her watch – quarter to three – she has time to go to one of the beautiful shops on Regent’s Park Road and buy something she can’t afford. She wants Tara and Megan to have something to remember her by.

  ‘What’s that?’

  Abi jumps. Jon is standing in the doorway. She has no idea how long he’s been there for.

  She looks at the photo frame in her hand. ‘Oh, nothing.’

  ‘Lovely frame,’ he says. ‘Is that hand-made?’

  Abi nods. She hands it over. She has no idea what he is doing up here.

  ‘Is that you and Cleo?’

  ‘I was going to give it to her as a leaving gift.’ Saying it aloud Abi realizes how pathetic it sounds. I’ve brought an apple for the teacher; it might make her like me.

  ‘She’ll love it,’ he laughs. Of course, Jon knows nothing of her and Cleo’s latest fallout. As far as he’s aware, their relationship has been growing stronger every day.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Abi says. ‘Maybe …’ She’s not about to let him know there’s anything wrong, because then he’d want to know what and why, and she knows she can never tell him.

  She decides to change the subject. Injects a lightness into her tone. ‘What brings you all the way up here?’

  ‘I came to say goodbye,’ he says. ‘In case I don’t get a chance to see you on your own tomorrow.’

  Abi feels a lump in her throat, blinks back tears, looks at the floor. ‘Thanks for putting me up all summer. And for putting up with me, come to that.’

  ‘It’s been really great having you around. Honestly it has. It’s been fun.’

  A big fat traitorous tear finds its way out and rolls down Abi’s cheek. She looks at her piles of clothes, pretends to busy herself with them.

  ‘And I wanted to thank you. Having you here has had a great effect on Cleo. And the girls, of course.’

  She’s powerless to stop another tear and then another from running down her cheek. She tries to keep her head turned away, not to let him see.

  ‘Abi?’ She can hear him behind her. She knows that if he touches her she’ll start to bawl and probably never stop.

  ‘Are you crying?’

  She grunts something that is meant to mean ‘no, I’m fine,’ but before she knows it Jon has put his hand on her shoulder and she’s turned round and buried her head in his T-shirt and is sobbing uncontrollably. He puts his arms round her, stroking her back, which only makes things worse.

  ‘You can come back and stay any time,’ he says, misinterpreting what it is that is making her cry. She knows she should pull away but the feel of his arms round her is so powerful. It’s so unfair she thinks, not for the first time. Cleo has this amazing man and she doesn’t even give him a second thought.

  ‘You have to anyway because the girls are going to miss you like crazy. And I’m sure Cleo will want to bring them down to Kent to see your new flat as soon as you’re settled in.’

  She doesn’t trust herself to speak. There’s so much she wants to say to him, but she knows she never will. She has to pull herself together. Get out of here with her dignity intact at least. She forces herself to stand straight, wiping her tears.

  ‘Sure,’ she says, trying to smile.

  For a split second Jon keeps his arms round her and then he drops them to his side and they take a step back from each other.

  ‘And anyway you have to come back up for the audition next week.’

  Shit, she does. Well, maybe. Perhaps she can just back out again at the last minute.

  ‘Of course.’ She smooths down her hair, rubs under her eyes where her mascara will have run.

  They both stand there for a moment, unsure how to end the conversation.

  ‘It goes without saying I’ll miss you too,’ Jon says finally.

  Abi swallows, uses all her willpower to stop the tears starting again. ‘Me too.’

  ‘I guess I’d better h
elp the girls with the big surprise,’ he says after a moment, mercifully breaking the atmosphere.

  ‘I’ve been practising my shocked face,’ Abi says, trying to smile. ‘It’s pretty good, if I say so myself.’

  Abi gets herself together, washes her face, reapplies her make-up and then heads up to the shops to find a parting gift for her nieces. She crosses the road to avoid Regent’s Park Road Books. She has no idea whether Cleo is in there with Richard still. She tries not to care. In one of the stylish interiors shops she buys two similar but not identical wooden boxes, beautifully made from rough wood washed with white. In one she places a necklace she bought for herself in Accessorize, and which Tara, no longer fixated by designer labels, has admired, and in the other a bracelet from Camden Market that is a favourite of Megan’s. Into both boxes she puts a print-out of a photo she has on her phone of the four of them, Abi, Phoebe, Tara and Megan, taken by Jon. She decides she will tell the girls these are their memory boxes, places to keep mementos that mean a lot to them. Somewhere to document their, hopefully, happy family history.

  Cleo makes an appearance at the last supper. Abi manages to gasp in fake surprise and genuine awe when she sees the trouble Tara and Megan have gone to to decorate the kitchen and prepare something that’s at least half edible. A home-made banner strung from the top of one of the cupboards to the hanging pot rack reads ‘We’ll miss you, Auntie Abi’. Abi actually cries although not quite for the reasons everyone thinks. Cleo makes a point of not looking at her, but in the excitement luckily no one else seems to notice. When Abi hears Jon ask her how her day has been and Cleo starts to hold forth on all the fabulous things she has done – with one notable exception – Abi turns her attention to the girls and forces herself not to listen.