A Tale of Two Sisters

by Anna Maxted

  ‘I had a small prang in the car on Friday,’ she replied.

  That would be my fault then. I paused, then asked a question designed to show that I thought deeply about her. And botched it. ‘Will Tim look after Sphincter?’

  ‘Sphinx!’

  I sighed. That was Lizbet. She didn’t see the big picture, even if it was the Mona Lisa, she saw the tiny, irrelevant flaw in the big picture, maybe the frame wasn’t nice. I was a queasy mix of tottery and delirious. I sank onto the sofa again. ‘Drinks, George,’ I whispered, and he stamped off.

  George returned with what appeared to be two identical glasses of water.

  ‘Teensiest splash of vodka in yours,’ he said to Lizbet.

  ‘I’m not an alcoholic, you know,’ she snapped. But she gulped it, and her body untensed with a zing!

  ‘Difficult day,’ I said, eventually.

  ‘Ya think?’ she replied. Then she muttered, ‘Wanker.’

  ‘Who’s a wanker?’ said George, braced for battle.

  ‘Who isn’t?’ said my sister.

  ‘Tim sent you packing, did he?’ said George.

  ‘He packed for me.’

  ‘You were a right cow,’ said George. ‘What did you expect?’

  ‘I was expecting a baby, George,’ said Lizbet.

  ‘So was Tim,’ said my husband, who didn’t know when to can it.

  Lizbet stared at him with bloodshot eyes. ‘You have no idea about anything so why don’t you shut your mouth? How dare you preach to me about—’

  ‘I think,’ I said – the first words I’d spoken – ‘that George is trying to tell you, in his boorish way, that whatever’s happened, it’s plain to everyone that Tim has a deep love for you that is very moving and incredibly special.’

  ‘What?’ said Lizbet. ‘Did you swallow an American pill?’

  ‘Lizbet,’ I said, ‘the man adores you. It’s been extremely traumatic for you both, is all I’m saying, and you’re bound to take it out on each other. But don’t be too hard on him, and don’t let this end out of pride. It’s too precious for that.’

  ‘He adores me?’ she said, and was quiet.

  ‘Yes!’ I said, encouraged.

  Lizbet sighed. ‘Whether this relationship ends is not up to me.’ She stood up, wobble-legged. ‘I’m going to bed.’

  In theory I was working from home the next day, but I couldn’t concentrate. Lizbet was snoring in the guest bedroom, and I felt the intolerable frustration of someone who requires other people’s domestic tiffs to be resolved. She wasn’t budging. Which meant it was up to me to kickstart the reunion. Despite our reputation, divorce lawyers aren’t just about scooping up the money in diggers while their clients bawl into handkerchiefs. In Family Law, you have a duty to mediate. You try to negotiate a deal for your client before you issue court proceedings. Even a week before the final hearing, you’re pressing for the two sides to see sense, before they throw away all their cash on a trial.

  We’re unofficial therapists.

  (‘I don’t want to see that bitch girlfriend of his . . .’

  ‘Well, why don’t you do the handover at McDonald’s in Neasden? We’ll have a written agreement, and if he doesn’t stick to it, we’ll turn it into a court order!’ That sort of thing.)

  If anyone could sort out the mess between Lizbet and Tim, it was me.

  I dragged a comb through my hair, slid into the Merc, and sped round.

  Tim opened the door in his boxer shorts and a white T-shirt. He didn’t look annoyed to see me, but he didn’t look pleased either.

  ‘Did she send you?’ he said.

  I hesitated, shook my head.

  He shrugged. ‘Why are you here?’

  I sighed. ‘Because—’

  Tim held up a hand. ‘Doesn’t matter. You can take away the rest of her stuff. Her make-up’s still in the bathroom cabinet, even the Benefit Moon-shine I bought her. I think it’s iridescent foundation – she paints it on. And her favourite boots, not that she can walk in them. And she’ll need her pillow. It’s very flat. She can’t sleep on a fat pillow. She needs her neck to be in alignment with her spine.’ He paused. ‘Not that I give a toss.’

  ‘No,’ I said, puffing as I followed him upstairs. ‘No, I can see that you don’t care at all.’ Then I shouted, ‘Ti-im!’

  ‘Yes?’ he said.

  I breathed deeply for a second or two, trying to catch my breath. I felt weird.

  ‘Tim,’ I said, trying to bulldoze through the sick, floaty sensation in my head, ‘I came over because even though George and I are . . .’ I gestured at my stomach, ‘our relationship is at death’s door. The truth is, while we are both decent people – well, I am – we don’t like each other. We are not friends. I don’t find him attractive. When he kisses me the air in his nose smells funny. Everything he does irritates me. His jaw makes a cracking sound when he chews. He eats apples whole, leaving only the stalk. He never turns a tap quite off. He pronounces apricot “ap-ricot”. He pronounces ate “at”. He creeps into a room and stands right beh—’

  Tim had paused from digging through Lizbet’s shoe cupboard and was looking at me curiously. There was a tiny bit of pink willy poking out of the front of his boxers, but I didn’t want to embarrass him by mentioning it.

  ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘my point is, you and Lizbet are not like us. You have a viable relationship. You have a bloody fabulous relationship. You two are so cool together. There’s passion, and respect, there’s love, there’s laughter, and admiration. It’s very enviable. But I think it’s got buried in the agony you two feel about losing your baby. It’s become a grief competition. Have you talked about it? Because Lizbet comes from a long line of people who excel in not talking. We pride ourselves on it! There is no communication in our family. Bugger all! We don’t communicate! No one says what they think! But I’m her sister, and I know when she’s angry, and she is the angriest I’ve ever seen her. She says she’s fine but she’s been rejecting food. She’s been rejecting everything she loves the most! Don’t some people do that when they’ve been hurt? Shoo away all love so there’s no chance of feeling that pain again? But she won’t be happy without you, and I don’t think you’ll be happy without her. So, maybe –’ I gasped, I couldn’t breathe, my heart was pounding, I felt as sick as a dog – ‘maybe –’ my legs felt hot and weak – ‘I feel wrong, I—’

  The world tipped sideways, and I fell onto the thin carpet on Tim and Lizbet’s bedroom floor.

  ‘Cassie!’ cried Tim, and bounded over. ‘What is it? Oh God, it’s the baby! I’ll ring an ambulance!’

  I shook my head. It took grim effort to say even one word. ‘Don’t. Not . . . serious. Just . . . tired. Dizzy. Need to lie flat. Water.’

  ‘I’ll put you on the bed. Hang on.’

  Tim bent and gently scooped me into his arms.

  Lizbet burst into the bedroom, stared at us grey-faced, let out a dramatic wail, and ran, slamming the front door behind her.

  Chapter 25

  The Top Man – Irish and softly spoken with a thousand pregnant women all in love with him – told me that I had low blood pressure and shouldn’t run around so much.

  ‘In Germany, they’d treat you for it, but in this country we don’t see it as a problem.’

  He might not see it as a problem. I had to disagree. I’d called Lizbet on her mobile ten times, and so had Tim, but she always cut off. There was no sign of her anywhere, and I was worried. After a day of searching, her man and I conferred on the phone. He was in a harsher mood than I was.

  ‘Stop looking,’ said Tim. ‘This is just another example of how she doesn’t trust me.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, from my prone position on the sofa, ‘but think how it looked. Anyone would think what she did.’

  ‘But this is me!’ he cried. ‘She knows what I’m like! I’m a frickin’ Labrador! And yet she’ll believe I’m having it off with her own sister! It’s so insulting! I’m so insulted! It’s such an insult!’


  I was a bit piqued that he was so insulted, but I didn’t say anything. ‘You do realise,’ I said, ‘that she had come over to apologise.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Tim,’ I said. I was continually amazed at men’s capacity for selective vision. They saw nothing! A good half of them needed to be issued with white sticks, ‘didn’t you see what she was holding?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A box for an iPod Dock Connector.’

  There was silence.

  ‘Tim?’

  ‘I didn’t even tell her I’d lost it,’ he said, in a small voice.

  The phone rang again straight away, so I picked it up and said, in a crisp voice, ‘Hello?’ (Another thing that annoyed me about George was that he was unable to choose between ‘yes?’ and ‘hello’. Instead, he answered the phone as if the house was a cab firm: ‘Yellow!’)

  ‘Darling, you called. Is everything ok? Can I get Daddy to pick something up for you?’

  ‘No, thanks. I’m fine. Have you spoken to Lizbet?’

  ‘Not since Friday when she rushed off. I suppose she took offence at my comment about the baby clothes. I admit it was a silly thing to say but I was only being practical. You have to move on. There comes a point when talking about an upset only makes it worse. I must say, though, she’s looking well.’

  Our mother was the opposite of a normal Jewish mother in that she thought you looked well if you were stick-thin. And while there probably was a point where talking about an ‘upset’ made things worse, the trouble was that for Mummy, this point came one minute after the ‘upset’.

  ‘Daddy says to remind you about Aunt Edith’s,’ she added. ‘I’d forgotten. Why Cousin Denise sent out children’s party invitations . . . Edith’s seventy-five! And it’s in Bushey. What a schlep. And it’s evening dress. You know it’ll be wall-to-wall sequins. You didn’t go to Ian’s twenty-fifth. Denise wore a sequined longcoat. It was striped. Black, red, white. All sequins. She looked like a snake shedding its skin.’

  Mummy and I had scant regard for the rest of the family – excluding Aunt Edith. We thought they were narrow suburban bores. In return, they thought we were strange, eccentric, and felt sorry for us. I was happy to celebrate Aunt Edith’s three-quarter century – less so with Denise, Ian, and a roomful of sequins.

  ‘When is it again?’

  ‘Six weeks from this Sunday. He says to put it in your diary. They asked Daddy to do the champagne. Of course. Not that he minds.’

  ‘What are you getting her?’

  Mummy sighed. I could hear a cigarette being lit. ‘There’ll be something in the John Lewis china department. I’m not going to drive myself crazy.’

  I paused. I had forgotten Aunt Edith’s seventy-fifth, and when I consulted my diary, I had actually arranged to go to the Dorchester Spa that day, with Peter-the-hairdresser. I had a busy life and my extended family did not occupy the head-space that they’d presume to be entitled to. With respect, Ian and Denise could go hang, but I felt bad about Aunt Edith. She’d been such a strong, loving presence in my childhood, and I’d grown up and neglected her. I’d postpone the Dorch.

  ‘Why don’t I check out the Tiffany website and find her a nice vase?’ I said.

  ‘A Tiffany vase?’ Mummy’s tone indicated that this would be a waste of the brand name. ‘Darling,’ she added, ‘when you get to her age, John Lewis and Tiffany become interchangable. In fact, John Lewis has more cachet.’

  I decided not to argue. ‘I’ll have a look and get something from all of us.’ I had a thought. ‘Does Lizbet know about the party?’

  ‘I left a message on her phone just now. Although she usually remembers these things.’

  Not only that, Lizbet usually corralled myself and Mummy into line, organising the communal gift, the transport, ensuring we stuck to the dress code (give or take ten thousand sequins) and turned up. I wondered if she would turn up this time. Not even Lizbet could sulk for six weeks straight! Actually, she could. The record sulk in our family is twenty-five years (Great-Uncle Keith, shunning Cousin Malcolm Once Removed, because he disapproved of Malcolm’s marriage to Korean Nelly. Mummy always claimed Keith was jealous, being stuck, as he was, with Scottish Miriam.) I put my hand on my stomach, to soothe myself, but I still felt low. Things could have been perfect, but they never were.

  Hubert Fitzgerald was as purple in the face as an aubergine. It was the morning of the middle negotiation hearing, and I was trying to persuade him that if we got as far as a final hearing we’d lose but he didn’t want to hear it. He’d reached a stage in life where people mostly agreed with him. He drummed his manicured nails on the table, and his eyes skimmed me with disdain. The room was airless, I felt lousy. I sipped water, hoping to ward off the dizziness. I was three months pregnant – not a fact I wished to share with Hubert, although if I keeled over he’d demand some explanation – and I hadn’t spoken to my sister for five weeks. It was affecting me more than I cared to admit.

  ‘Look,’ I said, swallowing my nausea. ‘You’d be so much better off – in every sense – doing a deal. If you don’t settle, you’re making a bad bet. Go for a final hearing, and she is going to get a big cut. You don’t know what the judge will award her, but my feeling is it will be significant. She has your children – she will need a house and an income. I don’t think the judge will accept that she should move out of your Georgian mansion in the village into a small flat in Greater London, and work in a shop sixteen hours a week so that she can qualify for tax credits. Maybe you could enlarge on what you’re offering Alissa.’

  Hubert thought he was smart, but he hadn’t been clever. He’d been too busy thinking with his knob. The proper way to do divorce is to plan ahead. You have to stick it out for a bit, while you squirrel away your funds. If you want to hide your money, you write cheques for random amounts over a long period of time. Say, two hundred and twelve pounds, or four hundred and forty-seven pounds, fifty. The sum of, say, five grand on a bank statement is going to be queried (let alone Hubert’s uncharacteristically charitable donation to his father of a fifth of a million quid).

  Unfortunately, only divorce lawyers, and people who’ve been divorced already, realise this.

  While Hubert’s most recent Nat-West bank statements revealed a monkish, meagre existence, reading through his less recent Barclaycard statements was similar to a jaunt through Cosmopolitan. Sex shops, internet sites, hotel rooms, restaurants, air tickets, weekends in Paris. Everything Hubert had claimed about everything? Alissa – who had emptied his entire filing cabinet into a black bin bag with yellow ties – possessed the documents to contradict it.

  ‘I tell you this, love,’ said Hubert, who couldn’t believe that I wasn’t a secretary. ‘I’ll enlarge my dick before I enlarge what I’m offering that cow! She’s done nothing. She cooked a few meals.’

  Thinking ahead to my own divorce (a girl can dream), I thought that at least George wouldn’t be able to say this of me. I had cooked no meals.

  ‘So you can tell her and her fuckwit brief I’ll see her in court, and she can stick that up her arse and smoke it!’ he added. I could tell he liked that phrase: he’d said it ten times in the last hour. ‘I’m going for a fag!’

  I stood up slowly, and said, ‘I will indeed convey that message to Mr Alcock. If deemed appropriate.’

  Barnaby and I were due to meet in three minutes, in a private room. Most times, if I knew my opponent – and I usually did – we’d spend the best part of an hour chatting about our weekends, and fifteen minutes discussing the case. Maybe ten. Nine at a pinch.

  ‘You’ve put on weight!’ said Barnaby, jumping up as I walked in. Only Barnaby could say that like it was a compliment. He pulled out a chair, and kissed me on the cheek, as if the awkwardness of our last encounter was all forgotten. It wasn’t. (In one of his fonder moments – a long time ago – George had issued me with one of those cutesy pet names that loving couples give each other. It was ‘The Sicilian Elephant’. I bore grudges and
I never forgot.)

  I sat down and dumped my briefcase on the table. Barnaby beamed, and leaned closer. He had nicked himself shaving and I wanted to kiss it better. ‘Are we soon to expect a little bundle of joy?’

  I stared at him. No need to be so jovial about it. I thought his heart was broken! ‘I don’t know where you get it from,’ I said. ‘Perhaps we could stop speculating on my personal life, and attend to business. I feel that my client has, in the circumstances, been generous. Bearing in mind that Mrs Fitzgerald has never worked—’

  Barnaby laughed. ‘Cass, cut the crap. She’s bringing up his three kids by herself. He was never there. They couldn’t afford childcare. Or rather, he chose not to allow a budget for it. In fact, she had to account for every penny she spent with receipts. Hubert was a total stinge, and I really wouldn’t say that Alissa has never worked.’ He nodded towards my stomach. ‘Not so long and you’ll realise exactly how hard she’s worked.’

  I opened my mouth to object and he rolled his eyes.

  ‘So come on, Cass, give me something to work with. It’s in your client’s interest to settle. Alissa would love a hearing, she’s keen as mustard. All he’s done is lie to her to the point where she’s convinced herself she’s going mad. She’s desperate for him to be cross-examined, it’s the only way she’s going to find out the truth. And Hubert is not going to want to be trapped in the witness box when I get started—’

  ‘Shush a minute,’ I said.

  ‘Shush?’ said Barnaby. ‘You can’t tell me to “shush”!’

  I wanted to think. I thought of Alissa bringing up her babies, and I felt a twinge. She was middle-aged but had the air of a gauche teenager. She had dark, shiny hair, a shy smile, and didn’t know what to do with her hands. I didn’t think she’d tipped the contents of Hubert’s filing cabinet into a black bin bag without prompting. Poor woman. In my experience, women end a marriage because they are fed up. And men end it because they’ve found someone else. It’s rare for me to represent a husband in divorce proceedings without a new partner. Which was no consolation to Alissa. I was glad she had Barnaby as her counsel – Jesus, what was wrong with me! Boo hiss, Alissa!