The Ugly Sister (18 page)

When they finish eating, she asks the girls to help her fill the dishwasher and to her surprise they don’t complain – they just do it – and then they demand that they all play on the Wii Fit, which seems like a fairly harmless way to pass the time, so she agrees
readily. Actually, boxing the life out of the object of your unrequited crush is quite a fun way to spend an evening. They box, they bowl, they play tennis and then Abi insists they box some more. In the end Tara and Megan actually volunteer to go to bed they’re so exhausted, so Jon goes and tucks them in, and Abi decides, what the hell, and breaks out the Pouilly-Fumé.

She’s still out of breath when he comes back in and sweating a little, not her best ever look. She hands him a glass of wine.

‘One more match?’ he says. ‘I was holding back before. Now I’m really going to thrash you.’

They are ridiculously competitive. After each bout, the victor parades around the room, hands aloft, rubbing their triumph in the face of the loser. It’s the most tiring thing Abi has ever done. If ever there was a perfect displacement activity, this is it, because she has no energy left to think about how much she thinks she is in love with Jon; she just wants to win.

Five matches later (Abi having lost three to two) she is lying on the floor in need of oxygen and laughing so much she’s making herself cough. Jon flops on the sofa, panting.

‘Bowling,’ Abi says. ‘Best of five.’

He groans and drags himself back up. ‘You’re worse than the girls.’

They play till at least eleven o’clock. Abi barely even notices the time go by. Just as they’re packing
up, Jon’s mobile rings and she gathers it’s Cleo letting him know that she’s there safely and, by the sounds of it, not very happy with her hotel which is clearly not The Mercer. She half listens in for a few moments, but then it seems like a good time to make her escape, so she waves goodnight at Jon and practically runs up the stairs and shuts herself in away from temptation.

OK. One evening down. Eleven to go. She gets into bed and turns out the light, but she can’t get to sleep for ages because her head is filled with all sorts of thoughts that it ought to be illegal to have about your brother-in-law. She tries to replace him with her default fantasy objects: George Clooney, Johnny Depp, that bloke off
Top Gear
who’s not even the one everyone else thinks is good-looking, but it’s hopeless. Every time the fantasy Abi in her head (the one with no stretch marks, much longer legs and unerring self-confidence) turns round there’s Jon beating a path to her door. In the end she just succumbs. Sod it. Why fight what you can’t change?

Wednesday starts off quite well. Abi keeps out of the way till Jon has left for work and then she ferries the girls around in the car. She’s getting quite good at driving in London now. She can be as aggressive as the rest of them, although when Megan shouts ‘bastard’ at an old man who nips into a parking space just before them Abi realizes that she should probably try to rein herself in a bit. And, of course, she laughs
when she asks Megan not to use language like that again, which completely cancels out any authority she might have earned.

‘Bastard,’ Megan shouts happily to someone who cuts them up on Regent’s Park Road.

‘Megan,’ Abi says, ‘it’s not funny, really. Don’t.’

‘You do,’ Megan says, and of course she has a point.

‘Yes, but I’m a grown-up. I’m allowed. Please don’t use language like that or your mum and dad will be really cross with me.’

‘What if she doesn’t ever say it in front of them?’ Tara pipes up.

Is this acceptable? Negotiating about how and when to swear with a seven- and a ten-year-old? It must be better than nothing. ‘Or anyone else. No teachers, no parents of your friends.’

Megan contemplates this. ‘OK. I’ll only ever say it in front of you and Tara.’

‘What about me?’ Tara whines. ‘I want my own word.’

Great. ‘Fine. Which word do you want?’

She thinks. ‘Shit-head. That’s what dad always calls people when they annoy him.’

Abi can’t help it; she laughs.

‘That’s two words,’ Megan is saying. ‘That’s not fair, is it, Auntie Abi?’

‘It’s one phrase – it counts. OK, here’s the rules. Megan may call people bastards, Tara may call people
shit-heads, but only in this car and only in front of me and each other. And not so loud that the people in the other cars hear and I get beaten up. Agreed?’

‘Agreed,’ they both say, and then they all spend the rest of the day arguing about whether everyone they come across is a bastard or a shit-head. Abi is glad she’s teaching them valuable life skills. She has found herself warming more and more to Tara. Of course she loves her, Tara is her niece, her flesh and blood, but she hasn’t always found spending time with her that easy. She’s usually so busy worrying about what she looks like or what the socially acceptable thing to say is that she’s not actually much … fun. It might just be that she’s relaxing with Abi because they’re together all day, but she seems to be loosening up a bit, becoming more like a normal child all the time. Maybe this time away from watching her mother pretending to eat and discussing everyone’s weight and dress sense as if that was the only thing about them that mattered might do her the world
of good. And if allowing her to call all their near neighbours shit-heads can help her down that path then maybe Abi is a marvellous auntie after all.

There’s no avoiding it. There’s another evening coming up. With her newfound feeling of solidarity with the girls giving her courage, Abi dares to suggest that they might actually help with the preparations for dinner and, miracle of miracles, they agree. Tara MacMahon
Attwood doing manual labour. Where will it end? So they all spend an hour in the kitchen together chopping and stirring and generally, honestly, having a good time.

At one point Abi looks at Jon showing Megan how to make the dressing for the salad and she feels a lump the size of an orange well up in her throat. He’s so patient with her – because, truthfully, she’s not that interested – and he somehow manages to make mixing oil, soy sauce, mustard, honey and sesame seeds fun. Megan is obviously the daddy’s girl of the two, but even Tara insists on having a go at making her own version and, in the end, they have a salad-dressing-off in which Abi is the judge. They’re actually both pretty rank because the girls insist on adding their own special ingredients, which, Abi suspects, are Marmite in Megan’s case and half a bottle of vinegar in Tara’s (Abi has been banished from the room for five minutes while they finesse their offerings), but she exclaims over their deliciousness and then suggests they mix the two together because there’s no way to choose
between them.

Jon looks at her, eyebrows raised. ‘Really?’

‘Why not?’ she says, smiling. ‘But, I know, let’s have it on the side like they do in America.’ She’s basing her knowledge of the way they eat in America on
When Harry Met Sally
, by the way. Everything on the side. ‘That’s how your mum’ll be having it, if she’s having a salad.’

Jon grabs that idea quickly before it can be vetoed. ‘Great idea. I’ll get a jug.’

Just as they’re about to sit down his mobile rings.

‘It’s Mum,’ he says, and Tara grabs it and answers.

While she and Megan take turns to burble away, Abi says to Jon, ‘Have you spoken to her today?’

He nods. ‘Only for a couple of minutes. She was in the middle of a make-up test. It seemed to be going OK.’

She makes the appropriate face. Neither Jon nor Abi have mentioned the anonymous-moisturizer issue since it first raised its ugly head, but she’s pretty sure they both know there’s a strong possibility this is not the dream job Cleo was trying to make out it is. Abi has decided it must be a downmarket brand. A cheap, supermarket-available face cream that only Cleo would care didn’t have a designer label or cost £200 a jar. Made from actual chemically proven ingredients rather than enhanced with acai berries or sea water or puppy’s tears. It’ll be an overblown sense of her own importance that’s preventing her from owning up to the brand. Abi wonders how honest Cleo is being with Jon, whether she can really admit even to him what the real story is. She doubts it somehow. Or, even if she is, Abi isn’t sure she and Jon will make it real by acknowledging it to each other. She waits to see what
he’ll say next.

‘She’s feeling better about the hotel, by the sound of it. It’s somewhere in Midtown. Not exactly The Mercer, but at least it’s close to where they’ll be shooting. There
are four other models, all British. She didn’t really say much about them.’

‘Right.’ She doesn’t really know what else to say. Maybe that’s the issue. Maybe Cleo is not
the
face of whatever it is, but she’s
one
of the faces. That would certainly damage her ego.

They both sit there in silence for a moment listening to the girls gabbling on about what they’ve been up to. Then Tara hands the phone over to Jon.

‘She wants to talk to you.’

‘Hi, love.’ The tender tone he adopts gives Abi a jolt and a much-needed reality check. He loves her. Of course he does. She’s his wife and even if she is a bit of a nightmare she’s the woman he chose. Out of all the women in the world, he wanted her, faults and all. And he still does. And, anyway, so what if he didn’t love her any more, she chastises herself. He’s still married to her, he’s still Abi’s sister’s husband. She’s never stolen a man off anyone. She’s hardly going to start with her own sister. She reminds herself: I am starved of male company, I am lonely because my only daughter has just left home, of course I would fall for the first man to be nice to me, it’s textbook. It means nothing. Get a grip, she tells herself for the twentieth time.

Jon takes the phone into the living room and Abi’s relieved. She doesn’t want to hear him whispering sweet nothings. She wraps his plate in foil and puts it in the still-warm oven then gets on with eating with
the girls while they tell her what Cleo has been up to. She’s glad to hear Cleo is giving them a rosy picture of the trip and she lets them witter on excitedly about how she can see the Empire State Building from her hotel window and how it’s nearly a hundred degrees outside, but inside she’s shivering because the air-conditioning is so strong. By the time Jon’s off the phone they’ve pretty much finished eating.

‘How’s she getting on?’ Abi asks him as she starts clearing away. Megan jumps up to help her and then, completely unbidden, Tara joins her. Abi double takes.

‘Great,’ he says. ‘She’s having a good time.’

She can’t tell whether this is really the case or whether he is just saying so for the sake of the kids, so she just says, ‘I’m glad,’ and leaves it at that.

The kids are full of questions about what else Cleo said and has she bought them any presents yet, so Abi sneaks off to the living room and watches
The One Show
although she’s only half concentrating. She needs a plan for this evening. She’s not sure she can insist they play on the Wii again; he’ll think she’s some kind of arrested-development overage teenager. Maybe they could watch a DVD. That’s got to be harmless. She hunts around a bit, but she can’t find evidence of any and then she remembers that Cleo and Jon have a ‘cinema room’ in the basement. She hasn’t been down to see it, but the idea of the two of them closeted away in a tiny dark room suddenly doesn’t seem like such a good idea. She’s just planning her escape
upstairs – she can claim she wants to write a long email to Phoebe – when the three of them pile in and the girls sit
either side of her on the sofa and insist that they all watch last night’s
EastEnders
together. They fill her in on all the plot points, half of which contain situations she’s not entirely sure a ten- and a seven-year-old should even know about, let alone be watching, but at least it fills both the time and the silence and, to be honest, by the end of the episode she wants to know what happens next. She finds herself asking when it’s on again. It’s like crack.

When it’s over, Jon starts making noises about baths and bed, and Tara and Megan whinge and complain as usual. Sometimes Abi thinks they just do it because they think they should. Phoebe was the same. She would fight to stay up past her bedtime even when Abi could see she was falling asleep standing up. She finds herself starting to wonder what Phoebe is up to now and, as always, that makes her start to panic about all the awful things that might have befallen her, so she decides that she will go and write an email, after all, in the hopes of getting a swift and happy response.

But when she stands up to go Jon says, ‘You’re not going up yet, are you?’ and when she tells him that she is he says, ‘Stay and have a glass of wine first. I feel like a saddo drinking on my own,’ and Abi finds herself agreeing to have ‘just the one’.

‘I’m a bit worried about Cleo,’ he says once the girls
have gone upstairs and they have a full glass each. ‘She’s saying she’s having a great time, but I’m not sure I believe her. She sounds a bit manic, like she’s a bit too keen for me to think it sounds amazing.’

Abi doesn’t want to be the one to bring up the fact that the job sounds a bit rubbish, so she just says, ‘Well, it must be a bit strange getting back into it after all these years. She probably just needs some time to adjust.’

‘Honestly, though,’ he says, ‘she still hasn’t said what the brand is. I mean …’

He tails off, never quite saying what he does mean.

‘I know. But it’s a moisturizer, they’re shooting in New York, how bad can it be?’

‘I just hope she’s not heading for a massive disappointment. I knew I should have tried to talk her out of it.’

‘No one could have done that, I don’t think. When Cleo wants something, she’s going to have it no matter what anyone else says. She’s always been the same.’

Jon fills her glass up again. There goes her ‘just the one’ resolution. ‘What was it like for you growing up?’ he asks. ‘It must have been strange …’

Abi has never really unloaded all her angst and resentment about her and Cleo’s shared past onto anyone. Philippa and Andrew, of course, wouldn’t have wanted to hear it and, anyway, they share as much of the blame as Cleo does, really. She’s told friends some of it, but because none of them know Cleo they
can never really understand, and Abi usually ends up sounding as if she’s feeling sorry for herself because her sister became a big success and she didn’t.