The Ugly Sister (27 page)

Jon shakes his hand. ‘See you Saturday, then?’

He’s being so nice to Richard, so friendly, Abi could kiss him. (Yes, yes, we know.)

‘Lovely,’ Richard says, smiling.

‘I’ll see you out,’ Abi says, and she follows him to the front step where they agree to wait for a couple of minutes so the others will think they are having some kind of teenage snog fest. At one point Richard makes a sort of strangled moaning noise followed by a loud slurp and Abi has to hit him to shut him up.

‘How was I?’ he says in a stage whisper, when they’re alone.

Even though his unabashed hero worship of Cleo drove her to distraction, Abi is still aware that this whole evening was above and beyond the call of duty. She knows that pulling him up for his suggestion of dinner wouldn’t help her cause any. ‘You were great. Thank you. And don’t worry. In a couple of days I’ll tell them we’re no more and it’ll all be over.’

‘Oh, no rush. Your sister’s lovely,’ he says. ‘Not at all like I imagined her to be from the way you’ve talked about her.’

Abi heads back inside before she says something she’ll regret.

French conversation, street dance, gymnastics, violin practice, bookshop. The next few days go past without incident or event. Abi takes herself off to the cinema on her own again one night just so she can claim to have spent the evening with Richard.

‘Has he got a secret wife stashed away at home, or something?’ Cleo says the next morning. ‘I mean, why won’t he let you stay over?’

‘I wanted to wake up in my own bed,’ Abi says.

‘Then tell Richard he can stay here. I’m not sure you’re giving this relationship a chance.’

Ah, of course, Abi thinks, my fault. Abi sabotages her own love life as per usual.

She refuses to rise to the bait. ‘Honestly, Cleo, it’s all fine. Don’t worry about me.’

Abi has insisted that they meet Jon and Cleo at the Ivy Club on Saturday to save them all having to share a cosy cab ride. She’s had to pretend that she and Richard are going straight there from somewhere else. In reality, she has been hiding out in the stock room at the shop for a few hours like a fugitive. To pass more time they have a quick one in the pub before they go.

There’s no sign of Stella, and Richard tells Abi that
she’s taken the kids up to see her parents for a few days. Despite the fact that they are, in reality, doing nothing wrong, Abi feels guilty that the other people in the pub might think she has succumbed to Richard’s charms while his girlfriend is out of town. She sits as far away from him as she can while still sharing the same table. Richard is dressed very smartly in a suit with an open-neck shirt and Abi too has pushed the boat out, pulling a dress from the depths of her backpack, and her one and only pair of high heels are making another appearance. They make a handsome couple if she says so herself.

‘If I wasn’t taken …’ Richard twinkles when he first sees her.

‘Don’t even joke about it,’ Abi says.

They get to the Ivy Club – The Ivy’s younger, more elitist sister – at about twenty to eight. Cleo is a member, for some reason, although Abi has no idea when she goes. Maybe she just likes to know she could if she wanted to. They head up to the bar in the impressive glass lift and announce themselves to the woman behind the desk who leads them to a table surrounded by four cosy-looking armchairs. Cleo and Jon aren’t there yet, so they order a drink. Richard immediately starts to scour the bar for famous faces.

‘Look,’ he hisses, ‘there’s Nigel Lythgoe. And is that Sylvester Stallone?’

Abi has to admit that part of her loves sitting in the opulent surroundings, glass of champagne in hand
(what the hell, Cleo’s paying, she assumes, and she’s developed a taste for it over the past few weeks), star spotting. She just wishes it was under different circumstances. When Cleo and Jon walk in, there’s a tiny little ripple of recognition from a few of the other non-celebrity customers – the ones who Abi noticed seemed disappointed when they looked up to see her and Richard arrive. Cleo surveys the room, keen to see what sort of reaction her entrance has provoked, waves her hand at a couple of people and then grants both Richard and Abi a stagey hug. Jon and Richard shake hands matily, and Jon and Abi sort of smile and say, ‘Hi.’ It’s all a bit awkward, a bit formal.

After another glass – well, Cleo and Jon were ordering one and she didn’t want to sit there empty handed – their table is ready and they move on up to the restaurant and order all manner of delicious-sounding things. Abi plumps for the smoked swordfish followed by cod with chorizo. She spots the sticky-toffee pudding on the dessert part of the menu and tells herself she has to try to leave room. Richard and Cleo are chatting away – he’s asking her about all the other supermodels from her era and she’s entertaining him with horror stories of which one was the worst diva and who was anorexic and who just stayed thin because they were a coke-head.

It’s all horribly indiscreet and Abi keeps looking around to check if anyone else is listening. There’s no point trying to change the course of the conversation
because Cleo’s loving holding court and Richard is lapping it up. It’s not that it’s not entertaining, it is, but after a while Abi starts to wish Cleo would let someone else get a word in now and again.

Richard is oohing and aahing as if on cue. He barely takes his eyes off Cleo, even when the starters arrive (seared scallops for Richard, onion-and-parsnip soup for Jon and chargrilled octopus for Cleo), and at one point he lays his hand on her arm and she lets him. Abi realizes with a sickening feeling that he’s flirting with her again. In front of her, his supposed girlfriend. Never mind that the whole thing is a sham, the sole purpose of tonight was to hammer home the fact that Abi is unavailable because she is in a new and exciting relationship. Not that she has got together with a man who really is more interested in her sister. And let’s not forget – far worse, if truth be told, because as far as Richard knows her crush on Jon was entirely one-sided – that this display is going on in front of Jon, Cleo’s husband, without any regard for the way it might be making him feel. It occurs to Abi that Richard is
not a man’s man. In fact, if an attractive woman is in the room, he probably barely even registers if a man is there. Even if the woman he’s chatting up happens to be married to them.

There’s no doubt that Cleo has picked up Richard’s signals – you’d have to be blind not to. She basks in the rosy spotlight. At one point, after something particularly banal that Richard has said to her, she gives a fake
little girly giggle and says, ‘You want to watch him, Abigail. He’s a terrible flirt,’ and Abi feels thirteen again, swimming blindly along in her sister’s wake.

She can’t even look at Jon. She’s afraid if she sees his pity she’ll burst out crying. Out of frustration, obviously, not because she cares what Richard is doing, but because Jon must think she does.

When she manages to make eye contact with Richard – which takes longer than you might imagine – she tries to indicate that she wants to speak to him in private. He steadfastly ignores her, so in the end she kicks him on the shin and he yelps in pain.

‘I’m going to nip out on the terrace for a cigarette,’ Abi says.

‘I didn’t know you smoked,’ Cleo says. ‘I thought you gave up.’

‘Yes, well, Richard’s got me started again. Coming?’ she says to Richard. He looks confused. In reality, neither of them have smoked for years, so she’s not surprised.

‘Oh. Yes. Of course.’

Out on the little roof terrace they stand by the heater inhaling the smoke from the cigarette of another exiled diner. He looks quizzically at them when neither of them lights up. He’s probably scared they’re going to ask him for a spare.

‘Passive smoking,’ Abi says, smiling at him. ‘I love it since I gave up.’

‘What’s going on?’ Richard hisses at her.

She waits a moment in the hope that the smoker will decide to go inside, but when he finishes his cigarette and lights another from the butt she realizes he’s there for the long haul. She hasn’t really worked out what she’s going to say, so it all comes out in a big inarticulate tumble.

‘You’re flirting with Cleo, what are you doing that for because now they won’t believe that we’re real and they’ll just feel sorry for me like my boyfriend’s got the hots for her. As usual.’

The smoking man is now a captive audience. Damned if he’s going to miss this show. Abi is past caring. Richard is looking at her, mouth open.

‘You’re having a go at me because I’m being friendly to your sister? What do you want me to do? I didn’t ask to be here in the first place if you remember.’

Well, strictly speaking, he did. He was the one who so readily accepted the first dinner invitation. The one who actually suggested the second. In fact, it’s only down to him that they are here now. She decides not to go there.

‘I’m sorry. I know you’re doing me a huge favour, but the whole point is for it to look like we’re a couple. Like we’re in that first-flush-of-love thing.’

‘Fine,’ Richard says, his tone making it clear that it’s anything but. ‘My mistake. I thought if your sister liked me, then she’d be more convinced that our relationship was real. How you’ve misinterpreted that as
me flirting I have no idea, but I can ignore Cleo from now on and play the devoted husband to you if that’s what you want. Then she’ll just think I’m rude, but anyway …’

‘Don’t be stupid. I’m not asking you to ignore her …’

‘What then?’ he says, petulantly.

‘Just … tone it down a bit. Include me and Jon in the conversation sometimes. I’m not asking you to go over the top …’

‘Whatever you want,’ he says angrily, and he stalks off. Conversation over.

Back at the table it seems to Abi that both Cleo and Jon look at them like they know the relationship is a disaster and that she and Richard have been off for a fight. People feeling pity for her is one thing Abi just cannot stand. She is so worked up that she is barely capable of making conversation even when Richard makes a big show of asking her opinion on something. He goes over the top, holding her hand, stroking her knee, at one point even nuzzling her neck. She knows he’s doing it to get back at her. He knows that she’ll be totally uncomfortable with the displays of physical affection. She goes along with it, though. It’s all she’s got.

On the way home – there’s no getting out of sharing a taxi this time – Cleo says, ‘Now, of course you’re going to stay tonight, Richard. It’s Sunday tomorrow so I know you can’t be getting up for a delivery.’

‘Well, the shop does open on a Sunday,’ Abi says, looking at the floor.

‘Yes, but not till twelve. I checked.’ Cleo laughs as if to say, ‘Look how clever I am.’

So that’s that settled.

They have a nightcap and because Abi and Jon pretty much sit there in silence – Abi just sick of the whole thing and Jon, no doubt, dreading knowing – or thinking that he knows – that she and Richard are about to be getting it on right above his head – Cleo and Richard resume their love-in. Cleo, Abi notices, is practically purring so ecstatic is she with the attention. She lays a hand on Richard’s knee momentarily as if to put emphasis on whatever she is saying. Their body language implies they’re oblivious to anyone else in the room.

Abi still can’t look at Jon, but now she doesn’t know if it’s him or herself that she feels more humiliated for. She is trying not to drink too much for fear that she’ll say or do something she shouldn’t, so she drowns her brandy in Diet Coke and sips it slowly.

After an hour or so of more Cleo stories, she stands up and announces she’s ready for bed.

‘See you at breakfast,’ Richard twinkles at Cleo as he follows Abi out. She can’t get out of there fast enough.

On the way up Richard practically takes notes, keeping up a running commentary about how fabulous everything is. Abi knows he wants to store as
much information in his memory as he can to share with whomever he thinks he can impress tomorrow. (‘So I had dinner with Cleo at the Ivy Club. Remember her? Her house is just incredible.’) She’s beyond irritated with him. When they reach her room, he makes a joke about bouncing up and down on the bed so that Jon and Cleo think ‘we’re at it’ and she can’t even laugh.

‘They’re two floors down,’ she says huffily. ‘And the girls are staying at their friends’ so no one would even hear it.’

She tells him he can sleep in her bed. She’s only slept in the sheets once. And then she goes off to the other little bedroom next door and lies on the unmade bed under a fake fur throw that she finds on a chair. This has gone far enough.

In the morning she smooths down the covers to hide the evidence and then she goes next door and wakes Richard up at about half past eight, safe in the knowledge that Cleo won’t even have thought about surfacing yet after a late night. She shoves him into the bathroom for a quick shower while she gets dressed hastily and then she practically drags him out of the front door. She can tell Cleo and Jon that they decided to go for an early morning walk and that Richard thought he might as well head home afterwards. She’s not going to go through a repeat of last night’s performance over breakfast. She can barely speak to Richard as they walk down the street side by side and
when she leaves him at the end of his road she just says, ‘See you on Tuesday.’ She doesn’t trust herself to say anything else.

She walks across Primrose Hill, having got herself a large coffee on the way. She needs time to think. She’s building up to her big revelation that it’s all over, which, she’s decided, needs to happen sooner rather than later. She can’t quite decide what reason to tell them. She doesn’t want to give Cleo any more ammunition to back up her theory that Abi is incapable of having a healthy love life. Telling them that Richard has dumped her would on the one hand make it look as if she had messed up somehow, but it would also make her the victim and keep alive the myth that she had feelings for Richard and not Jon. She decides to give it a couple more days. That’ll be long enough, surely. Long enough for them to believe it was real – just – but not so long that it becomes a family tragedy that it’s over. Cleo won’t have bought a hat for the wedding.