The Ugly Sister (40 page)
No, it’s what she says about not needing Abi in her life – ‘I don’t think there’s anything else we have to say to each other now’ – that makes it crystal clear that Cleo is closing the door on her. Saying goodbye. Don’t call me, I won’t call you.
It’s spring. There’s no denying it. The first few tentative tourists have started arriving for day trips on the weekends, sitting on the benches by the seafront, wrapped up in layers of clothing, picking at foil-encased sandwiches. Abi’s little one-chair, one-table balcony turns out to be a sun trap in the late afternoons and she takes to sitting out there when she’s not at work, book in hand, trying to lose herself.
She’s avoiding thinking about anything if she can help it. She goes to the library, does her days, has an occasional drink with Juliet or Kate, her friend with the market stall, talks to Phoebe on the phone if she’s lucky and then watches TV with a glass of wine until bedtime. On her days off she walks along the beach, makes soup and curries that she freezes and then never gets round to eating. She still goes up to London every few weeks, but not as often as she used to. Every now and then when she’s flicking through the cable channels she comes across an attractive, approachable, friendly young mum that she thinks might be her in another life.
She has heard nothing from Cleo, obviously. Just as unsurprisingly nothing from Jon. Tara and Megan
keep in touch sporadically. One or other of them mentions that their mum has told them she has a new boyfriend. Abi assumes it’s Richard, knows she can’t ask. Not for the first time Stella pops into her mind, but she can’t go there. If it hadn’t been for Abi, Richard never would have met Cleo and it follows that nothing else that happened would have happened. There’s nothing she can say to Stella that she’s going to want to hear, really. She’s just going to have to let that one go.
One of the full-timers leaves the library and Abi is offered his job. She knows she shouldn’t take it. Knows that if she does she will probably end up staying there forever. But it’s tempting. There’s something comforting about the safety and security it offers. It would be like coming in from the cold and diving under a big warm duvet. Not at all challenging, but maybe just what she needs right now. She ums and ahs about it, asks them if she can have a few days. Although in her head she’s pretty much given up on the idea of an exciting new future, she’s loath to take that final step. She knows that she could take the job and then leave when inspiration strikes, but she also knows that she won’t. She’ll bed in, settle down and the next thing she knows she’ll be retirement age and she’ll have been working in a library her whole adult life.
She’s still putting it off, still stretching her boss’s goodwill by avoiding giving her an answer, when she
comes home from work one day in April to find a large brown envelope on the mat. It looks like junk, but she opens it anyway. Inside there’s a brochure, folded open at one page. A large advert, ringed in red marker pen, reads ‘Part-time vocational course in curating contemporary art’. Her heart starts beating out of her ears. She looks for a clue. There’s no note, nothing. Just a London postmark and the red marker pen circle. But she knows who it’s from. Knows it can only be Jon.
She studies the advert. The course is attached to one of the big art galleries in London. Two days a week for two years. She had no idea such things existed. She had no idea that she could somehow turn her passion into a career.
It crosses her mind that this could be a sign, a way for Jon to initiate contact. She’s tempted to ring him, to say thank you. But her rational self tells her that if he wanted to talk to her he could just have picked up the phone himself. He wouldn’t have waited on the off chance that he might happen across a course he thought she might like and then have sent the details on anonymously. It’s enough that he’s been thinking of her. She nearly cries when she thinks how well he knows her to understand that this particular course is so completely perfect in every way.
She looks the course up online. Her money from Bargain Hunters will just about cover the two years with a bit of help from the library to pay for the train up to London twice a week. She hasn’t heard any
more from them so she assumes that their campaign for world domination is finally over and her cash cow has died with it. If she stays at the library three days a week (the course info states that it’s on a Monday and Thursday; she’ll have to ask if she can swap one of her days), then the whole thing might just be possible. And then, who knows? She could get a job in a gallery, get involved in deciding what they might or might not exhibit, work her way up. She doesn’t feel as if there’s an upper age limit on curators.
She calls Phoebe, not even thinking what the time might be in Argentina or Brazil. Last time she talked to her daughter she was in the former trying to decide when to move on to the latter.
‘I think I’ve found my vocation,’ she says when Phoebe answers.
‘I’m at work – hold on,’ Phoebe hisses.
Abi waits.
‘Hi, Mum. That’s better. I’m being a cleaner in a hotel in Buenos Aires. I’ve just had to nip outside to talk to you.’
‘Shall I call you later?’ Abi says, worried. ‘I don’t want you to lose your job.’
‘No, it’s fine. What did you say? You’ve found your what?’
‘Oh, it’s nothing really. Just a course I want to do.’
‘That’s brilliant. What is it?’
Abi tells her, trying to keep the conversation brief, but Phoebe is having none of it.
‘That’s so perfect. Where did you find it? I thought you’d given up.’
‘I nearly had …’
‘And you’ll be in the West End two days a week. We can meet for lunch.’
Abi laughs. ‘Yeah, right. I think once you get there and make friends you might decide you have better things to do.’
‘Well, you can take me shopping sometimes, then. I’ll be an impoverished student.’
‘Me too.’
‘Honestly, Mum, you have to do it.’
‘I really think I’m going to. At least, I’m going to apply.’
There’s a picture in one of the papers. Abi has long since stopped googling her sister – she no longer cares what she’s doing – but she’s flicking through one of the tabloids one day and there she is, dressed up to the nines, skin-tight jeans showing she’s clearly not eating any more than she used to, on the arm of one of the better-known young British film actors of the moment. He’s thirteen years younger than she is, but his career is already in danger of stalling after a succession of so-so period dramas in which he specialized as the fey young heart-throb. Despite the fact that his hair is starting to recede prematurely (resulting in a somewhat alarming comb-forward), up against him Cleo still looks tired and
strained. His youth magnifying her age. The text underneath implies – no, actually it all out says – that they are as desperate as each other to keep alive their fading
careers. It’s cynical about the relationship, speculating a fast track to marriage in the hope of magazine deals covering the engagement, setting up home together, the stag and hen dos, the wedding itself and the honeymoon. Not, it suggests cruelly, that anyone is going to offer to pay much for any of it.
Abi takes it in. Richard is already history, no doubt discarded when it became apparent that there was nothing he could offer in terms of social, financial or, most crucially, celebrity advancement. She hopes it was worth it for him. Or that maybe he somehow managed to salvage his relationship with Stella before it was too late. She hopes he’s learned his lesson.
She lets them down gently at the library and three people immediately offer to swap days with her if she gets accepted on the course. The way all her colleagues are so excited on her behalf you’d think it was them who had decided to try a new direction in life. It reminds her why she has always loved it here so much, why she never made a break for it before.
She applies for the course before she can talk herself out of it, calling Phoebe at least five times for help with the application form. She emails Tara and
Megan to tell them about it, hoping that they might pass her news on to their father so that he’ll know she’s acted on what she’s still sure was his suggestion. After a couple of weeks she’s asked to go up for an interview. She feels sick, excited, nervous, energized, happy, everything. More alive than she’s felt in a long time. She’s stupidly grateful for the good-luck phone calls that reach her while she’s on the train – Phoebe (who must have got up at about six in the morning to time it right), Juliet, Tara.
‘Oh, and Dad says to say good luck too,’ Tara says.
‘Oh,’ Abi says. ‘Tell him thanks.’
She hears voices in the background. Obviously Tara is with Jon right now.
‘And he says tell you he left his job.’
‘He … what? Why on earth?’
More mumbling.
‘He says tell you he sold the company.’
‘Why?’
Tara sighs. ‘You talk to him,’ she says, and before Abi can protest she hears Jon’s hesitant voice saying hi. Her knees go weak.
‘Um … You sold the company?’
‘I took a leaf out of your book. I’m going to follow my dream. Climb every mountain and all that.’
Abi laughs. ‘And what is your dream exactly?’
‘I’m not sure. Open a restaurant. I might go to culinary school. Or maybe I should just start at the bottom, washing pots and chopping carrots.’
‘You could go on
MasterChef
– that might be easier.’
‘But more humiliating. It’s a toss-up.’
The train is pulling into Charing Cross station. Abi curses the timing.
‘Jon, I … I have to go. I’ve just reached London and I don’t want to be late.’
‘Let me know how it goes,’ he says. ‘Call me later.’
Abi feels light-headed, breathless. ‘I will.’
‘Good luck,’ Jon says. ‘Not that you’ll need it.’
‘I …’ she starts to say, but he’s gone and Tara is back on the line.
‘Good luck, Auntie Abi.’
‘Thanks, sweetie. I’ll let you know how I get on, OK?’
She pushes through the crowd trying to get to the tube station. She feels elated. If she gets accepted on the course, she will be in London for two days a week. A city where she feels a tie to her family at every turn. Her real family, the people who care about her unconditionally and she about them: Phoebe, Tara, Megan and Jon. She’s realized it’s not all about blood.
She gets there early, goes around the gallery one last time for luck – she’s been here so many times before she knows exactly what paintings they have and where they are. By the time she is called in every part of her is sweating she wants this so much. In the waiting area she sits next to a girl who looks about twenty-two with a pierced eyebrow and ripped jeans.
Abi looks down at her best Hobbs dress and feels stupidly suburban and formal.
One hopeful is shown out and Abi is relieved to see he’s a normal-looking middle-aged man. He’s dressed in a suit as if he might have come from his job in the bank. He looks pale and anxious. The girl with the piercing is led in.
‘This is terrifying,’ she mutters to Abi as she passes. ‘I feel sick.’
Abi smiles at her warmly. ‘Good luck.’ Who knows? This girl might end up as her new best friend, another surrogate daughter. The middle-aged man could turn out to be her soulmate. Anything could happen.
After about ten minutes a casually chic woman in her forties calls her in. There are two other people in the room, both of whom look intimidating just because they look so at home. One of them, a man in his fifties she would guess, with a shabby air, smiles at her, breaking the tension. He looks down at her application form, checks her name.
‘So … Abi … do you want to tell us why you’re interested in taking this course?’
Abi closes her eyes. Tell them how much you love modern art, Phoebe had said. Show them how much you know about it and what it makes you feel. That’s all they’ll be interested in.
She takes a deep breath. She can do this.
Thanks as ever to the whole team at Penguin, especially Louise Moore, Clare Pollock, Alice Shepherd, Liz Smith, John Hamilton and everyone else who works so hard on the books behind the scenes but who I never get to meet; Jonny Geller and everyone else at Curtis Brown, not least Betsy Robbins and Melissa Pimentel; and Peter McFarlane for helping me understand the structuring of TV advertising deals, Samantha Mackintosh for her attention to detail and Charlotte Willow Edwards for her usual invaluable help.
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First published 2011
Copyright © Jane Fallon, 2011
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This is a work of fiction. All characters, events and businesses are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, businesses or events is entirely coincidental.
