The Ugly Sister (5 page)

‘And I do?’

‘Well … yes, I suppose you do. If you can’t work one day, you don’t lose a contract, do you? Or let an important client down?’

‘Cleo, I just … I can’t do this on my own. It’s not fair.’

‘Is it a national tragedy if Mabel from number seven can’t check out a new Catherine Cookson because the library’s shorthanded?’

‘Wow. That’s low even for you.’

‘Point taken. I’ll see what I can do. Let me look at my diary.’

Cleo may indeed have looked at her diary, but she never reported back on the findings. Rather than have to go through the whole uncomfortable conversation again, Abi had continued on her solo care mission, travelling backwards and forwards to Ashford and listening in resentful silence when her father sang Cleo’s praises on the rare occasions she remembered to call him.

At Andrew’s funeral, eleven months later, Cleo had turned up at the service with Jonty and the girls, and sniffled into a tissue, but then they’d cried off going back to the house for drinks afterwards because they had to be somewhere else. Not that Abi is bitter. Not that she’s still annoyed two years on.

So it feels a bit awkward just to pick up where they left off. Or, in fact, more that where they left off is not a place that Abi would necessarily want to pick up from. Of course they have emailed since. How are you doing? How are the kids? Happy birthday. That kind of thing. Hardly in-depth. They’ve never even come close to addressing the issue head-on just like they have never addressed any of their issues head-on. Still, this is meant to be a clean slate, a new start. Abi is determined to leave everything that has gone on in the past in the past and to see if they can forge a proper grown-up relationship from here on in. She just needs to think of what there is for them to talk about that isn’t too controversial, some common ground to get them started. Of course, the children. Fallback position number one. If in doubt about what to say to someone else who also happens to be a mother, ask about their offspring.
It’s a guaranteed crowd pleaser. It works every time.

‘I can’t believe how grown-up Tara is.’ Abi cringes at her genius opening line.

‘Ten going on twenty,’ Cleo says, and that seems to be that topic done with.

‘So.’ Cleo leans forward in her chair, her glass swinging between two fingers. ‘Tell me what’s going on with you.’

It’s a typical Cleo question. Generic enough to cover the fact that she really has no clue what might be happening in Abi’s life, but said in a conspiratorial
tone that hints at the possibility that, whatever it is, she might just find it fascinating and exotic. Abi hesitates. Surely Cleo has known her long enough by now to know that this is never going to be the case.

‘Oh, you know, the usual,’ she says. She dredges around in the depths of her brain, trying to find something worthy of adding, some little event that will make a story, but all she can come up with is that they are thinking about starting pottery classes at the library or that the local town council has announced a war on litter on the beach. Neither of these fascinating stories can, she knows, compete with the sheer glamour of life in Primrose Hill, so she opts to say nothing. They sit there quietly for a moment.

‘Oh, how about you? How’s things?’ Abi suddenly remembers that the polite thing to do is to reciprocate the question.

‘Good,’ Cleo says. ‘We’re well.’

The momentum has gone. If indeed there had ever been any. Usually their visits are so short they barely have time to find some safe and neutral common ground before it’s time to say goodbye again for another seven or eight months. Or, on this occasion, two years. Now, of course, they have all the time in the world to work out a way of communicating. There’s no need to hope for a miracle breakthrough on day one. Still, it would have been nice not to have ground to a complete halt this early on.

‘Oh,’ Abi says suddenly, remembering that she
does have one momentous event – to her, at least – to share. ‘Phoebe got away OK.’

Cleo knows about Phoebe’s trip because her original invitation had been for both of them and Abi had had to explain, by email, that she would be coming alone.

‘Where has she gone first again?’ It’s a comfortable middle ground. There are no hidden agendas lurking in their discussion of Phoebe’s travels, no poorly disguised accusations or barely concealed jealousies. Abi tells her the whole plan, such as it is. It doesn’t really stretch beyond Phoebe making her way to Greece and then looking for a job before moving on to India. Abi feels herself go weak at the knees the way she does every time she says it out loud, because, try as she might, she can’t stop herself picturing all kinds of dangers and horrors lurking out in the big wide world just waiting to ensnare her daughter. Cleo, to give her credit, picks up on this.

‘She’ll be fine. She’s her mother’s daughter.’

Abi scans the last sentence for any implied criticism. Phoebe’s her mother’s daughter so … what? She’s too dull to get herself in trouble? Too uninteresting? Too unattractive, unimportant, unadventurous? She counts to ten, forces herself to look for the positive. Maybe Cleo meant too clever? Too sensible – which in itself could be either a compliment or a criticism? Too mature? Abi decides to give her the benefit of the doubt. She’s come here to give Cleo the second chance
she seems to be asking for so best not to jump down her throat on day one. She nods.

‘She’s got a lot of common sense. They grow up so fast these days.’

‘They do,’ Cleo says, nodding back.

‘Although to be fair you’d been gone for two years by the time you were Phoebe’s age.’ The chat lurches straight into controversial waters. Abi attempts to qualify her comment, to make it sound less pointed. ‘Although you were only up in London, I suppose, not halfway across the other side of the world.’

‘Exactly.’ Cleo sips her drink. ‘Even so, I was probably a little young to be on my own.’

Abi thinks about Phoebe at sixteen, half child, half woman. Staying out far too late at a party with the lad from next door one night and then wanting to curl up in her mother’s bed with her the next, because she was still scared of the dark. If it’s hard to imagine her freewheeling around Asia with her friends now, it’s impossible to picture her taking care of herself in one of the biggest cities in the world back then. Let alone coping with the particular pressures and pitfalls of the modelling world. ‘I guess you did have to mature overnight.’

‘I’d never have made it otherwise. I’d have been eaten alive.’ Cleo laughs so Abi will know she’s joking, although she doesn’t pull it off entirely convincingly. Abi decides to take a risk. They seem to be getting on OK, what the hell?

‘Do you ever wish that it hadn’t happened, that you hadn’t been spotted that day?’

‘Honestly, I never really admit this, but sometimes I do. Not that it hadn’t happened at all. After all, I wouldn’t have all this …’ Cleo waves a hand around the room. ‘I know how lucky I am. Just maybe that it had happened a few years later when I would have been old enough to have handled it all better.’

It’s hardly a classified revelation, but Abi isn’t sure she can remember Cleo being this open in a long time. Usually she is sharply protective of her decisions and the life she’s had. Not for the first time Abi wonders why Cleo has invited her up, whether Cleo’s desire to reconnect now the family has dwindled down to just the two of them might be as great as her own. Maybe Cleo misses Abigail as much as Abi misses Caroline. She fills the glasses again, throwing caution to the wind. If being a bit tipsy on rancid chalky red wine is what they need to be upfront and honest with each other, then she can do that for the cause.

‘Mum should never have really let you go off like that. Moving up to London on your own, sixteen …’

Cleo shrugs. But Abi isn’t going to let it go that easily. She’s determined that one of these days they are going to have the conversation she’s been waiting to have for twenty-five years and why not today? And then she hears the click of the front door and the moment has gone.

‘That’ll be Jonty,’ Cleo says, signifying that the
subject is closed. Abi knocks back the rest of her glass. She’s feeling quite pissed, she realizes, as she stands up to greet her brother-in-law. Probably not a good idea given that where family are concerned she can go from happy to crying in under thirty seconds when drunk. Not much more when sober, if she’s being honest.

Abi is always slightly taken aback by Jonty in the flesh. He’s very good-looking in a too-perfect, groomed-to-within-an-inch-of-his-life, catalogue-model way. He is obviously a man who is on first-name terms with product because his hair is always just so, thick, glossy, swept back to show that there is not even a hint of recession. His clothes have an air of nonchalance, as if he merely picked up any old things off the floor in the morning and put them on, but somehow they all happen to fit perfectly, with the creases in all the right places, as if someone has spent all night and a great deal of money making sure they will give off just the right laid-back-chic vibe.

He is carrying a painstakingly battered brown leather bag – a man bag, Abi believes they are called. He’s a metrosexual through and through. She can’t stand him. Not because he has good hair and a man bag, although ownership of the latter does make her predisposed to dislike pretty much any bloke, but because she has always found him to be a bit pleased with himself, a bit smug, as if he thinks he’s better than them, the run-of-the-mill Attwoods.

Even his name is annoying. Jonty. It’s as contrived as his appearance. Pretentious masquerading as one of the lads. Cleo is always banging on about how successful he is, how he has his own agency and he earns this much and he drives that car. To be fair, Abi has never heard him brag about his achievements himself, but that is probably because he never really talks about anything, just prefers to sit in a corner and read a book or the paper until it’s time for them to go home again. When Philippa and Andrew were alive, that is. She doesn’t think she’s even clapped eyes on him since, apart from across a graveyard, which has never seemed like an appropriate venue for a get-to-know-you-better session.

So it’s fair to say they’re not great friends, Jonty and Abi. Barely even acquaintances. Plus she is feeling more than a little resentful that he’s come in at this exact moment, just as she had decided it was time for her and Cleo to have the conversation of their lives.

‘Abigail!’ Jonty says, and to give him credit he does look genuinely quite pleased to see her. They do that awkward-hug/kiss-on-the-cheek thing that is neither one nor the other.

‘Hi,’ Abi says. ‘I haven’t been here long.’

Jonty walks over to where Cleo is sitting and drops a kiss on her head. ‘Well, you look great,’ he says to Abi. ‘Doesn’t she, Cleo? Look great?’

‘I already told her that,’ Cleo replies.

‘I’ve never had so many compliments,’ Abi says, forcing a laugh. ‘I’ll come again.’

She waits for Jonty to sit and join them, but instead he says, ‘Salmon OK? I got some samphire from the market on the way home.’

‘Lovely.’ Cleo turns to Abi. ‘You eat fish, don’t you?’

Abi, a little taken aback, nods.

‘Great, I’ll get dinner started,’ Jonty says, and heads off in what, Abi assumes, is the direction of the kitchen. She’s a little confused to say the least. Last she heard, Cleo and Jonty had a chef who came each evening to cook up perfectly balanced, non-fattening nutritious meals for the whole family. She remembers spluttering into her vodka when Cleo had told her – Abi had coerced her into meeting for a quick drink on one of her art-fix trips up to London, the Courtauld she thinks it was – it sounded like such a ludicrous extravagance. Cleo wasn’t even really working by then and both the girls were at school or nursery all day – how hard would it have been for her to knock up a quick dinner for four? Abi had pretended something had gone down the wrong way, though. She knew Cleo wouldn’t have seen the funny side if Abi had laughed in her face about it. She assumes it must be the chef’s
night off. That’s if Cleo’s ‘people’ ever get nights off. And, if they do, don’t some other people have to come in and cover for them? It’s hard to imagine her sister fending for herself.

‘No chef?’ She tries her hardest not to make it sound like she’s having a go.

Cleo rolls her eyes. ‘Jonty got rid of him. He decided he wanted to get into cooking himself.’

‘Oh. Good for him.’

‘I’ve never eaten so much salmon,’ Cleo says, and then she laughs and for a split second Abi thinks she can almost see Caroline peeking out from behind her perfectly made-up face.

Dinner is absolutely delicious, the salmon cooked for just long enough and not a second more, the salty samphire, the Jersey royal potatoes buttery and sweet. Jonty clearly has a hidden talent. Abi is grateful to Tara for prattling on about herself and her friends incessantly, because she isn’t sure what they would have talked about otherwise. She loves her niece, it goes without saying, but Tara is relentlessly self-obsessed. Just like her mother. On this occasion, though, she is just what’s required. Abi is feeling exhausted already from the strain of spending time with people she doesn’t feel entirely comfortable with. She can’t wait to get up to her little attic room, just her. Tired as she may be, she’s also feeling optimistic. Cautiously optimistic. There’s no question in her mind that Cleo was about to open up to her a little before Jonty came home. She isn’t stupid; she knows they
aren’t going to go from polite exchanges to full-on sisterly bonding overnight, but she’s here
for eight weeks. And if today was anything to go by they’re already moving in the right direction.

It’s still light when she heads upstairs and, even though she’s exhausted, she sits in the armchair by the window for a few minutes soaking up the view across the city, the stretch of Regent’s Park a green barrier between her and the high rises of the square mile on the one side and the stately mansion blocks of the West End on the other. She has two whole months to explore. She feels elated. If she and Cleo can reconcile, then anything is possible.

Abi is up by half past seven the next morning, before anyone else except Jonty, who is already on his way out of the front door when she gets downstairs. She’s pleased to note there’s no sign of the man bag.