Faking It

by Portia MacIntosh

  Of course, the first thing she did with her newfound wealth was buy Mum’s house – and it just felt like such a kick in the teeth that in such a big house she basically wanted me out straight away. No prizes for guessing that I didn’t end up going to uni, but I did end up packing my bags and leaving. That’s when I moved away and, other than a couple of occasions after, my sister and I have had nothing to do with each other. And now she needs me to help her – isn’t it funny how life works out?

  ‘You haven’t done anything weird with your look, have you?’ she asks. ‘Like dyed your hair jet black, cut it short, or had a lip piercing?’

  ‘Erm, I haven’t, but, even if I had, I would just tell people, as you, that I had changed my look – and then you’d have to adapt when you got out of the clink,’ I insist.

  ‘Snap me a quick selfie,’ she says. ‘Send it over and I’ll see what we’re working with.’

  ‘OK, give me a second,’ I reply.

  I fire up my camera and take a photo, careful to hold it a little higher and angle it down so I don’t look completely awful.

  ‘Sent,’ I say.

  ‘OK, well, the length and the colour are pretty similar – maybe people will just think I’ve run out of expensive toning shampoo,’ she says rudely. ‘But I do need you to do something for me… I had a fringe cut a couple of years ago. Do you think you could book in somewhere for a fringe, before you get here? Money is no object – throughout any of this – I’ll give you a card. You can spend whatever you like on it. You just need enough to get the fringe, and to get here. Where are you, by the way?’

  ‘I’m in Sheffield,’ I admit.

  ‘Wow, that’s not far at all,’ she says, with a tone that suggests if I was so nearby, I should have visited.

  ‘And I can afford a train ticket and a fringe,’ I insist. ‘I’ll get those things booked when we’re off the phone.’

  ‘OK, thanks,’ she says. ‘Just one more thing, and I hate to say it, because you are doing me a big favour but… you’ll behave, won’t you?’

  I gasp theatrically.

  ‘Ella, seriously,’ she continues, before I have chance to say anything. ‘Just… please… try and be like me. No drinking, no swearing… no bad-girl stuff.’

  Ergh, she’s talking to me like I’m a child.

  ‘Emma, I’m a grown woman now. You haven’t spent any real time around me since I was practically a kid. Give me some credit,’ I say.

  I do drink like a fish and swear like a sailor but I’m not exactly going to do shots with my nephew while we play Cards Against Humanity, am I?

  ‘Sorry, OK. Well, so there’s no overlap, after Rich drops me off, he’s going to meet you at the station and take you home,’ she says. Her voice gets higher as her sentence goes on. I think reality is setting in, now that we’re through the practical side of things.

  ‘You’ll look after my family, won’t you?’ she says tearfully. ‘Promise me.’

  ‘Yes, I promise,’ I say. ‘Come on, sis, suck it up, it’s only six weeks. Just keep your head down and it will be like it never happened.’

  ‘Yeah.’ She sniffs loudly. ‘You’re right. Ella, I really can’t thank you enough for this.’

  ‘Meh, you can return the favour one day,’ I say casually.

  I don’t know what else to do, other than to make jokes. Saving face in the community, and with her kids, really does mean an awful lot to her. She’s always worried so much about what people think of her, and I always used to tell her not to.

  ‘Well, maybe I’ll see you after?’ I say. ‘For the handover, when I give you your life back.’

  ‘Oh, gosh,’ Emma replies, somehow laughing and crying. ‘I really hope so.’

  ‘OK… well… see you then,’ I say.

  ‘Goodbye, Ella,’ she replies.

  God, she sounds absolutely terrified – who wouldn’t be, I guess? I wouldn’t have thought she’d last a day in prison, just because there won’t be a nail bar or a sushi bar… the only bars they have in prison are, y’know, bar-bars. Still, I’m sure she’ll be fine. I doubt they’ll send her to a real, ‘Bad Girls’ style prison; it will be one of those rich-person-rehab things, surely? Maybe I’ve seen too much TV… It still stinks, either way, but at least she’ll make a point to learn how to park her car properly when she’s out. My car might be knackered, but at least I know how to park it.

  Well, I didn’t think it would happen, but I have a new job already – kind of? I’m going to say yes, so that’s a new record. Maybe this is just spin, from someone who really needs a break right now, but I’m going to say I got a new job offer within an hour of losing my previous job. I think that deserves a cheap bottle of wine from room service – especially if it’s the last time I’ll be drinking in a while.

  One glass turns into two, then three, then you stop counting, right?

  Oh, boy, when did trains get so expensive? Are they always this pricey or is it because I’m trying to book one at 11:45 p.m. for the next day? It’s a good job this is an all-expenses-paid gig because by the time I’ve paid for my train and my haircut I’ll be totally broke.

  I head into the bathroom and hold the front pieces of my hair over my forehead, sort of like a fringe. I’ve never really thought about having a fringe before. I guess the beauty of having a twin is knowing that, if something suits them, it will definitely suit you too. I mess with my hair, moving it into position. I think I might like a fringe, you know. It could have been worse. She could have told me she’d dyed her hair brown or something and I would have hated that. I’ve been blonde all my life. Even after my hair got darker as I got older, I’ve always had blonde highlights. I suppose Emma did the same. Of course, they’re expensive to keep up with, so I was rocking the balayage look long before it was in fashion. It turns out grown-out highlights are cool now. Luckily, though, I had mine done fairly recently, and it sounds like Emma must have too, so I should pass, if I have the fringe…

  The light hits the nail scissors in my open make-up bag, causing them to catch my eye. At least I think that was what just happened – as if it was a sign. It is also, of course, possible that, fuelled by wine, I already had the idea that I should cut my own fringe, to save some money. But, really, how hard can it be?

  I fire up YouTube to search for the best way to cut myself a fringe, because YouTube is so rich in content like that, and I can just put the video on in front of me and snip along with it. I’m going to save myself, what, like £40 if I went to a salon? Even with the free lecture they’d throw in about the barrage of bleach and heat I’ve subjected my long locks to, that’s still a lot of money to someone like me.

  There’s a video titled ‘I cut myself a fringe in lockdown’, which seems like a good shout. It’s a step-by-step video so I follow it to the letter. Section off the front part of my hair, twist it around into one big piece and then… cut.

  Shit. Shit, shit, shit. She’s cut hers too short. I’ve cut mine too short. Oh, God. I stop the video – well, it hasn’t served me well, and in hindsight someone cutting themselves a fringe in lockdown, during what looks like the middle of the night, given how dark it is outside their window, maybe wasn’t someone I should have been taking advice from. I suddenly notice the word ‘fail’ in the video’s description, so that makes sense.

  I stare at myself in the mirror. My face is so scrunched up in disgust at my new look I hardly look like me right now. I don’t suppose my new, stupid haircut is helping either. Crap. Not only is it too short, but it’s popping open like curtains in the middle. Like proper Nick Carter from Backstreet Boys circa 1999. I’m a couple of inches and a white suit away from being him in the ‘I Want It That Way’ video.

  I scramble to plug my straighteners in, back in the bedroom, to see if there’s something I can do. The two pieces of hair are too short but they’re not that short. And I should get a bit of length back when I straighten it, and maybe if I put a bit of a curl in it… It looks longer and better for me running my straight
eners over it a couple of times but, no matter what I do, I can’t get it to meet in the middle.

  I sit down on the bed and plonk myself backwards. As my head hits the mattress my new fringe – technically my two new fringes – part so widely that, when I touch my forehead, it’s as if I never even cut a fringe. Well, there’s that at least, maybe I can just make the best of it for a few days then pin it out of the way at both sides, tell people I’m growing it out or something like that.

  If this is me starting as I mean to go on, I’ve shagged it already, haven’t I? Hopefully, I’m better at being a housewife than I am cutting hair…

  5

  Standing outside the station with my bags for life on the floor in front of me, and my drunk fringe fail tucked away inside my scruffy beanie hat, I cringe as I see a black Bentley pull into the car park. There’s no way that isn’t Rich. I would bet everything I have – which, admittedly, isn’t much – that this is him. It’s so on-brand for him, to have such a ridiculous car – he probably does the school run in it. He, like a lot of the other rich kids I grew up around, had a brand-new car the second he passed his driving test. Because for some people it’s not enough to be rich, you have to show people that you’re rich too.

  Rich pulls up next to me and jumps out of the car to greet me. It must be ten years since I saw him last.

  ‘Hello,’ he says cheerily. ‘Thanks so much for doing this, Ella. Emma was in a real flap about it all.’

  He hurries around my side of the car where he hugs me, kind of awkwardly, before reaching for my bags.

  ‘Wow, you travel light,’ he says. ‘Your sister packs more than this for a day at the coast.’

  ‘Great to see you again, Rich,’ I say.

  It occurs to me to tell him he’s looking well – because he is – and it feels like that’s a thing people say to people they haven’t seen in a while, who are looking well, but it feels weird. We’re about to pretend we’re a married couple and that’s awkward.

  ‘Yeah, you too. It’s a shame it’s under such unusual circumstances though,’ he says as he loads my bags into the car. ‘Quick, get in, it’s freezing.’

  As soon as we’re inside I can feel that he’s warmed my seat up for me, which is very much appreciated on a chilly evening like this. I practically snuggle down into it.

  ‘So how have you been?’ he asks.

  ‘Yeah, good, I guess… you?’ I reply, although it seems like a stupid question given the circumstances.

  ‘Oh, you know,’ he replies. ‘I’ve been better.’

  Rich doesn’t look all that different from the last time I saw him. His blond hair is almost shaved on the sides and curly on top, just as it was when he was younger. I’d forgotten how intensely blue his eyes are, but the dark circles are new. It’s only now that we’re in the car that I can see that, despite looking good, he looks so stressed out. Seeing him look so worried and so tired makes me feel kind of good about turning up to help out. I still have no idea how I’m going to pull this off though…

  ‘Do you really think this is going to work?’ I ask him.

  ‘You know Emma – do you really think she would have taken any chances, if she hadn’t planned it in great detail, thought of every possible hiccup, and then every impossible hiccup, just in case?’ He smiles to himself. ‘She’s thought of everything.’

  ‘I think she’s counting on no one knowing or remembering me,’ I say as I stare out of the window.

  It’s so strange, being back here after all this time, because everything seems so familiar and yet so different. I’ll just spot something I remember so vividly, only to be disorientated again by a demolished building or cluster of new-builds.

  ‘Yeah, I don’t think most people even know Emma has a twin,’ he points out, plainly oblivious to the implication: that she pretends I don’t exist. Then again, I don’t exactly tell anyone about her either.

  ‘Won’t Millie realise?’ I say. ‘She knows I exist, and she’s met me – I know she was really young at the time but she might figure out what’s going on.’

  ‘Millie is my daughter and I love her,’ he explains, ‘but she’s really embracing the whole “horrible teenager” thing. She’s mostly ignored us for months, she does her own thing, she’s never home. Truth be told, Emma has been quite worried about her and the way she’s being, but you don’t need to worry about that. I remember you being similar.’

  I smile.

  ‘So, leave the teenager alone, got it,’ I reply.

  ‘And Henry is good as gold, in his own little world, all he cares about is playing football, Animal Crossing and the MCU,’ he says.

  ‘Football is the only thing on that list I recognise – and I hate football,’ I reply.

  ‘One is a video game, the other is superhero movies,’ he says. ‘But Emma isn’t into any of those things either, so you don’t need to know anything about them. Nine-year-olds just want to talk at you – they rarely check if you’re listening.’

  ‘Do I get my old room?’ I joke.

  ‘Well, your old room is actually the guest room, but you’re not a guest,’ he reminds me. ‘We’ve done a lot of work to the house. The master bedroom is in the loft conversion now. It’s a big bedroom with an en suite – you can sleep there. I have a bed in my office, I’ll sleep in there.’

  ‘Won’t that seem weird to the kids?’ I say. ‘Not that I’m trying to get you into bed with me…’

  When will I learn that more words rarely equal less awkward? Now it definitely sounds like I’m trying to get him into bed with me.

  ‘I’m always the first one up and the last one to bed,’ he says. ‘And it’s not unusual for me to fall asleep on the sofa bed in my office if I’m working late, so the kids won’t think twice – if they realise at all. Emma really did think of everything.’

  ‘I can’t believe she’s in prison,’ I say.

  It must have been so hard for Rich, dropping Emma off at prison, not just because her getting banged up doesn’t fit the perfect family image, but because he genuinely must be so worried about her.

  ‘You and me both,’ he replies. ‘The car is yours to use while you’re here – just make sure you park it properly. Are you used to driving big cars?’

  Christ, I’m barely used to driving working cars, let alone big ones.

  ‘Oh, yeah, I’ll be fine,’ I insist, not being one to prop up the patriarchy with the myth that women are bad drivers.

  I shift uncomfortably in my seat as I recognise the entrance to the street I grew up on. Even in the dark, it feels an uncanny combination of completely alien and no different from how it did fifteen years ago. As we pull around the corner and under the usually leafy canopy that cloaks the road (it’s bare right now, given that it’s January), it’s easy to see why the avenue is the most desirable location in the village.

  Behind big electric gates, at the end of long private driveways, sit a variety of massively different detached houses – the only thing they have in common being that they are massive – and right here, number six, is where I grew up.

  We drive through the big gates, passing the sign for The Willows – so they haven’t changed the name of it, at least – and as we continue up the dark driveway, I notice all the ultra-modern spotlights that line the way, and it becomes clear that the house itself might not be exactly as I left it.

  The Willows is a large period property – I think it’s Edwardian, if I remember correctly. It’s a huge red-brick detached house with Tudor-style black and white cladding at the top. With it being dark out, light beams through the large windows. Somehow it doesn’t look as cosy as it used to, which I genuinely think might be down to modern light bulbs giving off a much cooler light, rather than the warm glow they used to give off. I can’t see any curtains either, just California blinds in every window, which create shadows of horizontal bars. I could make a prison joke but that seems insensitive given the circumstances.

  Once we’re out of the car, Rich hands me a coat –
a belted dark green Michael Kors coat with gold detail.

  ‘Oh, I’m fine,’ I say. ‘We’ll be inside soon.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ Rich replies, pausing as though he’s carefully searching for the next words to leave his lips. ‘It’s just that, well, this is Emma’s coat, and you’re Emma as soon as you walk through that door, and for the foreseeable future, and… Emma wouldn’t wear a coat like that.’

  ‘This wasn’t cheap,’ I protest.

  It really wasn’t. I (at least it felt as if I) had paid a fortune for my khaki-green parka with the neon-pink fur around the hood. I suppose he’s right though; Emma would never wear a coat like this.

  ‘OK, fine, give it here.’ I give in. ‘I suppose you want me to hide my outfit with it too?’

  ‘For narrative purposes,’ he says tactfully. ‘And maybe lose the beanie.’

  ‘If you want me to pass myself off as your wife, trust me, it’s better if I keep my newly cut fringe and my hat hair concealed under the beanie for now,’ I tell him honestly.

  ‘Fair enough,’ he replies. ‘Just, erm, one more thing – well, two more things…’

  Rich removes a wedding ring and an engagement ring from his pocket.

  ‘Rich, please, you’re married to my sister,’ I joke.

  He laughs politely.

  ‘Emma said if you could wear these at all times,’ he says.

  ‘Yeah, of course,’ I say, hoping they’ll fit.

  ‘You can probably put them on yourself,’ he says with an awkward laugh.

  ‘I can do that,’ I reply. At least I hope I can.

  I slide the rings down my finger one at a time and, while they might be a little on the snug side, thankfully they fit. Emma’s wedding band is a small (probably) platinum band with a series of twinkling diamonds. Her engagement ring, on the other hand, is one hell of a rock, just the one diamond, but it’s huge. This ring is probably a deposit on a house – it’s probably as much as a whole house, in some areas, but not this one obviously.