Make My Wish Come True

by Fiona Harper

  ‘The boys are at Melanie’s,’ Gemma said.

  Juliet just kept staring at her. ‘Well, that’ll give you an extra twenty minutes to pack up your stuff and get out of my house, won’t it?’

  Gemma marched up to her sister. ‘Now, hang on a second! You’re kicking me out?’

  Juliet nodded. ‘Too right I am.’

  Gemma couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing. She felt her jaw actually drop. ‘After all I’ve done for you?’

  Juliet walked away, uncomfortable by her proximity, Gemma supposed, but then she never liked to let anyone that close. Not even her poor ex-husband, who’d finally given up trying to live with his Stepford Wife and moved on.

  When she’d created enough distance between them she turned round, arms folded lightly, and spoke in a cold, hard voice. ‘All you’ve ever done is take what isn’t yours, Gemma. And I think you proved that quite nicely just now.’ She glanced back at the section of kitchen counter that Will had been pressing Gemma up against only moments before.

  Gemma had felt bad about that up until now, but she found that was only a small part of what she was angry about. ‘You have got to be kidding me!’ she yelled at Juliet. ‘I’ve just looked after your house and your kids for almost two fricking weeks... I’ve washed their clothes, wiped their noses, cooked their food... I entertained your guests on Christmas Day, including that sorry excuse for an octopus “Uncle” Tony, and—oh, yes!—I just gave you an all-expenses-paid five-star holiday to the Caribbean!’ Her volume had been rising with each word and now her throat was starting to feel raw. ‘Yes, that’s right, Juliet! I never, ever do anything for you.’

  Juliet looked a little taken aback at that speech. While her sister had stopped spitting accusations at her, Gemma took the chance to put a few other things to rights as well.

  ‘And I wasn’t the favourite growing up! That’s a lie.’

  Juliet opened her mouth, but Gemma wasn’t finished yet.

  ‘Yes, I know Mum was hard on you sometimes, always pushing you, always asking that little bit more of you, but don’t you think that’s because she thought you were capable of it? No one ever asked me to do more. I was just cute little Gemma, too lightweight to deal with any of the difficult stuff, so we’ll just let her toddle along happily and hope she won’t notice she’s not as perfect as her wonderful older sister!’

  Juliet shook her head. ‘I was never perfect! But, yes, I tried to be. Do you know how much hard work it took to compete with you, with those curls and those adorable little dimples? I didn’t have a choice but to be that way. I’d have never got a look-in otherwise.’

  Suddenly Gemma felt more like crying than shouting. ‘Why did it always have to be a competition?’

  Juliet looked shocked at that, as if she hadn’t ever considered it could be any other way, but once Juliet had decided she was right about something there was no way she was backing down. Gemma saw the exact moment her brain changed tack and she decided to come out fighting again.

  ‘Yes, that’s right! Turn the tables and make it all my fault... God, you’re incredible!’ She shook her head. ‘You never take any responsibility for anything, Gemma! And you’ve always been happy to float around clueless, doing whatever makes you happy, while you left other people to deal with the hard stuff, to clear up the messes.’

  Gemma’s features crumpled into a look of confusion. What was Juliet on about? She was making no sense at all now. However, it didn’t matter. One thing had become crystal clear during this conversation, and there was no way Gemma was going to stay here and go round and round in circles about the same old stuff for hours.

  She folded her arms across her chest and glared at her sister. ‘It doesn’t matter what I say or what I do, does it? Nothing is ever going to be good enough for you. I am never going to be good enough for you. I get that now. And you’re right, if that’s the case, maybe it is time we stopped trying.’

  She turned to march out the kitchen door. ‘Oh, and by the way... I’m not leaving right this very second. I’m going to say a proper goodbye to the kids. They deserve that at least.’ And then she walked out and left Juliet standing there, open-mouthed.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  JULIET OPENED THE FRONT door thinking she was going to receive a package from the postman. There was a man on her doorstep all right, and he was holding a box, but it wasn’t Reginald, her usual postie. She was tempted to close the door in his face.

  ‘What do you want?’

  Will looked back at her. He was taller than she was, but she was standing on the step and he on the driveway, it meant they were eye to eye.

  ‘I think we need to talk.’

  Juliet thought she needed to rewind time and do the last fortnight over, but not everybody got their wishes, did they?

  He opened the lid of the Tupperware box and Juliet’s eyes widened. ‘Please?’ he said. ‘They’re home-made.’

  Brownies. Will had brought brownies. And even more astonishingly, from the sorry state of the squidgy brown squares in the tub, he’d made them himself. Three out of ten for baking, but ten out of ten for knowing what would soften her up.

  She sighed. ‘Five minutes.’ And she turned and walked away, letting him follow and close the door behind him. She went through the kitchen, not quite able to bear having this conversation in the scene of the crime, and into the conservatory. She sat down on the edge of one of the sofas and placed her hands on her knees.

  Will put the tub on the coffee table between them and sat down opposite her. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Walking in like that must have been awful, and I’m sorry you heard what I said.’

  Juliet decided to focus on the sad-looking brownies. He might be sorry, but it had been the truth. Will wasn’t like Marco. He wasn’t the kind of man who’d say anything to get a woman where he wanted her.

  She looked up at him. His brows were drawn together and he was wearing such an earnest expression. She exhaled and sat back in the sofa. ‘I’m angry with you, Will, but I know you wouldn’t deliberately try to hurt me. It’s Gemma who I’m really furious with.’

  She looked into his eyes, tried to read what she saw there. ‘Was I wrong? Did I misread the signals?’

  Will shook his head. ‘No. I thought that maybe there was something starting between us too.’

  There was. Not is. Whatever had been there once was now in the past tense. There would be no going back.

  ‘It wasn’t her fault,’ he said, straightening slightly, the penitent look on his face being replaced by something else.

  Juliet knew him well enough to read what was coming. ‘Don’t you dare defend her!’ That was one of the things that hurt the most. She’d thought she could trust him to be on her side, and instead he’d defected to the other camp. ‘I know you think she’s wonderful—most men do—but it’s different being her sister. And by doing what she did she proved she just doesn’t care about me.’

  ‘You’re wrong, Juliet. All Gemma does is care about what you think of her. Why do you think she offered to swap Christmases with you in the first place?’

  Juliet didn’t know. ‘Guilt, probably,’ she said.

  Will gave a confused little smile and shook his head. ‘You don’t see it, do you? You really don’t see it?’

  Juliet pursed her lips. No point in looking for something that wasn’t there.

  He leaned forward. ‘When was the last time you took a good look at your sister, and I mean really looked at her, instead of just seeing what you think is there?’

  She knew what he wanted. For her to see what he saw and, frankly, she didn’t want to. That sounded a lot like rubbing it in.

  Will sat back against the sofa cushions again, but his jaw was tight and she could see the urge to go into battle for her sister was still there. After a moment he shook his head and looke
d away. They sat there like that for a while, not saying anything, filling the silence with unspoken thoughts.

  ‘I don’t know what to say. What do you want from me, Will?’

  He looked straight at her. ‘We were friends before. I don’t want to lose that.’ When she didn’t answer, he asked, ‘Did you ever wonder why we didn’t act on whatever was brewing between us? I’ve thought that our friendship was on the verge of becoming something more for over a year, and I thought you did too.’

  ‘Not a whole year...’ she muttered.

  ‘But there was something there. And yet neither of us acted on it.’

  Juliet was about to say that she wasn’t that type, that she was old-fashioned and liked to take things slowly, but then she thought of Marco. She clearly was that type when the right man came along. Or the wrong man, as it had turned out. But Marco’s deficiency didn’t make Will’s point any less valid.

  She decided it was time to be brave, so she reached forward and prised a rather sticky brownie from the bottom of the Tupperware box. She lifted it carefully to her mouth and bit off the corner. It was okay for a first attempt, but it was a little bit bland, lacking something. Maybe he’d missed out a vital ingredient.

  And maybe that’s where their problem lay, too. She and Will were missing that vital ingredient. Because if it had been there they would have ended up together by now. It had been safe to like Will, she realised. Good old Will. It had allowed her to pretend she hadn’t been running scared, that she was okay after her divorce, when really she had been anything but.

  He must have seen her expression change, soften, because he leaned forward and said, ‘Juliet, you know I think you’re amazing, but...’

  ‘But I don’t make you feel the way she does,’ she finished for him.

  The truth of the words stung, even though she understood now that he was right.

  Will’s expression turned hollow, and that twisted the knife in her chest even more. He liked Gemma. He really liked Gemma. And it hadn’t taken him more than a year of pussyfooting around to work it out.

  ‘I understand,’ she told him. ‘But I don’t know if our friendship can survive this.’

  He breathed out. ‘I suppose that’s fair, but if that’s the case then I’m going to miss you.’

  Damn him for always having the right answer.

  To distract herself from caving in, from putting her own wishes aside and just smoothing everything over to make it okay again, she asked, ‘Have you called her?’ It had been two days since she’d come back from St Lucia.

  He shook his head. ‘Before I go I need to explain what happened that morning.’

  Juliet put down the brownie and held her hands up, warding off images in her brain she didn’t want to see.

  ‘I don’t want to know,’ she said in a rather shirty manner.

  Will ignored her. ‘When you walked in, Gemma had just finished telling me that nothing could happen between us, and she said that because of you.’

  Juliet snorted. ‘Didn’t much look as if nothing was happening between you. Quite the reverse.’

  Will gave her a bleak look. ‘We were saying goodbye.’

  The shock of his words stopped Juliet short. Her mouth snapped closed and she stared at him. In the last couple of days, she’d had plenty of conversations with both Will and Gemma inside her head, and not once had this scenario played itself out. Now the red filter of her anger was gone, she thought back to the moment she’d stepped inside the kitchen, to what she’d seen. The kiss she’d witnessed had been full of passion and tenderness. It had had a bittersweet quality, the quiet desperation of a farewell.

  How could she compete with that?

  She didn’t want to even try.

  Even if she did get together with Will in the future, she’d always be second best. To her own sister. Again.

  She rubbed her forehead with her hand, suddenly feeling tired and too overwhelmed to process everything coming her way. ‘Thank you for the brownies, and for coming to explain this, but I can’t give you the answer you want right now. I need more time to think.’

  Will nodded and stood up. ‘Thank you for listening,’ he said, and then he walked out of her house, and possibly out of her life.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  GEMMA TIED HER RUNNING shoes, plugged her iPod earbuds in and headed for the front door of her flat. A good, hard run through Greenwich Park was just what the doctor ordered. For the past week and a half she’d been moping about indoors, the words of her argument with Juliet ringing round her head. It was time to pick herself up and move on.

  It had been nine days since she’d spoken to Juliet and just as long since she’d seen Will. He’d phoned a couple of times on the landline—must have got her number from the book—but when she’d realised it was him she’d put the phone down. Rude, she knew, but if she spoke to him she was going to crumble and she couldn’t do that.

  She breathed in sharply to ward off threatening tears, then put her head down, her feet to the floor and charged out of her flat, ready to run. She didn’t get very far, however, because she barrelled into something, something large and beige-coloured standing outside her front door. When she regained her balance enough to look up, she discovered that something was Juliet.

  Gemma had thought that the overriding emotion she’d been feeling was sadness, but now she saw her sister standing there, her features all pinched, she discovered she was angry too.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I came to...’ Juliet broke off as she looked Gemma up and down.

  ‘Came to what? I’m about to go running.’

  ‘You run?’

  If Gemma hadn’t been so angry with her sister, the expression on her face would have been funny. She set off down the hallway to the lifts at a brisk march. ‘Yes, I run, but you’re not here to check up on my fitness regime? Or are you?’ She wouldn’t put it past Juliet to be that nosy or that controlling.

  Juliet took off at a jog and caught up with her. ‘No,’ she panted.

  They reached the lift and Gemma turned to face her. ‘So...?’

  Juliet took a deep breath. ‘I need to talk to you... No, I mean, we need to talk...to each other. About last week. And other stuff. Family stuff.’

  Well, that was a turn-up for the books. After hearing nothing from Juliet for almost two weeks, she’d thought her sister really had cut her off. However, when the lift doors dinged she went inside. She was fed up having to do everything on Juliet’s terms. If Juliet wanted to talk to her, she’d have to do it her way.

  When they got downstairs and out of the front door of her building she set off at a brisk walk, warming up.

  ‘You’d better say what you want to say quickly,’ she told Juliet. ‘It takes five minutes to get to the park and after that I’m running.’ She glanced down at Juliet’s rather nice mink suede boots. Even if she wanted to, she wouldn’t be able to keep up. In fact, she was already looking a little pink and breathless.

  The sadistic side of Gemma decided it was quite pleased about that.

  ‘I wanted to say I’m sorry about the way I talked to you the other day,’ she said, doing her best to keep up.

  That was almost enough for Gemma to stop dead. Or maybe even faint. But she couldn’t quite forget the look of contempt on Juliet’s face that morning she’d arrived back from St Lucia and that helped her to keep striding. ‘You are, huh?’

  Juliet nodded. ‘I had reason to be upset, but I totally overreacted.’

  Gemma turned the corner and set off past the grand old white stone of the naval college. ‘Ya think?’

  Juliet swallowed and scurried to keep up. ‘I met a man on holiday, you see...’

  Gemma kept going, but she turned her head sharply to look at her sister. ‘You met a man... A “not Wi
ll” kind of man, and then you had the gall to come back and bawl me out?’

  Just when she thought Juliet had changed her spots and got all reasonable, her sister had to go and prove her wrong! Gemma picked up speed.

  ‘Long story,’ Juliet said, hobbling along beside her, but not dropping behind, which was most annoying. Gemma wondered if she could subtly increase her stride length, making it ever more torturous until Juliet gave up. She was so busy wondering if the feeling of triumph would be worth quashing her growing sense of curiosity that she almost missed what her sister said next.

  ‘The short version is that I thought he was my wish come true, but it turned out he was a con man who tried to steal Grandma’s ring and all my money.’

  Now that was when Juliet got her full attention. Gemma screeched to a halt and faced her sister. ‘You’re kidding me!’

  ‘No,’ said Juliet, shaking her head, and then more sadly, ‘I wish I was. So you can see why I was a little...touchy...when I arrived back from the airport. Combined with the sleepless night on the plane and the jet lag, I wasn’t in the best of moods.’

  Gemma wanted to laugh. She might even have let out the tiniest of giggles. Juliet always had had a talent for understatement.

  ‘It really isn’t funny,’ Juliet said, trying to scowl, but then her lips started to twitch.

  Gemma set off walking again, at a gentler pace this time. ‘What happened? Are you okay?’ Crikey, that was the last thing she’d wanted to happen to Juliet when she’d offered her the holiday.

  Juliet nodded. ‘I’m okay. Or I will be. I’ll tell you the whole story later, but for now I think we’ve got some more important things to talk about.’

  Part of Gemma really didn’t want to talk to Juliet. Those things she’d said at her house that morning had stung. Part of her wanted to blow her sister off and tell her she didn’t care, it was too late. But another more sensible part of her knew that would just keep them circling round each other in the same twisted dynamic for ever. For their relationship to change, they both had to be willing to change too.