The Ugly Sister

by Jane Fallon

  Abi finishes her meal in silence, can’t bring herself to look at her sister.

  Upstairs, later, Phoebe’s indignant. ‘She’s pathetic,’ she says, banging the pillows around as she makes her bed. ‘It’s so obvious she just didn’t want you to go to the casting because she has to be the only star in the family. It’s a few little ads for Bargain Hunters for fuck’s sake …’

  ‘Phoebe,’ Abi says, although she’s not so naive that she really thinks her daughter hasn’t learned to swear yet.

  ‘Sorry, Mum, she just makes me so angry. She’s so … selfish.’

  ‘She’s just insecure,’ Abi says. ‘It was a stupid idea anyway.’

  Cleo appears at her bedroom door again. Phoebe, sensing trouble, makes herself scarce.

  ‘You weren’t really interested in that thing, were you? Bargain Hunters?’ Cleo says, sitting down on the bed without being invited. ‘I suddenly thought I hope I didn’t put you off going up for it if you really wanted to?’

  Abi thinks about saying, ‘Actually, yes you did. You sulked and pouted until I felt I had to back down,’ but she decides she can’t be bothered. She and Cleo have been getting on better than they have in years and, even though she knows that just below the surface her sister is still the same self-obsessed and spoilt madam that she’s been her whole adult life, she also knows that this version, the one that will play family games and apologize when she’s in the wrong, is a much enhanced model.

  ‘No, of course not.’

  Cleo leans back against the pillows. ‘Do you know that when you got your place at Kent Mum wrote me a letter saying how proud she was that you were the first of the Attwoods ever to get into university?’

  Did she? All Abi can remember is Philippa making a fuss about the fact that Abi wanted to move into halls rather than stay at home and commute, and telling her that they wouldn’t be able to afford to top up her grant so she was going to have to think about getting a job the minute she got to Canterbury or she was never going to survive.

  ‘Really?’

  Cleo nods. ‘I’ve probably still got it somewhere, buried in the attic. I remember thinking maybe she was having a dig at me for not being clever enough.’

  ‘As if.’

  Cleo smiles. ‘Remind me to tell Tara and Megan they’re both brilliant at everything tomorrow. You can help me make a list.’

  ‘Maybe it’s a good thing I only had the one,’ Abi says. ‘She has no one to be forced to compare herself with.’

  ‘That’s true. But no one to share all her memories with either. That’s kind of sad. I always wanted my two to have what we had.’

  Did she? ‘Did you?’

  ‘Of course,’ Cleo says. ‘Wouldn’t you?’

  24

  The summer is over. August has turned into a wet and windy month of storms and floods. The hill is already papered with brown and orange leaves that turn slushy and treacherous underfoot. Abi feels like it’s symbolic, an end or a beginning, she’s not sure which. Both maybe. She forces herself to put her practical head on, making lists, emailing her solicitor, arranging for her furniture to be moved out of storage once her new home is hers. Her plan is to give the place a quick coat of paint, freshen it up before she moves anything in there. Phoebe has promised to help. Abi thinks that between them they can cover the whole flat in two days if they ignore the woodwork. She has already arranged a cheap deal with a friend who runs a B ’n’ B up the road for the two of them to stay there for a couple of nights. On the third day her furniture will hopefully arrive and then her life can settle back into its normal routine again except that her daughter will be gone.

  Entertaining small girls in rainy weather is a whole different ball game to keeping them occupied in the sunshine. To give her credit, Cleo tries to help when she’s home. Although no one is really talking about it, her castings seem to have got fewer and further between, and they all spend wet mornings playing Monopoly or Mario Kart. They can’t stay in all the time, though – there’s a danger they’ll all kill one another – so on the Tuesday before she’s due to go home Abi decides to take the children on the train to Hampton Court where she’s read they are staging reconstructions of one of Henry VIII’s weddings and allowing kids to dress up in Tudor costumes to play the part of guests. It sounds like fun and the girls are fired up about doing anything so long as it gets them out of the house. Jon is at work and Cleo has a go see she seems very excited about, so Abi, Phoebe, Tara and Megan set out for Waterloo station and the short train ride to the suburbs.

  Phoebe has been complaining of period pains all morning, but, dosed up on Feminax, she has elected to go on the trip rather than remain home alone. By the time they have negotiated the Northern Line, though, she is practically doubled over, clutching her stomach and moaning that she should have stayed in bed. Tara and Megan watch her in wide-eyed horror while Abi is torn between alerting them to the fact that this is their future or allowing them to think something is seriously wrong with their cousin and traumatizing them in a whole other way. In the end she decides that it’s better to persuade Phoebe to cut her losses and head home. Phoebe graciously allows herself to be persuaded and manages to put on a big show of feeling much better before she leaves, which goes some way towards assuaging the girls’ fears.

  By the time they get off the train at the other end, and battle their way across the river in the driving rain, all of their umbrellas blowing inside out on the bridge, Phoebe has left a message that she’s already home and that Elena is making her a cup of tea, a sandwich and a hot-water bottle for her to take up to her room. Abi breathes a sigh of relief, relays the good news to the two younger girls and then throws herself into giving them a fun day out at the palace.

  Three and a half hours later they’re all exhausted. The girls have dressed up in cloaks and pretended to be courtiers then joined in a group activity to help Katherine Parr choose her wedding dress, toasted the king and queen and watched the wedding procession. Somewhere in the middle of all that they each wolfed down a sandwich and a Coke, but they’re all famished, so Abi takes them to an Italian by the station where they order enormous plates of pasta. By the time they get on the train back to Waterloo they can barely keep their eyes open. In fact, neither Tara nor Megan do. They sit either side of Abi on a seat made for two and snuggle up to her, wet and exhausted, both falling asleep almost immediately. Abi nuzzles into their hair, Tara’s so straight and dark, Megan’s wavy mouse. She feels an overwhelming rush of love for her two small nieces. She allows herself briefly to imagine that they’re her own – hers and Jon’s. She tries to slot that idea into her fantasy happy-ever-after that she still regularly plays out in her head, but this time the practicalities, the rationale, overwhelm her.

  At home Cleo is back and reading the paper in the living room, but Abi just waves at the door and heads on up the stairs, pushing the girls in front of her.

  ‘We’re all having baths,’ she calls. ‘We’re soaked through.’

  ‘Was it fun?’ Cleo shouts back.

  ‘Yes,’ all three say in unison.

  ‘It was brilliant,’ Megan adds. ‘I wish Auntie Abi would never go home.’

  ‘Me too,’ Cleo shouts back, and even though Abi knows she doesn’t mean it literally it gives her a warm glow to know that her sister really does seem to like having her around now.

  Abi drops the girls off on the second floor and traipses on up to her attic. Her limbs feel heavy and exhausted, and all she can think about is a deep hot bath. Maybe with a glass of wine if she could summon up the strength to go back down to get one. She pushes open the door to her bedroom and there, sitting on the bed, is Phoebe.

  ‘Hi. Are you feeling better? You missed a fun time actually …’ She stops as she notices the look on Phoebe’s face. Her daughter looks pale and strained. ‘Phoebe? What’s wrong?’

  Phoebe looks at her, looks almost scared.

  ‘Do you feel really bad?’ Abi sits on the bed next to her daughter and instinctively p
laces a hand on her forehead, feeling for a temperature.

  ‘No. Well, yes, but not like that.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Mum, you mustn’t say anything …’

  Abi’s brain holds up flashcards of what might be wrong. Pregnancy and STDs feature heavily, as usual, joined by illness, debt, boyfriend trouble (she crosses her fingers and hopes for that one even though she knows Phoebe doesn’t actually have a boyfriend at the moment). Maybe it’s about her exams. Maybe Phoebe didn’t get the two As and two Bs she proudly told the family she had gained last week. After all, Abi didn’t actually see the letter. That wouldn’t be so bad. OK, imaginary boyfriend trouble or failed A-levels, either of those would be dealable with. She takes a deep breath.

  ‘Just tell me what it is, sweetheart.’

  Phoebe looks at her, looks away. ‘It’s Auntie Cleo.’

  Now Abi is really confused. ‘Auntie Cleo?’

  Phoebe nods. ‘After I left you that message, I went back to bed and read, and then a while later Elena came up to bring me another cup of tea and say bye because she was going. Then I think I went to sleep for a bit …’

  Abi nods, impatient.

  ‘Anyway, I heard the front door go. I think it was about two o’clock. I knew it wouldn’t be you lot or Uncle Jon, so I assumed it was Auntie Cleo. I was feeling a lot better so I thought I’d go downstairs and say hi, but when I got to the landing I heard voices, Auntie Cleo’s voice and a man’s one I didn’t recognize. It definitely wasn’t Uncle Jon. I didn’t want to go down in my pyjamas, because I didn’t know who it was, so I went back to my room to get dressed, but then I heard them coming up the stairs …’

  Abi feels sick, knows without a doubt what’s coming next.

  ‘They were giggling a lot. And then I heard them go into Auntie Cleo’s and Uncle Jon’s bedroom and shut the door.’

  Phoebe runs out of steam and sits staring at the duvet. Abi reaches out and rubs her daughter’s arm. ‘And then what?’

  ‘I just stayed up here, but they were in there for about an hour and a half.’

  ‘Jesus,’ is all Abi can say.

  ‘I watched him out of the window when I heard him leave. He’s got really short hair, like cropped.’

  Abi nods. ‘I think I know who it is,’ she says. ‘I think it might be Richard, from the bookshop, you know.’

  ‘The one you used to go out with?’ Phoebe looks at her incredulous. ‘Why?’

  Abi knows she can’t tell Phoebe the half of it. She at least has to keep up the pretence that she and Richard were once an item. ‘I just had my suspicions, that’s all. They were very flirty.’

  ‘How could she do that?’ Phoebe looks as if she might cry now she’s got her big secret off her chest. Abi can’t bear to think of her sitting there all afternoon all alone and weighed down by what she had discovered. ‘Uncle Jon’s so … lovely.’

  Abi sighs. ‘I know. Does she know you saw them?’

  Phoebe shudders. ‘No. I’ve stayed up here all afternoon. I don’t think she’s even got any idea I was home.’

  ‘OK. I’m so sorry you had to witness that, sweetie. You must have felt awful.’

  ‘That woman is a complete bitch. I can’t even believe she’s your sister.’

  ‘No. Me neither,’ Abi says.

  Abi lies in the bath, warm water up around her chin, but it’s anything but relaxing. So Cleo is still seeing Richard. All her begging and her apologies and her promises that it was nothing more than a foolish near miss have turned out to be lies. All her protestations that she loves Jon and couldn’t imagine her life without him, worthless. The whole thing has been a smokescreen, a misdirection, a construct. All the ‘I’m really glad you’re here’ and ‘I always wanted my two to have what we had’ was just part of the performance. Desperate, needy, fucked-up Abi, so eager for crumbs from the family table, was guaranteed to fall for any line, however clichéd. It was all just another modelling assignment for Cleo. Act like you care about your sister. Click. Try to make us believe you’re pleased to see her. Click. Look at her like you love her. Click.

  Downstairs, she has no doubt, Cleo is working her magic on Jon. Abi has seen for herself how touched he has been by her attentions over the past few days, how surprised but pleased he’s looked when Cleo has unexpectedly put her hand on his arm or granted him one of her oh-so-special smiles. He’s taken the fact that she’s been home more as a sign that everything is going back to normal, Cleo is accepting that her comeback is over before it began and that she’s philosophical, even happy, about returning to her role as devoted wife and mother. He has been as taken in by her as Abi has, even more so maybe because he still remains blissfully unaware of the truth about how she has been behaving. He has put up with her moods and her selfishness and her ego, and he’s been beating himself up because for one split second he allowed himself to get carried away and kiss someone else. Cleo doesn’t deserve him.

  A thought jabs at Abi out of nowhere, cold and steely. If Cleo has still been seeing Richard then maybe he’s told her what he knows about Abi and Jon. Maybe he’s used that as justification for his and Cleo’s behaviour: ‘She’s in love with him, you know. Something happened between them while you were in New York, I’m not quite sure what …’

  Never mind that it came to nothing, that Abi turned him down for Cleo’s sake, Richard could have spun it any way he chose. She forces herself to think it through. Is Richard really that cruel? Wouldn’t he have taken into account the fact that she has never betrayed him to Stella? Wouldn’t Cleo have dropped the sisterly act immediately and confronted her, taunted her about her assumption of the moral high ground, her double standards? She breathes out again, slowly. She would know by now. Cleo wouldn’t have been able to keep it to herself.

  Abi ducks her head back into the water to rinse off her hair. She thinks about Stella, how she said that she and Richard were getting serious, even thinking about moving in together. She has an overwhelming urge to broadcast what she now knows. She can’t bear the thought of Cleo and Richard getting away with it, hurting people she cares about, but she also knows that she can’t, she won’t. It’s not up to her, not her secret to share.

  All she can do is confront Cleo, talk to Richard, beg them to do the right thing – either end it for good or come clean – and then get the hell out of there, go home to Kent and leave them all to deal with the fallout. Or she could just take the coward’s way out and say nothing. She wonders whether she should offer to take the girls down to the coast for a couple of weeks, leaving the adults free to talk about the future if they so choose, but she knows they’re due back at school next week, so it’s not really practical. She’ll just have to hope Cleo has enough decency left to protect them from the worst.

  She tries not to think about the fact that if she did speak up in front of everyone, throw it all out in the open, then Jon would more than likely end up on his own, available, free to form a new attachment with someone who would never even consider cheating on him.

  There’s a knock at the bathroom door. She hears Phoebe’s nervous voice. ‘Mum, are you OK in there?’

  Abi realizes she has been lying there for over half an hour. ‘I’m fine, sweetie. I’m getting out now.’

  She drags herself out, wraps herself in an oversize fluffy towel and opens the bathroom door. She doesn’t want Phoebe to worry about her on top of everything else.

  Phoebe appears in the doorway. ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘Nothing. We’re going to go down to dinner as if everything’s normal, for Uncle Jon’s sake. I’ll talk to Cleo later. Maybe. I haven’t decided.’

  She puts her arm round her daughter. ‘You OK?’

  Phoebe nods. ‘Shouldn’t we tell Uncle Jon? It’s so unfair on him.’

  ‘I know. But it’s not up to us to interfere in anyone else’s relationship. The only thing I can do is let her know that I know and then it’s up to her. I’m tired of trying to convince myself that there�
��s a good person under there, and that we have a relationship worth saving. There isn’t and we don’t. I can move into my new flat in three days’ time and forget all about her. She can mess up her life on her own from here on in.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Mum. Maybe I shouldn’t have told you. I didn’t know what to do.’ Phoebe looks so young and troubled that it nearly breaks Abi’s heart.

  ‘You did exactly the right thing,’ she says. ‘Don’t even think that you have anything to feel bad about.’

  It takes all Abi’s strength to go down to dinner rather than just crawl into her bed, put her head under the covers and hope it’ll all go away. She’s so angry she’s not sure she can look Cleo in the face without giving herself away. At the sight of her sitting with Jon and the girls at the kitchen table chatting away happily she feels a wave of nausea, as if she’s going backwards, too high, on a swing.

  ‘We made pizza – you missed it,’ Megan says. Indeed there are several misshapen pizzas on the table along with a big salad.

  ‘Well, it looks lovely,’ Abi says as she sits next to Phoebe who has come down with her. She forces herself to look over at her sister. Cleo is showing no obvious signs of guilt, no telltale hint of post-coital satisfaction. In fact, she’s smiling and laughing as though nothing is out of the ordinary, nothing is wrong. Abi feels weak with disgust.

  ‘Jon, I’ve been thinking,’ she suddenly finds herself saying out loud. She’s standing on a precipice fighting the urge to see how far forward she can lean. ‘I’ve decided I am going to go in and meet for that advert, after all. What’s the worst that can happen?’

  Jon beams. ‘Good for you.’

  Out of the corner of her eye Abi can see Cleo’s carefree mask fall. The old sour, disapproving look is back even though she is clearly trying to suppress it.

  ‘Gosh, Abigail, really?’

  ‘Why not?’ Abi says faux brightly. She plasters a tight smile across her face. ‘Not that modelling of any sort is something I’d ever really be interested in – it’s way too shallow. But just this once the money would come in handy.’ She’s aware she must look a bit manic – she certainly feels it – but there doesn’t seem to be much she can do about it. Phoebe is looking a bit panicked.