The Great Christmas Knit Off (30 page)

Take our thirtieth birthday for example. Sasha organised a hideous joint party at a flash private members’ club in London, not my thing at all, and then after all the guests had whooped and wished us happy birthday, Sasha had ripped off her dress, revealing a teeny-tiny tasselled silver bikini, and promptly leapt around a pole which swivelled down from the ceiling, glinting in the spotlight after the lights were dramatically dimmed and raunchy music pumped from speakers. She performed a full-on pole dance, like a pro, in front of the hundred or so guests, made up mainly of her business contacts (Sasha never misses an opportunity to network) while my small group of friends cringed over by the bar area. But that’s not all; she then heckled me to join her, knowing I hate heights, until the whole crowd, apart from my friends of course, were chanting my name. Even Luke joined in. I was mortified; there was no way I could writhe around a pole without making an utter fool of myself, plus I didn’t want to, it’s just not my thing, so I ran away, finding out later that Sasha had been having pole dancing classes for months, and hadn’t bothered to mention it to me, thereby ensuring the show was all about her.

‘Well, what did you expect me to do when you don’t
bother
to answer your phone?’ And there it is again, the same accusatory tone that Luke used; it must be a thing for people who’ve messed up, a defence mechanism – blame the other person and hope they don’t notice.

‘And why on earth would you think I would want to talk to you? And how did you know I was here?’

‘OK. Well, it’s the bizarrest thing …’ She purses her lips and makes big eyes. Sasha always did love a drama, especially someone else’s. ‘Mum has left like a hundred messages,’ she starts, in a stagey voice, ‘practically hysterical she was, something about you losing your job – a massive cock-up she saw something on the local news – and then Luke called her saying your boss had rung him. So she begged me to find you and sort out the mess.’ Hmm, I definitely bet Mum didn’t. ‘And then something about you and Luke working it out and that I should talk to you and say sorry so you can be happy with him, and then when I was schlepping through this toy town of a place, the village idiot approached me, twiddled her tacky loom band, did a crazy cow grin and then asked me how it was going with the doctor! Obviously thought I was you, God knows why, because we look nothing like each other any more.’ And she actually gives me an up and down look as if I’m somehow inferior to her, when actually, we do still look identical, apart from the hair of course and the make-up and the way we dress. ‘Have you met a doctor? Is that why you’ve run away to this dump? To be with him?’

‘Shut up! Just shut the fuck up. Tindledale isn’t a dump!’ I scream, flinging my hands over my ears and moving towards her. Sasha’s mouth actually drops open. She takes a step backwards and a dart of fear flits through her eyes. A short silence follows, interrupted by a knock on the door. It opens and Cher pops her head into the room.

‘You OK, Sybs?’ Cher gives me a look and I walk over to her, my legs still wobbling with rage.

‘I’m fine. Honestly, I can handle her.’ I toss a disparaging glance in Sasha’s direction and to my utter shock and disbelief Sasha is now crumpled on the floor, kneeling with her forehead on the carpet and her arms cradling her body. Sobbing!

Instinctively, I run over and reach a hand down to touch her back, but she shrinks away from me. Cher follows until she’s standing beside me. We look at each other, both wondering what on earth we should do. I’ve never seen Sasha like this before; in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her cry, certainly not since we were little girls, and then it was probably because she couldn’t get her own way. Tears of temper, never sadness or compassion, but this is different. She’s seriously distressed. Is she having some kind of breakdown?

‘Sasha!’ Cher crouches down next to her. ‘Come on. Let’s get you up.’ But Sasha pulls away from her too. ‘We’re worried, love,’ Cher says gently, using the same voice she did when she chatted to Bill. Cher manages to loop her hand through Sasha’s elbow and motions for me to get her other arm, which I do, and between us we lift Sasha up and on to the bed. Basil swiftly legs it to hide under the table by the window. ‘Do you think we should get Dr Ben over here?’ Cher looks at me. I open my mouth to reply, but Sasha mutters and pulls her arms free before yanking off the riding jacket and tossing it away. It lands in a sad heap by the bathroom door.

‘Please, I’m not ill,’ she sniffs, wiping her nose on the cuff of her sleeve, which is so unlike her – usually she’d be the first to criticise that kind of behaviour, and the silk shirt that she’s wearing looks incredibly expensive, but it’s as if she doesn’t care, as if she’s given up. How weird. Sasha may have her flaws, but she’s never been a quitter. I grab a box of tissues from the nightstand and offer them to her. She takes a handful and blows her nose before crying some more.

‘Sasha, if you’re not ill, then what’s going on? I’ve never seen you like this before.’ I can feel her body trembling against mine. Cher stands up.

‘I’ll get you a nice cup of tea, how about that?’ she smiles, but Sasha doesn’t respond. ‘Or perhaps something stronger?’ Sasha manages a nod. ‘OK, be right back. I’ll bring you one too.’ Cher nods at me as she leaves the room and I wait for Cher to close the door behind her, before trying again.

‘Sasha, please tell me what the matter is,’ I start, managing to keep my voice calm, even though I’m still fuming with her – I can’t erase the mean stuff she said or the fact that she cheated with Luke, just because she’s having a breakdown. But she is my sister, and I do still care about her, so I’m prepared to put it to one side for now, and find out what the hell is going on. ‘Are you sure you’re not ill? I can get Ben, the doctor, to come over,’ I say, wondering how he’d react to seeing my identical twin sister here. Some people totally freak: I had a friend from Brownies home for tea one time who started crying and Mum had to call her parents to come and collect her. And then a horrible thought pops into my head,
what if Sasha tries to steal Ben away too?
Oh God. I will myself to get a grip. Ben isn’t Luke. Besides, Ben isn’t my boyfriend, plus it comes down to trust at the end of the day. I can’t spend the rest of my life worrying that any man I meet is going to jump into bed with Sasha.

Sasha places her hand on my knee.

‘Sybs, I don’t need a doctor,’ she says quietly.

‘OK. So what
do
you need?’ I gingerly pat the top of her hand and it seems to calm her, as she takes a deep breath, stops trembling and tells me.

‘About a billion pounds.’

‘What?’ I say, wondering what she means. Is she joking? I can’t tell, as her face is deadly serious.

‘Oh, Sybs, I’ve messed everything up. I’m so sorry. I’ve ruined your life.’
Hardly, I’m sure I’ll survive.
But she’s always been a drama queen
.
‘And I’ve ruined my life. Mum and Dad hate me; my so-called mates have abandoned me. Most of my clients have deserted me; all I have left is the Christmas hunt ball. And it’s all my fault – so you’ll probably think it serves me right.’
Hmm, maybe.
But what am I? Twelve. Yes, she betrayed me horribly, but if what she’s saying is true, that she’s properly ruined her own life, then I’m hardly going to sit here and gloat. I press on, keen to get to the bottom of it all.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Sybs, I’m bankrupt! It’s all gone. The lot. I’ve lost everything. It started shortly after …’ she pauses to pick her words, but I save her the bother.

‘You stole my fiancé.’ And she flinches.

‘Please believe me when I say that it just happened,’ she says, crying again. ‘It was never intentional.’

‘Look, Sasha, I don’t want to talk about it. What you did was unforgivable, but it’s done, in the past. I can’t change it, and to be honest, you might even have done me a favour; I’m starting to see that now. Let’s just say that I would never do something like that to you, or any other woman for that matter.’ I turn away, determined not to make this about me. This is her doing, not mine.

‘You say that now, but you have already done it,’ she snivels, picking at a hangnail on her left thumb.

‘Whaaaat?’
Is she for real?

‘With Ian. He told me all about it, that you came on to him in the taxi that time, that he had to turn you down.’ Her voice is all quivery.

‘Are you kidding me? That’s a pack of lies. He came on to me!’ I say, incredulously, remembering Sasha’s barrister boyfriend who was named after Ian Botham.

‘He said you’d say that, that’s why I never asked you outright. I couldn’t bear to, but I never forgot and it broke my heart you know, everything changed from then on. I loved Ian, I thought we’d be together for ever, I just didn’t care after that, it’s why I am the way I am. And why I—’

‘Hang on,’ I interrupt. ‘So let me get this straight, are you saying that you got with Luke as some kind of sick revenge plan for something you thought happened years ago?’

‘Nooooo!’ And she actually looks genuinely horrified. ‘I truly didn’t Sybs, I was just saying, explaining that you’re not perfect either.’

‘But I didn’t betray your trust. I didn’t come on to Ian. Like I said, I’d never do anything like that,’ I reiterate.

‘I realise that now,’ she says in a very small voice. ‘And that’s what makes me even more awful.’

‘You’re not awful,’ I say quietly. I actually can’t be bothered to argue with her any more. I look sideways at my beautiful, glamorous twin sister and see instead, a wreck, a shell. On close inspection her hair is a mess, her red roots are in desperate need of a blonde touch up and her nails are chipped and bitten. Underneath her usually immaculate make-up her face is looking withered and weary because she’s lost too much weight. Her fight has gone, the hard outer shell, and the snootiness has faded away, leaving a vulnerable and frightened woman. I feel sorry for her. Something’s clearly very, very wrong.

Cher arrives back with two glasses and a bottle of Southern Comfort. She looks at me and I nod my head so she backs out of the room, pulling a face and mouthing, ‘good luck.’

I pour us both a drink, hand a glass to Sasha, down mine and ask her to start from the beginning. And she does.

*

‘Oh my God.’ I shake my head.

‘So do you see now?’ Sasha says, and I pour us another drink.

‘I had no idea,’ I reply.

‘I did try to tell you. I called and called and called to explain,’ she says, swallowing a mouthful of Southern Comfort. Sasha has told me that nothing happened with her and Luke before the wedding. He turned up at her hotel room the night before, confused, saying that he wasn’t ready to settle down, and they started drinking and one thing just led to another and they ended up in bed together, and then when they woke up in the morning, an hour after the wedding was due to start, they both panicked – Sasha says she felt disgusted with herself. And the weirdest thing of all is that I believe her. I just know she’s telling me the truth; so maybe we do have that twin thing, that sixth sense, that connection after all. But none of this changes anything between Luke and I. It wouldn’t have worked, it wasn’t right in any case. And he clearly thought so too, if he turned to my sister to pour out his heart to, the night before our wedding.

‘I know you did. But you can’t blame me for not wanting to talk to you,’ I say, ‘I thought it had been going on for a while.’

She shakes her head vehemently.

‘Yeah, I can also see that now. And I’m sorry I didn’t come to you on the day of the wedding, explain everything, but I felt so ashamed, so revolted with myself, I couldn’t have even looked you in the eye.’

‘But it doesn’t explain why you thought it was OK to sleep with my fiancé. What do you have to say about that?’ I ask, not ready to let her off the hook completely.

‘There’s no excuse. We had been drinking, and well …’ She stops talking.

‘Come on. You need to do better than that.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You must know. Had you wanted him for a while? Was that it, you fancied Luke and couldn’t stop yourself?’ I say, desperately trying to fathom it all out.

‘No. It was never like that. I didn’t want him.’

‘Why did you do it then?’

‘To feel better, perhaps.’ She shakes her head. ‘Oh, I don’t know, I’ve gone over and over and over it a million times.’

‘To feel better?’ I say incredulously. ‘But you weren’t unhappy, were you?’

‘Ha! This is the thing,’ she sniffs, ‘everyone assumes that just because you have loads of money and a glamorous, high-flying life, that it means you’re happy. But I’ve never really been happy. Not properly. Lonely, more like. Not like you, with your cosy, secure life. Friends like Cher that you’ve known for years, people that really care about you. A future, getting married and then most likely having a family, and let’s face it, I’ve always been the mean twin, the wicked one – and that’s the thing about being a twin, there’s always a comparison.’

Silence follows. I had no idea she felt this way.

‘So is that why you …’ I pause, not wanting to kick her when she’s down, I’m not that heartless, ‘um, are,
gregarious
?’ I settle on.

‘I guess so. When you’re the black sheep of the family, it’s sometimes easier to just carry on reverting to type, playing the pantomime villain.’

‘You’re not the black sheep,’ I protest.

‘Yes, I am. I know what you all think of me …’ her voice trails off.

‘Well, you could always try being a bit more courteous, less judgemental in future.’

‘I know. And I am trying. That’s what coming here today was all about. A start. But I got scared. Scared of what you might do to me, scared you might not talk to me, let alone see me. I thought I had lost you for good and well, I suppose I did what I always do—’

‘Lashed out,’ I finish, and she nods her head. ‘And what about the bankruptcy?’ I ask, not wanting to talk about her, or Luke, or what they did to me any more. ‘How did that happen?’

‘Oh God, it’s such a mess,’ she starts, and then takes a deep breath before exhaling hard and carrying on. ‘In Dubai, there are strict rules about kissing and drinking and that kind of thing in public. And it’s ludicrous, but I, we, Luke and I – he begged to come back to Dubai with me after he missed the wedding, said he had to get away, and well, we got drunk on the beach. We both felt so wretched, and unhappy, and we had one of those horrible, sad, desperate, rebound kisses and got caught by the police. So as soon as word of my arrest spread faster than a bush fire, that was that, all my clients drifted away. Pouf! Just like that.’ She waves her arm in the air in a feeble attempt at a joke. ‘Nobody wants the drunk tramp organising their daughter’s sweet sixteen. People can be very particular about that kind of thing. And in my business, you’re only as good as your last gig; hence I’m back here with only my charity event left. Plus a trillion bills to pay: my landlord in Dubai is suing me for non-payment of rent on the penthouse and all the catering companies, celebrity singers – superstars like Kylie and Miley performing at your wedding reception don’t come cheap – still have to be paid for because you can’t just cancel them at the last minute, and I never bothered with insurance policies and all that; I ran my business on goodwill and charm. So now it’s all an utter mess.’ And she starts sobbing some more.