The Ugly Sister (26 page)

‘Wow,’ Richard says as he takes a seat on the sofa. ‘This place is incredible.’

Cleo laughs a forced little laugh, which Abi knows is meant to mean: Oh, this old thing? I just knocked it up in my spare time. ‘Thank you.’

‘That’s interior designers for you,’ Abi says, and Cleo gives her a look. Immediately Abi feels petty and mean-spirited. What does she care if her sister wants to give the impression that she did the house up herself?

She tries to smooth things over. ‘What I mean is
you had a bit of help, didn’t you. You weren’t literally wallpapering the walls yourself.’

‘Of course not,’ Cleo snaps. ‘I didn’t say I was.’

This is going well, then.

They all sit down and there’s a bit of an awkward silence. Even the girls are lost for words. Wine, Abi thinks. That’ll help.

‘Do you want a drink?’ As she says it, as if he was waiting right outside the door for his cue, Jon appears brandishing a bottle of white and a bottle of red.

‘Merlot or Gavi di Gavi? Hi, Richard.’ Richard stands up and goes to shake Jon’s hand, but Jon is holding the bottles so he’s left hanging at first and then Jon offers him a couple of spare fingers so he shakes those.

‘Merlot, please. Hi, mate, how are you doing?’

‘Good, yes. Couldn’t be better.’ Jon’s megawatt rictus smile nearly blinds Abi as he turns to her. ‘I know that you’ll have white.’

‘Yes. White. Thank you.’ She knocks back the glass he gives her almost in one. She has to stop herself holding it out for a second one straight away. OK, so she doesn’t actually stop herself at all. She doesn’t look Jon in the eye as he refills her glass.

‘Something smells good,’ Richard says.

‘It’s only coq au vin. I didn’t have much notice, I’m afraid.’ Jon gives Abi a slightly accusatory look as he says this and she wants to say ‘it wasn’t my idea, don’t blame me’, but, of course, she doesn’t.

‘Perfect,’ Richard says. ‘One of my favourites. And, listen, I hope this hasn’t put you to too much trouble. Honestly, I’d have been OK with a takeaway.’ You have to say it for Richard – it’s hard not to be charmed when he wants you to be.

‘Don’t be silly,’ Cleo chips in. ‘It’s no trouble. We invited you for selfish reasons, actually. We wanted to get a closer look at Abi’s boyfriend.’

Richard laughs and, as if remembering why he’s here, puts his arm round Abi. She knows she should relax into him as if they sit like this all the time, but, however hard she asks her muscles to oblige, they refuse. ‘Well, I hope I pass the inspection.’

She smiles weakly at Jon who is standing rigid, looking at the happy couple as if they were a – not very appealing – exhibit. Abi resists the urge to shrug Richard’s arm away.

‘I’d better get back to it. Dinner’ll be about twenty minutes. Girls, do you want to set the table?’ Tara and Megan get up without complaint and Cleo watches them, eyebrows raised.

‘That’s a first. They must be trying to impress you, Richard.’

Abi doesn’t bother to tell her that, in fact, the girls have made some considerable headway in the field of domestic science during their mother’s short absence; she’ll see for herself soon enough.

Richard is at his personable best, asking all the right questions about Cleo’s career and showing appropriate
amounts of, genuine, fascination with the answers. She laps it up and, Abi’s surprised to find, it’s actually quite interesting because she’s always deliberately avoided talking to Cleo about it as much as she’s been able to over the years, so she hasn’t heard half of the stories before. Some of them are pretty funny and the atmosphere lightens tangibly as Cleo talks, Richard listens and Abi keeps an eye on the clock and wills the evening to be over.

Exactly twenty minutes later Megan comes through and announces that dinner is ready. Abi’s relieved that they’re eating in the kitchen as usual and not in the ‘formal’ dining room, which she finds intimidating at the best of times. Her plan is to set the girls off talking about something and hope that they don’t stop until they have finished eating and she can pack Richard off home as early as possible.

Tara helps Jon distribute the starters of homemade mushroom pâté and little slivers of crispy toast.

‘This looks amazing,’ Richard says.

‘He makes it himself,’ Cleo says with an almost imperceptible eye roll. ‘Although we have a perfectly lovely little deli up the road who do just as good a job and with none of the effort.’ Abi hates that Cleo is belittling Jon’s passion, even if she’s not aware that she’s doing so.

‘Amazing,’ Richard says appreciatively. ‘That’s really impressive, Jon. I wouldn’t know where to start.’

Jon grunts his thanks.

‘So, girls,’ Abi jumps in. ‘What else did you do today besides come into the shop?’

‘I had street dance,’ Tara says. ‘My teacher said –’

She doesn’t get to finish because Cleo interrupts. ‘You can tell Auntie Abigail about it later. Don’t think you’re getting away without the third degree,’ she says, turning to Richard and smiling. ‘It’s not often I get to interrogate one of my sister’s boyfriends.’

Abi would just like to say here that if the ground opened up and swallowed her at this point it wouldn’t be a moment too soon.

‘Honestly, Cleo, don’t embarrass Richard.’

‘Who’s embarrassing him? I’m just going to ask him a few questions. You don’t mind, do you, Richard?’

She turns the full force of her A-list smile onto Richard, who basks in its supernova glow.

‘Of course I don’t. Abi, you should be pleased that your sister’s so protective.’ Abi shoots him a dirty look, but he’s oblivious, seduced by the heady mix of good wine and the proximity of a real live celebrity. ‘Ask away.’

‘So,’ she says, leaning forward on her hands like a TV journalist interviewing a politician. ‘You run a bookshop?’

‘I own the bookshop,’ he says casually. ‘But it’s true that I do run it as well.’

‘Ah, you own the bookshop. How long have you been there?’

‘About nine years.’

‘And before?’

Abi can’t stand this any longer. It could only be worse if Richard really were her boyfriend and she wanted him to stay that way.

‘Cleo, for god’s sake. Stop being so nosy.’

Cleo laughs. She’s loving this. ‘It’s my prerogative as your older sister. I have to check his prospects.’

How could Richard object to all this attention from a supermodel no less? Clearly he doesn’t. ‘Tell you what, I’ll give you a quick rundown of my CV and then, if you think I’m not worthy of Abi’s attentions, I can leave before the main course. Although if it’s as delicious as the starter I’ll be loath to go. You might have to kick me out.’

Oh, the hilarity. Throughout all this Abi can’t even look at Jon. She just concentrates on eating far more of the pâté and toast than is healthy. Richard gives Cleo a brief precis of his life, all of which is news to Abi. He’s forty-four as it turns out, divorced eleven years ago and has had a fair few relationships since, but nothing serious.

‘Not until I met Abi,’ he says, overdoing it enormously and putting his hand over hers at the same time. She withdraws her own quickly, trying to make it look as if she was going for the bread all along. Briefly she catches Jon’s eye and he looks away.

‘He’s joking, of course,’ she says. ‘We’ve only known each other a couple of weeks, as you know. It’s early days.’

Richard soldiers on with his personal history. He worked as a sub-editor on various newspapers for
several years, then got sick of the rush-hour tubes and the nine to five and took voluntary redundancy to open his own business instead. Hence Regent’s Park Road Books was born.

‘It’s a lovely shop,’ Jon says, making an effort. Abi wants to hug him. Let’s face it, she’d want to hug him even if he wasn’t making an effort. She just wants to hug him generally. All day, every day.

‘It is,’ Cleo is saying. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been in there before today.’ And therein, Abi thinks, lies the difference between her and her sister in a nutshell. Cleo has lived within five minutes’ walk of a beautiful independent bookshop for six years and never been inside. Abi supposes she should at least be grateful that Cleo hasn’t been in there every day mooning over Richard like the other local ladies.

Jon and the girls start clearing the table and dishing up the main course, so Abi gets up to help, leaving Cleo and Richard to entertain each other. Over the coq au vin Cleo decides to up the ante.

‘So how did you two get together?’ Richard and Abi look at each other. They spent a bit of time this afternoon coming up with a fake history for this very eventuality, but she’s struggling to remember it now. She made him promise not to offer up too many gory details.

‘Oh, you know. I liked her right from the off, but she wasn’t having any of it, so I took her down the pub and plied her with a few drinks.’

Cleo and the girls laugh, and Jon does a good approximation of it.

‘He’s joking about the getting-me-drunk bit,’ Abi says, turning to Tara and Megan. ‘Never let a boy get you drunk.’

‘Yuk,’ Megan says. Abi doesn’t know whether she means boys or drink, but either way she’s pleased that’s the reaction.

‘Anyway, there’s no big dramatic getting-together story. We just thought we’d give it a go and see what happens.’

‘She’s such an old romantic, your sister,’ Richard says, and Cleo says, ‘Tell me about it.’

Luckily that seems to have exhausted the topic of Abi’s relationship so they talk about other things. Richard asks Cleo all about her trip and he makes appropriately flattering noises about her decision to stage a comeback. At one point he asks her what the product is and Abi holds her breath, waiting to see what Cleo will say.

‘It’s made by La Vie En Rose,’ she says, naming a medium- to high-end cosmetics company. This is more than she has told Abi or, as far as Abi knows, Jon before. ‘Some new moisturizer or other.’ Abi looks at Jon to see if he is registering any reaction and he catches her eye briefly. She raises one eyebrow and he mirrors her action. It’s the first normal interaction they’ve had for days.

Then Richard turns his charms on Jon and they
chat about advertising in general and
onehitcomparison.com
in particular. Under different circumstances Abi can see that they would get on like a house on fire, because they laugh at the same things and that even though Jon is clearly predisposed to dislike Richard he seems to be being won round despite himself.

Meal over and girls dispatched to bed, Abi starts to wonder how soon she can suggest to Richard that it’s time to go home. She looks at her watch – it’s only ten o’clock. To be honest, she feels absolutely exhausted from having to keep up the pretence of not-so-young love with the wrong person. She yawns loudly and they all look at her.

‘Are we keeping you up?’ Cleo says.

‘Sorry, I’m knackered. And don’t you have to get up early tomorrow, Richard? That … um … that delivery’s coming.’

Richard looks at her as if she’s insane. He’s having a lovely time, why should he want to cut it short?

He looks at his watch. ‘It’s only just gone ten.’

‘I know but, remember, you said to me to make sure you didn’t stay late because you had an early start …’

Thankfully he gets the hint. ‘Oh. Yes. The delivery. Of course.’ He puts down his glass and gets up. ‘Thank you so much for dinner …’

‘Why don’t you stay here? It seems mad you having to leave when Abi’s got a double bed upstairs. And it’s very private up there, isn’t it, Abi? You’ve got your own bathroom.’

Oh. Good. God. Of course, it hadn’t occurred to Abi that people would be expecting her and Richard to want to spend the night together – although it begs the question why they clearly haven’t so far. Cleo and Jon must think they keep themselves going with afternoon sessions and just let the shop run itself. She could try to protest that she’s saving herself, but that might have more weight if she was sixteen instead of a thirty-eight-year-old mother of one.

‘No! No. Because then you’d have to get up and get dressed to go and let the delivery thing in whereas if you’re at home you can just fall out of bed …’

‘Abi’s right. I’m not very good at getting up at the best of times.’

She knows that if she doesn’t go with him the others are going to think that the relationship has lost its magic already, but there’s no way she is going to head off into the night to sleep on Richard’s sofa. What would Stella think, for one thing?

‘And, you know what, I’m so tired I’m just going to crash out so there’s no point me coming with you. You don’t mind, do you?’ she says, making an effort to cosy up to him a bit.

Richard kisses her on the top of the head. ‘No. You get some sleep. Come round in the morning, though, won’t you?’

She agrees and he says his goodbyes. Cleo and he, new best friends, hug.

‘We must do this again,’ Abi hears Richard say.

What? That wasn’t part of the plan. Cleo, of course, purrs and says, ‘How about this Saturday? We could go to the Ivy Club. It’s so much more exclusive than the restaurant these days. And the food’s fantastic.’

Abi has to butt in. ‘Oh, I’m not sure we can. Weren’t we going to go to the theatre this Saturday?’

Richard stubbornly refuses to take the hint this time. ‘Well, we haven’t got the tickets yet and it’s probably sold out anyway. Dinner’s so much more fun, don’t you think? And you keep saying how much you’re loving spending time with Cleo. We can go to the theatre any time.’

‘I was looking forward to it,’ Abi says firmly.

‘What were you going to see?’ Jon asks, and of course Abi has no idea what’s even on in the West End so she just looks at Richard who says, ‘
Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
,’ and somehow manages to keep a straight face.

‘Oh,’ Jon says, because, really, what else is there to say.

Abi is looking daggers at Richard, but he is steadfastly refusing to take any notice.

‘It was me who wanted to see it, really. Abi wasn’t that fussed. So let’s do dinner instead.’

She knows what he’s doing. This is her punishment for involving him in her little mess in the first place. He gets to hang out with Cleo and go to the Ivy Club and do whatever fabulous things he wants while Abi has no right to complain.