The Ugly Sister (6 page)

‘The coffee machine’s on,’ he calls by way of a goodbye. ‘Just press the big button on the front.’

‘Bye,’ Abi says to his retreating back. She goes through to the huge chrome-and-white Corian kitchen that at this hour on a sunny morning is nearly blinding it’s so shiny. She finds a mug on the third attempt – actually it takes her about five minutes just to work out how to open the cupboards, which are flush with the walls and have no discernable fittings. She presses the appropriate knob and the coffee machine grinds and whirrs, making a noise like an enraged lion. No wonder Cleo and Jonty need such a big house, she thinks. If it were any smaller, there would be no chance that anyone could sleep through anyone else getting themselves a hot drink in the mornings.

She gazes out into the garden. There’s a small patio out the back with olive trees in terracotta pots and then a slightly larger lawned area. Tiny by country
standards, but spacious for central London, Abi assumes. Picture-book roses line the perimeter with rows of pleached hornbeams above them to ensure that none of the neighbours can invade Cleo and Jonty’s privacy. At this time of year, at least.

Abi hunts around for a key to let herself out, but then she feels bad about rooting around in someone else’s drawers so she gives up and goes to sit at the big white wooden table looking out through the patio doors instead. She’s starving as she always is when she first gets up, but she doesn’t feel at home enough to help herself to stuff yet. It’s a perfect morning and she tries to think of things to suggest the family might do today. She’s sure Cleo will have ideas of her own, but she wants to be able to chip in with suggestions too.

Although she grew up in fairly close proximity to London, it never really felt like anything other than living in the sticks. The fateful shopping trip to Covent Garden was only the third time she can remember coming up to the big city in her life (the previous two occasions having been a trip to see the Oxford Street Christmas lights with her mum and dad when she and Caroline were six and nine and a family day out at Madame Tussaud’s and the Planetarium a couple of years later). The whole idea of the capital was tainted for her after Caroline was whisked away to her new life. It was a place where bad things happened. A place that ripped families apart. The visit
to the Brompton Road flat only compounded that feeling.

Since she had Phoebe she has tried to bring her up to London whenever she can, not wanting her daughter to feel the parochial burden she grew up with herself, and, of course, there are her solitary gallery visits, but she’s still very much a tourist here and is actually quite excited to finally have the time to do all the touristy things: Kew Gardens, the Tower, the South Bank. And then, once she’s ticked a few of the more obvious contenders off the list, she intends to live like a local, absorbing the pace and the feel of the city. She decides on the Eye first, the slow-moving big wheel that dominates the south bank of the river. Who knows, this might be the only clear sky they get all summer – they should make the most of it.

Spurred on, she decides to start getting breakfast ready for when everyone surfaces, but as she is hunting through the fridge for the butter she hears a key in the back door and she jumps as if she’s been caught shoplifting. A small tired-looking woman, white-haired, in her late sixties, lets herself in. She smiles at Abi hesitantly as if to apologize for startling her. Abi smiles back.

‘You gave me a fright. I wasn’t expecting anybody. I assume you’re the housekeeper? I’m Abi.’ The woman still says nothing, just smiles again and nods so Abi holds her hand out and says ‘Abi’ again. The woman shakes the proffered hand then says
something unintelligible in a language Abi can’t place.

‘Do you speak English?’ Abi says slowly. ‘English?’

The woman shakes her head. ‘No English.’ She makes herself busy and Abi takes it that their conversation is over, but also that she’s redundant as a breakfast chef because the woman is already assembling foodstuffs on the kitchen table with practised ease.

‘I’ll get out of your way,’ Abi says pointlessly, because, of course, the woman has no idea what she is saying. Abi waves her hand in the direction of the living room and the woman smiles and nods, and so Abi does the same before she backs out.

She tries to sit and relax. It’s always strange being in someone else’s house. However much they tell you to make yourself at home it’s almost impossible to do so. Abi is hyper aware of the imprint she is making on the sofa, the small dent her arm is carving out in one of the cushions. She reminds herself to shake it out when she stands up. Then she starts stressing about it so she gets up and smooths it over, removing any trace of her ever having sat there. She sits back down, perching on the edge, minimizing the impact. She wishes she’d brought her book down from upstairs because now she doesn’t know what to do with herself. She doesn’t want to go up and get it in case she wakes everyone. She could turn the TV on, but it isn’t even nine in the morning so that doesn’t feel right. She doesn’t want the nodding smiling woman to think she’s some kind of waster while
she’s beavering away next door herself. She considers going to offer to help make breakfast, but she doesn’t know how she’d manage to convey that with just hand gestures and, besides, the woman might take offence, might think Abi was implying she couldn’t manage or something.

In the end Abi opts to just sit and wait, praying that the noddy smiler doesn’t decide to come in and dust the living room, because then she really wouldn’t know where to go, and it’s out of the question that she could just sit there while someone cleaned around her. She looks at the clock on the wall. Still only twenty past eight. She has no idea what time Cleo usually drags herself out of bed. For all she knows she could end up sitting there for two hours doing nothing before anyone even surfaces. Apart from anything else she probably will have starved to death by then.

Maybe she could pop out to a café. She noticed all kinds of interesting-looking shops on the way here from Chalk Farm tube last night. She could buy herself a pastry and a newspaper and then amble back slowly by which time, hopefully, at least the kids might be up and about. It’s the best idea she has come up with so far, but then it occurs to her that she doesn’t have a set of keys yet and she has no way of knowing whether the smiler would understand to let her in if she rang the doorbell. For all she knows the woman might think she’s a friendlier than average
burglar and is just waiting for Abi to leave of her own accord before she calls the police. She’s desperate for another cup of coffee; she doesn’t usually move until she’s had at least three at home. But in the end she decides that doing nothing is the best and safest option. She sits down again and goes back to staring
out of the window.

After about ten minutes of twiddling her thumbs, she decides that she really has to do something. There’s a little antique desk in a corner of the room so she risks looking inside to find a pen (Mont Blanc, of course, no Bic biros here) and some paper (Smythson’s finest). She doodles for a while but it feels criminal to waste the notepad that probably cost two weeks’ wages, so she starts to make a list of all the places she has come up with for them to visit. At least that way when Cleo finally does appear she can present her with a plan.

She has just finished when she hears footsteps on the stairs and then voices in the kitchen. Cleo. Abi waits for a moment to see if Cleo brings a morning coffee into the living room, but everything goes quiet, so she decides to brave the kitchen once again. She’s surprised by what she finds there. Cleo, fully dressed and made-up, is halfway through eating a bowl of what looks like muesli, yoghurt and berries, sitting at the table, reading the paper. Abi feels a little stab of hurt. She has been sitting in the other room listening to her stomach rumbling for what seems like hours
because she assumed that they would all eat breakfast together. She tells herself not to say anything negative, not to ruin the good atmosphere that was created last night. Cleo looks up, coffee cup halfway to her lips.

‘Oh, hi,’ she smiles. ‘I didn’t realize you were up. Did you have breakfast?’

‘No, I was waiting …’

‘What do you want? Orange juice? Toast? Cereal? Elena will get it for you.’ She waves her cup at the smiler in a gesture that seems to mean another one of these for my friend, please. ‘Did you meet Elena?’

‘Um … Kind of …’

‘She doesn’t speak much English, but she’s very reliable,’ Cleo says cheerfully, and Abi cringes at the idea that they are talking about Elena as if she wasn’t there when she is, in fact, standing right in front of them. Never mind that she can’t understand, it still doesn’t seem right.

‘Once she gets an idea of what you like, she’ll just have it ready for you whenever you get up. Don’t start waiting for everyone to come down or you’ll wait forever. Tara’s like a teenager already; I can hardly get her out of bed in the mornings.’

‘Where’s she from?’ Abi asks, trying not to make it obvious to Elena that she’s talking about her.

‘Oh. I’m not sure. Somewhere in Eastern Europe.’

Abi manages to communicate toast to Elena by waving the bread and pointing at the toaster. She
can’t help thinking it would be quicker and less humiliating to simply do it herself.

‘She’s here every weekday from eight till one. If you’re around later, she’ll make you some lunch before she goes …’

‘Oh, OK. I … um … I assumed we’d all be doing something today. I made a list …’

Cleo drains the last of her coffee, looks at Abi triumphantly. ‘Not today, I’m afraid. I’ve got a hair appointment in town and then I’ve got a go see …’

Abi stops in her tracks, list in hand. It isn’t so much that Cleo has plans, after all Abi wasn’t expecting her to put her entire life on hold for the whole eight-week visit (although maybe the first day … Abi stops herself pursuing that potentially poisonous train of thought), it’s the fact that she’s going on a casting. As far as Abi is aware Cleo announced she was hanging up her modelling boots five years ago, conveniently right about the time the modelling industry decided it was done with her for good. Time to move over, there’s a new girl in town. A hundred new girls, probably. A hundred new girls not just younger and fresher-faced, but still eager and polite, still not demanding limos and Cristal, still not insisting on keeping the diamonds they were showcasing or asking for £25,000 just to get out of bed (inflation hit the modelling world just like any other). Still not shouting at
the stylists and telling them they were fucking halfwits and what do you know about anything, you dried-up frumpy old hag?

Abi had read about this last one in one of the tabloids. A well-known stylist for one of the top women’s magazines had sold the story of how her editor out and out refused to work with Cleo any more, because her bad behaviour far outweighed any added value she brought to the magazine. It was all a balancing act, she’d said. If Cleo had been vile but her presence on the cover had meant thousands more magazines sold, then it would have been worth it. As it was her cachet was down, her popularity at an all-time low. Pain in the arse plus no extra sales equals no future bookings.

And come to think of it, even when Cleo was still working, when had she ever gone on a go see in the past twenty years? She thought they were demeaning. Everyone knew who she was – if they wanted her to do a job for them, they should just make an offer. None of this lining up with fifty other hopefuls for Cleo. That was for the B-listers.

Abi doesn’t know where to start so all she says is, ‘Oh …’

‘I’ve decided to go back to modelling,’ Cleo says. ‘After all, Kate and Naomi still work, so why shouldn’t I? It’s just that I’ve been away for a while so I need to get my face out there, show people that I’ve still got it. And if that means having to endure a few go sees then …’

‘Gosh. Good for you.’

‘Surprised? I am myself a bit. I hadn’t really ever imagined I’d want to go back to it, but here I am.’

‘That’s great,’ Abi says, not really sure whether she believes it even as she says it.

‘So, sorry about today, but – I hope you don’t mind – I thought maybe you could still take the girls somewhere? And there’s plenty of time for us all to do stuff together.’

Abi knows she’s right. There’s no rush. And, if Cleo wants to try to pick up the threads of her career, then why shouldn’t she? Abi gives her a smile to show she isn’t upset. ‘Of course.’

‘Great,’ Cleo says matter-of-factly. She stands up, leaving her bowl, spoon and cup on the table. ‘I’d better run – see you tonight. After I’ve been to the gym. I’ve got a session booked with my new trainer. I’m trying to go every day.’

‘See you later.’

Abi picks up her plate, along with Cleo’s things, and takes them over to the sink where Elena is fussing around cleaning. She puts them on the draining board and Elena taps her hand away as if to say she shouldn’t be clearing up after herself.

‘Sorry.’ Abi wants to ask if she is allowed to put the Marmite away, but she doesn’t know the international hand signal for that so she doesn’t bother.

In the brief period between Caroline becoming Cleo and her subsequently being crowned the ‘face of 1985’, it had looked like everything might turn out OK after all. Abigail knew that much had changed,
that their cosy family unit was never going to be quite the same again, but she had no idea, at that point, of the extent to which things would be different. After the initial excitement, there was a lull – the calm before the storm as Abi now sees it – when, despite Philippa’s attempts to ensure there was no one in Kent who didn’t know that her eldest daughter had been spotted and was now officially a model, nothing much seemed to happen. Cleo had her head shots done and then they waited, breath held, for the job offers to come flooding in. For a couple of weeks there was silence, nothing, and life more or less returned to normal. Even better than normal, maybe.

Caroline, it seemed to Abigail, had started to feel a bit guilty that she was stealing the limelight so completely from her sister. She went out of her way to include Abigail in whatever she was doing, inviting her to parties – where Abigail, grateful to be there but struck dumb through social ineptitude, stood in a corner nursing a lemonade and watched her sister and her contemporaries get drunk on cheap lager – trips to the cinema on wet evenings and to the shops in Maidstone in the afternoons. She had insisted to her friends that Abigail was now a fully paid-up member of their gang. Abigail had never felt so socially plugged in even if in her heart she knew at the time that Caroline’s friends were really only including her on sufferance. Abigail became the gang’s official lookout, watching out for parents when they passed
round cigarettes in the park, waiting outside the off-licence in case anyone
they knew caught them in the act of attempting to buy cider, and on more than one occasion causing a diversion outside Woolworths so that no one would notice a line of girls leaving the store with make-up-shaped bulges under their tops. She never shared in the spoils – no one ever offered – but she felt needed, part of a clique for the first time in her life. And then, of course, the famous newspaper article had appeared and life as she now knows it began.