As news goes, Cleo’s could not really have been more alarming or come at a worse time. She has got the job. Of course Abi is pleased for her on one level. Hooray. Good for her. Let’s celebrate! Oh? It means you’re going to New York for two weeks and leaving me – if I don’t mind, and how can I refuse? – to look after the girls because although Jon can take a couple of days off he is, of course, right in the middle of a big campaign so naturally it wouldn’t be fair to ask him to drop everything. Great! The best part of a fortnight of me and Jon in the house on our own (well, near enough). Jon, your husband, who I have just decided I have fallen headlong in love with. Perfect!
She has been avoiding him since Saturday night. Right after she had her eureka moment, she claimed tiredness and told him she really felt much better now, thank you, and went to bed. He, of course, is oblivious to her inner torment, so he just said goodnight and he was glad she had cheered up a bit and that he’d see her in the morning. Abi barely slept because every time she got close she would drift into half-conscious fantasies that would give Dr Phil a field day, and she had to pull herself together and force more anodyne, less provocative thoughts into her head. Every now and again she chastised herself – he’s your brother-in-law, your sister’s husband, your nieces’ father, grow up, snap out of it. Never mind that her feelings are entirely unreciprocated, that nothing would – or should – ever come of them even if she did allow them to flourish, it’s still wrong to be giving them space in her head. They deserve to be shut out.
Sunday she woke up late because, of course, she had been awake for half the night, so she spent the day hiding in her room, feigning exhaustion, venturing down to the kitchen only when she heard the family go out. At dinnertime she dragged herself downstairs before anyone (Jon) could appear at her door with a tray, made uninspired conversation for just long enough for them all to accept that she was fine, nothing wrong, just knackered, and then disappeared back upstairs with her plate.
This morning she still crept downstairs like a commando, determined to ensure that Jon had already left for work before she showed her face. She managed to grab her toast and some coffee from Elena and get back upstairs before Cleo emerged too, and then she waited to hear her sister go out before she came back down. She didn’t want to have to see her yet either. Not until Cleo had had a chance to think about the things she’d said.
The summer seemed to have vanished suddenly, to be replaced by something altogether more wet and windy, so the girls and Abi stayed at home all day and had fun making more outfits from the charity-store bargains and some of Cleo’s cast-offs, which were destined for the second-hand shop, and doing fashion shows for each other. Even Tara seemingly enjoyed herself because Megan and Abi both realized early on that the way to keep her happy was to let her tell them what to do. Abi found it surprisingly relaxing, actually.
It’s important to her that the girls don’t pick up on any kind of atmosphere, so when it gets close to home time she makes sure they’re in the living room playing Twister like they don’t have a care in the world. When she hears the front door close, she tries to forget how undignified she looks with her backside in the air and her face smushed against the floor, and she laughs extra loudly at nothing. Look at me. I’m just fine. Everything is normal. She waits for Jon to stick his head round the door to announce his arrival and what he’s intending to cook for dinner. Instead she is hit by a rush of long-discontinued ‘Exotica by Cleo’ and then Cleo herself breezes in and, not even acknowledging that they’re clearly in the middle of a game, says, ‘So, I got the job.’
In the rush of the hysterical little-girly excitement and Cleo’s self-congratulation that follows, Abi has only one thought in her head. Cleo is going away for two weeks and leaving her and Jon together. That can’t be a good thing. Hold on, when did she become such a master of understatement? That’s a fucking disaster.
Cleo has obviously decided that her good news cancels out any memory of their having had a row. She needs an appreciative and envious audience. Allowing Abi to sulk would ruin her moment, so she just acts as if everything is normal, and as if her sister will naturally be as thrilled for her as anyone else.
Abi has realized now that this is another way of her controlling things, of being in charge. Cleo is the one who decides when rows are forgotten and everything is back to normal. It’s all in her gift. She never says sorry or even refers back to the bad atmosphere at all, she just switches to all’s-fine mode and expects everyone else to do the same.
Abi tries to play along. Cleo is full of New York and where she’s going to stay – The Mercer, she hopes, that’s where she usually likes to be, opulent but discreet, downtown where all the hip people like to hang out, although there’s also a case for saying it’s been ruined by the hordes of tourists thronging the streets on a weekend, but still, on balance, it’s her preferred haunt – and how Falco told her agent that he picked her first of the five women who are going to be in the ads. Abi asks her what the product is and it seems to her Cleo is a bit vague, telling her it’s a moisturizer without actually naming the brand. Maybe she thinks Abi won’t have heard of it, living in the sticks and taking as little care of her appearance as she apparently does. As Cleo suspected, there are going to be both TV and print ads, which the girls get very excited about until Cleo tells them that the campaign is just for America so they’ll probably never even see it. Several times Cleo refers to herself as the ‘face’ of the product.
Abi is thankful for the distraction when Jon gets home. All the talk is of Cleo’s success. She has to leave for New York next Tuesday week and then she shoots from the following Monday until the Saturday inclusive and flies back overnight arriving home on the Sunday. Nearly two whole weeks for Abi and Jon to play happy families. Well, thirteen days and let’s not forget twelve long nights too. Abi has to come up with some things for them all to do, places she can go in the evenings. Displacement activities. At all costs she has to avoid spending long periods alone with Jon, because she’s not sure she can trust herself. She flinches when she acknowledges this to herself. However annoying Cleo can be, Abi is certainly not proud of herself for having these thoughts about her sister’s husband.
‘What’s the product again?’ Jon says as they sit down to eat. He is making a big show of being delighted for his wife although Abi knows he has mixed feelings.
‘Oh, it’s a moisturizer,’ Cleo says, once again avoiding saying the brand, which strikes Abi as even more odd. Jon is not a stranger to product although happily not the slave to it she once thought he was. He would surely recognize the name even if she wouldn’t.
‘Yes, but which one?’ Jon persists. ‘I want to know so that I can boast to people. ‘My wife’s the face of …’
‘I can’t remember the exact name,’ Cleo says. ‘It’s new.’
OK, Abi’s gut tells her something’s not quite right. Cleo has told them that the product is a moisturizer so why would she be so deliberately avoiding saying the brand? She shoots a glance at Jon and he studiously avoids looking at her. Both of them have the sense not to push it, though, and Jon skilfully changes the subject. They talk about New York – somewhere Abi has never been and has always wanted to go to – for long enough that the atmosphere shifts and the question of the name of the brand Cleo is promoting is no longer hovering over their heads. She tries to think what the issue might be, but she’s stumped. She and Jon, both ambivalent, to say the least, about Cleo the supermodel’s rebirth, and, speaking for herself at least, completely traumatized by the idea of Cleo going away and leaving them more or less alone, couldn’t be acting with more enthusiasm about her trip if they tried. Abi has no doubt Cleo is aware that they’re patronizing her, but so long as none of them say what they’re actually thinking it’ll all be OK.
A memory comes flooding back. Caroline, aged fifteen or so, defiantly bright-eyed and with a smile plastered on that, even to Abi’s twelve-year-old self, looked fake, insisting that the reason she wasn’t performing the lead solo in the dancing-school annual show – as she had almost every year Abi could remember – was because she had chosen not to. She had told the teacher to give someone else a chance, she said. Preferably one of the less talented, often overlooked girls with thick ankles and no sense of rhythm. She was blissfully happy to be part of the ensemble.
Philippa had been all over her, telling her she was such a kind and thoughtful girl and that it was wonderful to see that even with all her natural advantages she could still think of others before herself. Caroline accepted the praise graciously, but Abi knew her heart was breaking and, while it annoyed her that Caroline was getting credit where it most definitely wasn’t due, she had also felt desperately sorry for her. Why couldn’t she just admit to failure, have a good cry about the fact that she’d been passed over and accept the sympathy that would have come flooding her way? What was so wrong with admitting you weren’t perfect?
It’s a relief that Abi has work on Tuesday because there are just too many strange vibes buzzing round the house for her to feel comfortable there. Not that she’s a big believer in vibes, but there’s something almost tangible filling up the atmosphere and making it hard to breathe. Richard, witch that he is, says, ‘How’s things with the handsome brother-in-law?’ almost as soon as she walks through the door, so to pay him back she phones Anita, the hormonal Primrose Hill mum who left her back door open for him that time, and tells her that Richard found a pair of sunglasses in the shop that he thinks might be hers and does she want to come in and have a look?
Obviously there are no sunglasses and Abi has simply looked up Anita’s number on the shop’s computer, because, like all the hormonal mums, she orders things from time to time as an opportunity to remind Richard that he has her details should he ever choose to call. Anita undoubtedly knows that she hasn’t lost a pair of glasses, but she’s not going to pass up the chance to come into the shop and is no doubt interpreting Abi’s call as Richard sending her some kind of coded message. She’ll be in at about twelve, she laughs breathlessly.
Round one to Abi.
Does she feel bad that she’s misleading Anita like this? Honestly, no. She’s a married woman who’s trying to cop off with someone on the side. Abi isn’t trying to be judgemental – it’s more that Anita’s willing enough to make a fool of herself whether Abi helps her or not. And to be honest it will have made Anita’s day to have been given an excuse to come in.
Abi is really into her work routine now. She buys coffees and home-made pastries from the little local bakery on her way in (for which Richard thankfully insists she pay herself back out of petty cash, because otherwise she’d be broke) and they catch up with the gossip while they mooch about tidying half-heartedly. The shop is always quiet for the first twenty minutes or so. Abi makes Richard tell her all about the adoring ladies and he quizzes her about Cleo. He’s fascinated by Cleo. Although he has never met her, he knows everything about her from the press and he’s always asking Abi is this true or did she really do that? He should be gay, really, with his love of gossip magazines. He’s desperate for Abi to get her to come into the shop, but she tells him it’s unlikely Cleo’s going to be looking for a way to spend any extra time with her. She tells Richard Cleo has a job in New York, but when he asks who it’s for Abi is as vague about the details as her sister was.
At lunchtime, if it’s fine, she takes her sandwich to the park, usually climbing to the top of the picture-book hill to take in the breathtaking views across London. Elena has taken to shoving a packed lunch in her hand on workday mornings, as, Abi imagines, she does for the girls when they’re at school.
Abi never knows what’s going to be in there and, despite her trying to explain to Elena that she doesn’t really eat meat – apart from a very occasional piece of chicken and anything bacon related, oh, and pepperoni and Parma ham and chorizo, anyway, it’s complicated – she often finds some kind of bloody-looking scary thing in there. No doubt it’s Kobe beef and cost a fortune, but it ends up in the bin either way.
Abi thinks Elena likes her now because, despite her protestations whenever Abi tries to do anything, Elena seems to appreciate the fact that she does try. Unlike half the household who never even remember to say thank you. Not forgetting that Abi has mastered the coffee machine and taken Elena wordlessly step by step through its advanced options. She has also been teaching her English whenever she gets the chance and Elena can already identify most of the objects in the kitchen when Abi points them out. Sometimes Abi can hear her pottering about in there on her own: ‘Plate!’ ‘Knifes!’ ‘Freege!’
If, like today, Abi remembers to check the sandwich contents before she goes out for lunch and they’re not for her (today looks suspiciously like foie gras. It’s some kind of pâté anyway and she’s not taking the chance) then she has taken to offering to swap with whatever Richard has brought. Richard, in turn, very sweetly, has taken to bringing only veggie or fishy sandwiches on the days when Abi is in, so that she is guaranteed a nutritious lunch and he will be able to enjoy the super-gourmet offering.
Today, of course, there is the added excitement of Anita’s visit before lunchtime, and that makes the morning fly by. At five to twelve she breezes in, trying to look nonchalant although she has obviously spent most of the morning doing her hair and make-up.
‘Oh god,’ Richard mutters when he sees her. Abi smiles at him triumphantly and he says, ‘What have you done?’
‘Oh, just playing Cupid,’ she says innocently.
‘I’ll deal with you later,’ he says as Anita approaches the counter.
Obviously Abi doesn’t want Anita to know it was all a ruse because, while Anita’s an idiot, Abi doesn’t want her to feel as if she’s trying to make a fool of her so, before Anita can say anything, Abi jumps in and says, ‘Oh, Anita, I’m so sorry. I meant to ring you back to say that the owner of the sunglasses came back for them, so they obviously weren’t yours. I’m sorry.’
Richard is looking half confused, half amused. Anita, of course, couldn’t give a damn if they had been her glasses and Abi had fed them to a passing dog. She’s here for one reason and one reason alone. She twinkles at Richard who smiles back with his best fake charm. Got to keep the customers happy.
‘I’m going to go and tidy the reference section,’ Abi says, picking the department furthest away from the counter, and moves off, leaving them alone. She’s far enough away not to be able to hear what they’re saying, but Anita seems to be doing most of the talking. She almost feels sorry for Richard. Anita stays for about twenty minutes, hanging around the till and on to his every word. Abi’s starting to think the joke must be wearing a bit thin, so she decides to go to the rescue.
‘Don’t forget you’ve got that lunch.’
Richard grabs at the lifeline as if his life depended on it. ‘Oh god, yes, the lunch. I’d forgotten. I’d better not be late.’ He looks at his watch as if to make the point. Luckily Anita is not so thick-skinned that she doesn’t take the hint.
‘I should go. Miles is going away on business for a few days and there are all sorts of things I need to sort out. He won’t be back till Saturday,’ she says pointedly. Richard doesn’t leap at that opportunity; he just says goodbye and see you soon, so Anita adds, ‘Maybe I’ll come in again before the end of the week. After all, I’m going to be so lonely on my own.’
Once she’s gone, Abi dissolves into fits. She’s taken a bit of a gamble – Richard is her boss, after all – but the one thing she knows above all else about Richard by now is that he can take as good as he gets. He tries to pretend he’s cross for about a millisecond and then cracks a smile and says, ‘You are so dead.’
He has his lunch hiding out in the stock room at the back because he’s so scared he’ll bump into Anita on the street and Abi leaves him in peace, but when he comes back in she says, ‘Where have you been? I’ve been so lonely on my own,’ in her best Anita voice, which cracks them up again.
Apparently it’s all going well with Mrs Baby-buggy Jogger and Abi has to admit she’s pleased for him. If he settled down with a nice woman – she’s assuming Mrs BBJ is nice, although she has nothing but Richard’s word to go on – and lost the cringy twinkling that he seems to feel obliged to do around any women, he would be perfect new-best-friend material. In fact, scrub that, he is new-best-friend material, because he doesn’t mind if she laughs in his face when he tries to twinkle at her. Not forgetting there are no other candidates for the role. She loves that he’s almost impossible to offend, and that as a boss he’s laid back to the point of being almost comatose. Plus she has such a good time at the shop that she forgets about all the drama at the house. And without a doubt she really needs to be able to have a break from it, even if it’s just for a few hours a week.
She and Richard have also made the post-work two fishbowls of wine a routine. That is to say they’ve done it twice now so that counts as a tradition in Abi’s book. She feels so proud of herself that she has a little London social life all of her own – well, if you can call two Pinot Grigios with the boss twice a week a social life. Phoebe would be proud, although in a way Abi is glad she’s not around to witness it, because any woman over the age of about sixteen is fair game to Richard and she’s not sure she could face seeing her daughter fall for his wolfish charms.
This evening he is meeting Stella – Abi has finally discovered this is Mrs BBJ’s name – and she’s both honoured that he’s decided to introduce her and curious to meet the woman who Richard thinks is so special.
She knows Stella the minute she walks in. She looks exactly right to be a match for Richard. Slim, pretty, long straight blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail, casual clothes that scream of money but not in an ostentatious way: 7 For All Mankind jeans and a tight but not too tight cashmere cardigan. She’s smiley. She looks nice.
‘Hi! You must be Abi.’ Stella greets her warmly and sticks out a hand for her to shake. Other women never think Abi is a threat, something she has decided is a response to the way she looks, but which, in actual fact, owes more to her approachable, welcoming demeanour. And, of course, in this case she’s most definitely not. In fact, she never is. She would never knowingly steal another woman’s man – most importantly her sister’s, she reminds herself, as she does now several times a day. Don’t flirt with him; don’t let him guess how you feel – but just once in a while she wishes everyone wouldn’t write her off so quickly. Stella has all the confidence of knowing that she has won the looks lottery, but she’s so open and friendly that it’s impossible not to like her. While Richard gets the drinks, the women chat away happily. Abi asks Stella about her kids (yet again the trusty old default conversation with women she knows are mothers) and Stella tells her about her two little boys who are three and eighteen months.
‘You’re a single mum too, aren’t you?’ she says, so Abi is able to bang on about Phoebe, her favourite topic, but she tries not to bore Stella to death. Stella asks about Phoebe’s dad, so Abi gives her the short version and Stella tells her that her boys’ dad buggered off with the au pair a year ago.
‘How can you … I mean isn’t it hard …’ Luckily Stella realizes where Abi is going and puts her out of her misery.
‘Trusting another man?’
Abi nods.
‘Definitely, but the way I figure it is that if I don’t give someone else a chance, then I’ll end up on my own forever.’
‘Tell me about it,’ Abi says, and she tells Stella how she has been single pretty much for the past eighteen years. Stella is gobsmacked as everyone always is when Abi admits to that. ‘I’ve been out with people,’ Abi tells her. ‘I’m not that sad. I just haven’t had what you’d call a real relationship.’
‘Oh god,’ Richard says when he appears with the drinks and catches the tail end of their conversation. ‘Slagging off men already – that’s not a good sign.’
Abi has hardly been able to look at Jon since she found out that Cleo was going away. She’s sure he must think he’s done something terribly wrong. He probably assumes that she resents him for pushing her to admit that she and Cleo aren’t getting on. She hopes that’s what it is anyway, and not that he thinks she has taken a dislike to him for some random reason. Since Phoebe’s dad Abi has only reached stage four once before – at least she thought she had for a while although it didn’t turn out to be the case – and that was with someone she knew through the library.
He worked in social services and he used to bring a party of OAPs from a local home for the elderly down to browse around every few weeks. Abi used to make him coffee and chat to him while he waited. Of course she blushed and stuttered for a few weeks and then, just as with Jon, one day that all miraculously went away and in its place was something far more real and scary. He was divorced, he seemed to like her, there was nothing stopping her making a move, really, except fear of rejection and the fact that Phoebe was about eleven at the time and she couldn’t imagine taking someone home and introducing him as her boyfriend. And what if she did and Phoebe got to like him and then it all went wrong? So she did nothing about it except palpitate a bit dramatically every time he came in.
Eventually her infatuation disappeared as quickly as it had arrived – Abi thinks around the day when he happened to mention that he was a member of the local church choir at the exact same moment she noticed he was wearing novelty socks with Bart Simpson’s face on them. She was horrified that she might have made a huge mistake, might have somehow given away her feelings and that he might actually have realized she fancied him. So she dealt with it in the most mature way that she knew how. She started avoiding him and more or less blanking him if they did come face to face. She can still remember the confused look he gave her the first time she told him she was really busy and didn’t have time to chat. She’s the first to admit she has all the emotional maturity of a fifteen-year-old when it comes to relationships.
Luckily the focus is all on Cleo’s trip for the moment. The girls want to hear the details of where she is going and what she’s going to be doing over and over again and that suits Abi just fine. Let her have her moment. Abi is assuming that while Cleo is away Jon will take the days off work to do his fatherly duty when she is otherwise engaged at the bookshop, but she doesn’t like to ask. She can’t even begin to think about what they’ll do in the evenings and at the weekends.
The house seems to breathe a bit of a sigh of relief when Cleo leaves to catch her plane late on the following Tuesday morning, and although the kids get caught up in a teary goodbye they’re fine five minutes after she’s gone. Abi has swapped her days, working yesterday in lieu of today to allow her to do childcare once Cleo has left and she ferries them to their self-improving classes (Megan: French conversation; Tara: drama and improvisation) and then she has a delicious afternoon all to herself pottering around doing not much and hoping that the evening won’t come round too soon. If at all.
If she had any friends up here, she could arrange a night out and then just tell Jon he is on his own. But there’s only Richard and he would interpret an invitation to anything more formal than two drinks in the pub as Abi asking him out on a date. Maybe she could go out with him and Stella. She’s decided she really likes her. For all her intimidating good looks she seems down to earth and funny. Easy to talk to. When Abi left them to it in the pub the other night, they made all the right ‘we must do this again’ noises, but she knows that with her two children Stella doesn’t get to go out that much so it would feel like an imposition to muscle in on one of her and Richard’s evenings together.
She could take herself off to the cinema, but she’d feel like a bit of a saddo on her own and, even if she did, that would still only be one night out of twelve. She just needs to get a grip, keep her head down and her emotions in check, and try to get through the next two weeks unscathed.