The Sisters (6 page)

‘Because of what she overheard?’

She nods. ‘It was careless of you, Ben. And you’re never normally so careless.’

He paces the room and groans. ‘I know. I’m so fucking angry with myself.’

She winces at his display of frustration. ‘Anyway,’ she says, in an effort to placate him. ‘Luckily, no harm done. Although she says you told her to leave.’

He stops pacing and stares at her, his hazel eyes wide. ‘Of course I didn’t,’ he bursts out. ‘Why would she say that? And why hasn’t she spoken to me about it?’

Beatrice shrugs. She’s enervated by the whole experience. She’s past caring about Jodie.

‘And where has this come from?’ he says, walking across the oiled wooden floorboards to stand next to the sofa. He runs his hand along its curved back. ‘This must have cost a bomb.’

‘That’s what the Trust is for,’ she says. ‘I ordered it last week. I was always going to ask Jodie to move out of this room anyway. It wasn’t fair that she’d taken this over as well as the bedroom upstairs. She wasn’t paying any rent.’

‘You never asked her for any rent,’ he says.

‘It’s not about that,’ she snaps. ‘We don’t need the money.’

Ben takes a seat next to her on the sofa and places a soothing hand on her bare arm. Even though his fingers are warm, the gesture makes her come out in goosebumps. ‘Bea, what you’re doing is great.’

She turns to him, suspecting sarcasm but his hazel eyes are full of admiration and she’s overcome with love for him.
Oh, Ben,
I’m doing all this for you,
she wants to tell him, but knows she can’t. He won’t understand, not yet.

She takes his hand. ‘What
we’re
doing, Ben. We’re in this together, remember?’

They sit in companionable silence and Beatrice thinks that maybe she won’t tell him about Abi yet, that it will only spoil this precious, rare moment when it’s the two of them, alone. He moves his hand from her arm and snakes it around her shoulder, pulling her to him, and she sighs contentedly as she leans against him. He’s still
my Ben,
she thinks.
My twin.

And then he has to go and ruin it all by asking the inevitable question.

‘What are you going to do with Jodie’s room?’

Beatrice detaches herself from his embrace and moves over to the fireplace. She kneels down in front of it, the draught from the chimney blowing against her bare legs and methodically, and for no reason other than to stall Ben, she places a log from the nearby bucket on to the cold grate, trying to remember the last time they lit a fire in this room.

She hasn’t mentioned to Ben about Abi turning up unannounced two days ago, clutching those pathetic daisies, a sad, haunted expression in her big green eyes. She had stood by the gate, soaking wet and tiny in her oversized parka, looking so frangible that Beatrice’s heart had gone out to her. What she felt for Abi, in that moment, was almost maternal. She wanted to fold her in her arms and tell her that everything was going to be okay, that she, Beatrice, was here to help her.

Ben won’t understand, she thinks as she carefully lays another log in the grate, playing for time before answering her brother’s question. Because she knows that any burgeoning feelings Ben might have for Abi will have to be quashed and she’s not sure how he will react. They have an unwritten rule, no romances between housemates. He plays it down, of course, but she saw the look he gave Abi at the open studio, the way he made a beeline for her at the party afterwards. She understands exactly why he’s attracted to her. Vulnerable, a little shy, slim and fair-haired. Abi’s completely his type.

‘Shall we get someone else to move in?’ he says, cutting into the silence impatiently.

She stands up, rubbing her knees, and faces Ben, wanting, needing, to see his expression, but before she even opens her mouth his face falls as what she’s planned finally dawns on him.
Oh, Ben, you know me so well,
she thinks.

‘You’ve already asked Abi to move in, haven’t you?’ His eyes are hard, sharp. A hunted animal.

I’m sorry, Ben.

‘
You didn’t even bother to ask me. It’s my house too.’

She can’t help but feel a flicker of remorse as he gets up wordlessly from the sofa and leaves the room, the door banging closed behind him.

Chapter Six

Monty’s house, or rather, his mansion with its gabled roof and turrets, sits grandly at the top of a steep hill overlooking Bath. A crescent moon floats above the chimney and I think how eerie the house looks in the fading light, how gothic. I’m almost expecting to see bats swarming around one of the towers. It gives me an unwelcome flashback to Halloween, to that night over eighteen months ago, to that fateful party we attended, the argument that resulted in us all leaving earlier than planned.

Beatrice sidles out of the taxi, elegant in her black shorts and opaque tights that show off her long, shapely legs. I follow her as we pick our way over the gravelled driveway. The cacophony of voices, clinking of glasses and the beat of some dance tune floats through the open windows, alerting us that the party is already in full swing.

‘Are you okay, Abi?’ asks Beatrice as she stops to extricate her stiletto heel from the gravel, leaning on me for support. ‘I imagine these things are hard for you.’

Beatrice hasn’t asked me any more about Lucy, which I’m relieved about. That way I don’t have to lie to her. Would she still want to hang around with me if she knew about Alicia and how I ended up in a psychiatric hospital after Lucy’s death? I pull the sleeves of my blouse further over my wrists to hide the evidence of my downward spiral.

‘I’m fine,’ I lie. I’d been so flattered when Beatrice rang me up and asked me to Monty’s party. Not only does she want me to be a housemate, but she’s invited me to be part of her group of friends too, to be part of her life. All the same, my anxiety levels are high this evening, despite the antidepressants.

‘Isn’t this place amazing?’ she says, in an effort to lighten the mood, linking her arm through mine. ‘Monty is minted. Ha, Minted Monty, that’s what we should call him.’ She laughs at her own, rather feeble joke while my heart pounds uncomfortably in my chest.

Beatrice told me she’d met Paul Montgomery, or Monty for short, after he’d given a talk while she was studying for her MA at the university, and they had become ‘great friends’ apparently. ‘He’s gay and very flamboyant,’ she says. ‘And quite a successful artist. His parties are legendary.’

I take a deep breath before we push our way through the heavy front door and the heat hits me like an invisible wall. I find it hard to swallow, my tongue sticking to the dry roof of my mouth. There are people everywhere, clusters of them on the landing, milling about the hallway, languishing against door frames with easy smiles, glasses of bubbly in their hands. Waiters dressed in black and white manoeuvre expertly through the crowds, refilling glasses surreptitiously and handing out hors d’oeuvres from silver trays. The music pulsates in my ears, making my heart beat even faster, my pulse pounding painfully in my throat. I always knew this was going to be difficult, the first party without Lucy.

I suddenly glimpse her amongst the knots of people gathered on the sweeping staircase, a floaty scarf around her long neck, her familiar encouraging smile playing on her too-large mouth, but when I blink again she’s gone. Beatrice glances at me, mouthing if I’m okay and when I nod she squeezes my hand reassuringly, telling me I’m doing fine and to stay close to her. I follow her swishy bob, my hand gripping hers as we snake our way through the hordes of jostling bodies, in the same way I used to follow my sister whenever we went to parties or clubs.

It was always Lucy and Abi Cavendish and never the other way around. She was two minutes older than me, my better half, the brighter, shinier, more intelligent twin. I was the runt of the litter. As my mum was always so fond of telling us, as a baby I was the sickly one who suffered from acid reflux, whereas Lucy thrived, consuming all the milk and solids that she could get her chubby little mitts on. In the faded photographs taken with Dad’s instant Polaroid camera from the mid-1980s, square-shaped and yellowing, the corners curled with age, Lucy and I sit together on a sheepskin rug in front of a stone fireplace or on a picnic blanket on the lawn of our garden, two almost identical toddlers dressed in matching clothes, her pudgy-thighed and cute and me, her stunted skinny twin, Lucy’s distorted mirror image.

Even at school she made friends easier than I did; she had a natural, breezy way about her, whereas I was too intense. When she suggested we join in with the other girls in the playground I would stick out my lower lip and shake my head, which infuriated her. She was a social butterfly and I was clipping her wings. I wanted her all to myself, as if I somehow knew, even then, that the time we had together would be short, finite. When Lucy did play Hide and Seek or Tag with the other kids, I would drift around the playground by myself, inventing stories in my head of the great adventures we would have, just the two of us.

It was only at university that I stepped out of Lucy’s shadow. I had no choice. With her brains she was always going to be accepted at a red-brick, Russell Group university; my parents wanted her to be a doctor, and she didn’t disappoint them. I, on the other hand, only ever aspired to the local poly, although I think I surprised everyone, myself included, when I got into Cardiff to study journalism.

Lucy would have walked into this party with her head held high, as if she belonged in this world of wealth and art and I would have followed, her confidence rubbing off on me like body glitter.

‘Beatrice, my pretty darling,’ booms a loud voice and a big bear of a man with a frizzy beard, who looks to be at least fifty years old, parts the crowd. ‘I’m so glad you could make it.’ He’s wearing a dazzling print shirt that’s open at the neck and strains over his ample stomach. They busily air-kiss each other and then turn to me. ‘So, this is Abi,’ he says, his chocolate brown eyes meeting mine. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you. I’m Monty.’ He gives my hand a hearty shake. ‘Come and get a drink.’

They walk off together, leaving me trailing behind them. I can see the strap of a blood-red bra poking out of Beatrice’s black vest top and cutting into the flesh of her shoulder. I can’t quite catch what they are saying above the boom of the music.

We reach a huge, high-ceilinged drawing room with white walls, the coving and Georgian shutters painted a lead grey. Monty thrusts a glass of something orange into my hand and then resumes his conversation with Beatrice and I’m hit with a twinge of jealousy that he’s taking up so much of her time. I take a gulp of my cocktail; it’s so strong the alcohol burns the back of my throat, coating my anxiety, and before I know it I’ve finished the glass and taken another one from the tray of a passing waiter. I feel light-headed as my eyes sweep the room, noticing the many gilt-framed oil paintings of scantily clad, angelic-faced men and women, almost like modern versions of Botticelli, that adorn the walls. I recognize the paintings as being Monty’s own work. Beatrice had shoved a leaflet from his most recent exhibition under my nose while we were in the taxi on the way here. His paintings aren’t to my taste.

I catch snippets of conversations about artists I’ve never heard of or books I’ve never read, and I’m reminded of the parties in London that I attended with Nia and Lucy. They were similar to this; glossy, monied people, effortlessly cool and confident. But I didn’t mind that I never quite fitted in, because I had Nia and Lucy, and we usually only went along for a laugh and a free goody bag.

A cluster of thirty-somethings are dancing rather self-consciously in the corner to Happy Mondays. I turn my attention back to Beatrice, relieved when I see Monty drifting away from her to talk to an elegant woman in her mid-sixties. Beatrice raises her eyebrows at me and wrinkles her nose. ‘Is that woman wearing a real fur stole?’ she giggles. ‘Look, it’s even got a head.’ She seems to find this hilarious and I stare at her, perplexed; how many cocktails has she been plied with? ‘Come on, let’s go and explore,’ she says. ‘I’ve always wanted to have a nose around Monty’s place.’ She takes my hand and we make our way through the different rooms, all as huge and elaborate as the drawing room and filled with people drinking cocktails or champagne. It’s like being in a Stephen Poliakoff film.
My heart pounds in my chest. Not with the usual anxiety but with a growing sense of exhilaration at being so near to Beatrice. Her confidence, her joy, is infectious. When I’m with her I experience that heady rush of adrenalin at being around someone who I admire so much. She makes me believe that I can do anything, be anyone.

Giggling and clutching each other, we stumble across a small music room and dump our now-empty cocktail glasses on top of a glossy cream piano. ‘At last,’ sighs Beatrice as she leaps on to a Chesterfield leather sofa, dangling her long legs over the arm. ‘A room with nobody in it. There’s too many people at this party. And my feet are killing me.’

To emphasize this point she kicks off her high heels and stretches her toes, webbed like a duck’s in her opaque tights. I plonk myself next to her, grateful for a break from the relentless music and chatter and noise that accompanied us around every room as if we were being chased by a swarm of bees. The lighting is dim and I’m flattered that Beatrice is comfortable enough with me to lean back against me. I breathe in her smell; her perfume, the apple shampoo from her hair. We sit this way for a while in companionable silence. Me, upright against the stiff back of the Chesterfield, with Beatrice using my lap for a pillow, her legs stretched out so that she takes up most of the sofa.