It Would Be Wrong to Steal My Sister's Boyfriend (13 page)

“Nonsense,” Vanessa said firmly. “This colour will be amazing on you. And this is a really versatile piece – perfect for going out in the evening in the summer, daytime parties, even for work with a jacket over it. Now try it, please, just for me?” And such was the magnetism of her personality that the next thing I knew I was looking at myself in the mirror, covered from collarbone to knee in pink. I looked amazing. The dress lengthened my legs and made a waist magically appear where no waist had been before. The colour made my eyes look a brighter green and my skin look rose-petal perfect. And when I turned around to look at the back, no trace of bra strap showed in the hole.

“Wow,” I said. “You’re good.” I couldn’t stop smiling.

“See?” Vanessa was grinning like a maniac too. “Now we’ll put that in the ‘probably’ pile and move on.”

My admiration for Vanessa’s skill increased to something approaching reverence as the afternoon wore on and I tried on jeans that made my arse look all pert and tiny; suits that actually fitted rather than bulging out in all the wrong places; tops that had random tucks and frills and drapes that made them flattering and interesting instead of just tops. She’d even brought a few scarves in different sizes, and showed me various clever ways to tie them so they looked… right, somehow, not like I’d just wound them round my neck because there was a bit of a nip in the air. “But you’re not buying these here,” she said, “You’ll go to the high street, where scarves are three quid, not fifty like this one. They’re fashion pieces, you change them every season to update your look.”

I nodded obediently. By this stage we’d finished the champagne and we’d both flopped down on the chaise longue, exhausted, and started on the biscuits, and the rail full of clothes had been sorted into a big pile ‘yes’ section, a smaller ‘maybe’ section and a very small pile of ‘no’s, most of which I’d rejected because my conscience simply wouldn’t allow me to spend more than fifty quid on a top.

“Well,” Vanessa said, “that’s what I call a good afternoon’s work. I’ve missed doing this so much, although the buying side is great fun too.”

So I asked her about her career and she told me how when she stopped modelling at twenty (she’d got too big, she said, and looking at her I realised that although she’s tall, athletic and far from fat, Vanessa’s actually not skinny: she just wears clothes that fit her and really, really suit her figure), she’d worked her way up from folding garments on the shop floor (another surprise), and eventually done a couple of years’ stint in the personal shopping
department before training as a buyer. And she said that far from going off to be a Lady Who Lunches if she and Tom had children, she was planning to cut short her maternity leave and hire a nanny and go back to work as soon as she could, because she felt her brain would atrophy otherwise. She told me a bit about the shop’s background – how it was formed when an old-fashioned draper’s shop called White’s had merged with an old-fashioned corsetry shop called Black’s, and for ages it had sold gloves and parlourmaids’ uniforms and bloomers and suchlike to well-to-do Mayfair ladies, and then in the 1950s it had started to import ready-to-wear fashion from Paris, and the rest was history. Well, it was all history, of course, but you know what I mean.

Then she said, “Actually, I was chatting the other day to one of my colleagues, Barri, who’s head of marketing, and he mentioned that he’s looking for a press and communications person. You wouldn’t be interested, would you?”

I said it depended on various things, and although I was very happy where I was one keeps one’s eyes open for opportunities, and then she told me the salary and I gulped and said I’d think about it and maybe send a CV, and took this Barri guy’s email address. Then we went and paid for everything and even with Vanessa’s discount it was eyewateringly expensive, and there were so many bags – how is it that clothes can be so heavy? They don’t feel heavy when you’re wearing them – I decided to take a taxi home, which made me feel like the indulged daughter of some Middle Eastern potentate. But of course, as is always the way, there were no taxis to be had, and it began to rain – a thin drizzle that had everyone putting up their umbrellas and trying to shelter under awnings and generally making the crowded streets even more rammed than they’d been before. I pushed my way on to a side street and headed south, hoping my luck would improve. But the drizzle intensified, and soon it was proper, full-on rain, and the only taxis I could see had their lights stubbornly off, and
one of them drove too fast through a puddle and sent a sort of junior tsunami over the pavement, soaking my trousers so they stuck damply to my calves with every step.

“Fuck,” I muttered. One of my carrier bags was soaked too, and the thick, expensive paper was disintegrating into mush. I didn’t feel glamorous at all any more; I just felt like me, caught in the rain on my way home to spend a Saturday night on my own. I ducked into a doorway to squash the clothes from the bag that had got soaked into one of the intact ones, and realised I was right outside Gilbert’s, a wine bar where Claire and I had been a few times before she had Pers. I’d go in, I decided, and dry my hair under the hand dryer and have a glass of wine while I waited for the rain to stop.

A few minutes later I was ensconced at a table in the corner, sipping Sancerre and trying to look aloof and mysterious, not like the kind of tragic loser who drinks alone on a Saturday night, or, worse still, like I’d been stood up. I wished I had a book with me, but instead I used the Black & White Spring/Summer catalogue to hide behind while I checked out the other people in the bar. There were the usual crowds of tourists, wearing those see-through rain cape things that no Londoner would be seen dead in, and poring over huge maps, soggy from the rain. There was a table of girls who looked like they were on a hen night, although it was hard to tell because, this being Mayfair, they were all terribly well dressed and glamorous and there wasn’t an L-plate or cock-shaped deely-bopper in sight. And there were loads of couples on dates: a silver-haired man with a much younger blonde woman who certainly wasn’t his daughter, judging by the way he was pawing her thighs; two teenagers who looked barely old enough to have been allowed in, staring at each other in shy, tortured silence; a couple sitting next to each other at a banquette with their backs to me, her dark head and his lighter one almost touching at they talked intently. Then the girl stood up and slid out of the booth and the man followed and held her coat for her while she slipped it on,
and she lifted her sheet of silky hair out of the collar and it swished down her back, and before she’d even turned round I’d recognised her, and him. Claire and Ben.

I felt a flood of heat rush over my face, and held the Black & White catalogue higher, praying that its oversize format would obscure my face. But they wouldn’t have noticed me; they wouldn’t have noticed anyone. It was like they were surrounded by an invisible bubble of intimacy made for two as they moved easily through the crowd towards the door, Ben’s hand sort of hovering over Claire’s back, so her hair occasionally brushed against it. He held the door open for her and the wind whipped her hair over her face, and I imagined I could hear her laughter, and then Ben put up a big black umbrella over them, and they walked off together, their shoulders touching.

CHAPTER TEN

Every day the next week when I walked into the office, Duncan and Ruth and whichever of the volunteers were around looked at me and went, “Swit swoo!” and made me give them a twirl and tell them what I was wearing and what label it was, and although by Friday I’ll admit it was starting to get a bit old, I was actually really pleased. Of course, their being so lovely made me feel even guiltier about the fact that I was spending my lunch breaks polishing my CV, and that by Thursday it was winging its way to [email protected], the email address of Vanessa’s head of marketing. I’d been working with Ruth and Duncan for four years by that stage, after leaving my previous job as
a lowly press officer at Amnesty International, and I’d grown really fond of them, and of course I loved YEESH and everything it stood for. However much I told myself that everyone had to advance their career somehow, they’d find someone to replace me really easily, and that a stint in the private sector would do my CV no harm, I still couldn’t stifle the sense that I was betraying them, but I consoled myself with the thought that I was a dead cert not to get the job, given that I was neither an ex-model nor dating anyone whose name Barri would recognise.

So it was quite a relief when the week was over. Rose and I were both home that Friday night – she was still giving Oliver the silent treatment, as far as I could make out, which seemed a bit harsh since several weeks had passed since his Commitment-related transgression, but that’s Rose for you. We were sitting in the living room, me watching telly and picking at a jacket potato in a desultory sort of way; Rose painting her toenails. I’ve always wondered, when the women’s magazines go on about ‘pampering yourself’, exactly who they think they’re fooling. As far as I can tell, nothing could be further from pampering than the stuff like manicures and pedicures and eyebrow shaping and face masks that Rose spends so much time on. It’s boring repair and maintenance, necessary if you’re not going to let yourself go altogether, but it’s about as close to pampering as cleaning the kitchen floor – a task Rose approaches with as much enthusiasm as I do manicures.

“Rose?” I said.

“Mmmm?”

“You know Ben and Claire?”

“Like, durrr, obviously. Why? What’s up?”

I paused. I was torn between wanting to tell my sister, and knowing that as soon as I did, I’d have to stop pretending that what I’d seen in the bar last Saturday hadn’t
happened. All week I’d been trying to stop my thoughts lingering on them, how they’d looked together, Claire happy and laughing, Ben solicitous, almost tender as he held Claire’s coat for her, opened the door, covered her with his umbrella. How had they got together, I wondered? I’d imagined a moment of revelation in which Ben removed Claire’s glasses and said, “Why, Miss Jones, you’re beautiful!” (except Claire doesn’t wear glasses, and she always looks beautiful). In my head, imaginary conversations between the two of them played on an endless loop. They went pretty much like this.

Ben: Darling!

Claire: My darling!

Ben: There is only one thing standing between us and perfect happiness.

Claire: Yes. Ellie.

Ben: We will have to tell her eventually, darling.

Claire: Yes, darling. But not just yet. She’ll be so hurt.

Ben: Poor Ellie. It’s hard for her, being overshadowed all the time by Rose. And of course by you, my darling.

Claire: Poor Ellie. It’s not her fault she’s plain and awkward and, well, a bit dull really.

Ben: Let’s not talk about her, darling. Our time together is too precious.

Claire: My darling!

And so on.

“They’re going out,” I said to Rose.

“Ben and Claire? No way! When did they tell you?”

“I saw them together,” I said. “I haven’t talked to either of them for ages. They’ve shut me out. It’s not like when Ben got together with Nina, and he couldn’t stop gushing
about it.”

Although, I realised, I felt a bit the same as I’d felt when Ben got together with Nina. Quite a lot the same.

Ben first told me about Nina on what looked like being a perfectly ordinary Tuesday night down the Latchmere. We used to do the pub quiz there, before the Duchess cleaned up its act and started having one too, with a slightly lower standard and more generous prizes (a less vinegary bottle of Pinot Grigio for second place, which was usually the height of our attainment). I’d got there at seven as usual in order to bags us a table, get a drinks order in, peruse the menu and make the tough decision between the vegetarian platter and the mushroom burger and chips. I’d polished off a pint of Stella and was sending ‘don’t even think about it’ looks at other quiz-goers who had designs on the six chairs I’d appropriated, wondering whether Alex or Tim would be first to show up, when Ben sort of floated into the room on a cloud of happiness, with a gormless beatific grin on his face. Of course I knew straight away that something was up.

“Pint,” I said, shoving his glass across the table. “Now tell me why you’re looking like a spaniel puppy that’s just won Best in Show. Lotto jackpot? Surprise nomination to a safe seat in Islington? Collision en route here with a van carrying Krispy Kreme doughnuts?”

“Oh my God, Ellie,” Ben said, “Do you believe in love at first sight?” No word of a lie, he did.

I sparked up a fag – you were still allowed to smoke then – and in between puffs I told Ben in no uncertain terms that love at first sight was a load of delusional bollocks, in common with love of any other kind, but that it was better out than in, and the sooner he told me what the fuck was going on, the sooner I could cure him of this madness. And quite
uncharacteristically Ben, who’s normally restrained to the point of constipation about his feelings, spilled the beans.

“I’ve met a Pre-Raphaelite angel, Ellie,” he gushed. “My dream woman.

Beautiful, original, ethereal. And I have her mobile number!”

I told him to get a grip and start from the beginning, and he duly did, after a few more asinine burblings about her remarkable beauty and charm, which made me lose all enthusiasm for my coleslaw.

He’d been on the Victoria line, it turned out, on his way from Highbury and Islington station to Green Park, where he would change on to the Jubilee line to go one stop to Westminster and work. At King’s Cross the goddess had fought her way on to the rammed train, along with the hordes of tourists that blight the lives of Londoners using the station. He’d been impressed by the naked aggression with which she’d elbowed aside a group of German students, Ben said, nabbing the only seat in the carriage and flopping gleefully into it with – and here he went all misty-eyed again – her violin case nestled in her lap.

“It’s a Strad, Ellie,” he said, “Although I didn’t know that then, I only found out later.”