It Would Be Wrong to Steal My Sister's Boyfriend (18 page)

Dad said, yes, please, and then he said, “Please will you let Rose know? I left her
a message too but she hasn’t come back to me yet.”

“Of course,” I said. “I’ll be there about eight, okay? I’ll text you when I’m on the train.”

Dad said thanks and rang off, and I shut down my computer, glad to switch off the horrible words on the screen, exchanged the usual Friday formalities with my colleagues and headed for home.

How monstrously unfair it was, I thought, that poor Serena should be going through this, at risk of losing her precious, longed-for babies, while bloody Nina had not even rated the birth of her child as important enough to let his father know. Then of course I realised how silly and unreasonable it was to think that way, when Nina, vile as she was, presumably loved her son dearly, because mothers always do, don’t they, even when they’re deeply unpleasant people otherwise, or they’ve had the misfortune to give birth to one of those unattractive, pudding-faced babies you sometimes see. Just because Nina had treated Ben appallingly, didn’t mean she wouldn’t be a wonderful mother, I told myself – but I wasn’t convinced.

On the train I quickly tapped out a text to Rose, telling her what had happened and that I was on my way home, and she would probably want to pack a bag as well, but she didn’t reply.

If I’m being honest, I was quite relieved by the prospect of a weekend back at Dad’s with him and Rose. Although one’s supposed to relish the challenge of a new job and all that stuff, it’s actually a really isolating time. I was missing Ruth and Duncan and Russell and all the motley crew back at YEESH – the glossy denizens of Black & White were lovely enough in their way, but they were taking a lot of getting used to. I also hated the distance that had opened up between me and Claire and Ben. I wanted the two of them to make a go of
things, I really did, but I was beginning to think that leaving them to it hadn’t been the best idea. And I’d restricted myself to checking Oliver’s posts on Facebook only once a day, and that hadn’t actually been all that difficult to stick to, as there is only so much emotion to be gleaned from reading about the FTSE 100, grain futures and the Ashes. I missed Rose most of all. It’s not like we’d made a habit of cosy sisterly evenings together with Eastenders and massive slabs of Fruit and Nut, the way sisters who live together carry on in books (as if! Rose would rather eat her own hair than a slab of Fruit and Nut). But over the years I’d sort of got used to her getting home at about ten each night and telling me about the glamorous time she’d been having at whatever launch or party or sale she’d been at, and her friends turning up for kitchen sups, and all the rest of it. Of late, she’d barely been home at all, because, I supposed, she’d been at Oliver’s. Thinking about them together left me with a hollow, sick feeling inside, so I avoided doing it, but, for probably the first time in my adult life, I was lonely. I didn’t like it one bit. I’d even thought about getting a cat, but Rose is allergic to them and the fallout that would ensue if she arrived home and found the flat full of allergens and fur on her black dresses didn’t bear thinking about. We’d go together to Dad’s, I decided, and rally round him in a sisterly way and we’d be a family again. I was imagining making and freezing loads of batches of veggie lasagne and stuff, and with a mad rush of blood to the head I even wondered if I could learn to crochet, and make little booties for Serena’s babies. Then I remembered my spectacular lack of success with Pers’s Camelduck, and I shelved that plan.

Anyway, I was feeling quite eager and positive when I fought my way off the train and hurried to the flat. I ran up to my bedroom, retrieved my overnight bag from the top shelf where it was languishing, and stuffed in a random assortment of pants and tops and toiletries. Then I took off my work suit and hung it carefully away in the cupboard. I put on a
pair of the skinny jeans I’d chosen with Vanessa, and a plum-coloured cashmere jumper that I’d never worn before because it was dry-clean only, and I was standing in front of the mirror brushing my hair when I noticed there were two reflections of me. Two blonde-haired girls in designer jeans and dark, fitted tops. For a fleeting, disconnected second I wondered if I was hallucinating from stress, or if we’d suddenly acquired a resident ghost. Then of course I clocked Rose standing behind me in the doorway. With my new hair and new slimness, we were looking more alike than we ever had. Ghost or no ghost (and obviously there are no ghosts, and anyone who thinks there are is sadly deluded) it was really quite unsettling.

“I didn’t realise you were here,” I said. “Are you ready to go? We can get the six twenty train if we hurry.”

“I’m not coming,” Rose said.

“You’re not – what do you mean?”

“I’m not coming,” she said again, quite coolly.

“Look, Rose,” I said, trying hard to sound calm and reasonable, “I know you find it hard to get on with Serena. I know it must seem like a massive climb-down after what happened at Christmas. But think of Dad. These are his babies, they’re our half-sisters or brothers. He needs us there. Serena could die, she could literally bleed to death, or they could lose both the babies. If that happens and you aren’t there, think how terrible you’d feel.”

“Ellie, I said I’m not coming, okay? I’m not changing my mind and nothing you say is going to make me. I’m not a hypocrite and I’m not going to have some emotional hospital-bed reconciliation with Serena. I don’t like her, I never have and this hasn’t changed my feelings. She’s in hospital, she’s being cared for by professional people who know what they are doing, and my being there or not won’t make any difference to the outcome.”

“But it would make a big difference to Dad,” I pleaded. “And it would make a
difference to me.”

“Sorry, Ellie.” Rose turned around and walked back into her bedroom.

I’m quite a level-headed person usually. I rarely lose my temper and I absolutely hate rows, but I’m afraid I lost it with Rose then. I stood in her doorway and shouted all kinds of horrible things at her – about how she never thought of anyone except herself, she was a cold-hearted, selfish bitch and if anything happened to Serena it would be her fucking fault. By the time I finished Rose was crying, but I didn’t care. I picked up my bag and walked out of the flat. I didn’t even miss the train.

“It’s bloody Victorian,” fumed Serena, lying back in her hospital bed, surrounded by her laptop, her Kindle, her phone, her iPad and her Wii – all the high-tech, streamlined gadgets I’d come to regard as as much a part of her as her spiky hair and sleek spectacles. In addition to all this, though, there were things that were totally alien to Serena’s character: bouquets of flowers, cards with a preponderance of pink and even a full-on fruit basket. “I thought that in the twenty-first century pregnant people could just get on with being pregnant, but evidently my stupid body and that wobbly stepladder thought otherwise, and so I’m stuck here for the foreseeable, and so are our babies. At least I hope they are.” Then the clean, elegant lines of her face sort of smudged and her clear skin was suffused with a horrid flush, and she let out a noise that sounded like, “Hnnnggg,” and started to sob. Dad said, “Angel, don’t upset yourself,” and Serena said between sobs, “Watch what you say, Luke, or you’ll fucking upset me,” and I thought it was about time I went for a walk.

It was weird, I couldn’t escape the sound of her weeping even when I stepped beyond the curtains surrounding Serena’s bed. She and Dad could easily have afforded a private room for her but, as Dad had explained to me in the car on the way to the hospital,
Serena insisted that she and the babies would get no better care privately than they would on the NHS – or “our NHS”, as Dad told me Serena had described it. He was unable to keep a note of pride from his voice at Serena’s commitment to the welfare state, even in extremis, and I have to admit I shared it. Anyway, I walked down the ward a bit and thought I’d try and find somewhere where I could get a decent cup of coffee – fat chance, the NHS is wonderful in almost all respects, but Flat White it is not. So I walked towards the exit, a long, long way it seemed, with my heels clicking on the supposedly sound-deadening flooring. But I could still hear those awful, desperate sobs. I paused, wondering why I couldn’t make out Dad’s soothing voice any longer, and then I realised that the sound of women crying was happening in stereo, or whatever the version of stereo is when there’s many, many more than two sources of it. From behind each of the curtained-off cubicles came the sounds of women’s sadness – some whimpering, some quietly moaning, one actually keening in pain or fear: each voice expressing its own terror of loss.

Reader, I legged it.

I sent Dad a text saying that I’d see him back at home – he’d given me a set of keys – and I’d be around the whole weekend, but for now I felt there wasn’t much I could do. Then I dived into a taxi waiting outside the hospital door and asked the driver to take me straight to the local pub. In fact, I may even have said, “The Rose and Crown, my good man.”

I ordered a G&T, necked it in double quick time and ordered another. By then I’d calmed down a bit, so I took a look around to see if there was anyone I knew in the pub. The Rose and Crown’s a real local local, where you can happily sit on your own and have a drink and read a book without people thinking you’re there to get picked up. But generally you won’t be on your own for long, because you’ll bump into someone you were at school with or
a mate of Dad’s or the woman who runs the Oxfam shop, or… It’s that kind of place. And sure enough, within minutes I was chatting away to Max the bartender, who’d somehow found out about Serena being in hospital and wanted an update. I left out the gory details, but told him that for now she was okay, although not out of danger. Then I ordered another G&T and a packet of cheese and onion crisps, because I hadn’t had any dinner and was suddenly feeling almost crazed with hunger, and just as I was ripping open the packet a voice behind me said, “Ellie Mottram!”

I was really glad I hadn’t had the chance to eat any crisps yet, because there, leaning in for a kiss, was Peter Barclay, the fittest boy in the sixth form, and he’d lost none of his fitness. He was tall – over six foot – and kind of rangy, with a slight gangliness about him that I remembered from school – you know how it is when boys suddenly shoot up and don’t quite know what to do with their hands and feet? Even though it was barely spring and still freezing, he had a bit of a tan, so I guessed he must ski or play golf or run or something. I hoped it wasn’t golf. He had lovely, even white teeth, his blue eyes were as smiley as I remembered, and his dark blonde hair still stuck up a bit on one side.

Anyway, I noticed all this in about a nanosecond, before we started saying the usual things about how long it had been, and what had brought us back to the old manor. I told Peter about Serena, and he made sympathetic noises, which reminded me that in spite of being the fittest boy in our year, he’d also been really, really sweet and kind, although of course such was his fitness that he would still have had all the girls after him even if he’d been an utter dick. He, it turned out, was home from London where he worked in IT, for his sister Jess’s wedding the next day, and she was indulging in a bridezilla strop of such epic proportions that Peter had elected to leave her, her five bridesmaids and their mum to it, and decamp to the Rose and Crown for a bit of peace and quiet.

By the time we’d caught up on all this we’d finished our drinks and my crisps, and Peter bought another round and a packet of peanuts, and we carried on chatting away as you do when you haven’t seen someone for ages, catching up on all the news about how Mandy Simms and Ewan Miller are married with triplets, and Charlie Armitage is in prison for embezzlement, and Alice Chambers was killed in a road traffic accident, and you’re so busy going, “Wow, really?” and “Always knew he was a wrong ’un,” and “Oh God, how awful,” that there’s no room at all for awkwardness. We were chatting so much and laughing so much I barely noticed that we’d had two more drinks and I was beginning to feel decidedly squiffy, and I realised that we were flirting with each other.

We’d moved to a sofa – the Rose and Crown has lovely worn leather Chesterfields – and the cushions sort of dipped a bit in the middle, so we kept being slid towards each other, and our thighs kept touching, and every time they did Peter looked at me and I looked at him, and our eyes locked on to each other for a second before we looked away and carried on chatting. After a while I stopped moving away and let my leg press closer and closer to his, and a few minutes after that I felt the warm pressure of his hand on my thigh, and a delicious little jolt of desire went through me, and I knew we were going to end up in bed, and that everything that happened between now and then would just be a kind of formality. Max called last orders at half eleven and we had a final drink and I went to the ladies’ and looked at myself in the mirror to check that my mascara wasn’t smudged and I didn’t have peanut skin on my teeth. I didn’t, thank God – in fact I looked all glowy and excited, and even quite pretty. I went back to Peter and he took my hand as we walked out of the door. It was one of those really cold but beautiful nights you sometimes get when the sky is crystal clear, and there was a new moon and a dusting of stars. We paused for a bit, looking at the night and each other, and then there was that amazing moment when you know you’re
about to kiss someone but haven’t yet. I’ve sometimes thought it’s the best part of sex – when you don’t know if they’re going to be a rotten, slobbery kisser or suck on your nipples like a baby or have a fugly stunted cock like a button mushroom, or any of the other things that can lead to woeful disappointment. Anyway, there we were in the cold night, our breath clouding around us, Peter’s hands on my shoulders under my hair, and I felt this wonderful sense of freedom and anticipation, and of course I was already as turned on as hell. I smiled up at him and closed my eyes and waited for him to kiss me, and when he did it wasn’t disappointing in the slightest. His lips were warm and soft and dry, and his tongue gently questing, and I could feel that he was smiling while we kissed, and I was too. I could feel the roughness of his jumper under his coat and the hardness of his back, and I could tell from the erection pressing into my hip that his cock was going to be neither mushroom-like nor stunted.