“What is it?”
With an intake of breath, it hits me. She’s pregnant too. It has to be. God, how cool! We’ll have babies together and they’ll be cousins and we’ll take cute pictures of them playing in the grass together….
“I’ve been offered a two-year research project in Chile.” Jess’s voice pricks my bubble.
“Chile?” My mouth drops open in dismay. “But that’s…miles away.”
“Seven thousand,” she says, nodding.
“So…are you going to go?”
“I haven’t decided. But it’s a fantastic opportunity. It’s a team I’ve wanted to join for years.”
“Right,” I say after a short silence. “Well, then…you should go.”
I have to be supportive. This is Jess’s career. But I can’t help feeling a bit doleful. I’ve only just got to know my long-lost sister, and now she’s disappearing off to the other side of the world?
“I’ve pretty much decided that I will.” She raises her head and I find myself looking right into her speckly hazel eyes. I’ve always thought Jess had pretty eyes.
Maybe the baby will have speckly hazel eyes just like that.
“You’ll have to send me lots of pictures of my niece or nephew,” says Jess, as though reading my mind. “So I can see it grow up.”
“Of course! Every week.” I bite my lip, trying to digest all this. “So…what about Tom?”
“I haven’t told him yet.” She hunches her shoulders. “But it’ll mean the end for us.”
“Not necessarily! You could have a long-distance relationship…. There’s always e-mail….”
“For
two years
?”
“Well…” I trail off. Maybe she’s right. They met only a few weeks ago. And two years is a pretty long time.
“I can’t give up a chance like this for some…
man
.” She sounds like she’s arguing with herself. Maybe she’s more torn than she’s letting on. Maybe, underneath it all, she really has fallen for Tom.
But even I can see it. Jess’s work has been her life. She can’t just abandon it now.
“You have to go to Chile,” I say firmly. “It’ll be amazing for you. And it’ll work out with Tom. Somehow.”
The Pringles seem to have disappeared, so I get up and head for the cupboard. I open the door and survey the shelves dubiously. “We’re out of chips…. I’m not supposed to eat nuts…. We’ve got some old Ritz crackers….”
“Actually, I brought some popcorn,” says Jess, looking a bit pink about the face. “Toffee flavored.”
“You what?” I gape at her.
“It’s in my rucksack.”
Jess brought toffee flavored popcorn? But…that’s not organic. Or nutritious. Or made from farm-cooperative potatoes.
I stare in astonishment as she reaches inside her rucksack for the packet. A DVD comes out too, all shiny in its cellophane, and she stuffs it back, her cheeks reddening further.
Hang on a moment.
“What’s that?” I grab it. “
Nine Months
? Jess, that’s not your kind of film!”
Jess looks totally caught out.
“I thought it might be your kind of film,” she says at last. “Especially now.”
“You brought this for us to watch together?” I say incredulously, and after a moment she nods.
“I just thought…” She clears her throat. “If you were at a loose end…”
I cannot believe how touched I feel. The first time we ever spent an evening together I tried to get Jess to watch
Pretty Woman
, and believe me, it was not a success. But now here she is with popcorn and a Hugh Grant film. And telling me about her boyfriend. Just like I imagined having a sister would be like.
“But you have to go out.” Jess is shoving the DVD back into the rucksack. “In fact, you should get going….”
I feel a rush of affection for her—and all of a sudden I don’t want to go anywhere. Why would I spend the evening in some crowded bar, talking to a lot of snobby Cambridge graduates I don’t even know, when I could be spending time with my sister? I can meet Venetia’s Mr. Wonderful some other time. Luke won’t mind.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I say firmly, and tear open the popcorn. “Let’s stay in and have fun.”
We have the best evening. We watch
Nine Months
—Jess does Sudoku puzzles at the same time, but that’s OK because I’m reading
Hello
! magazine—and we conference-call Suze to ask her advice on Tom, and then we order pizza. And Jess doesn’t even tell me how we could have made our own for 30p.
She leaves around eleven, saying that I must be tired, and I go to bed, wondering how late Luke will be. He must be having a good time too, to be out this long. When at last a stripe of light from the doorway lands on my face and makes me blink, I realize I must have fallen asleep, because I could have sworn I was receiving an Oscar from the Queen.
“Hi!” I sit up sleepily. “What time is it?”
“Just gone one,” whispers Luke. “I’m sorry I woke you.”
“It’s OK.” I reach for the bedside light and switch it on. “So, how was it?”
“It was good!” There’s an enthusiasm in Luke’s voice that I wasn’t expecting. I rub my bleary eyes and focus on him. His face is glowing and he has a kind of lightness and animation about him which I haven’t seen in weeks, if not months. He strips off his tie and throws it on a chair. “I’d forgotten how much I had in common with all these old friends,” he says. “We talked about things I haven’t even thought about for years. Politics…the arts…My old friend Matthew runs a gallery now. He invited us to an exhibition. We should go!”
“Wow!” I can’t help smiling at Luke’s eagerness. “How fantastic!”
“It was great, just taking a break from business.” He shakes his head wonderingly. “I should do it more. Get things in perspective. Relax a bit.” He starts unbuttoning his shirt. “So, how was your evening with Jess?”
“It was fab! We watched a movie and ate pizza. And I have to tell you her news….” I suddenly yawn. “Maybe tomorrow.” I snuggle back down into the pillows and watch Luke get undressed. “So, what’s Venetia’s famous boyfriend like? Is he as boring as he looks in the picture?”
“He wasn’t there,” Luke says, hanging up his suit trousers.
I stop comfortably snuggling and turn my head in surprise. Venetia’s boyfriend wasn’t there? But I thought the whole point of the evening was to introduce us to Justin the wonder-boy financier.
“Oh, right. How come?”
“They’ve split up.”
“They’ve
split up
?” I haul myself to a sitting position in bed. “But…I thought she loved Justin more than anyone else. I thought she moved halfway across the world to be with him and they were the happiest couple in the whole universe.”
“She did.” Luke shrugs. “They were. Until three days ago. She was pretty upset about it.”
“Right,” I say after a pause. “I see.”
Suddenly the evening has taken on a totally different slant. It wasn’t Luke being introduced to Venetia’s long-term boyfriend. It was a newly single Venetia crying on Luke’s shoulder.
“So…did Venetia break it off?” I ask casually. “Or did he?”
“I’m not sure which of them ended it.” Luke heads into the bathroom. “Apparently he’s gone back to his wife now.”
“His
wife
?” My voice shoots up like a rocket. “What do you mean, ‘his wife’?”
“Venetia thought they were separated in all but name.” Luke turns on the taps and I can barely hear him. “She’s had a tough time, romantically, poor old Ven. She always seems to fall for married men and get into complicated situations.”
I’m trying to stay calm here. Shallow breaths. Do not overreact.
“What kind of situations?” I ask lightly.
“Oh, I don’t know.” Luke is squeezing toothpaste onto his brush. “Divorce proceedings…some scandal with a senior doctor at the hospital where she worked…There was an injunction in LA….” He frowns at the tube. “We’re nearly out of this stuff.”
Divorce proceedings? Injunctions? Scandals?
I can’t reply. My mouth is opening and shutting like a goldfish. Every instinct in my body is on red alert.
She’s after Luke.
I watch Luke cleaning his teeth as though with Venetia’s eyes. He’s wearing only pajama bottoms, and he’s still tanned from the summer, and the muscles of his shoulders are rippling faintly as he brushes. Oh God, oh God. Of
course
she’s after him. He’s good-looking and he owns a multimillion-pound company and they had a romance when they were much younger. Maybe he was her first love and she’s never given her heart to anyone else.
Maybe she was
his
first love.
There’s a hollow kind of feeling in my stomach. Which is ridiculous, bearing in mind how much is in my stomach right now.
“So!” I try to sound confident and lighthearted. “Do I need to be worried?”
Luke’s splashing water on his face. “What do you mean?”
“I…” I can’t bring myself to say it. What am I implying, that I don’t trust him? “She could maybe try going after single men!” I change tack. “Then life wouldn’t be so complicated for her!” I give a small laugh, but as Luke turns, he’s frowning.
“Venetia’s made some…unwise choices. But none of them were deliberate or out of malice. She’s just a hopeless romantic.”
He’s defending her. I feel totally wrong-footed.
A bleep suddenly comes from Luke’s jacket. He comes out of the bathroom, drying his face, and takes his phone out of his pocket.
“It’s a text from Venetia.” He looks at it and smiles. “Look. It’s a picture of this evening.”
I take the phone from him and study the display. There’s Venetia, dressed for off duty in long, rangy jeans, a leather jacket, and high, spiky boots. She’s gazing at the camera with a confident smile, her arm round Luke like she owns him.
Home-wrecker
flashes through my brain before I can stop it.
Well, she’s not wrecking this home. No way. Luke and I have been through a lot over the years, and it’ll take more than some swishy-haired, spiky-heeled doctor to break us up. I’m 110 percent confident.
Mrs R Brandon
37 Maida Vale Mansions
Maida Vale
London NW6 0YF
10 September 2003
Dear Mrs. Brandon,
I regret to inform you that your application to found an online bank, “Becky’s Online Bank for Girls,” has been turned down by the committee.
There were many grounds for the decision, in particular your statement that to run an online bank “you just need a computer and somewhere to put all the money.”
I wish you success in any further ventures, but suggest that banking is not one of them.
Yours sincerely,
John Franklin
Internet Business Committee
MAYBE I’M NOT
110
percent confident. Maybe just 100 percent.
Or even…95.
It’s a few weeks since Luke went out for that evening with Venetia, and my confidence has wobbled ever so slightly. It’s not that anything has
happened
, exactly. On the surface, Luke and I are as happy as ever and nothing’s wrong. It’s just that…
Well, OK. Here is my evidence so far:
1) Luke keeps getting texts and smiling and sending replies straight back. And I know they’re from her. And he never shows them to me.
2) He’s been out with her three more times.
Without me
. One time when I’d already arranged to meet Suze, he said he might as well use the evening to see some friends, and it turned out the “friends” was Venetia. Once with all the Cambridge gang at some big fancy dinner with their old tutor, where partners weren’t invited. And once for lunch, which was apparently because she was going to be “right by his office.” Yeah, right. Delivering a baby in an office block?
That was when we had our teeny row, where I said (very lightly), that wow, he was spending a lot of time with Venetia—maybe too much? Whereupon Luke replied that she was feeling low right now and needed an old friend to talk to. So I said, “Well, I feel low too when you go off partying without me!” And Luke said that meeting up with his old university friends had been the highlight of his year, and it was his chance to switch off and if I came along too, I’d understand. So I said, “I’d come if you’d
invite
me.” And he said he
had
invited me, and I said—
Anyway. We said a few things.
That’s all the evidence I have. I don’t even know why I’m calling it evidence—it’s not like I think something’s actually going on. I mean…it’s a ludicrous idea. This is Luke I’m talking about. My
husband
.
“I can’t believe anything’s happening, Bex.” Suze shakes her head and stirs her raspberry and apricot smoothie. She’s come over for the morning so we can do the gender predictor test, but so far all we’ve done is talk about Luke. Luckily the children are all in the living room, eating sandwiches and watching
Teletubbies
in a total trance (which Suze let them do only after I swore an oath never, ever to tell Lulu).
“I can’t believe it either!” I spread my arms wide. “But they see each other all the time, and she’s always texting him, and I have no idea what they talk about….”
“Did you stake your claim?” Suze takes a bite of chocolate-chip cookie. “Last time you saw her?”
“Totally! But she didn’t take any notice.”
“Hmm.” Suze ponders for a while. “Have you thought about going to another doctor?”
“I keep thinking about it. But I don’t think it would make any difference. She’s already made contact with Luke, hasn’t she? In fact, she’d probably love to get me out of the picture.”
“And what does Luke say?”
“Oh well.” I start fiddling with my straw. “He says she’s all lonely and vulnerable since she split up from her boyfriend. He behaves like she’s this poor tragic victim. And he always takes her side. I called her Cruella de Venetia the other day and he got really cross.”
“Cruella de Venetia.” Suze splutters cookie crumbs over the counter. “That’s good.”
“It’s not good! We ended up having an argument! She’s this…
presence
in our life, even though I never see her.”