The Ugly Sister (38 page)

She’s almost afraid to open it. It’s the first she’s heard from Jon since she left London nearly two weeks ago. He must have asked the girls for her email address. Even though she knows it will have something to do with Bargain Hunters, the timing alone makes that clear, she can hardly bring herself to open it.

Congratulations! It’s our standard deal, but we always try it on a bit with the first offer. Tell them you want the buyout to be for an agreed number of TVRs only and that you want a three-month restriction on the print campaign. They’ll check with me and I’ll say yes. That way you’ll get paid again if we keep running them. But don’t tell them I told you that. See you at the shoot. J

Abi laughs. So he has been thinking about her. He bothered to find out her email address and send her a message. Even better is the last line: ‘See you at the shoot.’ He’s going to be there.

She sends a message back. She tries to keep it to the point, friendly but businesslike.

Thank you. I will. Very exciting. Hope you’re all OK. Send the girls my love.

She composes another email, this time to Felicity, laying out, in as humble terms as she can – she doesn’t want to piss her off – what Jon has told her to say. She briefly wonders what she’ll reply if Felicity asks her what number of TVRs would be acceptable, because she doesn’t even know what TVRs are. Hopefully they’ll just suggest something and she’s already decided she’ll agree to whatever it is. She imagines they go through this with every offer, much more so when agents and managers are involved. She sends the email before she can change her mind.

Then she sits up way too late into the night waiting, just in case Jon replies to her message. (There’s no reason for him to, there’s nothing to reply to, but he might anyway. She chastises herself for not asking him a question that he would feel obligated to respond to.) He doesn’t.

She can’t remember when she’s ever been up this early in her life, but here she is on the 5.08, oversize coffee in hand, trying to stay awake because there are works on the line and she has to change trains at Ashford. If all goes to plan, she should get to the Bargain Hunters shop in Hackney where they are filming for the day just in time for her call at eight. The train is deserted. No one else is foolish enough to be travelling at this hour.

Felicity came back with a counteroffer, following Abi’s email to her, and didn’t seem to have taken offence at all. There is now a cap on the mysterious TVRs (she looked it up and it means ‘television ratings’ and refers to the aggregated amount of people who might see the ad when it’s shown on various different channels – she’s still none the wiser, really), and a three-month limit on all print adverts, after which time she’ll be paid more if the campaign is a success and still running. She accepted readily, sent her measurements (praying that there wouldn’t be a reason for Jon to have to see those. She had thought about lying, shaving a few centimetres off her hips and thighs, but that would slightly defeat the object), and arranged to
swap her days at the library. They are putting her up tonight at the Jury’s Inn Hotel on Pentonville Road. She laughed when
she saw that, imagining Cleo’s outrage if anyone had suggested that she stay somewhere like that when she was on a job.

She arrives at the shop right on time, having splashed out on a taxi from Charing Cross. She hangs around outside watching people bustling about, all totally focused on what they’re doing. Bargain Hunters in the flesh looks every bit as stylish and sophisticated as you might imagine. They already have two hundred shops nationwide, Felicity explained to her, with a strategy to open fifty more over the next couple of years. Abi has to admit it’s a principle she approves of. She wonders where the nearest branch to Deal is.

Eventually someone appears from the crowd and says, ‘Abi?’

Abi nods, smiles. The woman holds out her hand. Abi recognizes her from the casting although they never got as far as introductions then. ‘I’m Carmel the director. I know you haven’t done this before. Are you nervous?’

‘Terrified.’

‘Well, let’s get you some breakfast and into make-up. It’ll be a doddle, don’t worry. Lisa! Lisa will look after you.’

Carmel hands Abi over to Lisa who turns out to be a runner and who takes her straight into a back room where a make-up artist has set up. She doesn’t have a
moment to even worry about what is happening, because by the time she’s had her make-up done and scoffed down an egg roll it’s time for wardrobe and then, once she’s suitably dressed as an attractive, approachable, friendly young mum (in a pale pink T-shirt and A-line skirt) there’s no getting out of it; it’s time for her to go and do what she’s being paid to do.

Everyone is so friendly, but Abi feels sick with nerves by the time she’s taken out into the shop and shown her position at the till. Someone brings over the two kids playing her children, a boy and a girl aged about five and seven. They both seem far more at home than she is. What is she doing here? She’s never felt comfortable being on show. She feels ridiculous standing there with the lights and the cameras and the huge crew of people all waiting to film her. Carmel introduces her to the woman playing the shop assistant and then says, ‘Right, let’s have a rehearsal.’ Abi breathes deeply, tries to stop herself from passing out. She looks around, no sign of Jon. Thank god. Now she’s here she doesn’t think she could get through it if he was watching.

They run through the whole thirty-second scenario several times. Even to her untrained ears the lines coming out of her mouth sound fake and overacted. Every time she messes up she stammers and blushes. She feels as if she might cry. Eventually Carmel takes her aside.

‘None of them are taking a blind bit of notice of you,’ she says, putting her arm round Abi. ‘They’re only thinking about their own little area, how do the lights look or do we have the microphones in the right place. You could say anything and I swear no one would even register it. So just try to relax. We cast you because you look the part and we believed you when you said the words and that’s pretty much all that matters. Don’t act – just be natural.’

Abi nods. Tells herself to concentrate. She’s here now; she just needs to get through it. They do it again and again and it gets easier and easier when she realizes that what Carmel said is true. No one reacts when she messes up – they just throw in helpful suggestions about technical things she doesn’t understand. They try different staging and moving the props around, and by the time Carmel announces it’s time to do the final checks and actually start shooting the thing she feels, if not completely relaxed, at least able to get through it without making a fool of herself. So what if she looks ridiculous? Who cares?

By lunchtime she’s dizzy from the lights and the heat and the amount of times she’s said the same thing over and over, but at least it seems as if they’re getting what they want. Carmel seems happy.

Abi is sitting on the shop floor eating a salad and chatting to the shop-assistant woman (‘I was the woman in the plaster cast in the injuredatwork.com ad – did you see that one? Oh, and I was in one of
the Iceland ads. Not featured, just in the background, eating profiteroles …’) and actually quite enjoying herself – if nothing else it’s going to make an entertaining anecdote to tell Phoebe – when Jon suddenly appears out of nowhere and starts making his way across the room towards her.

She stands up, praying she has no lettuce in her teeth, willing the shop-assistant women to go away and leave them on their own. She has a split second to take him in before he reaches her. He looks well. He looks like Jon. For which read, in Abi’s mind, he looks gorgeous. She stutters a hello.

‘Abi.’ Jon holds out his arms and gives her a hug. ‘How is it going? Are you hating it?’

She nods, smiling. ‘Every minute.’

There’s so much she wants to ask him that she doesn’t know where to start.

‘Thank you, by the way, for this.’

‘Oh, it was nothing to do with me. Well, they showed me the tapes of three people they were interested in, you included, and I might just have nudged them towards you a little. But you got on their short list on your own.’

‘Well, I appreciate it. How’s …’ she starts to say, but then she hears someone calling for her and it’s time to go back and repeat the whole process all over again, only this time with the camera in a different place.

‘Oh, you’re coming to dinner tonight, by the way.’

She starts to protest. She has no desire to see Cleo. Ever again.

‘Thanks, but I’m shattered …’

‘The girls would be devastated if you didn’t. It’s all they’ve talked about for days.’

Shit. ‘OK. Thanks. I don’t know what time …’

‘Whenever,’ he says. ‘You’re family – you don’t need to make an appointment.’

Even though it’s only been a couple of weeks, Primrose Hill seems like a different place. It’s not just that the trees are now almost completely bare or that the hill has lost most of its lush green carpet, it’s as if she’s looking at it from an outsider’s point of view again, partly in awe, partly with a detached cynicism. It’s hard to believe that for a few short weeks it felt like home.

She’s barely touched the bell when the front door flies open and two pre-teenagers nearly flatten her with the force of their hugs. You’d think they hadn’t seen her for months from the way both of them cling to her, gabbling away about school and where they’ve been and what they’ve done. She had half expected that when she saw them again Tara and Megan would have reverted to their world-weary, seen-and-done-it-all, pre-summer selves, but it’s evident very quickly that her fears are unfounded. They lead her straight through to the kitchen where Jon greets her with another hug and hands her a glass of wine. There’s no sign of Cleo.

‘Sorry, am I too early?’

The shoot had finished for the day at five and, although Abi hadn’t intended to get to the house before seven thirty, once she had checked in to her hotel it felt too depressing to sit there on her own for too long, staring at the walls.

‘Not at all. Perfect timing. Cleo’s in the bath, but she shouldn’t be long.’

Abi notices that the girls set to laying the table without, it seems, anyone asking them to.

‘So,’ Jon says, indicating she should sit at the table. ‘How did it go?’

She tells them all about the shoot and how, after her initial nervousness, it had been quite fun although exhausting.

‘I’ve told all my friends you’re going to be the Bargain Hunters woman,’ Megan says, sidling up for another hug.

‘What did you have to wear?’ Tara asks.

‘You wouldn’t have liked it. The idea was I had to look as ordinary as possible. Like any woman you might see in the street, any day.’

‘I bet you still looked pretty.’

Abi puts her arm round her niece, squeezes hard. ‘Thank you.’

‘And tomorrow you have the shoot in the other supermarket, which we’re filming in a studio, and then it’s the stills shoot,’ Jon says. ‘And then it’s all over, which, I’m thinking, you might be glad about. Am I wrong?’

Abi traces the rim of her glass with her finger. ‘It’s been an experience, don’t get me wrong. And I’m eternally grateful for the money. But I think that’ll be my acting and modelling careers over. I’ll dump them before they dump me.’

Jon laughs. Abi notices the wilful bit of hair is standing up on the rebellious spot on his crown. She thinks about smoothing it down.

‘I can’t believe how long everything takes,’ she says instead. ‘Nine hours and we’ve got, what, twenty seconds of the ad done?’

‘You’re lucky it was Bargain Hunters. If this was a high-end product what you shot today would probably have taken a week.’

‘I knew there was an upside to being low rent,’ Abi says, making him laugh again.

‘It’s really good to see you,’ he says, and he gives her a smile that makes her stomach flip.

‘So, girls,’ she says, brightly, breaking the moment. ‘I need a new career. Or I should say I need
a
career. I thought I could use the money I make from the advert to pay to train to do something. Any ideas?’

‘Architect,’ Megan says.

‘Fashion designer,’ Tara chips in.

‘Vet.’

‘Stylist.’

‘Doctor.’

‘Make-up artist.’

‘OK, OK stop. I think I need something that plays to my strengths. What am I good at?’

They all look at her blankly. ‘You’re funny,’ Tara says eventually.

‘And kind,’ Megan adds.

‘Great,’ Jon says. ‘You could become a stand-up comedian who only does gigs for charity.’

‘Well,’ Abi says. ‘If you have any bright ideas let me know because I’m clueless.’

At about seven o’clock Cleo wafts in, fragrant and perfectly made-up after her bath.

‘Abigail! You’re here already. Why didn’t anybody tell me?’

Abi forces herself to smile. Tonight is for Tara and Megan; it’s not about her and her sister.

‘I haven’t been here long.’

She tries to think of something to say, some conversation for her and Cleo to share, but the only thing that comes into her head is, ‘Still seeing Richard?’ so she just keeps quiet. Cleo seems to be making a big show of being affectionate towards Jon and, even though it hurts Abi to watch it, she’s relieved that he seems to be enjoying the attention. They look the picture of a contented, loving nuclear family even if she knows the truth, that some of the paper over the cracks is stretched to tearing point.

Over seared tuna steaks and a second glass of wine
Cleo says, ‘So, did Jonty tell you? I’ve decided I don’t want to go back to modelling after all.’

Abi flicks a look at Jon and he nods, smiling.

‘Right …’

‘It’s too much of a commitment and it’s not fair when I have a family at home who need me.’

Abi is in no doubt that the modelling world has rejected Cleo, not the other way round, but she knows she would have nothing to gain from saying so. Let Cleo rewrite history if she wants. Who cares?

‘Good for you,’ she says.

Cleo, she notices, doesn’t once ask her how the Bargain Hunters shoot is going. At nine thirty the girls are finally convinced by their father that they have to go to bed and Abi decides it’s time for her to leave. Without her nieces chattering on she really isn’t sure what they’ll all talk about. When her cab arrives, she says goodbye to Jon in the kitchen with a sister/brother-in-law-appropriate hug.