Page 9 of Sisters Making Mischief
‘I just don’t know how he could do it,’ Sara kept saying, ‘to me, to the girls. How could he?’
‘He’s an idiot,’ John said, ‘just plain stupid.’
Vanessa stirred from her nest of cushions. ‘You know we don’t use that word, darling.’
‘Well for him I’ll make an exception,’ John said firmly.
Sara was slumped a little in her chair, one hand grasping her wine glass, the other resting on a box of tissues.
‘How am I going to get through this?’ Sara said, her eyes filling with tears again.
I reached over to pat her hand. ‘We’ll help, I promise you. We’ll give you all the support you need, won’t we, John? And Vanessa too.’
Sara sank a little further in the chair that had lost all its support after years of her and her brother jumping on it.
‘John’s not going to be much use, swanning around New York.’
‘I’ll be just a phone call away,’ he said, ‘you can ring me anytime you need a chat. Although there is a five-hour time difference. And you’ll have Mum and all your friends.’
Sara took a sulky slurp of wine. ‘S’pose.’
‘And in the meantime, you can come here whenever you want to,’ I said. ‘The rooms are always ready. If you need a break or anything.’
Sara shook her head slowly. ‘I’m dreading going back to The Old Rectory, I really am. When I slammed the front door behind me, it felt like I was closing the door on my past.’
Vanessa reached out and with the ends of her fingernails took one Pringle, which was very unlike her. They were neither low salt nor additive free. And speaking from personal experience, once you pop, you don’t stop until you’re shaking the last fragments from the tube into your palm. But then Vanessa was made of sterner stuff than I was.
She leaned forwards. ‘One of my friends got divorced in July. She had the best lawyer, he used to say “don’t get mean, get everything”. And she did. Her ex is living in a one bed in Milton Keynes. That will be Marty this time next year, you wait and see.’
‘Heating up beans over a camp stove with newspapers over the windows,’ John chuckled.
Sara struggled upright again fighting against the flabby seat cushions, spilling some wine in her lap, which she brushed off with an irritated hand.
‘But I don’t want him to be living in Milton Keynes, I want things to be back the way they were. With all of us living in The Old Rectory and being happy.’
‘Were you happy?’ I asked.
Sara emptied her glass and reached for the bottle again. I would have to stop her soon or she would head further into the maudlin phase.
‘No, not really,’ she said at last, ‘but we could have been if… if that woman hadn’t…’
‘Marty’s forty-two, he’s a grown man,’ John said, ‘you could never make him do anything he didn’t want to. Remember that Saturday when we all agreed to come over to help Dad with the shed roof? Marty turned up in an Armani suit and just stood giving out advice for ten minutes, and then he went in to get a beer and watch the Six Nations rugby.’
‘He’d come straight from the office,’ Sara said defensively, ‘an extraordinary meeting of the directors.’
‘And he was an extraordinary waste of space,’ John fired back.
‘Oh, shut up,’ Sara mumbled.
‘You shut up!’
‘John darling. Be nice. Sara’s upset,’ Vanessa murmured.
‘It’s not my fault he can’t keep his trousers on, he always was a?—’
I could see this degenerating into something that would not be appropriate duringthe most wonderful time of the yearand plastered a big fake smile on my face.
‘Right, you lot, I’m going to bed. Can you make sure you turn everything off when you come up? And don’t forget to take upthe girls’ stockings,’ I said as cheerfully as I could, ‘we don’t want them to be disappointed when they wake up tomorrow.’
