Free A Proper Family Holiday by Chrissie Manby

degree required had brought about the final polish. When she got back from twelve months in Grenoble, no trace of the dumpy little girl who’d begged to borrow Ronnie’s clothes remained. Ronnie doubted very much that Chelsea would ever covet any of her clothes again. She certainly wouldn’t covet Ronnie’s body-control swimsuit, which seemed to be exercising about as much control over her body as a sleeping bag might have done. That was the other thing Ronnie was dreading: Chelsea’s designer wardrobe.
    Since Chelsea had been working on Society magazine, she’d been dressed like an oligarch’s missus. Ronnie remembered when Chelsea turned up at Jack’s third birthday party wearing a black Chanel jacket with her designer jeans. Genuine Chanel. Everything about it breathed quality, from the real horn buttons to the delicate little chain that weighted down the hem at the back. Anyone with half a brain could tell the difference between the Zara knock-offs all the girls in Coventry were wearing that year and this piece of authentic fashion art. While wearing it, Chelsea hadn’t let her nephew or his preschool friends come anywhere near her for fear of their sticky little fingers. Eventually, unable to bear the tension any longer, Chelsea took the jacket off and put it in Ronnie’s bedroom for safe keeping. Unfortunately, Fishy the cat, who had also been put in the bedroom to protect her from Jack and his marauding pals, made a bed of it, her claws pulling threads in the pristine camellia-embossed silk lining as she scrunched the fabric together to make it more comfortable. Chelsea had not seen the funny side.
    Then there were the handbags. At the barbecue where they had last seen each other, Chelsea had been toting a real Louis Vuitton. Ronnie had looked it up on the Internet a couple of days later. Even second hand on eBay, those bags cost more than Ronnie earned in half a year. What would Chelsea think of Ronnie’s beach bag, which had come free with a magazine several years before?
    Then there were the shoes. Chelsea had a real pair of Louboutins long before the Wags even knew they wanted them. When both sisters were visiting their parents one Christmas – before they fell out, back when Chelsea still couldn’t believe her luck that she’d landed a magazine job at all – Chelsea had let Ronnie try on her red-soled treasures. (Shoe size was the one size they still had in common.) Chelsea looked so nervous when Ronnie got her feet in them, as though the delicate stiletto heels might break under her weight, that any potential sisterly-bonding joy of the moment was extinguished in a puff of self-loathing. Ronnie kicked the petrol-blue patent shoes off seconds later, claiming they pinched her toes.
    Though once upon a time they had made plans for a fabulous future together, Chelsea’s figure, her clothes and her lifestyle were a million light years away from anything Ronnie could aspire to now. Chelsea wore Chanel and Prada and Louboutins, and went to cocktail parties where supermodels rubbed shoulders with movie stars. Her day job was to interview celebrities and review five-star spa resorts. Even Chelsea’s voice had changed when she moved away from Coventry; these days, she had the polished vowels of a girl who’d spent her formative years at Cheltenham Ladies’ College, rather than the local comprehensive she and Ronnie had actually attended. She’d once joked that her colleagues assumed she was called Chelsea because she had been born in the smart London borough, and Ronnie could tell she was proud to have convinced them. There was no trace of the Midlands left in Chelsea’s accent any more. There was no trace of Benson left …
    Jacqui insisted that Ronnie and Chelsea would always have a special bond as sisters, but Ronnie had come to think that had they not been related, they would not have naturally become friends. Not these days. They moved in different circles. Different worlds.
    ‘Mummy! Watch