Free The Ugly Sister by Jane Fallon

turns there’s an icon looking back up at her, waiting to be admired. She points out the obvious – Hyde Park, St Paul’s, the Gherkin – and the less obvious – the Thames Barrier, the NatWest Tower, the rapidly rising skeleton of the Shard. Most of these buildings she’s never even seen in the flesh before, but they’re as familiar to her from photographs as if she walked past them every day. Megan at least pretends to pay attention, oohing and aahing in all the right places while Tara strikes a nonchalant couldn’t-care-less pose that she almost certainly learned from
America’s Next Top Model
and, perversely, looks anywhere but where Abi is pointing in her best tour-guide fashion.
    By the time they get home Jonty is already there, sleeves rolled up, doing something delicious-smelling in the kitchen. The girls go off upstairs, Abi assumes to their separate rooms because they had a fight about something or other on the way home andthere’s definitely still a frosty air. She herself is desperate for a cup of tea, but she doesn’t really want to have to hang around in the kitchen while the kettle boils, so she just flops on one of the sofas, exhausted. Her legs ache. The three of them walked back from the South Bank, all the way to Primrose Hill, which was a mistake probably, because it was twice as far as Abi had anticipated, but she couldn’t work out the buses and Tara flat out refused to get back on the tube. Plus they got lost in Soho somewhere and doubled back on themselves several times. And then again trying to find the entrance to Regent’s Park so that they could
enjoy the scenic route home rather than the somewhat frightening depths of Somers Town that they ended up experiencing. All in all it took nearly two hours. Two hours of whinging and complaining about sore feet and blisters and that was just Abi. She knows she should go upstairs and change, but she can’t quite face it at the moment. She leans back, eyes closed, feet propped up on the arm of the settee.
    ‘You look like you had a hard day.’
    Abi jumps and sits up straight hurriedly. Visions of teachers asking if she’d sit like that in her own home flash through her head. Her answer to that one was always yes, by the way. Yes, she did sit at home with her elbows on the table/feet up/shoes on and no one ever seemed to mind that much.
    Jonty is standing over her, mug in hand.
    ‘What? Oh … yes …’
    ‘I thought you might like a cup of tea. You look shattered.’
    She almost bites his hand off for it. ‘I’d love one, thank you.’ There’s no way she can deny that was thoughtful of him.
    ‘Did you have a good time at least?’ he asks, and Abi nods.
    ‘Lovely. Well, me and Megan did. I’m not so sure about Tara.’
    They haven’t really got their small talk worked out yet, so Jonty just stands there for a second then says, ‘Well, I’d better get on. Dinner.’
    ‘Oh. Right. Do you need any help?’ She crosses her fingers and hopes that he says no.
    ‘No. It’s fine. Thanks, though. Cleo should be back any minute.’
    Abi thinks about saying something about the nanny situation – she assumes it must have been Jonty’s idea as much as Cleo’s, but it seems mean-spirited to raise it when he’s in the middle of cooking dinner for everyone.
    ‘Do you cook every night?’ It seems so unlikely somehow.
    ‘Perk of having your own business,’ he says. ‘There’s no one to tell me I can’t leave early.’
    ‘Well, I’ll do my share, obviously, while I’m here. I mean if that’s OK …’
    ‘Great,’ he says, and another scintillating exchangedraws to a close. She makes a mental note that she really must go on a social-skills course.
    Cleo, when she breezes through the door, is full of the great meeting she’s had with someone or other who is clearly desperate to work with her, and how much they loved her at the casting and she’s almost certain to get the job because they told her she was looking incredible.