Free Passing On by Penelope Lively

satisfaction of television soap opera. ‘What happened over the row in your office about the new restaurant contract?’
    Louise looked at him sharply. ‘My life isn’t some sort of spectator sport, you know. Anyway, it’s nothing to do with the office. It’s Phil. Classic teenage stuff, I suppose, but it’s got a bit beyond a joke. He wants to leave school, go and hang out with a bunch of down and out friends, all that nonsense.’
    Edward was losing interest. ‘Talk to him,’ he advised kindly.
    ‘That’s pathetic!’ snapped Louise. ‘Frankly we feel more like hitting him at the moment. I have a permanent stress headache.
    If! was anyone else I’d be on tranquillizers.’
    The telephone rang. ‘I’ll go,’ said Helen. Out in the hall, she picked up the receiver. ‘Hello?’
    ‘Miss Glover? Helen … May I? Giles Carnaby here. I have one or two further little things I ought to discuss with you. I wondered if you might like to meet me in Spaxton for a spot of lunch?’
    She returned to the sitting room. Louise was still talking about Phil. Edward was picking burrs out of Tam’s coat. They both looked at her. Louise said, ‘That wine has turned you bright pink — it must be even more vicious than I thought. Let’s open another bottle. And your stew’s burning — I can smell it.’
    When Louise was a little girl Helen had been immensely proud of her. ‘Louise is going to be the pretty one,’ Dorothy said, when Louise was about two; and said it rather too often, thereafter. In fact Louise was not pretty, but she had a quality of vibrancy that did very well instead. Nowadays, in the company of good looking women she appeared louche — her skin was bad and her hair messy. But beside most women — Helen included — she was a curious illustration of why one woman is attractive and another not. You were simply more inclined to look at Louise than at others. And as a small child she had been compelling, with her bounce, her bright eyes, her mop of hair. Helen, escorting her along a street or into shops, had delighted in it: ‘Yes, she’s my sister. Yes, she is quite a handful — come along, Louise.’
    She sometimes saw a shadow of Louise in her own face, with interest and quite without rancour. Patently, the life of an attractive woman is different from that of a plain one — and not exclusively in a sexual sense: a personable appearance conditions the world’s response to most people. Louise’s looks invited attention; Helen’s did not. But, that being said, Helen knew that the gulf between her experience and her sister’s could be attributed to personality and inclination quite as much as to the cast of nose or mouth. Louise was extrovert and unwary; Helen was reserved and cautious. Louise, from the age of two, had fought their mother; Helen had propitiated and avoided confrontation.
    Louise had grabbed at opportunities (and, on occasion, paid for it); Helen had hesitated, considered the pros and cons, and then found that it was too late.
    She had never envied Louise; rather, she had feared for her.
    She had stood in the wings, over the years, and watched with apprehension as Louise was crossed in love, had rows and reconciliations, got the sack, went broke, suffered a fallopian pregnancy and an attack of shingles and smashed up a car. She came to realise, too, that while temperament may condition experience it also determines how we overcome it. She herself would have been felled by any of these things, she suspected; Louise shrieked her protests, and prospered. The mystery, as Helen saw it, was that two people could emerge from the same circumstances and set about dealing with the world so differently: follow the thread back and you reached, in each case, the same hearth, the same cot, the same indoctrinations, Dorothy’s uncompromising lap.
    Will this do?’ said Giles Carnaby. ‘I thought of the Crown, but I can’t stand all the bucolic laughter from Rotarian lunches. And that wine bar