The Ugly Sister Read Free Page B

those dreams with visions of playing happy families with the baby and her boyfriend of not very long, Dave, but it turned out he had visions of being single and child-free for a few more years, so he ran a mile when Abi told him she was pregnant. She sent him a photo of Phoebe when the baby was
born and he sent her a solicitor’s letter asking her to leave him alone.
    It’s hard to resurrect a non-existent career when you’re a single mum so eventually Abi gave up trying and got a part-time job in the local library. She’s still there. Eighteen years later. It suits her. The hours are flexible. The work unchallenging and pleasant enough. The library has its regulars, the old people, the nerdy kids, the homeless. Abi and her colleagues (a random collection of the most timid and unassuming members of society coupled with a smattering of part-timers who are more interested in the hours than the work) chat to them all and sometimes even offer them a cup of tea. Abi earns next to nothing, but she doesn’t really care. She gets by. Officially, of course, she is ‘a disappointment’. So much untapped potential. Therewas never anything Philippa could boast about: unwed single mum with badly paid part-time job not sounding quite so grandiose as
international supermodel apparently.
    After her sister married Jonty – an advertising executive with his own agency, as she never tired of telling the family – Abigail saw her even less often. Once a year, if she was lucky. And then usually only for a day or two. Abi has never stopped missing Cleo, though – or, more specifically, Caroline. Abi and Cleo have never really been close. She has never grown out of that feeling of excitement whenever she gets a letter or an email or – very rarely – a phone call. There is always that moment, that split second, when she can allow herself to think that it might be Caroline and not Cleo getting in touch. Like they might fall back into their sixteen- and thirteen-year-old easy way of being. The running jokes and confidences. It hasn’t happened in a long time. Phoebe was Abi’s family now. But Phoebe was about to go off for her gap year, travelling around the world with her two best friends before she took up her place
at the London College of Fashion, and Abi was at a loose end. Single Mother, One Not-so-careful Owner. Anything Considered.
    The house is grandiose grey stucco, identical to its twin next door. The mouldings picked out in white give it the look of every little girl’s dream doll’s house. It sits right on the edge of the neat green rolling park thatAbi presumes – from the large grassy mound rising up in the middle – is Primrose Hill itself. Dog walkers slog up the steep slope to the top where people flying kites rub shoulders with those who have made the climb just to admire the view. The house itself is picture perfect. At least five stories high and of giant proportions. There is only one bell; no one has attempted to destroy the eighteenth-century character by dividing it up into flats.
    Abi smoothes down her hair – grown long again since her rebellious student days and now fairer, streaked with a white blonde – as if her subconscious knows that she needs to smarten up to match her surroundings. She leans back, taking in the vast majesty of the place and her nerve leaves her. She suddenly has no idea why she had thought this would be a good idea. If she hotfoots it back to Charing Cross station now she could be back home in Deal in a couple of hours. Except, of course, that home is packed up in boxes and sitting in a dank musty-smelling storage facility in Dover.

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    The only thing that Abi knows about Primrose Hill beyond the fact that her sister lives here, is that it is – or, at least, once was – home to all sorts of glamorous celebrities who were famous for not very much other than thinking that they looked good and partying a lot. When Cleo had first said that she and Jonty were moving there, Abi had