My heart plummets down to the worn carpet beneath my toes. My disappointment isn’t just because the position has gone, it’s because of her tone. She sounds like she’s talking to an unwanted cold caller she can’t wait to get rid of. Like I’m a nobody.
I need to give this another go. ‘That’s a shame,’ I come back with. ‘Do you have any other positions going? Even something short-term, like a week’s work experience?’
‘Are you at school or college?’ she asks.
‘No, I’m in my mid-twenties.’ I’m twenty-eight, but whatever.
‘Sorry, our work-experience slots are only for people in full-time education.’
I’m desperately wracking my brain for something else to say. To win her over. But I can hear in her tone she’s already dismissed me.
‘Maybe you could make an exception?’ I try. ‘I’m a quick learner.’
‘I’m afraid not,’ she says, rudely ending the call, her mind no doubt already on to something else.
I drop my phone in my lap and slump back into the sofa with a grunt. Suddenly, I feel a spike of anger. Not at myself, but at them – the people who get to decide. The ones who never have to worry about impressing anyone because their names do the work for them. Bella Newbury. Even the name sounds like old money. Who does she think she is? She might be my twin, but she sounded like a right snooty cow. What was I even thinking, wanting to go and work for her? I bet her employees hate her.
I try not to think about my pathetically naive plan to surprise her. To see her face when she meets me for the first time. I try to forget all the imagined conversations I had in my head with her. About how excited we’d be to have found each other. I’m such an idiot. Of course she’s not going to be anything like me. She’s been brought up with wealth and luxury. I’m just some pleb who happens to share the same genes.
She’ll take one look at me, at my life, and she’ll think I’m a total loser. She wouldn’t be wrong either. I fist my hands, knuckles whitening. So that’s it. All those hours spent thinking about our reunion were a complete waste of time. I get to my feet and pace over to the kitchenette and then across the lounge towards the window. I stare through it, not really looking at the crappy view of the street, my mind too steeped in disappointment, replaying Bella’s snooty voice in my head. I mean, logically, she didn’t know who I was, she thought she was talking to a stranger, but I still feel hurt by the rejection. If this was a movie, we would meet up and have an incredible reunion. Instead, this is real life and it sucks.
I turn away from the window and sink back down on to the sofa, bored of this room, bored of this city, bored of my life and bored of my thoughts.
Although... thinking about it, maybe it wouldn’t have been great to meet on such unequal terms. She’s this hotshot business owner and I’m a nobody. It might have been humiliating. She might have been embarrassed to have such a loser for a sister. I might have felt awkward and lesser. Even though I know she’s had a better financial start in life than me, it still might have been a bit humiliating.
Not for the first time, I wish I’d made a bit more of my life. Maybe gone to college or started my own online business or something. Anything, really.
I make a decision. I won’t contact my sister again. Not yet anyway. Instead, I’m going to try to undermine her a little. I won’t gotoo far, just little things to create cracks in her perfect existence, to tip things out of balance. I don’t want to ruin Bella. I just want to level the playing field. Then, maybe, once she’s not so high and mighty, once she’s toppled off that pedestal and is back at ground level, I might finally introduce myself, and we can start out on a more equal footing.
‘Hello, sister,’ I’ll say. ‘Sorry you’ve been having a rough time. I know just what that’s like.’ I’ll be her confidante, her lifeline. And she’ll owe me. She’ll be grateful to have me in her life. Excited to have such a caring sister.
Maybe a bad review. Maybe a rumour. Maybe just a phone call at the wrong moment. Sabotage by increments. Like death by a thousand paper cuts, if you want to be dramatic. Normal, pain-in-the-arse hassles, so she’ll know what it’s like to be me. To be dealt all the shit cards in life. I need Bella to have a taste of that frustration. To have her confidence rattled.
Suddenly hungry, I reach for my half-eaten Snickers, every mouthful a little victory. With renewed enthusiasm, I reopen Newbury’s website. Looks like Bella’s running an ‘empowerment’ seminar next Thursday. It’s booked out, but there’s a waiting list. I sign up three times under fake names: Tiffany Sharp, Mia Hutchens, Erin Palowski, all the girls who were bitches at school. Next, I draft an email from a burner address. ‘Dear Ms Newbury. I am wondering if your “feminist” principles extend to your actual hiring and firing practices? Because some of the stories going around social media about your treatment of junior staff are shocking...’ I don’t hit send – yet. But I let it sit in drafts, like a grenade with the pin pulled but not released.
For the first time in years, I feel powerful. I scrunch up my empty chocolate wrapper, pull my legs up on the sofa, phone in hand, and start planning what I’ll do next.
Chapter Seventeen
Bella
Midday in November is a strange hour; the sun is already slanting west, the air crisp but not quite freezing, and the town has that out-of-season, slightly brittle feeling. The High Street glitters with what’s left of this morning’s frost; all the shop windows have swapped off-season discounts for Christmas bunting, and everywhere you go there’s the faint, spicy aroma of mulled wine. This close to the marina, the air also has a tang of salt and diesel, and the cries of the seagulls sound like spoilt children.
I’m nervous. Nervous in the way people are when every aspect of their last six months has led up to a single, hour-long midday appointment. I’m about to meet a potential new client – Joe Sainty. It’s funny that I lied to my bank’s business manager about having a deal lined up with a developer, but now my lie could actually become true. Maybe I’ve somehow managed to manifest him into reality.
Our lunch is at one of Lymington’s swankiest restaurants, Portofino, so I’ve dressed to impress. He’s booked the table for 12.30 p.m. and I messaged an hour ago to double-check we’re still on.Looking forward to it, he replied.
My parents are going to be so proud of me if I pull this off. It will be the biggest deal of my career. It might even eclipse their own highlights.
Joe is looking to offload an entire block of new-build apartments. Twelve, to be exact. None listed below £800,000. If he signs with us, and if I move even a quarter of them before the end of the financial year, I could pull the business out of its current death spiral.
I can’t blow it. Not after the disaster with the investors over the summer – which still wakes me at 3 a.m. some nights thinking about the financial security I watched evaporate in a fog of unreturned calls – and that one awful final meeting with the bank where they refused to increase my overdraft, instead saddling me with a loan I have to pay back in crippling monthly instalments. Since then, I’ve been cobbling together my finances with bubble gum and denial, secretly hoping for a Hail Mary like this one meeting. If the universe is going to start rewarding hard work and perseverance, now would be the time.
I check my reflection in the glass before opening the door to Portofino. My cheeks are flushed. I brush off imaginary fluff from my navy wool coat and take a long, grounding breath, exhaling like some maiden aunt in a BBC drama. I smile at my own melodrama. I need to take a leaf out of my mother’s book. She always enters a room with her chin up and eyes ahead, like the world owes her an audience.
Tony, the owner, spots me immediately. ‘Bella, Bella!’ he calls from behind the bar, his voice ringing out so loud that two men at the nearest table turn to glance at me with interest. It’s the jokey greeting he gives me in his gorgeous accent every time he sees me. Mum sold him and his wife their beautiful quayside home a couple of decades ago, so he’s known me since I was a child.
He comes around with arms outstretched, and we do the air-kiss routine, cheeks barely grazing, but the scent of his aftershave lingers. His hair is more salt than pepper now, but his warm smile is the same.
