My Secret Lover

Cy.
    ‘Nadia, then.’
    ‘But she hits us.’
    ‘Have you told your mother that Nadia
hits you?’ I ask, feeling suddenly protective. They are just seven years old
after all.
    ‘Yes, but she doesn’t believe us.’
    The cruelty of my sister!
    ‘Well, she’ll believe me.’
    Seven years old is not quite old enough
to know about rear-view mirrors and the fact that you should leave your
exchange of triumphant grins until your attentive aunt is concentrating on the
road ahead.
    ‘Only kidding,’ I say.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Well, you were only kidding, weren’t
you?’
    ‘How did you know?’
    ‘I have eyes in the back of my head,’
I tell him, which is a mistake because then they’re both scrabbling through my
ponytail.
     
    Is there anything more indulgent than
sitting on the toilet reading glossy magazines listening to the chink and
murmur of a dinner party going on downstairs? It takes me back to my childhood,
only then I was hiding in the only room with a lock, with a copy of Jackie and curls of vanilla-flavoured tobacco smoke from my parents’ Christmas cheese
and wine party drifting up through the bathroom floorboards.
    Even then, Joanna was the
sophisticated one who knew how to hand round prawn and mushroom vol-au-vents
and little bowls of silverskin onions. I never seemed to have enough hands to
offer the grown-ups a cocktail sausage and a napkin at the same time. Where are
you supposed to put the bowl while you hand over the napkin? Not the arm of the
sofa, anyway.
    Nowadays, Joanna gets a waitress to
hand round the canapés, but even as a guest, I can’t do glass, handbag and food
altogether, especially if there’s dipping sauce involved. If I do manage
without spattering a pair of shoes, I’m bound to be the one who’s chatting away
with a flake of filo glued to my top lip, or a porcini-speckled incisor.
    Cy and Ry are in bed competing for a
five-pounds-for-the-one-who-goes-to-sleep-first prize, which I think is worth
it for the peace, and, frankly, it’s less than two copies of Harpers and
Queen, which I shall read sitting here for free, as well as Tatler,
Vogue and Elle Decoration at no extra cost. Nevertheless, I can’t
get over the feeling that it’s bad to bribe children. I put down the magazine
guiltily and pretend to be trying to go, when Joanna comes into her en suite to tidy her hair.
     
    If my life were a film, which it
wouldn’t be because nothing ever happens, Joanna would be played by Kristin
Scott Thomas. She has a fragile English beauty that’s hung on a skeleton of
steel. But she’s not just beautiful. She knows how to put on make-up without
looking orange, how to spray perfume so that it follows her around rather than
announcing her arrival like a liveried herald at a ball. She makes good, quick
jokes, she has an instant grasp of the complexities of conversation, she can
quote any number of poets, politicians, playwrights, and yet she still knows
exactly when to defer to her husband or guests. If she was anyone else’s
sister, I would hate her. But since she is mine, I am just crazily proud of
her.
    I should tell you that Joanna is
really good to me. She bought me my car. If it had been up to me, I wouldn’t
have chosen one of the new Beetles in lime green, but that’s mainly because I
would have been pushed to afford a second-hand Corsa with nought-per-cent
finance. She bought me my purple Power Mac and my fondant pink Smeg fridge. In
fact, she’s always buying me hugely expensive items in amusing colours.
    I sometimes wonder if she missed out
on childhood, or if I got a double dose, like I did chickenpox.
     
    *
     
    ‘That’s it. I’m ringing Lester first thing tomorrow.’ Joanna’s
speaking to my reflection in the mirror whilst peering at the top of my head
and miraculously applying a coat of mascara to her eyelashes without smudging.
    ‘Lester?’
    ‘My colourist. You’re going grey!’
    I touch the bit she is staring at, as
if that will restore its colour.
    ‘It’s just Creme Egg.’
    She looks at me oddly.
    ‘Creme Egg?’ she says, pronouncing
the cream the French way, as if it’s a new styling product.
    ‘Doesn’t matter,’ I say, remembering
that the boys are not supposed to have sugar.
    ‘Come down when you’re ready,’ she
tells me, as she wafts out of the bathroom. ‘It will be nice for you to meet
some new people.’
    Joanna always manages to make it
sound like she’s doing me a favour when I babysit at zero minutes’