Читать онлайн «The Ugly Sister»

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Genetics is a strange science. It’s imprecise. A jumble of random combinations that make a unique whole. It’s basically a lottery. So you can inherit the beautiful turned-up nose of your mother, but the fact that it’s so big it takes up half your face from your paternal grandfather. Or your long legs from one side, but their tree-trunk-like appearance from the opposite. Or sometimes, cruelly, one sibling can inherit all the available beauty, leaving nothing for the other except the cast-off bits that didn’t quite make the grade. It’s as if there’s only so much good stuff to go round. Or at least that’s how it has always seemed to Abi. But then you could say her perspective is a little warped.

It’s a subject that’s close to her heart. One that preoccupies her from time to time. The unfairness of it. The way that your inherited characteristics can determine the course of your whole life. Or, to be more exact, the way someone who shares more than their fair share of DNA with you can have such a different experience of the world simply because of the few small dissimilarities in the chain.

She knows too that the universe always appears to be a different place to siblings just by virtue of their place in line. The oldest – used to being the entire focus of their parents’ adoration for as many years as they remain alone – entitled and imperious, convinced the planets revolve around them. The younger destined to grow up in the shadows, eager to please, aware that their very arrival has destroyed the idyll of the indulged first born and so prone to apology and self-sabotage.

In a large family you can get away from the endless comparisons or, at least, you can manipulate them to make yourself feel good. If measuring yourself against one of your siblings is making you feel bad, pick another. There’s always someone you can feel superior to. When there are only two of you, though, there’s no escape. Your every feature, every ability, every quality is held up for scrutiny and direct comparison. And the sad truth is that some people are simply handed a bigger deck, a shinier, sharper set of tools. Some people, as the saying goes, have all the luck.

She’s contemplating this – for the millionth time, or so it seems to her – as she stands on the doorstep of her sister’s palatial Primrose Hill home, gazing up at the sheer magnificence of the architecture, suitcases at her feet, wondering why no one is answering the door. Actually it’s an exaggeration to say she has suitcases; she hasn’t been on a proper holiday for years – why would she even own a suitcase? What she has is a large green nylon rucksack, an oversized Debenhams carrier bag stuffed full of last-minute bits and pieces, and a smaller Nicolas one containing a bottle of cheap (ish) champagne by way of a thank-you gift. Looking around the upmarket neighbourhood, she has no doubt that house prices in the area must be dropping by the minute the longer she stands there.