The Stepmother(6)

 

Let’s leave that for another time, yeah? It sours everything.

 

Happy endings? In my book, they’re what you get down the massage parlour on the Old Kent Road. They are not real life.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

I stared at the wedding picture my big sister had just emailed me.

 

Jeanie in her white velvet dress and big fur hood, eyes shiny and huge with hope; Matthew very debonair in an undoubtedly expensive dark suit, looking down at her with – I couldn’t dispute it – something definitely akin to love. Not that I’m an expert though.

 

Still, there was something about the picture I didn’t like: something I couldn’t quite put my finger on immediately.

 

Something about the look on his daughter’s face, perhaps – a teenager whose name escaped me, whom I hadn’t met yet. Slinky, skinny little thing: too much black eyeliner, wearing a long, tight purple dress and wedge-heeled boots.

 

Pudding brother, not nearly so handsome as his twin, but at least his smile was benign.

 

And lanky Frank, freckled and mop haired, in his borrowed suit and old black Converse, grinning lopsidedly. Probably dying for a roll-up if I knew anything about the boy.

 

I looked at the twins, these kids that Jeanie had met only a few months ago, who were taking a while to warm up, apparently, despite all her best efforts. Well the girl was, by all accounts. The boy was quite chilled, at least. But they weren’t ready for a stepmum, it seemed.

 

Jeanie had even bought a book, bless her, when we met in London in September for a lunch soon interrupted by a call from my new editor. (I dare not leave work calls unanswered these days.)

 

After I’d hung up, I’d accompanied my sister to the self-help section in Piccadilly’s Waterstones and watched her root the book out from the bottom shelf.

 

How to be the Best Step-parent or some crap – that’s what she chose. ‘Confront the challenges head-on,’ read the tag line.

 

She’d been worried about Frank too. Worried he’d feel left out and not the ‘only one’ any more. Worried that the twins wouldn’t accept her; worried they would compare her to their mother. Hoping to make a ‘new family’.

 

What did we know about family though?

 

I’d told her to stop over-thinking – as usual.

 

‘Just get on with it,’ I’d instructed again, a fortnight ago, over Jeanie’s hen-night cocktails in the Covent Garden Hotel, when she said it was still ‘a bit sticky’ with the girl. ‘How can anyone not like you, Jean?’

 

‘Quite easily.’ She ate her olive morosely. ‘I can’t get Scarlett to smile at me at all. I offered to take her clothes shopping last week, and she just left the room without speaking.’

 

‘Horrible age, babe,’ I reminded her, licking the salt from my hand and downing my tequila. ‘Think what we were like at fourteen.’

 

Not helpful, actually, that last comment. We were hardly today’s typical teens, my sister and I. Too busy fending for ourselves to have hissy fits about potential step-parents.

 

Too busy with the business of survival.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Matthew came to meet Jeanie after our cocktails. They were going to stay the night in the hotel – and when I saw him scoop her off her feet outside the main doors, her cheeks flushing with pleasure and excitement as she disappeared into his embrace, at least I could relax a bit.

 

This man was besotted by my sister – that much was obvious.

 

Strange match they might seem, but then stranger things have happened. He treated her like she was made of glass; he seemed to see her as precious.

 

And she is. Infinitely precious.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

When I couldn’t make the wedding at the weekend, when I texted to say I had to follow up a lead on a story about corruption in the back benches – Cameron’s lot and their sense of entitlement – that if I didn’t, my job would be on the line – Jeanie insisted it was fine. But I knew it wasn’t really. I sent the biggest bouquet of flowers Interflora did, but I still felt shit about it.

 

Especially when my ‘big story’ turned out to be a complete dud. Maybe I should have examined my own motives for not attending the wedding more closely. Maybe.

 

Now I closed the wedding photo down to read the directions to the sixth-form college I was visiting this afternoon. I was giving a talk on social media, responsibility and digital journalism. I was trying to do my bit; trying to make amends.

 

I also had to tell Jeanie I wasn’t going to their New Year’s Eve party. Matthew might be good for my sister, but wild dogs wouldn’t have dragged me to mingle with his money-market mates. I was a little hazy on what exactly his job was, but bankers really didn’t do it for me. Bankers had nearly been my own professional downfall.