I wanted to – I wanted to snatch the offer before she could see sense. I so, so wanted to be a part of this warm, crazy family. To sit in their sunny kitchen, with a coffee machine. Curl up with a story-book in the rocking-chair, children snuggled under my arm. I wanted to soak up the love, and the noise, and the life. It was everything I`d never had, and always dreamt of. But I couldn`t do it. I couldn`t take another job I didn`t deserve.
I put down my cup, straightened my glasses and tried to look Ellen in the eye. ‘I really appreciate the offer. I`m amazed to even be considered. But I can`t work for you like this. I could be a child-murderer, or a confidence-trickster. A thief.’
‘Are you any of those things?’
‘No.’
‘Well, I`m sure we can work out something sensible. Will`s a headteacher. He isn`t going to let someone loose on his precious offspring lightly.’
Ellen left a short while later, having agreed the something sensible to be two character references, what sounded like umpteen background checks and a thorough interview with Will over dinner followed by a trial period of a week.
I could find two people who weren`t relatives to provide character references, couldn`t I?Sheesh, Jenny, it would be a lot easier than finding two people whowererelatives to give them.
I meant it about having zero experience of how families work. My twin sister Zara and I are about as non-identical as it is possible to be having shared a womb. After nine months guzzling way more than her fair share of maternal nutrients, she used her three-pound weight advantage to shove her way out first and proceed to push, jostle, demand and manipulate my parents into making sure we never shared anything again, beyond a date of birth and surname. Waltzing off to boarding-school aged eight, she spent the next ten years wangling invitations to trips abroad, sponsored places on expensive summer camps and even a whole two months house-sitting in the South of France the year she finished school.
The few occasions she did end up home for more than a couple of nights in a row, she treated me with ninety percent indifference and ten percent irritation. I accepted this as exactly the way things should be. Stealing wondrous glances at the tall, blonde goddess, who flicked her glossy hair and pouted and the world bent to her will, she seemed another species altogether. A leopard and a mole. When people commented on how lovely it must be to have a special sister to share everything with, I merely shrugged and went back to reading my book. Zara didn`t have that problem. I don`t think she ever told anyone I existed.
Determined to justify her we-treat-our-daughters-completely-differently-because-they-are-individuals theory, my mum made it her mission to get me into the same university as Zara. Which happened to be Oxford. This included endless hours with a tutor, hundreds of headaches, heartaches and in the end the collapse of my parents` marriage, which disintegrated the year I turned seventeen. I lasted two terms at Queen`s College, Oxford before a nervous breakdown sent me home. The next three years were spent gathering my broken self together and wondering what on earth I was going to do, who I would be, and whether it mattered anyway. I also flunked out of yet more college courses my mother pressured me into, partly because I hated them, partly because I wasn`t yet mentally strong enough.
Then, landing in her own life-crisis, my mother sold everything she had and moved to Italy. My dad, renting a one-bedroom flat with his twenty-year-old girlfriend and seven snakes, somehow convinced the twin sister who had virtually forgotten my name to take me in (I suspect repayment of overdrafts was involved). I moved my battered suitcase up to Edinburgh, with strict instructions about never mentioning our embarrassing family to anyone, ever.
There is a reason why leopards and moles don`t live together. The odds are high that only one of them will get out alive.
And it isn`t usually the mole.
I had escaped, but it remained to be seen whether my wounds would prove fatal.
* * *
I dithered and dallied about who to call about a reference. Until, after hours of sorting crispy magazines into pointless piles, I phoned Meg, the one Dougal and Duff employee who might still consider talking to me.
‘Flip, Jenny, if anyone catches me talking to you, I`ll never hear the end of it.’ Her Scottish accent whispered down the phone. ‘I`ll call you back.’
She did, a couple of minutes later. ‘Right, we should be safe for now. I`m in the ladies`.’
‘Is it really that bad?’
‘Yes, Jenny. It is really that bad. When Zara heard that Elsie said you must have a good reason for what you did, you could hear the bellowing from Arthur`s Seat. Ian Dougal had to intervene before another nose got broken. Oh – hang on. Someone`s here.’
We waited in silence until they left.
‘So, how`s it going?’ Meg whispered.
‘Um, great, thanks. But I do need a favour.’
‘Ask away, my friend. Ask away. Unless it concerns my boss, in which case don`t, and you`re not my friend, and we never had this conversation.’
‘No, nothing like that. I need a character reference. A truthful one.’
’A truthful one? Are you auditioning to be a cage fighter?’
‘A truthful one up about my character at any point in which you`ve known me,apart from at the party.’
Meg laughed. ‘No problem. You want me to leave out the secret fling with your boss, aye?’
‘Aye.’
Enough memories for one day, I abandoned the box of papers waiting to be tackled and went for a walk instead. I chose the opposite direction to the village, abandoning the footpath to push through the trees and wild bushes. I admired the frost sparkling on the branches, transforming the spider webs draped between them into exquisite jewellery, sucked in a lungful of fresh, bright air and picked up my pace. Winding my way along rabbit paths, up embankments slippery with mulch, in between vast rhododendron bushes, walking until the ache in my thighs and feet drowned out the ache beneath my ribs. Richard had stung. A lot. But, like falling into the nettle-patch growing beside my new back door, my foolishness bothered me more than the pain. But Zara. She had been a rose, with thorns long and merciless. And where she drew blood, the wound festered.
