Ashleigh Brett and Remy Hughes 2022 Aged 60 #6
‘Can I just call you?’ Her question was genuine, her confusion real.
Her sister’s words had hurt more than she could express.
She wanted Remy not only to like her, but to love her, to forgive her too, for how far she had slipped out of reach, how far they both had.
It was a two-way street. But right now all she wanted was for them both to find a way forward.
‘You can, Ash, of course you can. And maybe you should. We’re not getting any younger. Well, one of us isn’t.’ She smiled.
‘I’d never take my life, Remy, if that’s what you were driving at. I love my life, love my friends, my people.’
‘That wasn’t what I was—’
‘Wasn’t it? You think I’m unstable.’
‘I don’t!’ There was a beat of silence, and an overenthusiasm in her sister’s tone that suggested she had lied. ‘I think you’re a train wreck sometimes, but generally not unstable.’
For some reason she found this funny. ‘Don’t hold back, Rem!’
‘I’m in that frame of mind where I think maybe we’d benefit from some open and honest communication, don’t you?’
‘Oh God, did you learn that in therapy? This was always my fear that with your new-found understanding you would try and fix me!’
‘Not that you need fixing.’
‘No, not that I need fixing.’ Ashleigh took a drag on her cigarette. ‘I’m worried too that the last time wine levered open the honesty portal, it didn’t exactly end too well.’
‘There’s the understatement of the day.’ Remy bit her lip.
‘Perhaps you’re right. Talking openly would be good for us. God only knows there’s a lot to say. We’ve drifted apart, and I find it hard to explain, to justify.’
‘Me too. I hate saying that it just happened!’ Remy faced her.
‘I guess it felt easier not to call you than risk arguing with you, going over the details of what happened with St. Jude’s, the Jamie thing.’
‘Yep, all of it.’
Spurred on by her burst of confidence, Ashleigh decided to test the water. ‘I’m okay. I really am. Most of the time. I think we all crave the same things, don’t we? A haven, love, and hope. Life is busy and hard sometimes, but it’s never too hard if you’ve got those three things.’
‘Yep.’ Remy swallowed. ‘And do you have those three things?’
‘In the words of Meatloaf, two out of three ain’t bad . . .’
‘Huh!’ Again, that beat of silence while they mentally regrouped. ‘When I told everyone, I thought you’d be delighted. It’s what you’d always wanted, and it came at a huge cost to me, to me and Midge—’
‘It came at a huge cost to me too,’ she interrupted, thinking again of her lovely dad and how things had never felt quite the same after.
‘I know.’ Remy gave a stiff nod of acknowledgement. ‘But you weren’t delighted. If anything, it only seemed to make you angrier! I couldn’t believe I’d got it that wrong again, when I only thought I was doing a good thing, getting it right.’
‘Not angrier’ – she took her time – ‘but I hated how you did it and when you did it. I guess I’d envisaged sitting down quietly with Mum and Dad and explaining what happened, but you just pulled the pin and lobbed it into the middle of a family celebration. Our kids were there, Tony . . .’
‘I know, and I’m sorry about that. I really am. In the moment, I just felt I couldn’t stand the thought of that conversation again, you making hints and suggestions. It felt like it was dangling over me, always dangling over me.’
‘Well, ditto that!’
‘And then you slept with Jamie!’ Remy’s face creased, as if to even say the words was enough to make her cringe.
‘I found it gross. Too close a connection. You knew what he’d done to me, how toxic we’d been, how hard I’ve worked for all these years to find balance, to let him in without letting him in, all for Sophie, and you did that. ’
Ashleigh felt her body stiffen. She had prayed that today she could parachute in and out without this analysis, but deep down she had known it was inevitable and this was why she had dreaded coming face to face with her twin.
‘I’ – she felt her jaw tense – ‘I was definitely going through stuff. Evie was pulling away from me, and it was a real slap in the face, my love life was in the gutter, the business was thriving without me in it, Archie was living his best life with his hot wife and fabulous kids all living in my house, and it all felt a bit unfair. I’d spent the weekend with you and Midge, the love birds in your cosy cottage.
Jesus, there were literal roses around the front door, and then the cherry on the cake – Tony appeared to whisk you away into a corner to gossip! ’
‘So you were jealous?’ Remy’s eyes misted.
‘No, not jealous, not really, more reflective, sad, looking for a quick hit of dopamine that fast, thrilling sex might provide, and it did. I was so sloshed I didn’t stop for a minute and think about the fact that it was with Jamie.
’ She took a final drag and trod the cigarette butt under foot.
‘If I’d been sober . . .’ She let this trail.
‘For the record, I wasn’t jealous, couldn’t give a shit. It wasn’t the physical thing, it was just yuck!’
‘We kind of unravelled after that, didn’t we?’
‘We did,’ Remy whispered. ‘I remember saying it was probably better to get all the shite over at once, and just let the avalanche knock me off my feet.’
‘And I remember thinking it would be better not being knocked off my feet at all!’
Remy licked her lips. ‘I guess I meant better than life-altering things happening by paper cuts. Better, I thought, to take the mighty thump that would see us land on our arses. The pain and humiliation would be the same, but I figured, at least it was going to be over, and we could dust ourselves off, and get up, stronger, nothing waiting in the wings for us.’
‘But we never really got up, did we? I still feel like I’m sat on my arse some days.
I am happy, I am, but I don’t know what happens next, and that’s unsettling at my age.
’ It was her truth, and it felt like the right time to say it.
Ashleigh reached out and took her sister’s hand, and there they sat for a while.
‘I hope it’s true, Ash, that we can get up stronger, closer.’
‘I hope so too.’ She held her sister’s stare. ‘I’ve hated not being in contact with you. It’s been lonely.’
‘For me too. I just couldn’t figure out how to mend things. Was it better to keep a distance and try and let things blow over, or face it head on, or make out it had never happened, or ignore you? I just . . .’ Remy looked a little overwhelmed, and she understood. This felt a lot like progress.
‘Listening to you now, it sounds like you’re posing one of those conundrums that Guy and the knobhead used to debate when drunk: would you rather get attacked by one horse-sized duck or twenty duck-sized horses . . .’
‘Gee, that sounds like fun!’ Remy gushed with fake enthusiasm, her smile turned to a sneer. She clearly wasn’t a fan of either man. This smacked of loyalty that was very nice to see. It made her laugh.
‘Oh, it was. So much fun!’
‘I’d rather neither, Ash. If I had the choice.’
‘You were always the wise one.’
‘In some ways.’ Remy huffed. ‘Thought I had all the answers, even when I was ten.’
‘Well, my problem, sis, or one of them’ – she puffed on her cigarette, deciding to wade even further into the honesty pool – ‘is that I’ve never been as confident as I present. And it’s hard to breathe sometimes when you feel a little less than.’
‘You’ve never been less than, Ash. You have so much going for you.
I mean, you can be an arsehole, but you have that lovely life in London.
And if you ever worried about not measuring up to that prick you married and the people you hung out with .
. .’ She gave a wry laugh. ‘None of them deserved you.’
Ashleigh shook her head. ‘Not just them, although yes. I wanted so badly to be liked by his parents.’
‘Oh God! I remember them – what were their names?’ She clicked her fingers, the well-known aide memoire. ‘Margot and Freddie?’
‘Close. Elaine and Dickie.’
‘Elaine and Dickie! That was it!’ Remy chuckled. ‘Now they were arseholes!’
‘She liked me far more after we divorced. Don’t think the German tolerates her arseholeness.’
‘Well, there’s a lesson.’
‘Yep.’
Remy stood. ‘Shall I go and get us a cup of tea?’
She nodded. She liked the sound of it; her and her sister having a cuppa at the back of the garden, just the two of them. ‘That sounds like a plan.’
Remy wiped the seat of her dress with her palms.
‘People always ask me when they find out I’m an identical twin if I can feel your pain; they want to know if we have a psychic link. The look on their faces, Rem, when I tell them no is always one of disappointment.’
‘Yep. I’ve had similar conversations.’
‘I did once though, that night, when you and Tony . . .’ It was almost instinctive, the way her sister rubbed her shoulder as Ashleigh spoke. ‘I got this sharp pain in my shoulder and felt winded.’
‘Weird!’ Remy acknowledged, this the first time Ashleigh had mentioned it.
‘Yes, weird. But over the last few years, I’ve known you were mad at me.’
‘Don’t think you need a psychic link to figure that one out, Ash.’
‘I guess not, but more than that, I could feel it, like really feel it, if that makes any sense, and it hasn’t felt good.’
‘I could feel it too,’ Remy whispered.
‘I guess what I want to say, is that I’m, erm’ – she felt the flare of emotion and exhaled through bloated cheeks – ‘I am sorry, Remy. I am. I’m sorry.’
‘I’m sorry too.’ Remy looked directly at her, and it was a moment of connection, of understanding in the way twins did, that this was the start of healing. ‘I’ll go and get the tea.’ She offered a small smile.
Ashleigh watched as her sister made her way along the path towards the back door.
Remy