Page 3 of Annabel and Her Sisters

My eldest sister, Clarissa, lived only about seven miles away from Netherby and I drove off to see her with a heavy heart.

If she’d already bought a tractor, things looked ominous, and I knew it was no good appealing to her husband, Derek, who was far more grasping than his wife and whose idea it might even have been.

As much as I loved Hugo, I found Derek tricky.

His veterinary training– eleven years, he’d tell us constantly, because he’d trained as a doctor first– had somehow turned him into the biggest know-all on the planet, which, together with a distinct sense of entitlement, was not terribly endearing.

As I passed through the farm gates I remembered someone had once painted ‘fig jam’ on them, which Ginnie had explained to me through tears of mirth meant ‘Fuck I’m Great Just Ask Me’.

Despite my sisters’ geographical proximity, they could not be further apart temperamentally, and I was often called upon to be the mediator, usually for the sake of our darling ma, whose name I invoked shamelessly.

‘Just keep the peace for Mum,’ was a constant refrain, which Clarissa referred to as emotional blackmail.

‘You always say that, Annabel, and it’s below the belt and childish.’

‘But it’s true. It upsets her terribly when you fall out and you know it.’

She’d have the grace to look shamefaced, reminding me so much of how she used to look years ago when my father dealt with her if she was in a rage.

He’d died over twenty years ago now and had been so good with Clarissa: gently talking her down, then taking her fishing on her own, hiking or riding or something, embracing her love of outdoor pursuits, even though he was bookish and intellectual and preferred his library.

Calmly, he would explain the point of view of the recipient of her rage.

And she’d listen. Would come back in a better humour.

Her face would collapse like a child’s in seconds if Dad explained something, but without him, it would rise like a soufflé in even less time.

My father had died of a heart attack just as he and Clarissa had drawn into the yard at home in a horse box.

She’d been at the wheel, thankfully. They’d been bringing a lame horse in for box rest, just the two of them.

Mum, Ginnie and I had of course been heartbroken, but Clarissa had never got over it.

Never. I had to remember that, I thought, as I drew into her own stable yard now.

Just as I had never got over my own husband, David, dying from the same ghastly cause in Fleet Street, ten years ago.

Clarissa had once been heard to tell Derek darkly: ‘Yes, but it’s completely different.

David drank, Daddy barely had a beer, even at Christmas.

’ I’d nearly bitten her. In fact, I hadn’t been able to speak to her for weeks after, feigning pressure of work, writing, my usual excuse when I didn’t want to see anyone.

David drank in a sociable, normal way, and despite his capacity for copious amounts, was never a drunk, never.

Plus, it was not what killed him, as Clarissa well knew.

He’d had an aneurysm, which apparently had been creeping up on him for years, although neither of us knew about it, because neither of us ever had check-ups, unlike her and Derek– which she’d also helpfully told me, incidentally.

Her remark about drink had never left me though, and I had to sit in my car now for a good few minutes to banish it from my head and make myself forgive her and remember what Ginnie had told me at the time.

I’d had to tell someone or it would have consumed me, and I didn’t want to tell Luke and Polly, who would have hated their aunt forever– but Ginnie had been good.

We’d all grown up together, after all, half in Somerset and half in London, and even though she didn’t get on with her sister, she understood her. She explained.

‘It’s her own grief, Annabel, for Daddy, nothing to do with David. It’s all about her. It’s nothing to do with you. Nothing ever is. Remember that. For Mummy.’

I’d nodded, choked and furious. But I’d kept it in.

For Mummy. Ginnie never made me furious like Clarissa did.

Despite our different attitudes and ways of life, we were close, and despite, also, Ginnie’s endless attempts to set me up with ‘frightfully attractive’ single men at dinner parties she hosted.

‘I’m not setting you up, darling,’ she’d trill disingenuously down the phone when I’d remonstrate. ‘It’s just that Rupert/Timmy/Rollo is coming on his own and he’s such a honey, and numbers-wise I need a single girl.’

‘I’m not a girl.’

‘Nonsense, of course you are!’

‘And I’m not single,’ I’d added, which had thrown her.

‘Aren’t you?’

‘No. I’m widowed.’

‘Oh yes, I do see,’ she’d said, but she hadn’t.

I breathed deeply as I got out of the car, glad I’d at least dispelled thoughts of murdering Clarissa by dwelling on my other sister’s much smaller peccadillos. No doubt I had plenty of my own.

As I shut the car door and changed into wellington boots from the back, the woman herself emerged from a stable holding an enormous chestnut gelding and cooing in a way never heard unless it was to animals.

‘Easy, boy, easy. Look, it’s only lovely Annabel come to see us.’

I smiled, loving to hear the tone, even if it never featured when addressing a human.

‘He’s gorgeous, what’s his name?’ I asked, advancing gingerly and stroking his shoulder gently, knowing better than to go any higher on account of the nervous look in his eye and my own slight fear, ever since I’d been thrown as a child.

‘Casper. Isn’t he grand? Bit green and very young, but he’ll take Ed round Badminton one day.’

‘Of course he will. What fun.’

My sister beamed, tall and powerful, one hand on her ample hip as she gazed lovingly up at the horse.

She was dressed in ancient cords and one of Derek’s shirts, and boots.

No make-up, ever, and her tight grey curls were cropped short for convenience, her moon-shaped face lined and weathered.

Ginnie had once, for a birthday present, taken her on a Colour Me Beautiful day in Oxford.

Clarissa had never forgiven her. ‘What a ridiculous waste of an entire day,’ she’d stormed.

‘And it’s the harvest. I’ll colour her effing beautiful, black and blue! ’

‘Two minutes while I pop him in the paddock, then I’ll be back,’ she said softly.

I murmured ‘great’, quietly, so as not to frighten him, and she led him away.

Two minutes was literally all it took. When she returned, head collar swinging from her wrist, the rope already efficiently rolled, she was a different woman. She stopped in front of me, hands on hips, legs astride. No kiss.

‘Right. What can I get you?’ she barked. ‘Cup of tea in the tack room or d’you want to come up to the house?’

‘Tack room would be perfect,’ I told her, knowing it was the right response.

Clarissa ate lunch, and sometimes supper in the tack room and only went up to the house to sleep, and even then only for about six hours.

Oh, and for sex. Clarissa and Derek took sex very seriously and when they travelled, which they only did to attend agricultural shows, or to watch their sons compete in eventing competitions, or to Finland, once a year, to see Derek’s parents, they always took the blue towel.

‘It’s disgusting,’ Ginnie would seethe at Christmas, one of the few times a year we’d all get together, usually at her house. ‘It’s one thing to bring it, but to rinse it and leave it on the radiator in my spare room is simply gross!’

‘At least they wash it,’ I’d said mildly, the blue towel being one of the few things I found amusing about my older sister.

I’d giggle naughtily about it with the children, who found it hilarious.

Luke had even given his aunt a new one for Christmas one year, his face poker straight as he handed it to her.

As she’d opened it round the tree it had rendered the rest of us speechless with horror, but Clarissa had cheerily thanked him for it, seeing nothing wrong, whilst Polly and Lara, choking with suppressed laughter, had to leave the room.

I followed her to the tack room now which, unlike her house, was immaculate: rows of dark leather saddles sat on racks, the bridles hanging beneath on pegs, cleaned and polished, tenderly caressed to render them as soft and supple as silk, the bits shining.

And actually, I liked to see my sister in here, where so much love was lavished, and not in her utilitarian farmhouse where newspapers and Horse & Hound s and dirty plates and ashtrays littered the kitchen, and where dogs peed on the carpet in the other rooms so that the stench was ingrained.

‘So. What can I do for you?’ she demanded, as if I was an NFU Mutual salesman come to renew her insurance.

As I watched her brew two mugs of brick-red tea from an ancient kettle on the side and slop the bags in the sink before she sat down at the scrubbed pine table, I wondered how to phrase this.

She helped herself to two spoons of sugar, stirring her tea noisily, left the wet spoon in the bag, and I began:

‘Clarissa, I know we’re all behind Mummy selling the house. It’s far too big for her and it hasn’t been touched for years. It makes total sense.’

‘Plus I’ve always hated it. Wish she’d kept the country house instead.’ She blew on her boiling tea and slurped it.

‘Yes, I know. But it made sense at the time. She had more friends in London. And she wanted to be near her children.’

She nodded grudgingly, acknowledging this. Even Clarissa had gravitated to London in her early twenties, after agricultural college at Reading, to go to parties, meet boys and have lots of sex.

‘And yes, she grew up in rural Yorkshire but she always preferred the town– it was an obvious decision.’