that Abby was no longer a Miss Spencer like herself, but for three months now had been a Mrs Morelli – Signora Morelli. Ellie hadn’t been invited to the wedding – nor had their mother – as Abby had somehow persuaded Matteo she wanted something small and private, and they’d surprised Ellie and Susanna with an email and a photo of the happy couple outside Portoferraio town hall.
Ellie had been shocked. Not so much that her sister had got married on the quiet, but how much it had hurt. When they were small, all Ellie had wanted was for Abby to play with her, to make up games together in the garden, pretend they both had imaginary pet dogs that they could take for a walk around the small lawn, but Abby was always aloof, would go off and do her own thing. This continued as they got older, Abby always seemingly with her eye on some private goal, something Ellie knew nothing about. Abby would be building a den in her room, an idea that she hadn’t shared with Ellie; she would arrange to go to a friend’s house for tea when Ellie was hoping to ask her about her new make-up; she’d come back to say she’d passed her driving test when Ellie hadn’t even known she’d applied for it; and, of course, the biggest betrayal was the years and years she’d spent saving and investing, never once sharing her goal or her financial savvy with her sister. Then out of the blue – wham! – Abby announced she was leaving the workforce forever. See you later, sucker – that was the message she seemed to be sending, while Ellie had been left abandoned and feeling like an inadequate fool.
You’d think she would have become used to it, hardened herself to the hurt, but one memory was still imprinted on her brain and, even after twenty-two years, it had the power to move her.
Ellie had been in the first year of secondary school, a place she found isolating after her sporadic primary education. She’d been placed in the bottom set in every subject; the years of missed schooling had taken their toll, and she felt slow-witted and ashamed of not being anywhere near her older sister’s league. One group of girls in particular noticed this fact. There were three of them who went around in a pack, two lesser bitches flanking the ringleader, and they would mock her for her stupidity. When Ellie had been found crying her eyes out, hiding behind the temporary classroom block, and Abby had extracted a name, Ellie had followed her sister from a safe distance back to the playground, wondering what on earth Abby was going to do.
She was rewarded by seeing Abby punch the ringleader on the nose. All hell had broken loose: blood and screams and a rapidly ballooning crowd.
Three big things changed after that: the nose was broken and would forever have a kink, Abby was suspended for a week, and the bullies never touched Ellie again. But the one thing she really wanted to change still didn’t happen. Abby was just as aloof and it had hurt even more because deep down Ellie now knew that, on some level, her big sister cared for her.
She suspected she knew why there had always been a distance between them: Ellie was their mother’s favourite, something that was never said aloud but was blatantly clear. In fact, Susanna had paid little attention to Abby’s successes, as she’d been so preoccupied with Ellie’s childhood illness, the doctors and hospital appointments, the constant care. If Abby did well in her exams at school, she was told not to speak of it, for fear that it would make Ellie feel inferior. The same if Abby achieved something sporty – Ellie had suffered from so much sickness, it was ‘unfair’ to ‘flaunt’ it in Ellie’s face.
Ellie had felt guilty for being so sick and blamed herself for Abby’s upset, but was often too ill to have the energy to try and make it any different. As they grew older, Ellie watched the gap between them widen, and even when the illness seemed to abate, years had gone by and she never caught up. Abby did so much more, achieved so much more, and Ellie’s confidence slowly disintegrated.
She looked again at the paintings. These, at least, were no masterpieces, and she was just turning to leave the room when her eye caught something.
She stopped. Frowned at