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We’ll make this work, I had said to him supportively at the time, even though it effectively meant putting my own acting career on hold, as we packed up our independence in the city and got ready to move. Sure as long as we’re together, we can make anything work, I said reassuringly. And if a job comes up for me, I’ll just do the long commute back and forth to Dublin.
Because our marriage comes first. Doesn’t it?
But, like I said, that was well over three years ago and since then, the goalposts have shifted. Considerably. For starters, I’m finding it far, far tougher than I’d ever have thought, hauling myself up and down from Dublin every time there’s a sniff of a job. So to keep myself busy, I’ve done just about every gig in The Sticks that comes my way. Given the odd drama workshop to kids in the local school, worked part-time at the local florist’s, you name it, I’ve given it a whirl.
But the hard, cold fact is that I’ve been treading water rather than really loving what I’m doing, knowing in my heart that if it’s acting work I really want, then I need to be in the city, where all the big job opportunities are. Not to mention where all my old friends are. We stay in touch, of course – we text and phone and email and Skype is my new best friend…but it’s just not the same as seeing people all the time, is it?
I’m constantly begging/pleading/nagging my old pals to come and visit, even just for a weekend, and in fairness, most of them have done at one time or another. But the thing about The Sticks though, is that it doesn’t exactly offer all that much in the way of nightlife. Apart from a couple of pubs where the average age profile is about eighty and the main topic of conversation among the sages of the snug is still the Civil War, there’s not a whole lot else on offer.
Bear in mind that you’re talking about a tiny village where the main tourist attractions are a Spar newsagents and a large clock in the middle of Main Street, so, unsurprisingly, repeat visits from my Dublin buddies tend to be few and far between.
But it does my heart good though, to keep in touch with our old circle. I love hearing all my girlfriends’ tales from the city, of how well they’re all doing in their careers and most of all, hearing their stories direct from life at the great dating coalface. And even if their romances don’t go exactly according to plan, at least they’re all out there, having fun/ breaking hearts/ having their hearts broken in turn/picking themselves up and getting back in the race…just like you’re supposed to be doing at our age.
Sometimes I’ll see them all looking at me, like I’m some prematurely middle-aged housewife in a Cath Kidston apron with matching tablecloths and they’ll say, ‘But you’re married! Why aren’t you at home, getting fat?’
And I’ll want to tell them the truth; that the whole reason I got married was to grow old with someone and not because of them. But instead, I’ll smile and laugh and make a joke and say that Victorian virgin brides in arranged marriages saw more of life than I did before I walked down the aisle. Then they’ll all jolly me along by reminding me that I got lucky, because I didn’t just marry a great guy, I married the holy grail of men, didn’t I?
And the heartbreaking thing is that it’s all true – I did.
It’s just that the grass is always greener on the other side of the M50 motorway, that’s all.
I often think that life here is far, far easier for Dan, who’s surrounded by his family, along with friends he’s known since he was in nappies and has grown up with. Some people live a life that’s already been planned out perfectly for them, as inescapable as a circle. And that’s Dan and he’s perfectly content with that. But the truth is that after three long years here, the claustrophobia is slowly starting to get to me. It’s like every time I glance in the mirror I see a woman who looks like it’s raining inside of her. Crushed under the weight of my own future.
Because I have deep grievances with my life here that over time, feel like they’ve barnacled permanently onto my skull. In spite of all my super-human efforts to fit in and to be a good wife and half-decent daughter- and sister-in-law…I swear to God, there are days when I physically feel like I’m being smothered. That I can’t breathe. That I’m slowly being asphyxiated as surely as if someone had tied a plastic Tesco’s bag over my head.
Worse still, that I’m going to go to my grave with an unlived life still in my veins.
Even the clinking sound of Dan’s coffee mug as he rests it on a saucer is almost enough to make me want to scream. There’s so much I need to talk to him about and yet we’re sitting here in total silence. Like an old married couple that ran out of things to say to each other years ago.
Another, tacked-on worry pops into my mind unbidden; is this what we’re going to be like twenty years from now? Because as far as I can see, that’s the road we’re headed down. Rare enough that we even get to eat a meal together given the eighteen-hour days he’s been working for as long as I can remember. Rare enough that we get time alone together at all, given that his family still consider this to be their home and just breeze in and out whenever it suits them. Not to mention his work colleagues, who treat our house as a combination of a twenty-four-hour free canteen-cum-low-grade hotel. But to think that we’re wasting this precious opportunity to talk, really talk, with him rattling away at the shagging paper and me restlessly glowering off into space…
Dan looks up and catches my eye again. A tiny sliver of hope; he used to know my mind nearly better than I did myself.; time was when he could read my subconscious as easily as an autocue. Maybe, just maybe, he’s noticed that his wife is slowly drowning right before his eyes and will throw me some kind of lifeline. Maybe, after all my fretting and stressing, he and I are something that can be fixed after all…
‘Annie?’
‘Yes?’
Come on, Dan, come on…meet me halfway here…
‘You won’t forget to pick up that fungicidal cream from the chemist for the cat’s ringworm today, will you?’
I do not befeckinglieve it.
Brilliant. Just brilliant.
When I don’t answer, he tosses the paper aside and for a split second looks at me again; really looks at me this time, his soft, black eyes now full of concern.
‘Everything OK?’
And like the moral coward that I am, I back down.
To be polite, I freeze frame a watery smile onto my face and even allow the grin to reach all the way up to my eyes.
‘Everything’s fine.’
But I’m lying.
Everything is so not fine.
WINTER
Chapter One
OK, two things you need to know about me: firstly, I’m really not the sort of person to mortgage my entire future on a whim. Secondly, if life in The Sticks has taught me anything, it’s this: the lower you keep your expectations, the less likely you are to get let down. And above all, do not, repeat, do not, expect miracles to happen in this neck of the woods. Long and unbelievably boring conversations with Audrey, my mother-in-law, about the correct way to make a poinsettia entirely out of icing for the Christmas cake, yes, but miracles…no, sorry, love. ’Fraid not. Not in this neck of the woods.
So when the phone calls start coming from about eleven-thirty in the morning onwards, you’ll get some idea of how utterly, unbelievably staggered I am by this bolt from a clear blue sky.
I’m up a ladder in the dusty back room of our local book shop, stacking shelves with copies of a hot, new young adult series which we’re hoping will bring in some badly-needed footfall over Christmas. Because considering it’s only a few weeks off, business is worryingly quiet and so far this morning I’ve already had the owner, Agnes Quinn, who’s been around for approximately as long as the Old Testament, explain to me that she’s really very sorry but she just doesn’t think there’ll be a job for me here after the holidays.
Not her fault of course, she was at pains to explain, people just aren’t spending cash in the same way that they used to…more and more people are buying books online now…Amazon are squeezing her out…rents are too high…recession is still having a massive knock-on effect…blah-di-blah…
I know the story only too well and sympathise accordingly. Try not to worry, I say positively, and look on the bright side. Yes, business is slack I gently tell her, but just think, it’ll give you more time to work on your own book. Her round, puffy cheeks flush at this, as they always do whenever she’s reminded about her as-yet-unfinished magnum opus. It’s a cookbook, by the way. Agnes has spent the last three years eating her way through her granny’s recipes with a view to publication.
‘Anyway, I’m sure you won’t miss working here, will you now, Annie, love?’ she twinkles knowingly at me from where she’s standing over by the till, surveying a shop floor so empty it might as well have tumbleweed rolling through it. ‘Because it’ll mean you’ll have far more time to spend up at The Moorings with your in-laws, won’t it?’
I do what I always do: smile, nod and say nothing.
Then she rips open another cardboard box that’s just been delivered and sighs disappointedly, ‘Oh, look at this. More books.’ In much the same manner as someone who’d been expecting petunias.
Anyway, just then I feel my mobile silently vibrating in my pocket. I ignore it and quietly get back to stacking shelves. Audrey, most likely, ringing from my house to whimper down the phone at me, in her frail, reed-thin, whispery, little-girl voice, like she does every day, even though she knows right well that I’m at work and therefore not supposed to take personal calls.
OK, three possible reasons for her ringing: a) she wants to have a go at me, in her best passive-aggressive way for still not having put up the Christmas tree yet; b) she’s having one of her little ‘turns’ and needs me home urgently, even though I’m at work. Not that she doesn’t have a daughter of her own at her permanent beck and call, who’s unemployed and therefore has far more time on her hands than I do. But somehow, it’s always, always me she’ll call, like I’m some kind of nicotine patch for her nerves.
Or worst of all, point c). Whenever Audrey runs out of things to guilt me out about and yet feels the need to use me as a kind of emotional punch bag, she’ll have a right good nose through the house when I’m not there, then pick on me for making some supposed change to The Moorings behind her back. Any minor shifting around of furniture or rearranging of china on the kitchen dresser by the way, all fall under this category and if I even attempt to deny said change, she’ll usually resurrect one of her favourite old gripes. Namely the fact that I had the outright effrontery to strip the flowery wallpaper from our bedroom wall and paint it plain cream instead. Not a word of a lie, when I first brought her upstairs to proudly show off my handiwork in all my newly-married innocence, honest to God, the woman’s intestines nearly exploded. The local GP had to be called, sedatives had to be administered and to this day, I still haven’t heard the last of it.
This, by the way, would be the one, single decorative change that I’ve made since moving into the house; the first and the last. How could I have even thought of doing such an insensitive thing? I’ll never forget Audrey whimpering at me, laid prostrate on our sofa like Elizabeth Barrett Browning having an attack of the vapours and glaring accusingly at me with her pale, fishy eyes. No messing, all the woman was short of was a hoop skirt, a cold compress on her forehead and a jar of smelling salts. Not only had I completely destroyed the look of that whole room, she sniffled…but did I even appreciate that the wallpaper had been there since she first came to The Moorings as a bride?
Ohh…way back in the early eighteenth century, most likely.
The Moorings, I should tell you, is a vast, seven-bedroomed crumbling old mansion house; relentlessly Victorian, with huge, imposing granite walls all around it – exactly the kind of location that film scouts would kill to use on an Agatha Christie-Poirot murder mystery and decorated in a style best described as early Thatcher. Which is a crying shame, because with a bit of TLC and if I was really allowed to get my hands on the place, I know it could actually be stunning. I often compare it to Garbo in a bad dress; you can see the bone structure’s there, if you could only strip away all the crap. All the house’s features are intact and perfect: the coving, the brickwork, the stunning, sixteen-foot high plastered ceilings, but layered in a blanket of someone else’s old-fashioned, long-faded taste. With the result that I permanently feel like I’m a guest in my own home.
From the outside though, it’s so scarily impressive that the very first time Dan took me here, aged fifteen, I remember joking to him that it was half posh mansion, half the kind of place you’d go to get your passport stamped. And he laughed and little did I think it would one day be my home.
Trouble is that ever since Dan’s father died, Audrey, Queen Victoria-like, has pretty much wanted the house to remain exactly as it was when he was alive – a living mausoleum. Right down to his boots in the outside shelter which are still in exactly the same place he’d always left them. And his favourite armchair, that no one is allowed to sit in, ever, just where he liked it to be – in the drawing room, right by the window.
Grief does funny things to people, my Dan, Dan Junior, gently reminded me after the whole wallpaper-gate debacle, so of course I apologised ad nauseam and solemnly vowed not to do anything that might bring on a repeat performance. Nothing to do but bite my tongue and support Audrey for as long as she needed. Let’s both just be patient with her, Dan said to me; together we’ll help get her though this.
Course that was around the same time that he buggered off to start working eighteen-hour days and started communicating with me via Post-it notes stuck on the fridge door, telling me not to bother waiting up for him, that he wouldn’t be home. And of course, Jules was in college at the time and just couldn’t have been arsed doing anything.
Leaving me alone, to handle Audrey all by myself.
You try living inside a memorial with a mother-in-law who still considers it to be her home, a husband who’s never around and who, when he is, barely bothers to speak to you anymore.
Go on, I dare you.
Anyway, back to the book shop, where my mobile keeps on ringing and ringing and still I keep ignoring it, wondering for the thousandth time if Audrey has any conception of basic office etiquette – that you can’t take phone calls when you’re supposed to be working. But then, that’s the kernel of the problem; she doesn’t consider what I do to come under the banner heading of ‘work’. No, in her book, being a vet like Dan is an actual hardcore, proper ‘job’, what I do is just arsing around. Just in case, God forbid, I got any kind of notions about myself.
By lunchtime, business is so slack that poor, worried old Agnes tells me I can finish up early for the day. In fact apart from a lost backpacker sticking his head through the door looking for directions and Mrs Henderson waddling in from across the street, not to buy, but to give out that she can’t pronounce the place names in any of Stieg Larsson’s books, we haven’t had any other footfall the entire morning.
Mrs Henderson, by the way, is something of a crime book aficionado and she drops into the shop pretty much every day to tell us the endings of whichever thriller she’s stuck into at the moment. Well, either that or to describe all the twists and red herrings, and then to tell us exactly how she saw them coming from miles off.
Anyroadup, between one thing and another, it’s just coming up to one o’clock before I even get a chance to check any of the messages on my mobile.
To my astonishment, not a single one of which is from Audrey.
A Dublin number, one that hasn’t flashed up on my phone, since, oooh, like the George Bush administration. One Hilary Williams. Otherwise known as…drum roll for dramatic effect…my agent.
OK, the CliffsNotes on Hilary: firstly, she wasn’t exactly a fan of my decision to move to The Sticks. In fact, she’s a sixty-something, bra-burning, first-generation feminist of the Germaine Greer school and the very idea that I’d sacrifice a budding theatre career to, perish the thought, actually put my marriage first, was almost enough to have her lying down in a darkened room taking tablets and listening to dolphin music.
Secondly, her nickname is Fag Ash Hil, on account of the fact that she smokes upwards of sixty a day and climbing. She’s the only person I know who actually went out and organised protest marches against the smoking ban, and among her clients, it’s an accepted rule that you don’t even think about crossing the threshold of her office without at least two packs tucked under your oxter for her.
Hence she normally sounds deep, throaty and gravelly, a bit like a man in fact, but…not today. Four messages, in a voice designed to wrest people from dreams and all rising in hysteria till by the last one she sounds like she’s left Earth’s gravity field and is now orbiting somewhere around Pluto.
‘Oh for GOD’S SAKE, ANNIE, why are you not returning any of my calls?! Can you please stop please stop role-playing Mrs James Herriot from All Creatures Great and Small and kindly get back to me? Like…NOW?’
This is delivered, by the way, like an edict from the Vatican. I listen to what she has to say, call her back toot suite…then hop straight into my car.
And faster than a bullet, I’m on the long, long road to Dublin.
Sticking to the speed limit, it generally takes the guts of three hours to get from The Sticks to Dublin and believe me the drive is not for the faint-hearted. It’s motorway for a lot of it, but you still have to navigate a good fifty plus miles before that on narrow, twisting, secondary roads that would nearly put the heart crossways in you. Anyway, anyway, anyway, fuelled by nothing more than adrenaline, I manage to a) drive at breakneck speed, b) not get caught by the cops and c) even beat my own personal record of getting to the city in under two-and-a-half hours flat, with my foot to the floor and my heart walloping the entire way.
I finally arrive in Dublin late in the wintry afternoon, avoiding the worst of the rush-hour traffic and miraculously managing to find a space in a handy twenty-four hour car park, right in the middle of town and conveniently close to Hilary’s office. In my sticky, sweat-soaked, heart palpitation-y state I amaze myself by even remembering to pick up a few obligatory packets of Marlboro Lights for her.
‘Annie, get your arse in here and sit down!’ is her greeting, which might sound a bit harsh, but coming from Hil, can actually be taken as a term of endearment. I obediently do as I’m told and head inside, dutifully handing over the cigarettes as we air kiss.
It’s been over three years since I set foot in this office and at least a year since we last spoke, so it’s comforting to see, in spite of my being out of circulation for so long, that precious little has changed round here. Hil still has the same grey spiky hair, the same grey trouser suits, same matching grey skin tone. Same sharp tongue, same short fuse. Oh and she still chain smokes like it’s food.
And another thing, with her there’s never small-talk of any description. Never a hello-how-are-you-how’s-your-life-been. Hil, you see, favours the Ryanair approach to her work: no frills, no extras. Time is money so it’s always straight down to business. She plonks down behind her desk, dumps a thick-looking script down in front of me, then leans forward so she can scrutinise me, up close and personal.
‘Good, good,’ she nods, taking in my appearance as thoroughly as a consultant plastic surgeon while lighting up at the same time.
‘Ehh…sorry, Hilary,…what’s good?’
‘You still look the same way you do in your CV headshot. Living the life of a countrified recluse hasn’t altered your appearance that much. Which at least is something.’
All I can gather from that comment is that she half-expected me to clamber into her office dressed in mud-soaked wellies with straw in my hair, brandishing a pitchfork and looking exactly like Felicity Kendal from The Good Life. And while ordinarily that mightn’t be too far off the truth (The Sticks isn’t exactly Paris during fashion week), at least, thank God, today I’m out of my normal jeans and woolly jumper and am in my best shop assistant gear: a warm woolly coat, a wraparound dress and a half-decent, non-mud-stained pair of boots.
‘No,’ she growls, still scrutinising me. ‘You still look like the same old Annie Cole. Which is good news. Which is exactly what we want.’
She’s got black and white pictures of all her clients dotted round the office walls and through the haze of smoke I manage to make my own photo out. Taken over four years ago, but apart from a few more wrinkles and a few extra pounds…no, I’m not really all that much different. Same dark skin, same long, dark, centre-parted, wiry hair that needs enough hairspray to put a dent in the ozone layer just to get it to lie down flat…same everything.
Funny, but looking at my own photo always reminds me of how alike Dan and I are, even the way we look. We both have the identical eye colour: deep brown, which turns straight to coal black when either of us are worn out or exhausted. We could almost pass for brother and sister. Or as Jules puts it a bit more cruelly, I look like him dressed in drag.
Ouch.
‘OK, down to business,’ says Hilary, sitting forward and balancing her fag on the edge of an ashtray. ‘You’re familiar with Jack Gordon’s work, no doubt?’
‘THE Jack Gordon? Are you kidding me? Yes, yeah, of course I am, he’s completely amazing,’ I blurt out, wondering where this could possibly be headed.
Jack Gordon, by the way, would be one of the youngest and hottest theatre directors in town; so unbelievably successful that you’d almost think the legal firm of Beelzebub and Faustus had a contract on file with his name scrawled on it in suspicious looking red ink. I’m not joking, actors nearly impale themselves just to get a chance to audition for him, never mind work for him. But then Jack’s reputation goes before him and boy, does he have the Olivier awards hanging out of him to prove it. His productions are always cutting edge, razor sharp and invariably the talk of the chattering classes. In fact, probably the only thing that’s slowed down the guy’s progress over the years is the deep drift of bouquets and laurels that he’s had to wade through.
The theatre world’s Alexander McQueen, in short.
‘Then have a read of this,’ says Hilary, tossing a bound script over to me.
I look at the title of the play, Wedding Belles. By a new playwright whose name I’m not familiar with.
‘It’s a comedy-drama and a smash hit to boot,’ Hilary goes on. ‘Set in a health spa where a group of women of different ages and all from the same family go for a hen weekend, because the protagonist is getting married. It opened at the National back in October, during the theatre festival and is still packing them in.’
Now a distant bell begins to ring.
‘Yeah, that’s right…I remember reading some of the reviews when it first opened,’ I tell her, excitedly grabbing hold of the script and flicking through it.
Fag Ash Hil just raises a Vulcan eyebrow at me, like she’s shocked that we actually do get paper deliveries down in The Sticks and don’t just communicate with the outside world via carrier pigeon. But I don’t care, because by now I’m on the edge of my seat with anticipation, wondering what all of this can possibly have to do with me and with my little life. The show is already up and running so it’s not like I can go and audition for it, now is it? Aren’t I already a few months too late for that?
‘The curtain goes up at seven-thirty sharp tonight. I’ve already managed to wangle a house seat for you, and I need you there,’ says Hilary, pulling so deeply on her fag that it’s like the breath comes from her toes. ‘Then you’ll go back to bog-trotter land…’
For the sake of diplomacy, I let that one pass. Mainly because I know only too well that as far as Hilary is concerned, if you’re based anywhere further than a thirty-mile radius from Harvey Nichols, chances are you live in a mud hut and spend your spare time either milking cattle or else throwing stones at the neighbours. When you’re not worrying about the new taxes on cider, that is.
On she goes: ‘…where you’ll spend the rest of the night studying that script like your life depended on it. Then tomorrow afternoon…’
‘But, Hilary, I don’t understand…none of this makes any sense…I mean, the show is already cast and in production…’
‘If you’d let me finish, I was about to explain that the leading actress has literally just given notice to the producers that she’s pregnant and will have to drop out of the show very soon. In a matter of weeks, as it happens. It seems that she’s almost four months gone and unfortunately for her, the pregnancy can’t be disguised any more. Plus, as you’ll see when you read the script, her role is quite a physical one, so she’s been advised by her doctors to drop out of the show as soon as possible. For the health and safety of the child, naturally.’
‘Pregnant?’ I repeat stupidly.
‘Which is where you come in. Jack Gordon remembered seeing you in a production of Twelfth Night years ago. Of course that would have been before you decided to take early retirement and disappear off into the professional wilderness…’
Again, I bite my tongue and let that pass; I’m waaaaay too keyed up right now to bother defending my life.
‘…And he thinks that you might possibly be right to take over the role…’
‘He WHAT? He actually said that?’ I almost yell, stunned that the mighty Jack Gordon even remembered me in the first place.
‘So maybe if you’d shut up for two seconds together, I could get to tell you the really good news. Jack is only seeing three actresses this week to audition them for the part. And you, my dear, are one of the lucky three.’
For the first time since I arrived here, I’m completely shell-shocked into silence.
