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Yes, there.
The taste exploded on her tongue, released saliva and with it a feeling of warmth. A hug. She remembered the way her mother and she had hidden down here, dipping crisps and giggling over the silliness of Immy and Daddy and Marie. How her mum had held her and told her that Daddy didn’t mean it when he called her ‘Podge’ or poked her in the tummy telling her to suck it in. And he was just busy with work when he forgot to call her on her birthday.
Why was she hiding down here, yet again?
She was a successful production accountant in her own right. Hired to wrestle spreadsheets into submission and ensure the cast and crew of TV shows and movies got paid. She was bloody good at it even if she’d fallen into it hoping that by being in the same industry as her family that might make them closer. What did it matter if she didn’t have some sort of vocation for it? It had led her to her dream job, producer, and she was so close to it happening. Not everyone was born knowing what they wanted to be when they grew up. Sometimes you found it by falling over it.
Hell, Annie could stand up to belligerent directors and producers and win. But what was it about her family that made her squish down into a completely spineless marshmallow? They made her feel as if she was ten again. Or maybe six.
‘Annie! Annie! Where the bloody hell are you?’ The voice came echoing down the stairs followed by the clatter of stilettoes on wooden stairs.
Crap. Immy was having one of her ‘moments’. In anyone else they’d be called a temper tantrum.
Annie dug another crisp into the tub of hummus, trying to hold on to the comfort, but it had disappeared.
The door banged open taking another chunk out of the plaster on the wall.
Damn. Annie tried to swallow the crisp quickly and ended up choking.
Gasping for breath as she coughed, she saw her sister staring at her in disgust through the tears in her eyes.
Not even an offer of the Heimlich manoeuvre, she thought as her vision started to blacken around the edges.
‘Really, Annie, there is no need to be so dramatic,’ Immy said.
Annie managed to dislodge the crumb and staggered to the sink. She stuck her head straight under the tap. The water flowed over her face and her neck but enough got down her throat to soothe the rawness.
‘When you have quite finished …’ Immy even stomped her foot. Annie noticed that she had new shoes again. That was probably next month’s electricity bill, the spiked heels making more marks on the wood floors.
‘What is it?’ she croaked.
‘Why didn’t you tell me that Sam Mendes was casting for his new imagining of Romeo and Juliet? You know I’d make a perfect Juliet. When I played her at the National the papers said my performance was sublime.’
‘Immy, that was over ten years ago. You do remember that Juliet is supposed to be a teenager? Anyway Sam was looking for an unknown actress.’ Annie left off the age range bit. At thirty-three, Imogen was ten years over the upper range.
‘Don’t you think I can act like a teenager?’ Immy demanded.
Annie would have sniggered if her throat weren’t so scratched. She did in her head; she had enough self-preservation not to point out that her sister always acted like a teenager.
‘Look, Immy,’ she said forcing her voice into the cajoling tone that she hoped would work. This was the problem with working in the same industry. Immy and her dad expected her to be their eyes and ears. And Cassie, her boss, was working with Sam. ‘I hear he was thinking of going all low class on the casting. Soap actors.’ She nodded and rolled her eyes to pretend to Immy that this was a fate worse than death. Which in the Elliot family it was.
‘I even heard that Will Elliot was being considered as Romeo. I mean if Sam is thinking of casting him … Well it isn’t really something you want to be involved in. Can you imagine?’
Annie didn’t have any particular issue with their cousin, Will, who had made a name for himself on EastEnders. And of course, there were those unfortunate stories in the tabloids about that affair he’d had with a married co-star.
In fact, she’d only met him once when they were kids, which she didn’t remember, but the mere mention of his name made her dad start foaming at the mouth. She was sure it was the EastEnders connection that annoyed him more than the affair – the Elliot name connected to such mundane TV. In the Elliot world, soap actors might as well be reality TV stars. Annie had always felt an affinity to Will. As soon as it became clear to Dad that she had no interest in acting she had ceased to be of interest.
‘Well, hmm.’ Imogen’s face screwed up as much as it was able against the chemicals that she injected into it every six months.
‘I’ll let you off this time, but really, Annie, you know it should always be family first.’ And on that line she swept out of the kitchen.
Annie leant back against the sink and wiped her mouth.
Family first? Ha. But on that list she knew she came last.
Sighing she folded over the top of the crisp packet and secured it with a clip. The TV flung bright images of Marie, who was smirking at her. She needed to grow a backbone where her family was concerned.
‘They need to be grounded; they need to feel taken care of. That is our job.’ She could hear her mother’s voice as if she were standing right next to her. There had been a low huskiness to it. It was the voice that had kept them all fed and clothed through the years. She had been the narrator of a thousand TV commercials and the true caretaker of their family. Her beautiful talented mother who took jobs because the family needed the money while her husband wouldn’t deign to sully his reputation. And he’d let her. And now it was Annie’s turn.
Annie who tried to fill the gaping hole left but didn’t quite manage: sister, daughter, and caretaker. Her mum’s stand-in, but she didn’t fill the gap quite well enough no matter how she squished or pulled herself.
Annie wasn’t sure she wanted to do it any more but what was she without it? Maybe eight years ago there had been an alternative but now … She shook her head. Annie wouldn’t think about it. She’d lost her chance and now she had to get on with the choices she’d made. Maybe she could at least start looking at moving out. If she could put some distance between them maybe things would get better.
Suddenly the taste in her mouth was too cloying, less like a hug and more like a vice.
She put the lid back on the hummus tub, only just remembering to put the tub in the fridge and the crisps in the cupboard as opposed to the other way round. She turned off the TV and felt guilty for the sense of relief from wiping Marie’s face out with the press of a button.
Annie wondered if she could get a remote that did that in real life.
That was harsh. She felt a shiver of guilt at the thought but then a bigger swoop hit her stomach when she had to admit it was true.
Slamming the front door of the house a few minutes later, she clattered down the steps, noticing the replacement tiles she’d ordered when she’d realized some cracks were showing. She looked back. The house was shone and the brass was sparkling on the door. It was always camera ready in case Immy was papped leaving it.
The house overlooked a part of Clapham Common that, when her parents had bought it, had been down at heel. A house with four floors and a back garden had been a steal. Clapham had pulled itself up by its bootstraps in the past thirty years. Now their house, which had always looked a bit too polished and slick for its neighbours, almost fitted in.
But Annie knew that the other houses had interior-designed kitchens, fittings that would cost her a year’s salary. Whilst their house was a façade, with everything inside stagnated and crumbling. She was glad Mum couldn’t see it.
‘Sorry,’ she whispered as she pulled her jacket round her, trying for protection from the chill February wind, and rushed up the street to Clapham Common station. But she wasn’t sure who she was apologizing to or what for.
Chapter Two (#ulink_59b59a4a-eabd-59f0-869c-8e03e0f54265)
Annie breathed out and felt the tension leach from her body as soon as she clattered down the steps and through the front door of work. The Northanger Agency office was in the basement of a terraced house on a road parallel to Notting Hill Gate. Three rooms, a toilet, and a small kitchen, and not another Elliot in sight, bliss.
She shrugged off her jacket and hung it on the rickety hat stand that leaned lopsided just inside the door.
‘Crap,’ she said as it fell into the wall and took another small flake of paint off the wall. She rubbed it as if that would make a difference, instead merely managing to spread the red plaster underneath.
‘Are you taking chunks out of the office? You know the boss will take that out of your wages?’ Annie smiled when she heard the dry voice coming from one of the offices.
‘She’s such a slave driver,’ Annie replied as she walked through to the kitchen and flipped the switch on the kettle. She turned and leant against the counter, smiling at her boss who was now leaning against the doorjamb. The only reason Annie had a boss was Annie had enough responsibility without adding in running their tiny two-person agency. And Annie didn’t trust her family not to get their fingers into the firm’s finances.
‘I know. I mean if she didn’t chain you to the desk you’d never do any work.’ Cassie grinned. Cassie Steventon was all of five foot and with her mass of curls, dimples, and curvy figure most people dismissed her as a pretty doll. Which she was, if the doll had a spine of steel, a mind that ran rings round everyone else’s, and the ability to deal with the financial running of a production with the ferocity of a honey badger. So, yes, a really scary doll.
‘Speaking of which, isn’t today your day off?’ Cassie came and perched on the counter next to the kettle.
Annie cringed inside. How sad was her life that she had only one place to escape to when home got too bad? There was only work and home and if she had to choose, she chose work.
‘You know … I wanted to make sure everything was in order for that meeting you have with Sam about Romeo and Juliet.’
‘Annie, you had that all tied up yesterday. And we both know that Sam will be like putty in my hands.’ She fluttered her eyelashes as she said it. ‘Are you hiding out here again? It isn’t like I don’t enjoy having you round the place but really how can you be the kick-ass person at work who doesn’t take any nonsense and then at home …’
Annie quickly interrupted her.
‘I know, Cassie. I promise to get a life. Soon. It’s just …’ How could she explain that it was as if as soon as she came into contact with her family her backbone dissolved to mush? It was like that acid that even with a brief contact could burrow into your skin and then start leaching the calcium from your bones. No amount of washing would take it off. Maybe she should be wearing a HAZMAT suit when she was with her family?
‘Okay, I’ll leave you be. But one day they truly will drive you mad,’ Cassie said as she made a twirling motion with her finger against her temple. ‘Anyway enough of this, I have news. Big news. I thought I was going to have to keep it to myself till tomorrow but now you’re here …’
Annie relaxed. She was off the hook with the nagging for a little while. ‘Spill,’ she said.
‘Maybe we need cake for this particular piece of news?’ Cassie said.
‘Just tell me.’
‘No, I really think I should get us some of those cupcakes from the bakery across the way.’
‘If you don’t tell me, Cassandra Steventon, I will personally squash every cupcake within a mile radius with my fist. You know how I feel about them, evil foreign interlopers that have endangered our native fairy cake. It would be a pleasure … and stop distracting me. Tell me!’
‘I don’t know why I employ someone with such heathen taste in baked goods,’ Cassie said.
‘Number one, you “employ” me because I’m the best. Two, I’m the one who is pushing ahead with expanding into production. Oh, and three, I own part of this company too.’ Annie counted off the reasons and summoned up her best withering look. It was one she’d learned from Imogen and her dad. She knew it was a mere shadow of theirs but it worked a treat on non-Elliot people.
‘Okay okay, I’ll tell you,’ Cassie said. She put her hands up in surrender. Then she dropped them to her thighs and leant forward on the counter.
‘I’ve had it from Les Dalrymple’s assistant that he’s got the funding for his TV adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. It is going to have a quick pre-production and then they’ll be filming it on location …’ Cassie leaned even closer. ‘It turns out he got the money from one of the big US networks because he bagged a brilliant Mr Darcy.’
Annie could feel herself lean forward. Cassie was weaving her magic again. Her heart accelerated as she realized that if they hadn’t cast the rest of the production she knew exactly who she would put forward. This was it. This was what she could use to shoehorn her father and sister into gainful employment and put some much-needed cash in the family coffers. And then she could have the peace of mind to go and get a place of her own.
‘Fantastic. Please tell me they still haven’t cast Mr Bennet and Caroline Bingley.’ She crossed her fingers. She could almost see the rental listings she would be looking at.
‘I’m sure we can pull a few strings,’ Cassie said with a wink. Annie wanted to pay her the fifteen per cent that an agent would take. Cassie waved her hands as if it were taken as read. ‘Now shut up and let me tell you who the big star is.’
Annie mimed locking her mouth.
It was going to be Benedict Cumberbatch, she thought. He hadn’t done much Jane Austen yet.
Annie was wondering what the Cumberbitches would make of their hero in breeches when cutting through her thoughts she heard: ‘Can you imagine it, Austen Wentworth in breeches?’ Cassie’s words echoed in her head.
What?
It reverberated round and set neurones firing.
Suddenly her mind was producing images of exactly what Austen Wentworth, voted People magazine’s sexiest man, looked like in breeches. She knew. She’d seen it. Truth be told she also knew what he looked like out of breeches.
She shook her head to dislodge the pictures of her past.
‘You what?’
She felt a burn on her shoulder blade, where ghostly tattoo needles made themselves felt, seven years after she had been inked. The tattoo that she always kept hidden, that no one knew about. Then Annie could feel a shaking start in her hands and gradually move up her arms to join the burn. As if she was having an attack of the chills. She clenched her teeth to stop them chattering.
‘Yes, Austen “phwoar” Wentworth. I mean he is the hottest property around. And when I say hot, I mean it in all possible ways.’ Cassie waggled her eyebrows as if Annie needed it underlined.
Suddenly Annie thought the sugar from a cake would come in very handy. Even if it was a cupcake.
‘Just think – weeks of being on set with Austen Wentworth. I think Les Dalrymple will need our services, yes?’
‘Well I don’t know. As long as Dad and Immy get parts, I’ll be happy.’
‘Yeah, right, we’ll sort them out otherwise. Now think about yourself. This is perfect for you. This is what you’ve dreamt about since I met you. Production. All that solving problems and getting things moving: your forte. Such great exposure for you working with the best in the business. You’ll get seen by some serious TV producers. Eric Cowell is the lead. Hollywood, baby. This is where you swoop in and move into production like we planned.’
Cassie punched the air.
Eric Cowell. If Annie’s body hadn’t already been dealing with the Wentworth bombshell, she would be tingling with excitement instead of going into shock.
Yeah, suddenly Hollywood was looking good. It was a place that she had actively avoided, turning down work so she didn’t have to go. Great for her sanity, not so great for her career.
But now, for the first time in eight years, it would be Austen-free. Even sitting in the kitchen in the office she could feel the UK shrinking round her just with the thought that he was in the same country. A few miles between them instead of thousands and the likelihood that she could turn any corner and he’d be there had exponentially increased.
Annie wasn’t stupid. She knew that he had been back in the UK sometime in the past eight years. But she wouldn’t have known when that was; she had been oblivious.
‘So what do you reckon?’ Cassie was looking at her expectantly.
A shudder went through her.
What did she reckon?
She reckoned it was the worst thing that had ever happened.
She reckoned that it would be hell on earth.
She reckoned that if she didn’t get her dad and sister parts she might be flayed.
‘It’ll be interesting,’ she croaked in understatement.
The kettle clicked off and Annie turned away, reaching to grab a mug, her hand shaking.
‘Tea?’ She was surprised her voice came out so steady.
‘Sure,’ said Cassie. ‘And cupcakes later, yeah?’
‘Yeah,’ Annie said not capable of restarting the cupcake debate. Even the mention of his name had her almost giving in.
Was getting Immy and Dad jobs worth pulling the scab off her wounds? Maybe she could pull in other favours to find other jobs for Immy and Dad? Some other high-profile production, which also had literary merit, and was far far away? If only someone would do a production of King Lear in Iceland. Then she would have a viable alternative.
Of course, it would be cold and there was always the worry of volcanic eruptions. These weren’t things that bothered her. It sounded like a regular week at home.
There had to be another way, but how did you turn down Pride and Prejudice?
Slopping tea over the side of her mug, Annie tottered into her small office across from Cassie’s. She collapsed at her desk and acting on automatic she turned on her laptop.
