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‘Whatever, darling; Daddy, we need to go.’
And in a flurry of clicking heels and ciaos, they were gone leaving Annie in a fog of exotic scent and anger.
Why couldn’t she tell them no?
The whisper of her mother’s voice was in her ear: ‘Promise me, Annie. Promise to look after them.’
Annie stood in the hall, her chest heaving with all the unsaid words she wanted to shout. Her throat choked by familial feelings.
This had to stop. She needed to make a stand.
***
‘What the hell?’ Annie poured the rest of the white wine from the bottle into her glass.
Taking a stand meant Annie needed to figure out the family finances. Ever since Mum died, she had been the one who managed everything. At first because Marie was too young, Immy had stuck her face in a pile of drugs and Dad, well he’d just let her.
Which was why Annie was sitting downstairs in the kitchen. She shifted as her bum was going numb on a rickety kitchen chair and her laptop wobbled slightly on the uneven surface of the table.
She took a massive gulp of wine and rubbed her eyes.
There should have been enough in the family’s account for the next mortgage payment. Everyone’s salary went in, the big bills were paid, and then everyone got an allowance in their own account. Annie had come up with the system and with a few tweaks it worked.
But now she was sitting looking at the statement on the bank’s website and it had a very different figure than it should have, a much lower amount than the one her spreadsheet said should be there.
Hadn’t she taken Immy and Dad’s cards away that linked to this account? They weren’t allowed access ever since she found Dad had left the card behind the bar at a pub and charged the whole of a wrap party’s tab to it.
Annie downed the rest of the glass, her lips pulling back as the acidity hit her tongue. She squinted at the website. Slowly she scrolled through the past month’s transactions. Her salary had gone in last Monday and almost immediately it had nearly all gone.
What the …
And there was the culprit: three thousand five hundred and twenty-one pounds ninety-nine spent at … She looked a little closer.
She was going to kill them. Absolutely annihilate them. They had spent what little financial cushion they had at a place called The Kybella Klinic. With shaking hands she typed it into the search engine.
A series of injections to get rid of fat, especially under the chin, she read.
And the worrying thing: she wasn’t sure whether it was Immy or her dad who had wasted the money because neither of them looked any different.
Annie downed the remainder of the wine.
She couldn’t do it anymore. That was her salary. She would get them standing on their own two feet and free of her or die trying.
Annie got up from the table and headed towards the fridge where she knew there was another bottle of wine.
And if she was going to die then it didn’t matter how much wine she drank in the interim, did it?
***
‘You need to rent out the house, tell them to pull their socks up and act like grown-ups. Let you get on with your life.’
The whole restaurant went quiet and Annie could see everyone’s head swivel to watch them. She wanted to crawl under the table in the Italian restaurant. She wondered how her godmother would take being asked to keep her voice down.
Not well.
Crisp and RADA trained, Lily Russell’s voice had filled the Old Vic and had projected to the back of the Olivier. It easily reverberated around the small room that made up the exclusive restaurant. She was a national treasure. Dame Lily Russell, grande dame of English theatre. More importantly she had been Annie’s mother’s best friend at drama school and beyond. She didn’t do quiet.
But she definitely did managing.
‘I know, Auntie Lil.’ Annie sighed. ‘Renting out is the only way we can get out of this mess. But I don’t know how to bring it up. Dad will have a fit, Immy will go into queen bee mode, and Marie, who doesn’t even live there, will get all sentimental about how I’m taking her childhood home from her.’ She smoothed the tablecloth as she said it, looking down so she didn’t see the faces of the other diners she knew were still staring at them.
Annie knew this because she tried to bring up the idea for renting out the house about once a year. She shuddered. And there was that one time she’d suggested selling …
The house was a millstone around their necks – or rather her neck. She should be rejoicing about the new job but she was stuck.
And now with the mortgage in danger of being defaulted on she needed to do something. She couldn’t bury her head in the sand.
That is why she’d called up Auntie Lil. Reinforcements. Or an old-fashioned kick up the backside.
‘You let them bully you,’ Lily said. ‘You have to be firm and stick to your guns. Your mother, God rest her soul, babied them all. Ruined them.’
Annie raised her eyes to stare at the picture of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, which was on the wall behind Lily. Bullied? Well, Annie couldn’t deny it. But they needed her, didn’t they? She was looking after them. Just like she promised.
‘Annie, darling.’ Auntie Lil leaned forward as if she were saying something she didn’t want overheard. Her voice came down a few decibels but could still be heard in the kitchen. ‘While you are looking after the whole family, you can’t move on.’
Annie could feel her eyes fill.
Crap.
‘Now, I know that you aren’t getting any younger. I mean, I was talking to my private doctor the other day and he said that no matter how you young people put things off, your eggs are ageing.’
Let the floor open up and swallow her. How had they gone from family finances to her fertility?
‘How will you settle down and start a family when you are too busy babying William and Imogen?’
Start a family?
What?
Annie felt she had taken a sharp turn into a different conversation.
‘I know you wanted to settle down with that callow actor fellow. That was wrong for you then. Penniless actors are ten a penny. Now … well, you can’t be fussy. And you’ll have to be the breadwinner. Maybe you’ll meet a nice chap on set?’
Annie’s heart clenched.
She had tried to forget the one disastrous meeting between Aunt Lil and Austen. No one had come out of it unscathed.
‘But …’ Annie tried to interrupt. She wasn’t looking to meet anyone and start pushing out babies. She wanted her independence. Her job.
‘Now, no interrupting me – it is for the best. I’ve arranged for Clay Shepherd from Shepherd and Kellynch to come by the house tomorrow at ten to view it. You have to take your father by surprise. It is the only way.’
And also take Annie by surprise as well.
She knew Auntie Lil meant well even if she was taking over. It was nice not to have to always be the grown-up and have someone look after her instead.
Thank goodness for Auntie Lil. Annie wasn’t sure they would’ve survived this long without her.
Although that wasn’t what her dad thought. Lily thoroughly disapproved of him and had told him so in no uncertain terms on numerous occasions. Dad hated her – not that he would ever let that be known. William Elliot couldn’t be seen to be at outs with one of the national treasures of British theatre.
Annie shouldn’t be amused with the way Lily exploited it ruthlessly but how could she not? The acidic exchanges they had about ‘what Molly would’ve wanted’ happened as regularly as clockwork and sometimes were the only way Annie could get Dad to budge.
‘It will be a month or two before we will be off on location, yes? And then when the production is done we’ll have to hope we can find them more work.’
The ‘we’ in Auntie Lil’s speech was something she was trying hard not to think about too hard. Les, in a casting coup, had cast Lily as Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Annie was trying not to think about the one-upmanship that would happen between Lil and Dad on location. Luckily they were both too sensible to brawl in public. Or too vain.
And then when the production is done we’ll have to hope we can find them some more work.
Annie wasn’t sure why everyone seemed to think she was also acting as an agent to the pair of them. They both had professionals who took a percentage of their salaries to find them work. Admittedly most of the work Dad and Immy had over the last few years was through her but there were only so many favours she could call in before people started avoiding her. Immy and Dad weren’t always the best employees. In fact they were poster children for complete horrors.
‘Yes, Aunt Lil,’ she agreed, saving her energy for an argument she could win.
‘Now, I can’t keep chatting all day. I’ve a meeting with that darling Ken Branagh. He always has the best gossip.’
Lily waved for the bill, and the waiter popped up as if from a secret trapdoor in the floor. No one kept Dame Lily Russell waiting.
With a flurry of pound notes and air kisses from the staff they were ushered through the restaurant so that all the patrons could see who had been bellowing out their troubles. When they were outside, Lily pulled Annie into a hug, and then rushed off into a taxi that miraculously appeared. Annie was left ruffled on the pavement with a slick of red lipstick smeared on her cheek. Dealing with Aunt Lil was like being in a film, where everything had been choreographed to ensure that Dame Lily Russell was the star.
It was then that Annie realized nothing had actually changed. She was still going to have to be the one to tell her family they were renting out the house.
***
‘Annie,’ Cassie said as they sat in their local, The Hill Gate, a week later waiting for their friends, Julie and Anna, fellow accountants. ‘Why haven’t you replied to Les’s invite for the pre-production party? I’m being chased by his PA for the fifth time.’
Annie screwed her eyes closed. She wondered if she could get away with sticking her fingers in her ears and singing la la la la.
‘Don’t close your eyes on me,’ Cassie said.
‘I thought we weren’t talking work?’ Annie opened her eyes and reached for her glass.
Cassie glared at her.
Decisions about the party weren’t the only thing she’d been avoiding. It was what she had been doing about the house-renting business too. She could have it on the market tomorrow and tenants by the end of the week. Financial issues gone. Freedom guaranteed.
The problem there, she thought, was telling Dad and Immy.
Why was life so complicated? Why couldn’t she make it all behave like numbers on a work spreadsheet? She took a sip of wine and looked round the pub. Where the hell were Julie and Anna? Surely they should be here by now?
Cassie kicked her under the table.
Annie rolled her eyes. Of course, she hadn’t replied to the invite because then she would actively be putting herself in front of Austen Wentworth.
And eight years ago, Annie had sworn she would never do that again.
Mind you, all she was doing was putting off the inevitable; she was going to have to see him throughout the whole production.
But maybe it would be okay. A treacherous tendril of a thought escaped out of the box she had hidden all her Austen-related feelings in. Maybe he would take one look at her and eight years would fall away. He’d look at her again with his famous green eyes, ones she knew turned from emerald to grey to brown depending on the light, and his mouth would twitch up at the edges. As if he was trying not to laugh.
‘Anne-ticipation, Anne-tediluvian, Annie-matronic.’ He’d have his arms round her waist and he’d swing her from side to side, coming up with more and more inventive additions to her name.
Austen had always said that she needed a bigger name than Anne or even Annie. That only one or two syllables didn’t seem enough to him. He’d started going through the dictionary adding endings to her name. She’d never felt as if she took up space until Austen. He saw her and in his seeing her she grew bigger in the world.
With him she expanded. She felt as if she didn’t have marshmallow for a spine but that she could conquer the world. That she mattered.
Until she didn’t.
She put her glass down and clamped her hands over her ears. Anything to try and stop the chorus of names that he had called her, the way they had of tying her heart in knots again.
This is why she couldn’t go to the party.
What if he just called her Annie?
‘Annie, putting your hands over your ears to block me out isn’t going to help.’ Annie opened her eyes to find Cassie frowning at her.
‘If you’re going to do it then at least use sound-cancelling headphones and we can both keep our illusions. Also we are in a pub…’
‘Sorry,’ Annie said.
How could she explain it to Cassie? She had never told her about Austen. But maybe she could? Not all of it, of course. She didn’t need to see the disbelieving look from Cassie. She liked Cassie.
‘Look. I …’ Just say it, Annie, she thought. Rip off that scab. ‘I kind of knew Austen Wentworth back in the day and, well, we didn’t part on the best terms.’ She rushed it out.
Best of terms? That was putting it politely. Although there had been no screaming – only excruciating silences punctuated by pleading and a slamming door and her heart walking away on the coat tails of another.
‘You never said, you sly dog.’ Cassie smiled. ‘Look, you don’t have to tell me but we’ve all made arses of ourselves over pretty boy actors. A bit of drink and a declaration of love can happen to anyone. You have to get over it. Ten to one, he won’t remember. And if he does I’m sure he’ll be flattered.’
And there it was in a nutshell, Annie thought. No one would ever believe that it was Austen who had said ‘I love you’ first.
‘Yeah,’ Annie sighed, her whole body slumping in the chair like a deflated balloon. ‘Just a little leftover psyche scarring,’ she lied so she could forego the disbelieving look.
‘Well get over it. You are going to the party,’ Cassie said. ‘This is the chance for you to be Anne Elliot, producer. Isn’t this what you wanted? A place in the business for you. Where you get introduced as yourself and not William Elliot’s daughter or Imogen or Marie’s sister? And wear something nice – not the usual “blend into the background” stuff you wear around the family. I’ve seen you dressed up for nights out. You scrub up well, when you want.
‘You need to do this for yourself as much as for the agency. You know that don’t you?’
Cassie looked at her with concern, her curls rioting over her head like a halo.
Of course she knew that. In theory Annie knew exactly what she had to do. And if Cassie could guarantee neither her family nor Austen would be there then she could be the biggest social schmoozer in the history of schmoozing.
‘And you replace that embarrassing memory of Austen with a completely professional one.’ Cassie winked as she waved Julie and Anna over from where they were hovering by the door waiting.
