The Austen Playbook

by Lucy Parker

  “Don’t mind us.” Charlie strolled around the dangerous vibes surrounding his brother. It was like watching a visitor to the Underworld just swan airily past Hades. “I’m just showing Freddy the library.”

  “I’m working.” With an emphatic movement, Griff closed the file he was holding, as if she was likely to peer over his shoulder and have a good nose into his personal affairs. “As, I believed, was everyone else. Isn’t that the reason a former soap opera sociopath is poking around the rose bushes?”

  “Which soap opera sociopath?” Charlie peered out the window. Over his shoulder, he said, “The big cheese has put everyone on hold until tomorrow morning. And stop glowering at Freddy. She’s just emerged gracefully from a run-in with a Tasmanian devil.”

  “A Tasmanian devil?”

  “The red-lipsticked, stiletto-heeled variety.”

  Griff put his file down, apparently giving up on any prospect of working in peace while his brother was in the room. “Sadie Foster?”

  “It’s bleak if people can instantly name you based on that description.” Freddy bent to examine a shelf of Austen novels. She doubted they were first editions. There’d be no reason to live in a house that was beautiful but a bit...crumbly if you had a library full of books that could fund a whole restoration. Of course, if she owned even one first-edition Austen, it would have to be pried from her frozen, comatose hands before she’d let it go, but she didn’t see Griff as the type to go sentimental over material possessions. She sneaked a sideways peek at his forbidding profile. Or sentimental over anything. “I see you’ve got the source material on hand.” She curled her fingers to prevent herself stroking the weathered spine of Persuasion.

  She’d spoken lightly, but Griff set down the book he’d picked up from the desk and looked at her sharply. “Source material?”

  “The Austens.” She gestured. “The play? The Austen Playbook? The reason fictional murderers are fondling your petals?”

  Griff changed his stance, effectively dismissing her from his attention. “Help yourself. The books are there for reading.”

  Charlie stopped spying on whatever was happening on the lawn and came to stand by the desk, prodding an incurious finger at a stack of old photographs, to his sibling’s obvious irritation. “He thought you were talking about this lot. The intel on Henrietta and co.”

  Amazingly, he didn’t instantly shrivel like a raisin when his brother turned his head.

  “Oh. Right.” Freddy stood and smoothed her skirt, her gaze on the hostile inhabitant of the room as she addressed the forthcoming one. “You mentioned Henrietta. And Wythburn Group first editions? Or was that just for Sadie’s benefit?”

  “I try to retain a grain of truth in my embellishments. It’s more convincing.” Charlie picked up one of the black-and-white snapshots. “It’s for this big film Griff’s working on about your grandmother and The Velvet Room, and that whole nutjob crowd she used to hang with. Including our grandfather, so don’t worry, it’s not just your relations under the microscope.”

  “A film?” Freddy took the photograph Charlie held out to her and looked at the beautiful lines and angles of her grandmother’s face. Henrietta was smouldering up at a man who had stern eyes and a faint smile, and was clearly Sir George Ford. Looks-wise, he was a Charlie replica. As was the man in a newer portrait on the mantel, whom she assumed was Griff and Charlie’s father. “The dad genes obviously run strong in your family.”

  “Griff excepted,” Charlie said lightly. “Ma once said that if it hadn’t been for the twenty-hour labour, she might have thought he’d spontaneously animated from an ice sculpture.”

  Freddy raised her gaze back to Griff’s face. That comment could have stemmed from her own early thoughts about him, and it didn’t cause so much as a flicker in his expression, but there were little arrows that only family could truly drive home.

  “So, you’re doing a film about Henrietta?” She turned the subject back to its original point, and Griff leaned one hip against the desk. Now, there was definitely a fleeting shade of...something in his look. Surprise? Or calculation?

  “Haven’t you heard about it? That’s surprising,” Charlie said.

  She didn’t know why. There’d never been a feature film about Henrietta, but people had always written about her and featured her in theatre documentaries. They didn’t ring Freddy to tell her about it.

  It was Griff who answered her unspoken query, his eyes watchful. “Your father has been expending a lot of energy and money trying to stop the project in its tracks for the past year. And attempting to block us from using any material from his biography.” He rested a hand on the familiar volume on the table.

  All Her World, Rupert’s great achievement, the in-depth insight into Henrietta that had won him a Reinholdt literature award. The highlight of the writing career he’d established after his own future in acting had been curtailed. The writing career that her agent thought he should concentrate on, instead of juggling his time with managing—and directing—Freddy’s production portfolio.

  “Apparently, he has plans in mind for a screen adaptation of his own.” Griff sounded bored. “However, as a lot of his personal recollections in the book are based on the time that Henrietta stuck him with a nanny while she was writing The Velvet Room—”

  “And vamping Grandad into building The Henry.” Charlie was still nosing through photographs, and he passed Freddy one of the theatre in its early building stages, which she studied with interest. Henrietta was in this one as well, posing against the construction framework, in company with a slight woman with a dark bob, who wasn’t looking at the camera, and a cocker spaniel with an overgrown coat, also not looking at the camera.

  “—we already have access to a lot of similar material, including reminiscences from people who weren’t snot-nosed kids at the time.” Griff flipped open the cover of Rupert’s prized biography and turned over a few pages. Something dismissive in the gesture raised Freddy’s hackles. Her father’s written voice was witty and personable; it was a good book, and it had deservedly done very well.

  “He obviously doesn’t trust his family history in your delicate, notoriously sensitive hands, big brother,” Charlie said. “Can’t imagine why, after all those glowing reviews you’ve given his daughter over the years.”

  After a few seconds in which Freddy chose to examine the chipped polish on her nails, and she couldn’t hear even the slightest ruffle of movement over by the desk, Charlie compounded things by adding, “Is there a reason your dad never mentioned it? Bit weird, isn’t it? Or does he have to battle off these hardnosed cultural types all the time?”

  Considering that at present the relationship between Freddy and Rupert wasn’t so much a strong branch of the family tree as a dry, brittle twig, it wasn’t weird at all. She couldn’t remember the last time they’d had a conversation about anything other than the jobs she was booking, was not booking, or should be booking. She had no idea what her father did in his spare time, who his friends were, or upon which film productions he tried to heap obstacles. And this was the first she’d heard that he wanted to do a visual adaptation of the biography.

  “Two options, little brother.” Griff’s abrupt interjection bumped Freddy out of her glum reverie. She looked up and met his dark gaze. “Pipe down or clear out.”

  “Oops.” Charlie tugged on the end of one of Freddy’s curls, in a manner so reminiscent of a chastened child playing with a doll that it made her smile. Griff, on the other hand, looked even more pissed off. It was evident only in a certain tautness to his cheeks, but she figured that was the equivalent of an out-and-out scowl from another man. “Sorry. Sore point?”

  She made a short movement with her head, gently pulling away from his touch. “It’s just life, isn’t it? Ups and downs.”

  “Always best to focus on the ups.” Despite his words, there was a funny note in Charlie’s voice as
he glanced at his brother. Freddy looked at him frowningly, but even as she blinked, that happy-go-lucky demeanour was back in place. “Very much a family affair in your case, theatre. Your dad is your manager, isn’t he?” It had been a whole thirty seconds since his last tactless remark, so Charlie rushed to fill the void. “I’m surprised he signed off on you taking this role. Griff can’t be his favourite person right now, so the property ought to be blacklisted by association.”

  Freddy tried not to tighten her fingers on the photo she’d picked up. It was the thin woman with the bobbed hair again. She was scowling out of the faded image. Actually—Griff wasn’t such an outlier in his family appearance-wise after all. This lady hadn’t shared the blond gene, but she had his nose, his chin, and his aura of impatience. “My father doesn’t actually know I’m doing this show yet. The initial casting option fell through, so my agent back-benched the idea, and then a concrete offer came through again a few weeks ago. Dad’s in New York this month for meetings, so—”

  “Your head’s on the chopping block as soon as his plane touches down at Heathrow?” Charlie suggested helpfully, and she winced.

  She was in for a strongly worded lecture when Rupert got back to the UK and revisited his opinion that this production would torpedo her credibility. He emphatically didn’t share her view that the world would be a sad, dull place without light entertainment.

  However, since she hadn’t been aware that he was involved in some sort of High Noon standoff with Griff, she’d expected he’d get over it. The Austen Playbook script was based on respected classic literature, after all. It hadn’t retained as many of Jane’s pearls of wisdoms as it should have, but there were a good few satirical zingers in there. And on a cynical note, Lisa was quite right: the TV ratings were predicted to be high, thanks to the screen celebs in the cast. It was also very well paid, for just a few weeks of rehearsal and one performance. Regardless of Rupert’s personal tastes in drama, he had a razor-sharp business brain, and he was getting commission.

  And his focus would be mostly on the upcoming audition for The Velvet Room.

  “It’ll be fine.” Carefully, she passed the photographs she was holding back to Griff, and determinedly directed her mind down a less troubling path. “Can I see what you’re doing with the film?”

  Apparently she’d found the magic button to end his impassivity. “No, you bloody well cannot.”

  “Have you learned your lines yet?” Charlie didn’t seem fazed by his brother’s rudeness. Obviously it was an everyday event, so Freddy chose to ignore it as well. “Your director doesn’t look like a lady who brooks many mistakes, and Sadie Foster looks like she’ll take the first opportunity to drop you in it.”

  “I can handle Sadie,” Freddy said, with more confidence than she felt. By nature, Sadie would prefer to taunt and play rather than divulge whatever she thought she knew and give up her new toy. In other words, she would do her best to make the next few weeks extremely unpleasant. “And I don’t usually have a problem learning lines.”

  Things had been more stressful than usual this year, but at least she hadn’t repeated the incident with the Springsteen song.

  However, the multiple-choice scenes were proving a challenge. There were four voting opportunities for the audience, each with three variant scenes, but it wasn’t so much the number that was tricky as the connections. When the cues could shift at any moment, there was no orderly progression to fix on.

  Covertly, she watched Griff turning the pages of a folder. The sun glow was bright on his face, and as he twisted away from it, the shadows cast hollows into his cheeks and threw that interesting nose into greater prominence.

  Her gaze lowered to the large studio portrait of Henrietta that Charlie had tossed carelessly down on the desk. Even in a faded, sepia-toned image, her grandmother radiated assertive ownership of her space, and the pursuit of Life with a capital L. In some ways, it was difficult to believe that Henrietta had ever been a flesh-and-blood woman. She couldn’t imagine the woman in that photograph ever doubting the path she was on, or letting someone else sway her decisions.

  But if anyone was likely to provide a more nuanced view of Henrietta, present the human being and not the sum of her achievements, it was Griff. There was a reason so many people watched his programmes on telly, and clearly it wasn’t for the raging charisma. He had a knack of getting to the heart of a subject.

  He looked up suddenly from his papers and their eyes met.

  And suddenly her mouth felt dry, and she was very aware of her heartbeat, thudding a bit too hard against the wall of her chest.

  Ever so slightly, his eyes narrowed.

  Just a little, her chin lifted.

  Chapter Five

  There was a myth that the countryside was peaceful. That might be true beyond the borders of Highbrook.

  The memory of waking up in his childhood bedroom to the sound of his mad parents practicing their latest hobby on the south lawn—bowls, air rifles, paintball, insert the passion of the moment—was so fixed in Griff’s mind that he still sometimes woke to revving engines outside his flat in Notting Hill and for a few seconds thought it was his mother’s model airplane.

  A dozen actors doing yoga on the patio at the crack of dawn were comparatively easy to ignore. He caught a few words of the motivational mantras one of them was spouting. Listening to the trite affirmations that twenty-somethings liked to emblazon across Instagram, while waving his arms and arse about before he’d even had a coffee, would not set him up for a successful day at work. It would send him quietly homicidal.

  “Failure will never overtake me—”

  Griff cast his eyes up and set off for his run, cutting across the lawn towards the back road through the south fields, which were blessedly free of staring, glaring, babbling people. The only nosy gaze he encountered on the route belonged to his father’s old Hereford cow. He stopped to catch his breath and she whuffed hers over his fingers as he gently rubbed her head. Ruefully, he spread his other hand over his ribs. He was getting out of shape. Gym sessions had gone on the backburner.

  With a final stroke of the cow’s greying muzzle, he checked his watch and kept going, trying to ignore the invisible weight of the paperwork waiting on his desk. Another load of unexpected bills had joined the heap, and he’d had to take a temporary sabbatical from his theatre column for the Westminster Post just to grab a few hours of sleep each night, which meant even less income currently coming in.

  His shortened breath burned grimly through his lungs as he picked up his pace. At this point, they needed both the film to come together and The Austen Playbook to go off without a hitch, or they were in serious danger of losing the place.

  Although there could be an estate agent’s placard at the gate and a bank manager nailing wooden boards across the front door, and Charlie would just make an airy comment of naïve optimism. Probably before he came up with another crackbrained scheme, lost interest halfway through, and traipsed happily back to his cocktail crowd in the City until the next time inspiration twinged. And exactly the way their parents, no matter how much they overspent, and how bad the financial situation was, always tossed out a few words about everything turning out well in the end, before they turned their backs on reality and went back to whittling tiny townsfolk out of expensive mahogany.

  The sun was rising higher in the sky. It was going to be a beautiful day. The birdsong of the skylarks in the trees came from so many directions that it seemed to hang suspended in the air, like a lace of interwoven melody. It was difficult to maintain a bad mood in that setting.

  Difficult, but he managed.

  Aided when he turned the corner by the oldest tree on the property, an enormous, towering oak that his mother had, long ago, told him contained dozens of tiny rooms inhabited by gnomes and fairies. He’d heard her out, then offered a few short, pertinent facts on the concept of a tree trunk. Charlie had been
born shortly afterwards, and she’d found a more receptive audience for her flights of imagination.

  Over a quarter of a century later, the majestic old tree seemed to have picked up its first fairy, but there was nothing ethereal about her. More like a force of nature. She was sitting against the monstrous base of the tree, wearing a rainbow-striped T-shirt and incredibly short shorts, with that explosion of disorderly hair a tangle against the bark. She appeared to be trying to fix a broken lace in her left trainer.

  “Oh.” Freddy looked up at him through the frenetic dark mop and shoved a handful of curls out of her face. “Good morning.”

  “Good morning.” He took in the shoe problem, knelt at her side, and reached into his pocket.

  “Dear me,” she said with suspicious blandness. “It’s not a Mr. Collins situation, is it? I really prefer to have my breakfast before I receive unsolicited proposals.”

  He found one of the cable ties he’d been using to fix the broken wiring in the library this morning, inserted it through the top loops of her trainer and fastened it tightly, then glanced upwards. Her face was very close to his, and he looked straight into her sparkling eyes. There were faint dark smudges under them, but she exuded a warmth that he almost felt as a physical sensation, as if, without touching him, she was heating his own skin. That attitude of suppressed laughter was one he’d often found grating on stage, but out here in the sunshine, he felt that same sudden and strong tug of attraction he’d experienced in the library yesterday. It was like trying to bury something in the sand, only to have the wind persistently blow it back into his line of sight.

  And he was still down on one knee, like he was serenading her in a fucking comic opera.

  “I only propose to women I barely know on Saturdays.”

  “Funnily enough,” she said, “I’m starting to feel like I’ve known you for ages. Power of the written word, I suppose. All these years of reviews, it’s a bit like having a one-sided correspondence with a really crabby, judgmental pen pal.”