by Brigid Coady
The hazy dread that had enveloped her since that lunch with Auntie Lil became a little more solid.
How the hell was she supposed to tell them? Even if she got them to accept that they had to move out, they would probably expect some fancy Regency type townhouse in a small town as if they were really characters from the productions they were in.
There was no probable about it.
Of course they would.
And Bath wasn’t cheap.
For fuck’s sake.
Annie added a few more choice swear words and threw the stapled list at the wall. It fluttered apart and shed pages like leaves.
She looked round for something with more weight to throw so that it would make a more satisfying thunk and add to the chips and nicks and scars the kitchen already bore.
She thought of the expensive smoothie maker in the cupboard gathering dust. It would sound great as it split apart taking bits of wall with it.
She got half out of her chair.
No.
She wouldn’t stoop to their level. What she needed was to show them in no uncertain way what the reality of their life was going to be.
She sat back down and started to smile.
Oh, what a great idea, she thought.
Okay, it was time for some show and tell.
***
Annie looked round the living room, seeing it with new eyes.
She never realized exactly how big it was.
Hell, this had better work.
They’re going to sulk and shout and scream; they’re going to annihilate you, Annie couldn’t stop the fear whispering to her.
Nope. She shook her head to distract herself. She could do this.
No matter how much she hated family confrontation she had to do this. Needed to. She had to pull them into line and get them to understand the reality of their situation. She couldn’t keep letting them go down this road to what was toeing the line of bankruptcy even if it meant they’d shout at her. Letting the family fail wasn’t why her mum had left her in charge.
And maybe she could free herself in the process.
Annie could feel her shoulders seizing up, rising towards her ears. Her breath was coming fast, her mouth was dry, and her hands were shaking. She felt about five years old.
There was nothing they could do. Nothing, she told herself. She was a grown-up now. She wasn’t a child.
She could do this.
‘Really, Annie, I don’t know why you are making such a fuss of talking about finances. You do this every year and every year we’re fine.’ Immy was speaking as she walked through the door into the living room. ‘I can’t believe …’ Her words stopped.
Annie started chewing on her nail as she watched Imogen take in what was before her.
Or what wasn’t before her.
Immy’s eyes had widened and her mouth hung open. Then she snapped it shut at the same time as her eyes narrowed. ‘What the hell?’ Her voice was like an arrow and it hit Annie right in the gut.
How was it that your family could reduce you to a quivering prepubescent mess with a word and a tone of voice?
Immy’s voice held the memories of Chinese burns and ostracism. It carried with it ties and hooks, ready to clutch at Annie and remind her of how things were supposed to be. How they had always been. The tone of it spoke of where Annie fitted in to the world, her place in the family hierarchy. It told her that she was not to challenge the status quo.
But that was all changing – had to change. Annie had to stay strong.
‘I wanted to show you and Dad how much of our things we could realistically take to the new place. I mean, our new places.’ Annie’s voice started strong but wavered towards the end.
Damn it, she couldn’t show fear.
‘This is some kind of joke?’ Immy’s voice got sharper. Harsher.
‘No, it isn’t. This –’ she gestured around the living room ‘– is reality.’
That was right, she thought, I’ve got to get angry.
The room they were in was empty. Almost.
Annie had stripped the room of everything: furniture and pictures. It was bare except for two suitcases and two brown packing boxes.
It looked barren.
‘Where is all our stuff?’ Imogen’s voice was quiet but it carried.
‘Storage,’ Annie said hoping her voice didn’t show her fear. ‘And once this room is done, we’re doing the rest. This is all you can take with you when we move out.’
And then it was as if a thunderstorm exploded inside the house.
‘Move out? Are you kidding me? How dare you even think that you can tell Daddy and I what to do? Put our stuff back. Put it back now. We’re not moving. You can’t make us,’ Immy shouted. It bounced off the bare walls and felt as if it was boxing Annie’s ears. ‘Who died and made you boss?’
Annie wanted to curl up into a ball – to give in, yet again. Everything in her told her to hide. But she couldn’t because Mum had died and left Annie to clean up the mess.
‘Shut up, you silly cow.’
Annie started to look round to find out who had said it when she realized that it was her.
Immy stopped, her mouth open, shocked that Annie had spoken back.
Oh that felt good. Seeing Imogen silenced.
Annie felt lighter inside, as if she’d lanced a boil. She wanted to take that lightness buoying her up; she wanted to carry on.
Giddy with confidence, she took advantage of Imogen’s sudden stunned silence.
‘For once in your life, will you bloody listen to someone else rather than yourself? We have no money. None. Nada. Zilch. We couldn’t make the next month’s mortgage payment because one of you spent all the cash on yourselves. I’ve rented the house out. The tenants will take it and move in in two weeks. That is happening whether you like it or not. Dad put the mortgage in my name because I was the only one with a secure income, but that also meant he gave me the right to make these decisions. It is my arse on the line if we default. So someone had to be the grown-up around here because it wasn’t ever going to be you two.’
‘We have two months in short-term lets until the production starts. Then after we wrap, we look for something long-term. Because we aren’t coming back here. And this …’ Annie pointed to the bags and boxes. ‘This is it. This is how much you can take with you. So pick up your newly fat-free chin, close your mouth, and deal with it. Choose which of your precious pairs of Louboutin shoes you want to pack and we can get a move on.’
The room reverberated with her words for a few seconds until it settled into silence.
Yes.
Oh God that felt good.
It was as if a million slights and put-downs had been paid back in one go. Not that it made much of a dent in how many she’d been on the receiving end of but it was a start.
Annie wanted to grin and punch the air. She’d hit back. She was invincible. She’d focused every bit of professional Producer Annie into it.
Would it have been completely wrong to do a happy dance?
There was a sniff, a watery snuffle.
Annie looked at Immy.
A tear welled up and hung on the bottom of her eyelashes.
Crap.
All the elation Annie felt escaped from her like a deflating balloon, her shoulders sagging, her body curling up on itself.
When had she last seen Immy cry? Properly cry? She had a flashback to Mum’s funeral. Of Imogen’s grief-stricken face. It hadn’t been an act; Immy would never have allowed her face to be seen like that. Then there had been the tracks of tears on her face, mascara-smeared. It had been a shock, Imogen being less than perfect in public. It had been the beginning of Immy’s spiral downwards.
It had broken Annie’s heart then.
Annie watched helplessly as Immy gave another sniff and the tear that had been finely balanced fell from Immy’s eyelashes and tracked down her cheek, a sooty line cutting through her foundation like a ravine.
It echoed the cr
ack of guilt that was beginning to open in Annie’s heart.
‘We’re not all perfect, Annie,’ Imogen said wetly. ‘Not all of us can keep a job and a house. Not all of us were Mum’s favourite,’ she said on a sob.
The crack of guilt widened to take the tears that were now coming thick and fast from Imogen, the ravine carrying the stream of Immy’s emotions.
Because it was true, Annie had been Mum’s favourite. They’d had their own private jokes, had been united in making sure Immy, Marie, and Daddy were looked after. Even when the rest of the family’s silly ‘over the top-ness’ and thoughtlessness had made them laugh and despair. All those skills that made Annie so good at her job came from there.
‘You have to be the strong one, Annie,’ Mum had said as she lay on the hospital bed before she went to the hospice. Her warm husky voice that had kept the family in money now cracked from the chemo and the breathing tubes.
‘Immy, Marie, and Daddy, they don’t bend like we do. They’re brittle souls; you need to be there to keep them supple. They seem larger than life but …’ Mum had coughed then and fought for breath. Annie had gripped her fingers tighter, feeling the fragility of the hand that had held hers for so many years. She’d willed her strength to go into her mother.
‘You are the oil that greases the wheels that will keep this family turning,’ Mum had finally gasped out. A week later she was gone.
And that is what Annie did: she made sure the family still functioned, even if she had to squeeze herself into the cogs to keep them moving. It was what Mum would’ve wanted.
But what did Immy have?
Annie felt the crack widen with the guilt flooding her. And she opened herself up and took all those tears from Immy and absorbed them as she held out her arms and hugged her for the first time in years. Those tears crumbling her resolve and wearing away at the foundations of her rebellion.
‘Well maybe we can let you have three suitcases,’ Annie heard herself cave in.
Immy nodded against her neck. ‘You’re still telling Dad,’ Immy croaked as her nails dug painfully into Annie’s back.
All of Annie’s triumph washed away. ‘Fine.’
She’d wait till later to tell Immy that she needed to start booking adverts and supplemental acting jobs.
***
Annie bit her nails as she waited at the table.
He’s on his way.
The text from Immy pinged through to her phone, the vibration from the alert causing a fork to knock against a wine glass. Chiming like bells broke the quiet of the restaurant.
Maybe telling Dad in public wasn’t the best idea?
No, this was good. He was too proud and vain to cause a huge scene in public.
Wasn’t he?
She should’ve got Auntie Lil to do this for her. She’d only told Immy yesterday about the move, putting off telling Dad as he had been away at an audition in Manchester the night before.
He was going to be in a foul mood. He detested ‘the north’ as he called it. Always conveniently forgetting that his grandparents came from there.
She could do this even though she was knackered. Soothing and apologizing to Immy to get her to stop crying had taken all evening.
In fact she should think this was good practice for moving into being a producer. Be professional, don’t let emotions get in the way. Keep calm.
‘Annie?’ Dad came through door and paused briefly.
His dramatic timing was what made him such a great actor, she thought. But not the greatest father.
‘Hey, Dad.’ Annie got up, jostling the table. The clatter was less like the earlier chiming bell.
‘Imogen tells me you have something important to talk about?’
The waiter leading him in pulled his chair out. Dad sat with the grace of a younger man. He moved his arms back to allow the cloth napkin to be shaken out and placed on his lap.
Here it comes, she thought.
‘So, Dad, it’s like this …’ she began.
‘Why don’t we order first?’ he interrupted her.
Damn. Why wouldn’t he let her finish?
‘But …’
‘It would be rude not to order; surely it can wait?’ Dad lifted an eyebrow and his menu simultaneously.
Annie could feel all her determination start to leak out, melt away under his gaze.
‘Yeah, sure,’ she mumbled.
Bugger. Annie stared at the card she held. Who gave a stuff that the pork was from pigs bred by hipsters who let them wallow in a champagne mud bath in rural Oxfordshire? It wasn’t important in the grand scheme of things.
Annie fidgeted as the waiter and Dad conferred on the best wine to go with the chicken that had lived in golden nesting boxes in Hertfordshire.
Annie shouldn’t have let Immy choose the restaurant, when the family bank account said they would struggle to afford Nando’s.
It would serve Immy right if she had to take a job doing voiceover work for Kentucky Fried Chicken to pay for the meal.
‘Now, what did you want to say?’ Dad asked as he got out his phone and started playing with it.
He wasn’t even looking at her.
The fear that had replaced her determination was washed away with anger. Annie wondered if he would even have turned up if Immy hadn’t asked him.
‘Dad, can you look at me?’ Annie asked.
Dad sighed and put down the phone. ‘Yes?’
The famous blue eyes that still had women of a certain age swooning over them were now fixed on her. There was some of the sparkle the critics spoke of.
He’d be okay with it, wouldn’t he? It was for the good of the family after all.
‘The house is rented out. We move out in two weeks. And both you and Immy need to find some advertising or voiceover jobs to keep us in afloat.’ Annie rushed her fences and rattled everything out all in one go.
Grabbing the glass in front of her, she took a swig of the expensive wine, washing the dryness from her mouth. This ‘adulting’ business could turn her into an alcoholic.
There was silence except for other people’s cutlery gently scraping their plates.
‘I don’t think I quite caught that?’ His voice was low; it carried only as far as her. But it felt as if she had been punched.
The wine got caught at the back of her throat and gasping she said, ‘House. Rented. Move. Out. Job.’
‘I see,’ he said and Annie peeked over her glass, meeting his gaze.
There was no sparkle. His face, which when in public was always slightly smiling and benevolent was as hard and unsmiling as it was at home.
‘Dad …’ she started.
‘Bread,’ the waiter stated setting the basket and whipped butter on the table.
‘Thank you.’ The gracious smile was back on Dad’s face. ‘My daughter has suddenly been called away for an emergency. Can we cancel her order?’ he carried on.
Annie was glad she was sitting down.
He wasn’t going to do this, was he? Dismiss her completely when all she’d been doing was trying to make sure the family kept together?
‘Certainly, sir.’ The waiter left and took Dad’s smile with him.
‘I can’t believe you could betray me like this,’ he said without looking at her. ‘I think it best if you left.’
‘But …’
‘Goodbye, Annie.’ He picked up his phone. ‘Immy, darling. Why don’t you join me for lunch? I seem to be on my own.’
‘Dad …’
‘Annie, you’ve said enough. Immy and I will make all those plans you want us to make. I’ll do some special guest spot on a soap. I’m sure it will make you happy to see what you have forced us to do. But that doesn’t mean I have to look at you.’ He flicked his fingers at her.
Annie knew he’d never really liked her but this … it was like when Mum had died all over again. Except Dad was still breathing, and she was dead to him.
Maybe she could take it back? Annie rose slowly on shaking legs.
&nbs
p; ‘I’m sorry you feel that way, Dad. I was doing it for all of us.’
‘Why are you still here?’
Stumbling out of the restaurant, Annie grabbed the wall. This was the price she was going to pay for trying to help. But if she didn’t do this she let Mum down. She could turn the producer job down, and maybe she could … but there wasn’t anything was there? Other than winning the lottery, this was the solution.
Annie grabbed her phone.
‘Aunt Lil?’ she said as the other woman picked up. ‘Can I come over?’
Chapter Seven
‘That Austen Wentworth is a hoot.’
Annie wasn’t sure why she was putting herself through another Musgrove Sunday lunch when she had so much to do. Especially as the only person anyone wanted to talk about was Austen. She helped herself to another roast potato to mop up Angelique’s sublime gravy.
She didn’t want to know why Austen was so funny. She didn’t want to know what he had said to Charlie and she definitely didn’t want to know what he said to Louisa.
She stabbed her fork into a piece of broccoli and grunted as the gravy spat up onto her shirt.
Maybe this was all penance for having upset Immy and Dad?
Annie’s lips were still sore from having to bite them, holding in what she really wanted to say. The hours of Immy rewriting history, all about how damaged she’d been by Mum’s indifference. The words that Annie had managed to hold back from saying even as they clamoured up her throat, wanting to spew out and tell Imogen that her mother had loved her so much she’d given her Annie.
And Dad … Annie’s shoulders were still tense and sore, currently somewhat nearer her ears than they’d been before. She shuddered as she popped the broccoli in her mouth.
Well he still wasn’t speaking to her. Although Aunt Lil had intervened, which Annie could only see as a positive because it meant it could’ve been worse. Although how much worse considering the narrow-eyed looks he had thrown her way when he’d passed her on the stairs this morning. And the very loud comments about family loyalty and traitors as he’d left through the front door. But it seemed he had at least accepted that they were moving. And a breathless thankful voicemail from his agent meant he’d obviously started looking for work. Thank goodness for meddling godmothers.