Persuading Austen

by Brigid Coady

  Annie stood at the front of the bus.

  Maybe she should give some sort of inspiring speech? Let them know what was going on. No, she thought, looking down the aisle. Everyone was dealing with it in a different way.

  On the back seats, Sasha and some of the other make-up girls were gently plaiting Olivia and Diana’s hair into matching fishtail plaits.

  The lighting guys were playing a quiet but competitive game of snap with Will, Lewis, and Harry across the middle rows.

  Even Dad and Immy were subdued; they had trailed back in the last two groups, only seeing the tail-lights from the ambulance going off into the distance. Now Immy was idly watching the game of snap, whilst Dad staring out of the window, pinching his bottom lip with his fingers.

  Annie sat down near the front of the coach and leant her head back onto the headrest and closed her eyes.

  Carefully she mentally prodded at the bruise in her mind that was Austen.

  He wasn’t hers any more. She’d known that but she had always thought she’d find out by picking up a magazine one day. See him smiling with his arm around another person, a ring on his finger.

  Knowing something intellectually was different from living it.

  Whether Austen ended up with Louisa or someone else, he wasn’t ending up with her. She was just a tattoo he regretted.

  Louisa was a nice girl.

  Not very bright, maybe …

  Louisa and Austen would make a very pretty couple. Gorgeous.

  And live a shiny superficial LA lifestyle, and he’ll stagnate in boredom, no one to play Scrabble with and quote Donne to. He wouldn’t cheat on her but …

  Squeezing her eyes tight Annie willed the tears that were threatening to fall to be absorbed back into her body. It wasn’t her problem any more.

  Annie could be a grown-up about this. She could.

  ‘Hey.’ The soft voice came from beside her and jolted her.

  Austen.

  Maybe she could keep her eyes closed so she didn’t have to see him?

  ‘Anne,’ he said on a breath.

  At least it wasn’t Annie.

  She wanted to see him, though, even if it was a bad idea.

  She opened one eye to find Austen squatting in the aisle of the coach, his hand – millimetres from where hers – was resting on the armrest. He looked up through his fringe, which had fallen messily onto his forehead.

  ‘Anne,’ he repeated and she could almost believe that it was eight years ago and he was kneeling at the side of their bed. He would be carefully removing her shoes and socks. Waiting to smooth his hands up her calves and knees. Then further up …

  ‘Thanks.’ He moved his hand as if to put it on her knee.

  Annie flinched back.

  ‘Erm …’ Austen blinked and his mouth tightened quickly. He took his hand and tucked it behind his back. ‘Thanks, Anne. I just wanted to say that. Thanks for keeping such a level head. You were … you are …’ He swallowed and blinked.

  How could her heart still stutter? Surely the all those tiny pieces shouldn’t still be able to? When would she stop reacting to him?

  ‘You are just so you,’ he said biting his lip and staring at her, as if what he had said was important.

  Just so you.

  Just her.

  Just Annie.

  Great. Because she was such a ‘wonderful person’, such a non-event, that he couldn’t find anything good to say except ‘just you’. As if she didn’t know there was nothing remarkable about her.

  ‘No worries,’ she said crossing her arms tightly across her chest. The tears that she’d tried to force back in were clogging up the back of her throat.

  ‘Yeah, well.’ Austen stood up.

  Annie closed her eyes again, willing him to go. She could feel him standing next to her for a beat. Then he was gone.

  ***

  The next morning the hotel was under siege from photographers, journalists, and fans.

  Not surprising, Annie thought as she chewed on a piece of cold overcooked bacon, while sitting in the hotel restaurant. She stared out at the throng; photos of Louisa being bundled into the ambulance had been all over the internet before they’d even got back to the hotel. And this crowd had arrived with the scent of a story in their noses.

  They should never have given everyone their mobiles back when they got to the base. She and Tanya had been more concerned about Louisa. Why did people have to be such voyeurs? Not everything needed to be documented and sent out for the whole world to see. Annie had looked at the blurry pictures of them all huddled round the ambulance. Most had been taken at funny angles as if the person taking them was trying to be surreptitious. She tried to work out who had been sitting where to get these particular photos.

  They were shots of Austen hunched up over Louisa’s stretcher, then of the group of them round the ambulance.

  Well at least it couldn’t be Dad or Immy. They arrived so late, that all they’d seen were the tail-lights of the ambulance as it left. And with Marie making such a fuss there was no way it was her. Unless she had somehow worked out how to take snaps during her collapse.

  Will had been in the group that could’ve taken the photos. But he wouldn’t do that, would he? Not after everything that had happened to him in the press?

  But someone was making some extra money selling gossip about them.

  Annie looked down at her phone, ignoring the restaurant filling up around her.

  ‘Heartbroken Austen’, read the beginning of Daily Planet’s headline on their website. She really needed to stop giving their ‘sidebar of shame’ more clicks.

  ‘Parasites,’ Lewis muttered as he came to sit in the chair next to her, cradling a cup of coffee in his hands.

  Annie hummed and looked back out the window at the locals standing just behind the press, all staring at the front door of the hotel as if it would give them the ultimate answer to the universe.

  ‘I hope whoever sold it got a good price.’ Harry came up behind them both and dropped a full plate of food in front of Lewis and another at the setting next to him.

  She turned away from the window.

  There was no point in worrying about it now. The bubble they’d all been living in had burst. Admittedly it had been a very dysfunctional bubble but it had been beautifully self-contained.

  The shouts of the paps and the fans filtered through the window, Austen’s name being shouted the loudest.

  Her Austen, who wasn’t her Austen any more.

  At least she wasn’t known. She’d be able to slink out of the hotel without one of the cameras turning on her. If she had gone to Hollywood with Austen would this have been her life? Have the press camped out on them, waiting and watching for some sort of reaction? Picking over their life for a story. Relegating her to Austen’s lesser half.

  Annie sighed and looked back down at her breakfast. The scrambled eggs looked more plastic than they had before. From the corner of her eye she saw Lewis grasp his husband’s hand.

  ‘It’s okay, babe,’ he said quietly to Harry as they grimaced at each other.

  Of course it wasn’t quite so easy for the others. Even if they weren’t at Austen’s level of famous they still had their fair amount of hassle.

  ‘How do you handle it?’ she asked.

  ‘Well you handle it together, don’t you? I mean we’re a team, no matter what they say in the press, what lies they make up, I know we have each other’s back and when we get home it’s just us and we know the truth,’ Lewis said as he nicked a mushroom from Harry’s plate.

  ‘Hey, that’s mine,’ Harry said smiling.

  ‘Sharing’s caring.’ Lewis grinned back at him.

  Annie felt a jolt of jealousy shoot through her.

  These two were partners. They were proper partners where one wasn’t more important than the other, each appreciating the other’s difference.

  Supportive. Respectful.

  What was that like? Her parents never had that – neither did Cha
rlie and Marie. Was it that unusual or was it her family?

  ‘I see the vultures are circling.’ Austen seemed to appear from nowhere. Annie hadn’t realized he could walk that quietly – or had she been that deep in her own thoughts?

  ‘Yeah. Looks like you’ll have to do the pap walk every day now.’

  Harry reached an arm up and squeezed Austen’s hand where he had rested it on his shoulder.

  ‘Well, only this morning because I fly back to the States tomorrow for a week. Maybe when I come back things will have settled down and people will have become bored with all this.’

  He rubbed his hand across his face. He looked so tired. Annie wanted to wrap her arms around him and cocoon him from the world.

  Hold on, he was leaving? How the hell was that going to work?

  Annie frantically searched her brain to work out how that affected the budget and production schedule.

  I mean if they focused on the Bennet sister scenes, she thought. But then they’d have to have scenes without Kitty in them because of Louisa.

  ‘Hey don’t give Annie here a heart attack. She looks like she’s trying to shift the whole schedule round in her head.’ Lewis laughed.

  ‘No … I …’ she spluttered.

  ‘It’s okay, Anne. Les knows. They’ll be filming round me and Louisa being out. I have to go back and do some advance publicity for Ten Peaks. Somehow this one –’ Austen ruffled Harry’s hair ‘– has managed to skip it. When I get back it will be full steam ahead. It’s not like they need Mr Darcy for every scene is it?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She could feel herself burning up. The production might not need Mr Darcy in every scene. Annie, though, she needed Austen.

  No. That was a dangerous line of thinking. She’d managed eight years not seeing him every day, even if the first year or two had been difficult. She could do it again.

  She had to.

  They all subsided into silence. Annie’s foggy morning feeling completely evaporated when Austen sat down next to her. She shifted her chair to put more space between them. This close she could feel the heat from his body, the ghost of a touch from his skin even if they were millimetres apart. So close but too far.

  Austen wouldn’t notice would he? He wasn’t feeling the same way she was.

  No, she sighed, he was too busy buttering his toast.

  ‘It’s okay, Anne. You won’t have to see me for a week.’ He leaned in and whispered it to her. He sounded sad.

  He had noticed. Crap.

  ‘But …’ she said as he pushed his chair back, taking his toast with him.

  ‘See you all on set,’ he cut through her whisper.

  And then he was gone, striding out of the dining room, leaving a wake of turned heads. Then from through the windows she could see a flash of cameras and the shouts escalating. They descended on him like a tidal wave.

  How did he manage it?

  One minute he was poised in the entrance and the next it was as if he’d been consumed by a swarm of locusts. Hands wielding phones waved in the air and it was only by following the way they were pointed and the very top of his hair that she knew he was there.

  The swarm moved towards the fleet of cars and minibuses that took them up to location. Annie looked away. Lewis and Harry were looking at her. Their smiles were sad and knowing. She felt as if they were reading her mind.

  Was her sad and pathetic yearning written all over her face?

  ‘I’ll see you later,’ she said, pushing her chair away from the table, grabbing her laptop, and running out of the dining room.

  At the entrance, she paused much as Austen had. But no swarm engulfed her. That crowd was jogging after the silver car that was pulling out of the drive.

  ***

  A voice broke through the silence. ‘This is where you hide out.’ Annie looked up from her monitor and blinked blearily.

  Standing in the slanted doorway of the Leaning Tower production office was Will. He lounged in the doorway as well as he could at the angle it listed. His feet and calves were clad in black shiny leather boots and his legs in snowy white breeches. He was an anachronism in a room that was muggy with coffee, stale sandwiches, and printer ink.

  Will’s blond hair was swept forward across his forehead. He was smiling but the skin around his slightly too close eyes didn’t crease.

  Annie noticed that his legs didn’t quite fill the breeches the way they should.

  Not like Austen’s did, she thought.

  Damn it, no, Will’s legs were absolutely fine. Good even.

  Hell, how long had she been staring at his legs?

  She looked up to see that Will’s smile had a hint of smugness now and his eyes were crinkled.

  He was going to get the wrong idea.

  ‘I wouldn’t say being in my office is hiding out exactly,’ she quickly said; maybe she’d got away with it.

  Will raised an eyebrow.

  ‘It isn’t like when I was holed up in the stables, to try and get things done,’ she finished. She should probably shut up now. She didn’t owe Will an explanation.

  But she realized as she spoke that one of the good things to come out of the team-building day was that she didn’t have to hide to do her job any more.

  Everyone had stopped coming to her with every little complaint; so she had time to actually work. Balancing the books didn’t happen on its own – no matter what anyone else thought.

  There were payrolls to run, invoices to pay, and forecasts to go through to ensure that they didn’t fall foul of any number of pitfalls. And the numbers were not playing nice with Annie; they still refused to be corralled. Money was missing, and she couldn’t work out where it had disappeared to. She rubbed her eyes.

  ‘Tired, cousin?’

  Annie wanted to believe it was said with concern but there was an underlying edge whenever she spoke to Will. He was great fun; last night he’d had her snorting wine out of her nose as he gave a detailed run-down on what he thought of his colleagues in his soap. But there was an edge to it.

  Annie wondered what he said about her when she wasn’t around.

  ‘A bit – shouldn’t have had that last glass of wine last night.’

  Will came over and leaned against her desk. She hoped he didn’t lean too hard; she had the feet on the desk propped up with books on one side to even it up.

  Was he staring at the spreadsheet on her screen?

  She couldn’t quite tell. Quickly she minimized the window, so that all Will could see was her Feckless Rogues wallpaper. The last thing she needed were rumours swirling that the budget had a huge hole in it already and she was no nearer finding out where it had come from.

  ‘Up for another session in the bar tonight? Just us lowly folk, what with Mr Big Shot still in the States,’ Will asked.

  That was it, wasn’t it, she thought, the edge she felt. Why did Will need to talk about Austen like that? Maybe it was insecurity. Austen had the break that Will still wanted. It didn’t excuse him but it made it easier to understand. He was only human.

  And Annie knew what it felt like to never be good enough. To be in the shadows of other people – and poor Will had the shadow of the Elliot name already. And with this production you had to add in the great shade that came with standing next to Austen Wentworth and not quite measuring up.

  Only human.

  ‘That sounds great.’ Annie smiled. She wouldn’t drink quite as much as last night, but being in the bar around other people stopped her brooding in her room.

  And missing Austen.

  ‘Okay, I’ll come by and get you once I get out of these.’ Will bowed with a flourish like a dandy. Annie laughed; yeah, she needed to stop thinking about Austen.

  ***

  Thirty minutes later Annie didn’t feel like laughing any more.

  ‘Why are they still here? Don’t they know that Austen isn’t around?’ she asked as she eyed the crowd of photographers and fans that were blocking their way from the bus to the front of the hotel. It
was a slightly smaller swarm than when Austen was around.

  She and Will had cadged a lift on the minibus shuttle that usually took the crew to and from the hotel, neither one wanting to wait for the cars that they usually took.

  ‘Come on, Annie. You shouldn’t let a few flashes put you off.’ Will was staring at the throng. His mouth curved upwards but Annie couldn’t see any humour in it. If anything, it seemed as if he were calculating odds in his head.

  ‘But …’ Before Annie could finish Will had slung his arm over her shoulder and pulled her out of the bus.

  ‘Will!’ At a shout from a fan, the crowd turned from looking at the front of the hotel and suddenly Annie was faced with the blank-eyed stares of a dozen cameras, the open-mouthed gaping maws of fans behind the multicoloured covers of a forest of mobile phones.

  ‘Hey,’ Will shouted and used his free hand to wave, whilst keeping an arm clamped round Annie’s shoulders.

  Why was he making it more obvious? Why was he encouraging it?

  Annie could feel her muscles locking one by one as she tried to dig her heels in and stop. She wanted to duck out from under Will’s arm. Shrug him off and run away, anything to get away from this and find a way to the hotel that wasn’t quite so public.

  ‘Can I have a selfie?’

  ‘What’s Austen like to work with, Will?’

  ‘Give us the gossip. Is he really shagging Diana?’

  ‘Is Austen shagging both Diana and Louisa Musgrove?’

  ‘Tell Austen I love him.’

  The shouts came from all sides. Intrusive questions from the journalists, rude suggestions from the paps, and fans wanting to be close to Will: some because they were his fans but mostly they were Austen’s fans and wanted to be near them because they’d been near Austen.

  Will dragged Annie forward, her feet scraping on the ground, his arm holding her in hard to his side so she had no way to escape.

  I want to throw up, she thought.

  This was hell. She was going to be all over the internet with frizzy hair, virtually no make-up, and yet another faded, tattered Feckless Rogues shirt. With her face screwed up as she tried not to puke.

  Eyes down, Annie. Don’t make eye contact. Annie repeated it in her head.

  The crowd pressed closer, hands grabbing at her clothes and trying to delay her or get to Will. She cringed but she couldn’t help but press closer to Will.