by Brigid Coady
Annie wished Cassie would stop sending her links to the articles in emoji-filled emails. And Auntie Lil had been laying less than subtle hints that when she got to set she expected some ‘good news’.
But Will didn’t do anything for her. Okay, he did but her skin’s reaction to him breathing in her ear was not goosebumps; instead her skin felt itchy, as if it were crawling to get away from him. It wasn’t that they were so closely related that it was icky. They were third cousins or something, positive strangers in some societies. There was something about him that didn’t gel for her.
But it would be nice to like a man who wanted her back.
She couldn’t help but stare back at Austen and Immy.
Suddenly her skin was covered in goosebumps and her fingers curled to claws.
Austen, she realized, was currently staring at Will and her, his forehead creased, his brows lowered and his lower lip pouting. And, look at that, Annie thought. He’d managed to move his arm away from Immy’s grubby mitts. He did know how to disengage. In fact Austen was now standing with his arms crossed over his chest.
Even with Austen looking grumpy, Annie could feel her hands unfurl from the fists they had been in. She had to stop this unconscious reaction to him.
‘I wonder what’s got The Austenator so hot under the collar?’ Will said as he threw an arm over Annie’s shoulder and pulled her into a half hug.
Without thinking she leaned into it briefly, needing to hide her face from Austen’s stare in Will’s shoulder. She got a lungful of the potent and pungent smell of his aftershave.
Yuck.
Quickly she ducked and shimmied herself out from under his arm. When she looked back, The Austenator, as Will called him, had turned away and was stalking back to his trailer.
‘Anyway, darling Annie, enough of him. What say you come and keep me company for lunch? A bit of gossip for you: I have it on good authority that there is at least one hotel room that is lying empty due to some unofficial sharing going on.’ He winked and then wiggled his eyebrows at her.
She shouldn’t encourage his gossiping. But, she justified to herself, how else was she supposed to keep on top of the rumours swirling round Austen? It was about making sure that every day she could don her armour again and try to get through the day without yearning after him – or at least not yearning too badly.
‘So, Sash said she saw Olivia and Diana coming out of Olivia’s room this morning to go to breakfast.’ Will grabbed Annie’s hand and started walking. She didn’t know how to pull away without making a scene. ‘And the maids have been saying that no one has been using the bed in Diana’s room.’
Annie let Will’s words swim over her as he led her to the tent that served as the canteen for this part of the shoot. As they entered she could see that there were still cliques but nowhere near as bad as it had been before the team building.
She grabbed a salad and sat down at the nearest free table, Will sitting opposite her.
‘Will,’ Dad’s voice rang out over the voices of everyone else there.
There were no words for her.
She dug her fork into her salad not caring when bits of cabbage and sweet corn shot out and fell on the table. What she wouldn’t give for a burger, she thought as the hunger in her belly got bigger.
‘Great work in your scene earlier. I can’t wait to see what you do in the assembly scene we’re shooting tomorrow.’ Dad settled the other side of Will with only a nod to Annie.
Annie frowned back into her salad.
At least he wasn’t expecting her to run after him every moment of every day. She’d managed to get an assistant that Dad and Immy now shared. Admittedly the intern, Andrew, whom she’d conned into doing it, was giving Annie death glares every time he passed her. She figured if Andrew could put up with them for the whole production without quitting or suing then she would make sure he got a glowing reference and try and open every door possible into the industry.
Anyway Andrew had it easy. At least he didn’t have the family guilt added into the mix. He could get on with the job knowing that somewhere his family probably loved him or at least liked him.
She watched as the boy in question staggered behind Immy – who was heading their way – carrying Immy’s bag and lunch tray. As they got to the table, Immy flicked her fingers at the chair and waited. Andrew then dropped everything on the table and pulled out the chair.
Maybe she’d also buy him a gift basket or a card or something.
‘Will, darling.’ Immy and Will air-kissed.
‘Have you had an invitation to that party after the BAFTAs? The Harvey Weinstein one? If you haven’t you must come along. It will be a great way to be seen and get you away from your soap opera image. If you’re with Daddy and I, they’ll have to pay attention to you.
‘Oh that reminds me.’ Immy turned to poor Andrew who had been silently backing away from the table, trying to make a quick escape.
Annie could’ve told him that you just had to run when you could; subtlety wasn’t going to cut it.
‘Has my dress arrived from Suzanne Neville? I can’t believe they’re making me pay for it. I mean I am supporting home-grown talent. Maybe I should’ve gone for Dior?’
Annie could believe that she was going to have to pay for the dress. Immy was blacklisted from most designers’ lists as she had a bad habit of not returning the gowns lent to her for events. And Dior probably had her blacklisted from any and all their stores. Annie wouldn’t have been surprised if she was banned from buying their fragrance. The 2010 Olivier Awards dress fiasco still gave her sleepless nights.
But where were they getting the money for all this? What with Dad and the large bar bill and Immy and her designer clothes and Les and the holes in the budget? All her non-Austen-related worries seemed to come back to money. Where it was and where it was going to.
Annie stabbed her salad again.
She didn’t know why she was worrying about what she was eating. She could eat all the junk food in the canteen, gaining a stone, and no one would care. It wasn’t as if anyone was looking at her, but when faced with the Bennet sisters en masse she couldn’t help herself. All that youth and enthusiasm and the hope of Hollywood made her feel frumpy and invisible.
She tuned out from the conversation her family was having and looked around the room.
Maybe she should go through the accounts another time to see if there was something she’d missed – maybe a payment that hadn’t been reconciled.
‘Of course we’re staying in a hotel. We’ve let the house out. It was getting too big with just us rattling around in it. We’ve booked the suite at The Dorchester.’
Annie choked on a piece of carrot, as Immy’s voice cut through her mental calculations.
A suite?
At The Dorchester?
What the actual …?
This was getting ridiculous. She knew to the penny exactly how much Dad and Immy were getting paid for this job. And she knew they had no savings anywhere to dip into. There was no money for a single room at The Dorchester, never mind a suite.
So much for trying to keep them on the straight and narrow.
Annie couldn’t stop coughing, the carrot piece scraping her throat as it went down, her tears starting fall.
‘You okay there?’ Will patted her on the back and gave her a glass of water.
She nodded and through her tears, she hoped that the rest of the people in the canteen would stop staring and go back to what they had been doing before.
The production’s missing money problem she’d been thinking about was still crawling round in her brain, as she gulped down the water. And they say that you solve problems when you are doing something else, because at that moment the missing money problem met and introduced itself to the idea of Dad and Immy’s sudden wealth.
‘Annie, for God’s sake.’
Her mouth full of water was now decorating Immy.
Oops.
Wardrobe was going to have a fit.<
br />
They couldn’t be embezzling could they?
All she could think was that she had two money problems, but what if she had one problem and she had the two ends of it?
‘Stop staring at me like that, you freak,’ Immy said as she dabbed at her costume. Obviously Caroline’s strict rule to wear a covering when eating didn’t apply to Immy.
‘You could at least say sorry instead of going all creepy on me.’ Immy glared at her.
‘Sorry,’ Annie said through clenched teeth as she lowered her eyes to her salad plate.
Her stomach turned. She hoped she wasn’t about to decorate Immy with half-digested lettuce.
How could she even think that her own family would steal money?
Annie swallowed hoping that in that act she could swallow the idea. But once an idea is out there it is difficult to put back in its box and even harder to digest.
‘I’ve got to go.’
She grabbed her tray and almost ran to the rubbish bins to dump it all, not caring that she was leaving a trail of vegetables in her wake.
***
‘You okay?’ Austen asked.
His voice brought her up short as she fast-walked from the canteen tent back towards the wonky production office.
It was the first time he’d spoken to her since he’d come back from the US.
Was she okay?
No, she wasn’t. She wanted to throw up. Or scream. Or curl up into a little ball and cry. But she couldn’t because she had a job to do, even if that meant finding out that her own family were criminals. How the hell did she end up here?
She shuddered. She didn’t even want to think what she’d have to do if she actually found any evidence …
‘Yeah, fine,’ Annie said not looking up but staring down at the ground. Frowning at the tips of the shiny black boots that Austen was wearing.
What she really wanted to do was throw herself in his arms and lose herself in there. Tell him what was going on and get him to tell her she was imagining things. Stroke her back and say he’d make it all right.
Except he wouldn’t, would he?
Austen hated her family. He always had. She’d heard it from his own mouth.
‘I swear that man is a complete arsehole. I don’t care if he is Anne’s father. God, I wish I could just get her away from it all.’
Annie had stood outside the door to Austen’s Stratford dressing room, her hand raised to push it open when she heard his voice echoing into the corridor.
Her first feeling was shock, her breath stopping briefly, before starting again. Then after a moment she didn’t know why she was shocked by what she overheard. It wasn’t as if Dad ever showed himself in a good light around Austen. In his head why should he – Austen was just a bit player while he was the lead. While for Annie he was everything.
Annie knew that it was a shitty way for her dad to be but that was the way it worked with the Elliots. And even though it was true, it didn’t stop Austen’s words hurting.
‘Of course I’m not telling her, do you think I’m stupid?’ Austen was obviously on the phone, as Annie hadn’t heard anyone else in there. Maybe she should go?
‘She worships him. I’m just hoping I can persuade her to take a chance and come with me.’
Come with him? Where was he going? What had happened?
She knew that Austen had been talking about going to LA for the pilot season, trying his luck there.
‘Look, mate, I know. I know but I love her. I’ll put up with no end of crap for her; she’s worth it.’
Annie’s knees gave out slightly and she had to grab the wall to stop from sinking too far.
God, he loved her. He’d said it to her before but to hear him say it to someone else … To want to tell someone else, as if loving her was a given. And he’d put up with crap for her. She was worth it.
But that crap he’d put up with was her dad.
She closed her eyes as after the good feeling came the bad.
That was the day when her heart had started to tear in half.
Annie came back to present. She could still feel the ghost of her complete heart, how she had felt before everything changed.
Before you threw it all away.
She wished the nasty voice in her head would stop. She knew it was her fault; she didn’t need reminding.
She was still staring at Austen’s feet.
His toes still pointed in, like they had all those years ago. They made him seem more vulnerable.
Yeah, she was fine. Really.
‘I’ve got to go,’ Annie said and stepped away so she only saw the dusty ground.
‘If you’re sure,’ he said.
She wondered if the sensation of warmth she could suddenly feel on her shoulder was his hand hovering there or whether that was her wishful thinking.
Annie couldn’t speak again without bursting with a declaration of undying love, tears, or the rest of her lunch. Knowing her luck it would probably be all of the above. She nodded her head instead.
Annie moved away from the warmth. Because if she hadn’t let him put up with the crap that came with her eight years ago when he said her loved her, she wouldn’t let him now when they were not much more than acquaintances.
Chapter Seventeen
Annie put her phone down, her hand shaking.
She could feel the echo of Eric’s shouting still in her ears.
But he and the other producers had seen the same spreadsheets she had.
Annie took the paper she had been poring over for the past hour, both on and off the call. She crumpled it up and threw it behind her to join the growing pile surrounding her chair and building up like snowdrifts against the table.
It didn’t matter how many different tables she put the numbers in or whether she looked at it on her screen or on paper, there was money missing. And she knew it wasn’t an accounting error or her mislaying a few hundred thousand in the ‘in’ tray; there really was a massive hole in the budget. And the only people who could’ve fiddled the figures were Les, one of the other producers, or Annie herself.
Well she knew she hadn’t done it. So that left Les or one of the producers. But they had seemed as confused as she had during that call.
A gust of wind swept through the production office, paper flying up as the door opened on its own again. With the angle it was leaning at the door never quite shut. She got up to push it closed.
Maybe she should keep it locked all the time? The only time she usually locked it was at the end of the day.
Oh …
Just because she knew she hadn’t taken the money, that didn’t mean that someone couldn’t have done it pretending to be her. Annie shuddered because she couldn’t put off thinking about it anymore. She’d spent all day convinced she’d find evidence that pointed a different way.
With the office being unlocked through the day, it could be anyone who could’ve got access to her laptop. But it could only be someone close to her who could work out her password. She probably should stop using Feckless Rogues song titles. But neither Dad nor Immy had ever shown any interest in her job before – unless it could help them.
But they were getting money from somewhere. Enough for champagne, new clothes, and suites at The Dorchester.
You could just ask them … The voice in her head sounded distinctly like her mother’s.
Ha. Ask them.
Annie wondered where they’d find her cold dead body if she actually accused them of stealing.
She’d laugh if it weren’t so close to the truth.
So the only person she could truly rule out as the thief was herself – but not her access. And if she didn’t rule out someone using her login, she refused to give a name to that possible ‘someone’, then the next people who could be asking would be the police.
Maybe they could put the money back? She could pretend to find some check or something tucked away. She could sell that surely?
They were still her family. She couldn’t just hang
them out to dry. But if she was going to protect them then she needed to know the truth.
Annie sat back in the chair.
If it was them, then her family were thieves. Annie wondered why it had taken her so long to admit it to herself, but now she had, she felt … calm. Okay, not calm but accepting as if a massive piece of a puzzle had slipped into place. It shouldn’t be this easy to think badly of your family, should it?
Annie stood and started pacing, almost slipping on the paper pile, which was now collecting in drifts at the lower part of the room. She kicked them out of the way and when she got to the lowest corner of the room, she slumped against the wall and brought her knees up to her chest, hugging them.
How was she supposed to ask them?
Hey, Dad, have you decided to see if the theatre workshop provision in prison is any good?
It had a certain something about it, a flippantness that hid the hurt. Annie started to giggle. Dad’s eyes would bug out and he’d start spluttering whether he was lying or telling the truth. She had a picture of him in her mind in an orange jumpsuit playing a convincing King Lear.
The giggles erupted out of her in spurts and quickly turned into hiccups, her stomach aching. Her breath caught in her throat and never quite filled her lungs.
Breathe, she thought as her eyes watered and tears streamed down her face. She could feel them catching in the corner of her mouth.
She swallowed and then held her breath for ten counts.
Hic.
She sat for a while waiting for them to calm down.
When she was still hiccupping five minutes later, she struggled to her feet and moved to the bathroom. She poured a glass of water, leant forward over the sink and drank it from the wrong side of the glass. Water splattered on the porcelain basin and dripped down her neck.
The hiccups stopped. Annie grabbed a towel and wiped her face.
Staring at her reflection, she saw the skin around her eyes was puffy, as if she wasn’t sleeping well. Her nose was red and her make-up was streaked where the water had washed it away.