It wasn’t until Sarah was twenty-four that she heard the term OCD. Obsessive–compulsive disorder—that’s what she had. It was a well-recognized condition, and she was by no means the only person to suffer from it. All over the world, people were straightening things and washing their hands until they cracked. People with OCD were counting things and scrubbing things, making lists, and ordering their lives into a set of neat and regular routines. It was their way of controlling the world, and it made perfect sense to them. There was no other way to live, and even though it might drive them crazy and they knew it was illogical, they couldn’t stop themselves.
Sarah often tried to imagine what life might be like without OCD. She tried to envisage a different version of herself—a Sarah who was more relaxed, who could get out of bed and not worry about straightening the pillow and covers. A Sarah who didn’t need to brush her hair with one hundred strokes and start all over again if she was interrupted.
Or, perhaps, OCD could be something that you could choose to suffer from on certain days of the week; you could mark it in your diary for Mondays and Thursdays, leaving the other days of the week free, so you could behave like a normal human being. But that was never going to happen, and there was no use in wishing it so.
As she packed her suitcase for the festival, Sarah’s eye caught a little framed silhouette of Jane Austen that hung on the wall beside her bed. It was a dear little thing, framed in oval brass and with a traditional acorn hanger, bought on a previous trip to Bath. The reason it caught her eye now was that, like the curtain before, it wasn’t hanging quite straight. She must have knocked it whilst dusting. Neatly folding her pair of jeans and placing them in the bottom of the suitcase, she walked across the room to straighten the little frame. As she did so, she couldn’t help remembering another frame she’d once straightened and how much trouble it had got her into.
She’d been about twelve and was visiting a very posh art gallery in London with her school. She still remembered walking into a large, airy room hung with beautiful landscapes in large gold frames and standing in the middle of the room to admire them. It had been perfect. Even at the tender age of twelve, Sarah had been drawn to Georgian architecture. There was something intrinsically pleasing about the straight lines and symmetry of the rooms that made her feel calm and gave her a feeling of being oh-so-right.
But it hadn’t all been perfect that day, because one of the paintings hadn’t been straight. It was a landscape—a simple river flowing through the mountains—but it was distinctly wonky. Sarah looked around her, because she felt sure that she wouldn’t be the only one to notice it, but nobody seemed to be paying it any attention.
Sarah shook her head, bemused as to how it had gone unnoticed. In such a symmetrically pleasing room, the wonky painting was virtually screaming out loud to be straightened, and without even pausing to question her actions, she crossed the room and took the painting in both hands.
The alarm that went off had never been equalled in loudness before or since, and it still made Sarah shudder to think of it.
‘What on earth were you doing?’ Her teacher’s face was scarlet with embarrassment as security staff sprang into action and she and her teacher were escorted into a book-lined office.
It was soon pretty obvious that a twelve-year-old girl had no intentions of stealing the priceless artwork, and she was allowed to go on her way without further questioning. Now, as she fixed the little silhouette on the wall, she couldn’t help smiling. OCD had certainly made her life interesting.
Catching sight of her reflection in the mirror, Sarah smoothed down her hair with her hands. She kept it in a neat bob, its edges so sharp that it looked in danger of slicing her cheekbones. Her mother used to let Sarah’s hair get completely out of control, and Sarah had hated her for it, because she knew that once it got to chin length, one side curled outwards and the other inwards, which was absolutely appalling and not to be endured.
Everything about her was controlled, from the way she styled her hair to the neat skirts and jackets she wore for work. Straight lines were featured heavily. Not for her were the ruffles and flounces that came in and out of fashion—they were far too messy and unpredictable. You knew where you were with a straight line; it didn’t mess around.
Mia often made fun of her for dressing so neatly and precisely.
‘You work from home! You could hang around in your pajamas all day, and nobody would notice.’
‘But I don’t want to hang around in my pajamas all day,’ Sarah said. ‘It just isn’t right.’
One of the reasons Sarah had become an accountant was so that she could work from home. Home was an environment she could control. She didn’t have to worry about co-workers and the mess they made, and there was a certain calmness that came from knowing exactly where everything was at a given time. Imagine trying to work in an open-plan office with other people—the thought was just preposterous. She would have to share her space with total strangers, who might pick up her things. No, working from home was a much safer option.
Post was an issue, of course. She found it irritating that anybody could pop a filthy envelope through her mailbox, so she employed a pair of fine cotton gloves that she donned before touching anything that landed on her doormat.
Her clients were harder to control. When she could, she met them in a local pub that she knew to be clean.
If people turned up at her home, she showed them through to the room that she kept specifically for that purpose and would later vacuum and polish any surfaces she had seen them touch during their visit.
It really was an exhausting business, and there was never an end in sight. Sarah just seemed to lurch from one anxiety to another.
The only thing that could make her forget her OCD was Jane Austen. When she immersed herself in Austen, her lists were forgotten, and she managed to stop thinking about the dust that might be accumulating behind her wardrobe and the fact that the vacuum marks in the carpet were no longer visible. Whenever she picked up one of the six perfect books or switched on the television to watch one of the wonderful adaptations, she could truly relax and become a person that she barely recognized. That was the power of Austen.
She first discovered Jane Austen when she was at school. Her English teacher was meant to be teaching them Charles Dickens’s Hard Times but had rebelled and given each pupil a copy of Pride and Prejudice instead, and thus began a lifetime of romance for Sarah. Whenever she was feeling stressed, whenever life got too much for her and even she couldn’t organize or control it to her liking, she could lose herself in the magical world of heroes and heroines, where love and laughter were guaranteed, and where a happy ending was absolutely essential.
Then, a few years ago, she discovered the Jane Austen Festival in Bath. It had been a complete revelation to her that, all over the world, there were fans who were as obsessed as she was with the Austen books and films. She made many new friends, and they were the loveliest people in the world. Well, you couldn’t imagine a mean, nasty person adoring Jane Austen, could you?
And here she was packing her suitcase once again, except she was a little nervous this time; she hadn’t been for the past two years. She and Mia usually attended together, dressing up in Regency costume and giggling their way around Bath together, eyeing up any young man who might be a contender for Mr Darcy, but that was before things had gone wrong, wasn’t it?
She sighed and picked up a tiny silver photo frame that sat on a highly polished table by the side of her bed. It was a picture of her and Mia at Barton Cottage in Devon three years earlier. They were both squinting into the sun and laughing. How happy they both looked, and how long ago that all seemed now!
‘Three long years,’ Sarah said.
And not a single word spoken between them in all that time.
Chapter 3
Mia Castle got out of bed, idly thinking how clever she was not to have needed her alarm clock, when a sudden cold fear iced her spine and she remembered that
the alarm clock had indeed gone off and that she had silenced it with an angry hand and then promptly fallen asleep again.
‘I’m late!’ she yelped, throwing back her duvet and leaping out of bed, tripping over the slippers that had been left among a tumble of clothes on the floor. Bending down quickly, she grabbed the pair of jeans and gave them a quick shake before shoving them into the suitcase at the end of the bed. They were mostly clean, after all.
Flinging open her tiny single wardrobe with the wonky door, she grabbed an armful of sweaters and shirts, most of them unironed, and dumped them into the suitcase. Next came the shoes. How many to take? It was an impossible question to answer, so they all went in: flat ones, heeled ones, scuffed ones, and cute ones.
Then it was the entire contents of the bathroom, from shampoo bottles to hairbrushes to an overstuffed bag of old bits of makeup. She didn’t have time to be selective—not that her packing would have been any different if she had more time. Her suitcases were usually a big jumble of everything.
She then took the quickest of showers. She didn’t have time to wash her hair, but let it tumble its way down her back, the dark curls as wild as briars as she pulled on a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt with the name of a rock band she’d seen when she’d been at drama school. She hadn’t heard of the band since, but it was a very nice T-shirt and one of the few that didn’t have great gaping holes in it.
Because she wasn’t a complete slob, she opened her fridge and took out a pint of milk, pouring the contents down the sink and binning the empty carton. If her days of being a student had taught her nothing else, she’d learned about the perils of out-of-date food.
Putting on a watch with a leather strap almost worn away to a whisper, she glanced around her flat. She was looking forward to getting away from the dark, depressing place. Nine wonderful nights in Bath, she thought, where she wouldn’t have to wear earplugs to shut out the noise of the traffic and her neighbors or worry about inhaling the pernicious damp in her shower room.
Reaching for her handbag, she checked her train tickets. She was only just going to make it in time.
‘Handbag,’ she said, grabbing it from her bedside chair. ‘Suitcase,’ she said, sitting down on top of it to squash it into submission. What on earth was in there to make it bulge so? she wondered. She hadn’t packed that much stuff. Still, it was a whole nine days away from home, and at that time of year, it was impossible to know what to wear, so everything had to be packed.
She was just about to wheel the suitcase out of her front door when she suddenly remembered something.
‘Costume!’ she shouted. It was the most important item of clothing, and she’d almost forgotten it. She’d left it draped over the threadbare armchair that sat by the window overlooking the dirty street below. How white and pure and beautiful it looked in the dark, dingy bedsit! I don’t belong here, it seemed to say. I belong in a beautiful Georgian sitting room with candles and mirrors and a huge sash window overlooking an immaculate lawn.
‘Poor dress,’ Mia said, picking it up and holding it against her. ‘But don’t worry, we’re going to Bath. You’ll love it there.’
What was she actually going to do with her costume, though? There was no way it was going to fit into her suitcase, and even if it did, it would get horribly creased. She looked around the tiny bedsit as if inspiration might strike, and surely enough, it did as she spied the overflowing bin in the corner of the room.
A bin bag would do the trick. It wasn’t very dignified for such a lovely dress, but it would have to do.
With her suitcase threatening to explode at any moment, her handbag stuffed with books for the train ride—Persuasion and Northanger Abbey to get herself in the mood for Bath—and her bin bag, she left her flat, locking her door behind her and looking forward to getting as far away from it as possible for the next few days.
It really was a terrible flat, but it was all she could afford. Well, she couldn’t really afford it, if she were honest. Who would have thought it? Three years after leaving drama school, and she was still in debt. What had happened to her dreams of being discovered and becoming an overnight success? She’d been so sure it would happen. Mind you, so had the thousands of other drama school students who had graduated the same year she had, to say nothing of those who had graduated before her and those who followed her. All of them had the same dreams and aspirations, and ninety-nine percent of them were probably stuck in a dingy bedsit and waiting tables at some terrible restaurant.
Success, it now seemed to Mia, was as elusive as a Jane Austen hero, but, as with her deep-rooted knowledge that she would find a modern-day Mr Darcy, Mia wasn’t going to give up on her dream of becoming a singer. It was all she’d ever wanted to do. Her mother used to joke that, when a baby, Mia hadn’t ever cried but rather had sung whenever she wanted something. Growing up, she’d taken every opportunity she could to show off her talents, from grabbing the microphone at her auntie’s wedding and treating everyone to a very gutsy version of ‘White Wedding’ to hogging the karaoke at the local club. Mia sang at every opportunity, which could be particularly annoying if you were her neighbor, and she frequently received angry bangs on the flimsy walls if her rendition of ‘Nessun Dorma’ really was making it impossible for people to fall asleep.
What was to become of her, she dreaded to think. She lost count of how much she owed in back rent, and there was no way she could ever hope to save enough for a deposit on a place of her own with the money she was making from her job as a waitress.
And then there had been that recent audition. Mia shivered whenever she thought about it and tried to put it at the back of her mind, but it refused to go away. Just a fortnight before, she had auditioned for a new show in the West End. It was everything she ever dreamed of, and she queued up with the rest of the hopefuls, her heart hammering and her nerves jangling.
She shook her head. She wasn’t going to think about it. She refused to think about that now. She had a train to catch and plenty of other things to worry about, such as sneaking by her landlord’s door without being heard.
As she began to descend the stairs with her suitcase, she counted, remembering that the fourth stair was creaky in the middle and the fifth was creaky on the right side, but Mia had perfected a strange sort of ballet movement to avoid setting them off. It was a bit more difficult with a huge suitcase and bin bag in tow, but she managed to do it, making it down onto the next landing and the next flight of stairs. That was where Mr Crownor had his lodgings, and she did not want to run into him right now. He was the sort of man one tried to avoid at all costs, not only because he was most unpleasant in manner, but also because his personal hygiene left a lot to be desired. But just as Mia’s foot hit the first stair, his door flung open, and he walked out onto the landing.
Mia froze and tried not to inhale, but the landing was soon ripe with the stench of garlic. Slowly she turned around, knowing she’d been caught and there was no escape.
‘I’ve been hoping to run into you,’ Mr Crownor said. ‘You’ve been doing a pretty good job of avoiding me, haven’t you, young miss?’ He jabbed her left shoulder with a stubby, nicotine-stained finger. His thinning hair was slicked across his head in a greasy wave, his bloodshot eyes bulging out of their sockets as his stomach bulged over the waistband of his jeans. It was a sight that should only ever come out once a year, at Halloween.
‘I’ve not been avoiding you, Mr Crownor,’ Mia said, inching backwards down the stairs.
‘Oh, you haven’t? You sure about that? Because you know you’re behind with your rent—again.’
‘I know,’ Mia said, swallowing, ‘and I’m so sorry.’
‘So where’s my money?’
‘It’s coming, Mr Crownor. I just need a little bit more time.’
‘Time, eh?’ he said, his eyes bulging toward her most unnervingly. ‘Well—see—I ain’t got any more time to give you. I’ve got people queuing round the block for your flat. It isn’t easy to find lux
ury apartments in this part of town.’
Luxury? Was he talking about the same pokey little bedsit with the moldy ceiling and the permanent smell of damp?
‘Mr Crownor, as much as I’d love to talk to you, I really must go. I have a train to catch and—’
‘So you’ve got money for a train ticket, have you? Well, I might have liked some of that money.’
‘I promise I’ll have the money for you when I get back,’ Mia said.
‘A working trip is it, then?’ Mr Crownor’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.
‘Yes,’ Mia lied. ‘That’s right.’ Well, all those years in drama school had to be good for something, didn’t they? ‘Now, I’ve really got to go, or my boss will be furious with me, and I won’t earn a single penny!’ Before he could stop her, she trotted down the stairs, her suitcase banging behind her.
‘Well, don’t be surprised if I’ve let your room whilst you’re away,’ Mr Crownor shouted after her.
Mia ignored him, slamming the front door behind her and shuddering. Horrible, horrible man! That such men existed was just too depressing. Mia was a romantic and wanted to exist in the world where all men were handsome and eloquent and—above all—polite. Was that too much to ask? Unfortunately, her experience with men had been far removed from the novels she read. Life at drama school had been full of show-offs and fools. It had all been very depressing, and then she met Guido. He stepped on her toes outside Covent Garden tube and hadn’t stopped apologizing for the rest of the day. He was tall, dark, and handsome, and she’d really fallen for him, but he was in town for only a month and then went back to his mama in Italy. It was the story of Mia’s life.
‘There are no heroes in London,’ she said under her breath as she hailed a taxi, knowing that she was about to use the last ten-pound note in her purse, but not able to face the bus or tube with all her luggage. No wonder her best friend Shelley had swapped London for Bath two years before. Not only was she living in a beautiful house, but she was also very handy for the Jane Austen Festival.
Mr. Darcy Forever Page 2