by Brigid Coady
‘How about you have a look at my music and see if we can’t expand your musical collection,’ she said smiling and looked up at him through her lashes.
He smiled back and gave a small laugh.
They spent the rest of the evening scrolling through her phone, a set of headphones shared between them.
‘I’ll have you know that Breach Of The Peace, like One Direction, are very underrated. And I refuse to listen to your snobbish attitude to boy bands.’ Annie shoved her shoulder into John’s as they walked back to the hotel.
Overall it had been a good night. It hadn’t revolved around Austen for her. Okay, she had been completely aware of him the whole time but John was a good bloke. Sad. Damaged. But good. Annie wanted to help him out.
‘Sheesh, you’ve just bought into that Wed Poulley nonsense,’ he said laughing, mentioning the ship name of two of the Breach’s members as they got to the door to the hotel.
‘The fact you know about their “forbidden love” says something about your internet habits. Also don’t be dissing the greatest love story of the twenty-first century,’ she said as she stopped, clutching at her heart dramatically as she turned to face him.
Annie watched the rest of the group head towards the hotel bar. ‘I’m going to leave you all to your drinks,’ she said wanting to end the night on a positive note.
‘I had a great time tonight,’ John said. His smile slipped slightly and he looked guilty.
Annie’s heart clenched. Instinctively she put a hand on his shoulder, reached up, and kissed his cheek.
‘You are allowed to have a good time,’ she whispered in his ear. ‘I’m sure she wouldn’t want you to be sad.’
He hugged her. It was nice to have someone hold her even if it was merely platonic.
‘Thank you,’ he whispered back.
They let go of each other, smiling.
She waved him goodbye and headed through the lobby to the stairs.
‘I’m still not listening to Breach Of The Peace,’ he called as she walked away.
She laughed as she grabbed the newel post; she carried on smiling to herself as she started climbing the stairs. The lobby was quiet as the door to the bar closed. She was suddenly on her own. Rubbing the back of her neck, she thought about her bed. Maybe she could sleep tonight.
She got to the first landing and started yawning. As she put her foot on the bottom step to go up to the next level, she heard the door from the bar open. Then there was someone coming up the stairs from the lobby at a run.
That someone was tall and lean and taking the stairs two at a time. He had a mess of hair and green eyes; he grabbed her arm and pulled her back onto the landing. Austen stared down at her. He looked tortured for a brief second, then his face was composed.
Where had all the oxygen gone? How had he managed to suck it from the stairwell?
She realized the landing was small dark and secluded.
‘What are you doing?’ The words, although whispered, reverberated through her.
‘What?’ Annie gasped.
Austen let go of her arm and took a step back, as if he’d only just realized he was touching her.
‘Please, if you ever had any feeling for me … leave John alone. He doesn’t need people like you messing him up.’
‘People like me?’ she said.
Eight years. And this was the most personal conversation they’d had.
‘John needs people he can rely on. People who’ll be there for him for the long haul; someone who isn’t going to flake out.’ His voice was quiet and desperate. ‘Could you do that? Could you stick it out?’
It was like he was throwing knives at her. And each one was slicing into her, leaving her bloodied and raw.
But he was right.
‘I don’t want him realizing he comes second behind your family. He deserves to be first,’ Austen continued.
Annie could feel her mouth opening and closing. She wanted to deny what he was insinuating, the words rising up in her only to be choked back down before they were uttered.
She wanted to say, ‘But you came first with me’. But he hadn’t.
Austen waited, his hand clenched on the bannister.
Say something. Say anything.
‘But John’s a …’ She started to say friend.
‘Just think about it before it goes any further,’ Austen said, his face now in shadow. He quickly turned and went back downstairs, jumping the final three steps, his fists clenched.
And Annie collapsed against the wall of the landing, her heart breaking. He had no respect for her. That was somehow worse than him hating her. She’d never realized how much she would’ve welcomed his anger.
Blindly she walked upstairs and stumbled to her room. Acid burning her throat, her stomach cramping.
She made it into the bathroom just in time. And as she knelt convulsing over the toilet, tears dripping off the end of her nose, all she could think was: I’m pathetic.
I’m a sell-out.
***
The next morning, Annie woke up tangled in her duvet, her phone blaring some inspirational music that experts had determined was ideal to wake up to. She picked it up, clumsily pressed a button, and smacked it back onto the nightstand. Turning off a phone alarm was never as satisfying as throwing a clock across a room.
Annie wasn’t sure when she’d eventually got to sleep but it hadn’t been that long ago.
She cuddled one of the pillows to her chest, eyes swollen, throat raw, and her abdomen sore.
She felt like shit.
Inside and out.
Had it felt this bad eight years ago?
She had two more weeks of rehearsals and then the actual production to get through. And every day she spent near Austen was like having her heart shredded by a million paper cuts until it was a mushy pulp.
Groaning she flipped onto her front. Why couldn’t Cassie find her a nice safe production, with lots of OAPs? She’d heard Ian McKellen was a joy to work with. Anything but this one. Surely Cassie would understand. They’d get another chance to get into production.
Annie couldn’t stay in Lyme Regis – that she did know. Not after last night. It didn’t matter what everyone said. It didn’t matter if Austen thought she was running away. Not that it should matter what he thought. He had obviously made up his mind.
Now she had to work out a way to escape the hotel with no one noticing her.
Annie was never sure how, when you came to pack up in a hotel room, there always seemed to be less space in your bag than when you arrived. Even if you hadn’t bought anything extra.
She shoved her toilet bag further down the side of the case and pressing hard managed to get the zip closed. She looked at her phone: eight a.m. Annie wished she knew when everyone had said they would meet for breakfast.
No, she could do this. She could totally sneak downstairs and out of the hotel. And she wasn’t going to let Austen pay for the room. She had some self-respect, didn’t she?
Dragging a suitcase quietly down the windy stairs took a bit longer than it had taken going up the previous day. When she reached the lobby, Annie wiped the sweat from her forehead and had a quick look round.
No one familiar.
Excellent.
She darted across to the reception desk, wishing it wasn’t in full view of the restaurant. She leant her elbow on the desk and hid the side of her face nearest the door with her hand. If she could get this done fast, and the cab she’d called arrived, then she’d be on a train to London before anyone thought to knock on her door.
‘No, you don’t understand. I want to pay for room 212,’ Annie said in as quiet a voice as she could.
‘But Mr Wentworth is picking up the bill?’ The receptionist frowned at Annie and then down at her computer.
Annie glanced back over her shoulder. ‘I know that, but I need to pay instead.’ She raised her voice slightly and waved her credit card. ‘See, I want to pay with this card.’
‘But, Miss El
liot, Mr Wentworth was very insistent.’
Annie clenched her teeth together. ‘And now I’m being very insistent.’
What was wrong with her money? And who cared who paid for the bill as long as it was paid?
‘Hey, Annie, you okay?’
Annie closed her eyes. Great – so much for sneaking off.
‘Hi, Lewis.’ She turned and hoped her smile was less of the grimace she felt it was. His frown told her that it was definitely a grimace.
‘Can I help at all?’
‘No …’ Annie started.
‘Miss Elliot is checking out but she wants to pay for her room and I keep telling her that Mr Wentworth has taken care of it all.’
Wasn’t there a receptionist code of ethics that stopped you spilling information to other guests?
‘You’re going?’ Lewis asked.
Annie didn’t want to say it. Didn’t want Lewis to look at her with pity. There was a strained silence.
Annie could see the receptionist eagerly watching them and knew that this little drama was going to fuel the staff room gossip for the next few hours. Up until the point some chambermaid walked in on a shirtless Austen or something.
‘Oh did work call you in?’ Lewis took over, coming up with a cover story.
‘Yes, work.’ Annie fell on the excuse with open arms.
‘Look, if you want to pay for the room, I’d take it up with Austen after the weekend. You can pay him back or something.’
Or something.
She wanted to cry.
There was a car horn from outside and suddenly she knew that she had to go. Any minute another of their group would turn up and wouldn’t be as lovely as Lewis.
‘Thank you,’ she said and grabbed her bag.
‘What do you want me to tell the others?’ he asked.
What could she say? I’m running away because the only man I’ve ever loved has no respect for me. Or maybe, I’m running away because I can’t stand to see him fall in love with someone else. Either would be true.
‘How about I stick with the “work called” excuse?’ Lewis was saving her yet again.
‘You are a star,’ Annie said.
Lewis reached out and hugged her. He might have been a small man, only a little taller than Annie, but he managed to hug hard.
‘I’ll see you soon,’ he said and then ushered her out of the hotel.
Later as Annie sat on the train watching the countryside rush by in a blur of green, she realized that not going to LA with Austen had robbed her of someone like Lewis.
She didn’t need any more regrets.
When she put her key in her door she sagged against it.
So much for having any self-respect. Austen had still paid for the room.
Chapter Ten
‘I quit.’
It was an entrance worthy of any in the Elliot clan, even with Annie tripping slightly over the uneven floorboard and launching herself with more energy than she expected into Cassie’s office.
It also meant that her voice rose at the end of the delivery giving it the feel of a question rather than the very definite decision she’d made on her way back from Lyme.
Somewhere on the train she’d thought, sod it. She didn’t need to do it. She was quitting.
A logical, in no way emotional, decision.
One that she would be sticking to come what may.
‘No you aren’t,’ Cassie said, staring at her screen without looking up.
‘I bloody am.’
There was no way she was going to be talked out of this.
But why did she feel as if she was losing ground already?
She’d gone over the whole thing very thoroughly. There had been spreadsheets and everything. A pro column and a con column – there had been filters and scoring with the cells changing colours going from red to amber to green.
It all boiled down to the fact that no way on God’s green earth could she and Austen keep working on the same production.
And if she’d fiddled some of the scores in the cells then that was between her and her hard drive.
But it burned in her throat to give up the opportunity to be a producer. This was her career, everything she had worked for.
God, it was like two steps forward and one step back. She’d got her family propped up somehow, had stood up to them only to throw away her dream job because of her ex.
Why couldn’t she have both?
Annie thought back to the weekend, could feel Austen’s hand on her arm. Her stomach clenched when she remembered the dismissive way he’d written her off.
No, like eight years ago she had to choose her sanity. Although this time it was choosing her heart before her career, rather than her family before her heart.
She wasn’t running, not really. She was keeping herself safe. Wasn’t she?
Surely another chance to be a producer would come along?
‘Annie, you really can’t quit.’ Cassie was still looking down at her computer, biting her lip. Her shoulders looked rigid. It was as if she wouldn’t meet Annie’s eyes.
Annie frowned. Years of being attuned to the smallest change in body language or inflection had been her survival tactic. All her senses were telling her to run.
‘Why not, Cassie?’ She crossed her arms. ‘What aren’t you telling me?’
Not that it mattered; she was still quitting.
She was Anne Elliot and she was going to remind everyone, including herself, that she wasn’t a doormat. And if that meant running away from Austen Wentworth then that was her right, wasn’t it?
‘Crap,’ Cassie muttered as she looked up at Annie.
She’d never seen Cassie look less like a honey badger. Her eyes were big and she looked as guilty as Goldilocks being discovered by the three bears.
Cassie didn’t do guilty.
‘Come on, Cass, spit it out.’ Annie leant against the wall, her stomach making its way down to meet her knees.
Please, she thought, don’t do this to me. I’ve made up my mind. Don’t make me have to be around this version of Austen.
‘Well, you know how your dad and sister got the auditions because I sent in their show reels?’ Cassie said quietly.
Annie nodded and moved a finger in a circle to indicate that Cassie should just get on with what she was confessing; surely it couldn’t be too bad. Maybe Annie could work remotely?
‘Well, after the auditions, Les was all for them but Eric and the rest of the producers were a little worried due to … erm … well you know … stories about them being a little difficult.’
Annie snorted. A little difficult … Her family put the dys in dysfunctional.
‘So when I suggested that we co-produce I might have added in that you being on hand would be collateral against their good behaviour?’ Cassie’s voice went up at the end as if in a query.
Annie could feel her skin go cold, goosebumps on her arms. Her head was fuzzy.
‘Are you asking whether this happened or telling me?’ she said. She could hear her own voice at first from far away and then very close as she could feel freedom slipping further away from her.
‘Telling you?’ Cassie flinched back in her chair as if waiting for a blow.
Annie stared at Cass. A logical part of her brain that was standing to the side observing thought that it was weird for kick-ass Cassie to look quite that scared.
Annie must be scarier than she thought.
‘Fuck.’
Annie didn’t raise her voice; she let the profanity fall from her mouth. She wondered how she wasn’t screaming the place down.
She felt as if she had taken a punch in her abdomen, air whooshing out, and she gasped to try and replace it. How she wanted to tear her hair out and rant and rave, scream to the sky that it was unfair. Freedom had been so close, well not proper freedom, more safety and stagnation.
All those little red, green, and amber cells on her spreadsheet had changed colour for nothing, she thought, just like she was noth
ing.
‘Look, Annie. It shouldn’t be too bad. What is it that Imogen and William did this weekend that has you all het up? I mean you were in Lyme Regis all weekend and they were in London so it couldn’t have been too bad. Anyway they won’t be on set the whole time and you know how to handle them.’ Cassie was beginning to wheedle and worm her way through Annie’s defences. ‘And you’ll always have the delectable Austen Wentworth as eye candy; surely that has to be a benefit.’
How had she let her life become this big of a joke?
Annie could feel the steel she always wanted in her dealings with her family enter her. She was going to make a stand.
Grow a backbone, Annie thought to herself.
She needed to do this for her own sanity.
‘You’re going to have to tell them that you’ll be working on it instead of me or we’ll get in a freelancer. There is no way I’m going to be on set.’ This was good; she would stay firm. This was the bit of her job that she was good at.
‘Annie, you don’t understand: legally it is your name in the agreement. When I tried to negotiate round it I hit a brick wall. And I thought that you would be happy to do it. It was what you’ve always said you wanted to do, your name on the credits as a producer …’ Cassie was now batting her eyelashes at her, as if she was some lecherous director who needed bringing round. Cassie was desperate.
‘What does that mean then? It’s me or nothing?’ Annie would be happy to do nothing. There would be other productions. ‘I say we do nothing. We can always get another gig. It will just take a little longer. They’ve still got time to find someone else haven’t they?’
‘Annie, the options are you or there will be no more Northanger Agency.’
A multitude of swear words crashed through Annie, teetering on the edge of her tongue, but none came out. Her knees trembled. Why was she a punching bag this weekend? she wondered as she grabbed for the back of the chair in front of Cass’s desk. She couldn’t show weakness, not yet.
‘What have you done?’ she whispered.
Cass couldn’t have sold Annie’s soul to the devil without Annie noticing?
‘I’m sorry, Annie. I thought it would be fine, but if you don’t honour the contract, they’ll sue the agency for everything we have.’ Cassie put her head in her hands.
