Anna’s heartbeat accelerated to such an extent that she felt sure everyone in the room would hear it.
‘A bit girly, of course, but nothing a slap of paint and new curtains . . .’ She gasped and turned to Anna. ‘How tactless of me – you leaving and me already thinking about changing things! What I meant . . .’
‘It’s fine, honestly,’ Anna said, turning away to fiddle with an ornament on her bookcase and fighting against the idea of Felix lying in her bed.
‘Hold your horses, precious,’ Joseph murmured, glancing fondly at his wife. ‘We don’t know for sure that he’ll come. After all, his mother will want to see him when he gets back.’
‘But Joe, Felix has spent part of every summer holiday with us since for ever.’
‘That,’ Joseph replied gently, ‘was when he was a kid. He’s a grown man, a soldier . . .’
‘And all the more in need of a relaxing break,’ Ruth said dismissively, turning to Marina. ‘He’s a lovely lad, my nephew. My brother’s boy, you know. I love him to bits, and not having been able to have children of my own, he’s been like a son to me.’ She sighed. ‘Of course, what with us having been abroad for so long, I haven’t seen nearly as much of him as I would like, but we keep in touch with phone calls and email when we can – or rather we did until Joe here dragged me off to darkest Patagonia!’
The affectionate way she smiled at her husband made it obvious that she was more than willing to be dragged anywhere he chose.
‘So I haven’t seen the dear boy in over a year and now . . .’
Listening to her barely pausing for breath, Anna remembered how Felix used to talk about his aunt’s verbal diarrohea.
‘He’s with the Marines in Afghanistan, you know – such a worry, every time I hear about some poor guy getting killed, I feel physically sick until I know it’s not him.’
Anna knew the feeling only too well.
‘But a few more weeks, and he’ll be home on leave,’ Ruth chattered on. ‘Just enough time to move in and get the room ready.’
Anna felt the room begin to spin. Felix was coming home. Coming here. And she would be miles away in Eastbourne. At that moment, she realised that Marina was staring at her with a penetrating look. She smiled in what she hoped was a carefree manner and prayed that her godmother hadn’t worked out who the Crofts really were.
‘What a relief that will be!’ Ruth went on. ‘And you dear —’ She beamed at Anna.
‘Excuse me,’ Anna gabbled. ‘I’ve got to go, er, out. Lovely to meet you.’
‘Anna?’ Marina’s tone was sternly disapproving as Anna squeezed past them and out on to the landing.
‘Me and my big mouth,’ she heard Ruth say apologetically. ‘The poor child’s upset at leaving and why shouldn’t she be? You know, I had the strangest feeling just now that I’d seen her face somewhere before.’
Anna, halfway down the stairs, stopped and held her breath, straining her ears to catch the conversation.
‘But then again, I meet so many young people, what with my illustration workshops and then trailing around the place with Joe on his lecture tours. Now then, about the rental?’
Anna exhaled with relief. She’d got away with it. Now all she needed to do was keep well out of the way until the Crofts had gone. And try somehow not to think about Felix in her bedroom, in her shower – in short, not to think about Felix at all.
CHAPTER 2
‘A few months more, and he perhaps may be walking here.’
( Jane Austen, Persuasion)
AT THE BOTTOM OF THE LONG GARDEN, TUCKED IN A CORNER behind the fruit trees, and overlooking the field that led down to the river, stood a cream and blue shepherd’s hut. It had been the Eliot girls’ playhouse when they were small, and still served as a place they escaped to when the need to sulk, scream or simply be alone came over them.
Anna pushed open the door, its hinges creaking slightly, and stepped inside. A shaft of sunlight lit up the faint layer of dust on the rusting wood burner, and a cobweb brushed across her face as she tossed an old magazine aside and slumped into one of the wicker armchairs. Casting an anxious glance through the window to make sure that no one had seen her, she pulled the newspaper cutting from her pocket.
Controversial campaigner and champion of lost causes: our new columnist, Cassandra Wentworth, MP, ensures a challenging read. Catch her every Saturday from July 1st in our Week Ending section!
Just reading the strap-line made Anna cringe inwardly, but it was one of the photographs in the mini-collage beneath it that she’d been so anxious to keep from her father.
The photo was a still from that fateful programme in the last series of Walt at the Weekend. It showed Walter and Cassandra face to face, each looking as if they could cheerfully murder the other. The caption read, Still confronting issues head to head – Cassandra Wentworth sniffs out the sleaze in high places in our new series. Don’t miss it!
Anna jumped as the door to the hut flew open and Mallory, tears streaming down her face, burst in.
‘How can you just sit down here like nothing’s happened?’ she sobbed. ‘You know what? Dad’s only gone and agreed to rent our house to those people —’
‘He did? It’s agreed? Thank God!’ So just possibly, her dad wouldn’t have to declare himself bankrupt.
‘What do you mean? How could you say that? It’s just not fair!’ She flung herself down on the chair opposite Anna and wiped her nose on the back of her hand.
‘Can’t you stop him?’ Mallory looked up pleadingly.
‘Even if I could, it wouldn’t be the right thing to do,’ Anna replied as gently as she could. ‘We can’t afford to stay here. If the Crofts hadn’t taken it, someone else would have.’
‘Mummy would never have let this happen,’ Mallory sniffed. ‘Us going broke, I mean.’
‘I know,’ Anna sighed. ‘But she’s not here and we just have to make the best of it.’
‘I’m scared,’ Mallory whispered. ‘I won’t know anyone in Eastbourne and Charlie . . .’
She choked back a sob. ‘If I’m not around, he might find someone else and I really love him.’
Anna got up and put an arm round her sister. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘Anyway, if he was the type of guy to dump you just because you moved house, he wouldn’t be worth having in the first place. If you’re really right for one another, this won’t change it.’
‘You don’t know anything,’ Mallory retorted. ‘You haven’t been out with anyone since Felix – and that was ages ago.’
Anna bit her lip.
‘Do you still miss him?’ Mallory asked with rare sensitivity.
Slowly Anna nodded. What was the point of pretending? ‘Yes. Every day. I guess I should never have listened to what anyone else said – letting them persuade me to finish with him, it was stupid.’
‘You’re right!’ Mallory leaped to her feet. ‘And I’m not going to mess up my life because of what other people do. Dad wants to move, fine. But he’s not dragging me with him.’ She pulled her mobile phone from the back pocket of her jeans and punched in a number.
‘What are you doing?’ Anna asked. She knew full well that, however big a tantrum her sister threw, nothing would change.
‘Calling Charlie,’ Mallory replied. ‘Come on, come on, pick up.’ She tapped her foot impatiently.
‘Hang on a minute,’ Anna began, glancing out of the hut window. ‘He’s coming here.’
‘Where are you, for God’s sake?’ Mallory shouted at the unanswered phone.
The door of the hut swung open again and Charlie Musgrove, grinning from ear to ear, held up his shrilling mobile.
‘Hiya babe – how’s that for instant response?’
‘Charlie!’
In a moment, Mallory switched from impatience to pathos. She flung herself into Charlie’s arms and began sobbing with an intensity that, had she been on the West End stage, might have been considered over-acting.
‘Charlie, the most terrible thin
g . . . and I can’t bear it . . . and no one understands except you . . . can’t cope . . .’
‘Hey, hang on – what’s happened?’ He cast an anxious eye in Anna’s direction and raised one eyebrow questioningly.
Charlie, who at nineteen looked two years younger and had the cheeky grin of a small boy caught stealing cookies, was totally besotted with Mallory and either didn’t realise, or didn’t care, that making a drama out of a crisis was her preferred way of operating.
‘My entire life is in ruins,’ she sobbed. ‘As if I haven’t been through enough already what with Mummy and . . . I’ll never forgive my dad.’
Charlie patted Mallory’s shoulder and looked pleadingly at Anna.
‘I’ll leave you two alone,’ she said briskly and then paused. ‘By the way, how is your mum, Charlie?’
Bea Musgrove was recovering from a badly broken arm, the result of getting overenthusiastic at the church Barn Dance.
‘In a tizz,’ Charlie replied. ‘The girl who runs the tearoom has handed in her notice, and Ellie who helps out with the cottages has got glandular fever. And at the height of the letting season too. And what with Mum being one-armed and dad tied up with the harvesting and the farm rides, life’s a bit difficult at our place. To say the least!’
‘Your life’s difficult?’ Mallory gulped, squeezing a few more tears out of her eyes. ‘At least you’ve got a home.’
‘Mallory, don’t be so dramatic,’ Anna began.
‘I thought you were leaving,’ her sister snapped. ‘So just go – hey wait a sec! You’ve dropped something.’
She stepped forward and picked up the newspaper cutting from the floor. As she handed it to Anna, her gaze fell on the photograph.
‘Hang on, isn’t that Cassandra Wentworth?’
‘Thanks, I’ll take that!’ Anna snatched it from her sister’s hand. ‘Didn’t you have something you wanted to tell Charlie?’
‘Yeah, babes, I haven’t got much time,’ Charlie said. ‘I only popped in on my way to pick up stuff from the printers for Dad.’
Not surprisingly, Mallory’s tears conveniently began flowing again, and the last words Anna heard as she hurried back towards the house were, ‘Charlie, if you really love me, you’ve got to do something. And fast.’
Late on the following Friday afternoon, Anna was sitting in Caffé Nero stirring her latte disconsolately while her best friend, Shannon Smith, demolished a doughnut with the dedication of one warding off imminent starvation.
‘. . . and so there’s nothing for it, we’ve got to move to Eastbourne.’
She had been putting off sharing the news for as long as she could in the vain hope of a miracle, but now that Shannon was home from her latest stint in Stoke Mandeville hospital, there was nothing for it but to come clean.
‘But you can’t!’ Shannon spluttered, spraying crumbs over a large area. ‘What about the band? We’ve got all those gigs coming up – you can’t just swan off and leave us!’
‘I don’t want to, but . . .’
‘And Felix? I mean, you’ve been going on for the last heaven knows how long about how much you miss him, and how you wish you could turn the clock back, and now you get a chance to put things right and you’re going to chuck it all away!’
‘What choice do I have?’ Anna asked.
‘Anna Eliot, for God’s sake get a grip!’ Shannon retorted. ‘You don’t want to go to flipping Eastbourne? So don’t go!’
‘Oh, like I can really do anything about it? I’m hardly going to rant and rave and throw tantrums like Mallory’s been doing, am I? There’s enough stress in our house without that.’
‘So you’re going to wreck your summer, just to keep the peace? And let the band down?’
‘You don’t understand,’ Anna argued. ‘On the first of July, the Crofts are moving in – what do you expect me to do? Camp in the garden?’
Shannon sighed, took a long gulp of her coffee, and eyed Anna.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Question number one: am I your best mate?’
‘You know you are,’ Anna said, nodding. The two of them had hit it off that very first day in the Sixth Form at Fleckford College, and Shannon was the only one of Anna’s friends who knew the whole horrible story from beginning to end.
‘Question number two: do best mates tell it like it is?’
‘Well, you certainly do,’ Anna teased. ‘With embellishments.’
‘Last question: have you really thought through whether you want to see Felix again? Because it sounds to me as if you’re having second thoughts.’
For a moment, Anna said nothing. She’d been wondering the same thing herself for the past week, ever since Ruth Croft had announced that Felix was coming home. On the one hand, if she did see him and he didn’t want to know, she might die all over again; on the other, if she didn’t see him, and his time away had been filled with yearnings for her and a desire to start over . . .
‘A lot. I want to see him a lot.’
‘Right,’ Shannon said, licking the last remnants of sugar from her fingers. ‘So for once, do what you want. You’re eighteen, for God’s sake – you can do what the hell you like.’
‘It’s not as simple as that.’
‘Oh Anna, those are the very words you said to me way back when everything blew up in your face, remember? And I told you then that things are as simple or as difficult as you choose to make them. Fancy another coffee?’
‘I’ll get them,’ Anna said hastily, as Shannon backed her wheelchair away from the table.
‘Don’t you dare,’ Shannon replied amicably. ‘I can manage. Just sit there and make a plan.’
Not for the first time, Anna reflected on the irony of their friendship. There was Shannon, who following a horrendous accident when she was thirteen, spent most of her waking hours in a wheelchair, and who was about the most feisty, go-getty girl she’d ever known, never letting her disability stop her from doing whatever she wanted. She was a great keyboard player, and a leading light of the county wheelchair basketball team. And here was she, Anna Eliot, with everything going for her and the chance to put her whole life back on track, and she didn’t have the guts to tell her father that, even if he had to go to Sussex, she didn’t have to follow him.
The trouble was, irritating though he was, she loved her dad, and she knew that underneath all his blustering and pomposity, he still missed her mum dreadfully. Alice Eliot had been his rock; his nickname for her had been Pebble, because he said she was too dainty and too beautiful to be a rock. Alice had always been there to pick up the pieces when Walter messed up, always took his side and made excuses for some of his more outrageous behaviour, and one of the last things that she had said to Anna before she died had been, ‘Look after everyone, darling. Especially your daddy. You’re my sensible girl – I know I can rely on you.’
She’d failed her mum once already. She’d been the cause of all her father’s recent problems. She didn’t dare upset him again. And yet . . .
Her thoughts were interrupted by her mobile phone vibrating in her pocket.
‘Hi Mallory, what’s up?’
‘You’ll never guess, it’s so amazing, I could die from happiness.’
‘Why? What is it?’ Anna laughed.
‘I’ve got a job!’
If Mallory had said that she was about to fly to the moon, Anna couldn’t have been more surprised. Work was normally something she expected others to do for her.
‘It’s so cool,’ she babbled. ‘I’m going to work in the tearoom at Uppercross Farm. It was my idea and Charlie sorted it with his mum and guess what?’
‘What?’
‘They say I can live with them all summer till I go back to school. I can have the spare bedroom as my own. And they’re going to let me try out recipes for the café and everything. Isn’t that just the best thing?’
‘Yes, I guess,’ Anna replied hesitantly, trying to suppress the surge of jealousy. ‘But have you asked Dad?’
‘Not y
et, and I shan’t ask him, I shall tell him,’ Mallory replied decisively. ‘He can’t complain; it’s his fault we’re in this mess. And besides, it’ll look good on my CV for when I go to catering college. Anyway, got to go; Charlie’s waiting. Laters!’
For a moment, Anna sat open-mouthed, staring at her phone. While she couldn’t for one moment imagine her sister sticking at a job day in, day out, and knew that her latest idea of going to catering college had only come from spending a day on the set of Ready, Steady, Cook! when Walter was the guest celebrity, she had to admire Mallory for taking matters into her own hands. In the past, she’d always looked to Anna to take care of stuff and now she was the one getting a life.
That did it. If Mallory could do it, so could she. She’d tell her father today. She wasn’t going to Eastbourne either. What’s more, an idea was forming in her mind that just might make everything easier.
‘I’m not going,’ she announced as Shannon wheeled up to the table balancing a tray of coffees on her lap. ‘I’ve decided.’
‘Halle-blooming-luljah!’ Shannon cheered, punching the air and slopping coffee everywhere. ‘So what’s the plan?’
‘I’m going to ask Marina to let me live with her till I go to uni,’ she went on, finally verbalising the idea that had been drifting at the back of her mind for the past two days. ‘I mean, I’ll go and visit Dad and everything, but if I’m up here, we can still do our gigs.’
The Barn Theatre, on the outskirts of Fleckford, which had grown from a tiny amateur effort in a couple of disused cowsheds into a thriving enterprise that was famous across three counties, had a policy of letting student music groups play in the foyer before shows. Wild Chicks had managed to get slots every week in the summer, as well as the chance to help out from time to time at the theatre’s music and drama workshops for kids.
‘That’s great, but of course not half as vital as being in a position to see Felix when he turns up,’ Shannon teased. ‘I take it you’re not planning to mention that part of the plan to the rest of the family.’
Echoes of Love Page 3
