Persuading Austen

‘Whatever, darling; Daddy, we need to go.’

And in a flurry of clicking heels and ciaos, they were gone leaving Annie in a fog of exotic scent and anger.

Why couldn’t she tell them no?

The whisper of her mother’s voice was in her ear: ‘Promise me, Annie. Promise to look after them.’

Annie stood in the hall, her chest heaving with all the unsaid words she wanted to shout. Her throat choked by familial feelings.

This had to stop. She needed to make a stand.

***

‘What the hell?’ Annie poured the rest of the white wine from the bottle into her glass.

Taking a stand meant Annie needed to figure out the family finances. Ever since Mum died, she had been the one who managed everything. At first because Marie was too young, Immy had stuck her face in a pile of drugs and Dad, well he’d just let her.

Which was why Annie was sitting downstairs in the kitchen. She shifted as her bum was going numb on a rickety kitchen chair and her laptop wobbled slightly on the uneven surface of the table.

She took a massive gulp of wine and rubbed her eyes.

There should have been enough in the family’s account for the next mortgage payment. Everyone’s salary went in, the big bills were paid, and then everyone got an allowance in their own account. Annie had come up with the system and with a few tweaks it worked.

But now she was sitting looking at the statement on the bank’s website and it had a very different figure than it should have, a much lower amount than the one her spreadsheet said should be there.

Hadn’t she taken Immy and Dad’s cards away that linked to this account? They weren’t allowed access ever since she found Dad had left the card behind the bar at a pub and charged the whole of a wrap party’s tab to it.

Annie downed the rest of the glass, her lips pulling back as the acidity hit her tongue. She squinted at the website. Slowly she scrolled through the past month’s transactions. Her salary had gone in last Monday and almost immediately it had nearly all gone.

What the …

And there was the culprit: three thousand five hundred and twenty-one pounds ninety-nine spent at … She looked a little closer.

She was going to kill them. Absolutely annihilate them. They had spent what little financial cushion they had at a place called The Kybella Klinic. With shaking hands she typed it into the search engine.

A series of injections to get rid of fat, especially under the chin, she read.

And the worrying thing: she wasn’t sure whether it was Immy or her dad who had wasted the money because neither of them looked any different.

Annie downed the remainder of the wine.

She couldn’t do it anymore. That was her salary. She would get them standing on their own two feet and free of her or die trying.

Annie got up from the table and headed towards the fridge where she knew there was another bottle of wine.

And if she was going to die then it didn’t matter how much wine she drank in the interim, did it?

***

‘You need to rent out the house, tell them to pull their socks up and act like grown-ups. Let you get on with your life.’

The whole restaurant went quiet and Annie could see everyone’s head swivel to watch them. She wanted to crawl under the table in the Italian restaurant. She wondered how her godmother would take being asked to keep her voice down.

Not well.

Crisp and RADA trained, Lily Russell’s voice had filled the Old Vic and had projected to the back of the Olivier. It easily reverberated around the small room that made up the exclusive restaurant. She was a national treasure. Dame Lily Russell, grande dame of English theatre. More importantly she had been Annie’s mother’s best friend at drama school and beyond. She didn’t do quiet.

But she definitely did managing.

‘I know, Auntie Lil.’ Annie sighed. ‘Renting out is the only way we can get out of this mess. But I don’t know how to bring it up. Dad will have a fit, Immy will go into queen bee mode, and Marie, who doesn’t even live there, will get all sentimental about how I’m taking her childhood home from her.’ She smoothed the tablecloth as she said it, looking down so she didn’t see the faces of the other diners she knew were still staring at them.

Annie knew this because she tried to bring up the idea for renting out the house about once a year. She shuddered. And there was that one time she’d suggested selling …

The house was a millstone around their necks – or rather her neck. She should be rejoicing about the new job but she was stuck.

And now with the mortgage in danger of being defaulted on she needed to do something. She couldn’t bury her head in the sand.

That is why she’d called up Auntie Lil. Reinforcements. Or an old-fashioned kick up the backside.

‘You let them bully you,’ Lily said. ‘You have to be firm and stick to your guns. Your mother, God rest her soul, babied them all. Ruined them.’

Annie raised her eyes to stare at the picture of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, which was on the wall behind Lily. Bullied? Well, Annie couldn’t deny it. But they needed her, didn’t they? She was looking after them. Just like she promised.

‘Annie, darling.’ Auntie Lil leaned forward as if she were saying something she didn’t want overheard. Her voice came down a few decibels but could still be heard in the kitchen. ‘While you are looking after the whole family, you can’t move on.’

Annie could feel her eyes fill.

Crap.

‘Now, I know that you aren’t getting any younger. I mean, I was talking to my private doctor the other day and he said that no matter how you young people put things off, your eggs are ageing.’

Let the floor open up and swallow her. How had they gone from family finances to her fertility?

‘How will you settle down and start a family when you are too busy babying William and Imogen?’

Start a family?

What?

Annie felt she had taken a sharp turn into a different conversation.

‘I know you wanted to settle down with that callow actor fellow. That was wrong for you then. Penniless actors are ten a penny. Now … well, you can’t be fussy. And you’ll have to be the breadwinner. Maybe you’ll meet a nice chap on set?’

Annie’s heart clenched.

She had tried to forget the one disastrous meeting between Aunt Lil and Austen. No one had come out of it unscathed.

‘But …’ Annie tried to interrupt. She wasn’t looking to meet anyone and start pushing out babies. She wanted her independence. Her job.