Echoes of Love (15 page)
Authors: Rosie Rushton
She paused as the front door slammed. Within seconds, the kitchen door flew open. Her father stood in the doorway. His face was as white as a sheet.
‘Sorry – Dad’s back – got to go,’ Anna muttered down the phone. ‘I’ll call you in a bit.’
She tossed the phone to one side as her father slumped down in the nearest chair and rested his head in his hands.
‘Dad? Dad, are you OK?’ Anna asked.
‘No.’ His voice was thick with emotion. ‘In fact, I’m far from OK.’
Every fibre of Anna’s being went on red alert. She knew her father so well – and normally, if something or someone had upset him, he would have been swearing and slamming doors and
shouting the house down. Instead, he looked drained and diminshed.
‘Are you ill?’ she gasped, memories of the day her mum admitted how ill she was flooding back into her mind.
‘No, I’m not ill,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ve been accused of something. Wrongly accused – I didn’t do it. I swear to you on your darling mother’s
memory, I didn’t do it.’
From that moment on, the day became a bit of a blur. Walter, silent and morose, refusing food but drinking whisky in a rather alarming manner, Araminta turning up a couple of
hours later (much to Marina’s annoyance) and Anna being told to field phone calls, most of which were from the press.
‘OK, now let’s get this perfectly clear,’ Araminta said, removing the bottle of Glenmorangie and sitting down beside Walter on the white leather sofa. ‘You were in the
Green Room after the show talking to Valerie, the producer, and your other guest, Jack what’shisname from that new soap, right?
‘Jack Flanders,’ he nodded.
‘And Cassandra was there?’ Araminta took his hand, while Marina looked on daggers drawn.
‘Briefly – said she was going on to some reception.’
‘Anyone else?’
‘Of course someone else,’ Walter snapped, the alcohol bringing back patches of florid colour to his cheeks. ‘The place was teeming – put a tray of free canapés on
a table and they descend like flaming locusts!’
‘According to Valerie, Cassandra is adamant that, not only did you humiliate her on air,’ Araminta pressed on, ‘but that Jack swore to her that you made blatantly racist
comments about Anna hanging out with some ill-educated half-caste – his words, not mine!’
‘Dad, you didn’t . . .’ Anna gasped.
‘Of course I didn’t!’ Walter returned. ‘I may not approve of you two going out but I’m not a total idiot. Would I honestly jeopardise my career, which isn’t
exactly thriving right now, by uttering such obscenities?’
Anna realised things must be bad. Her father would never normally admit that he was anything but a number one star.
‘But am I right in thinking there was something else?’ Marina ventured. ‘Some ridiculous suggestion that you actually said that if you were Cassandra’s husband
you’d choose to go mad rather than have to live with her?’
Walter fiddled nervously with his bow tie. ‘I – well, I mean obviously that was a joke – and clearly not meant for anyone’s ears except Valerie’s. Not my fault Jack
flaming Flanders was earwigging in on the conversation.’
He glanced round at their frozen expressions.
‘Oh come on, people say things like that all the time at dinner parties,’ he reasoned. ‘I didn’t mean anything by it.’
‘What you did or did not mean is hardly the point right now,’Araminta sighed. ‘We can probably paper over that one – but the remark about Felix . . .’ She looked at
Walter, a stern expression on her face. ‘You swear you didn’t say anything racist about him?’
‘No, truly – I mean, the only thing . . .’
‘Go on.’
‘The only thing someone might have heard,’ he continued, glancing nervously at Anna, ‘was when I said to Val that I hoped there was some truth in the saying “out of
sight, out of mind” because the sooner . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘The sooner Anna started mixing with her own kind the better.’
‘Dad, I just don’t believe you!’ Anna exploded, half out of anger at his prejudice and half out of fear that Felix would somehow blame her. ‘You know what? You are
unbelievable!’
‘I’m sorry, darling.’
‘It’s too late for sorry, I fear,’ Marina cut in. ‘We’ll just have to hope and pray that some big news breaks overnight. Otherwise the press could run with this big
time.’
For days after that disastrous show, Walter was a man in shock. His time was spent on the phone, in meetings with Araminta and the TV company and glued to his laptop,
monitoring the public’s response to the outcry that followed the programme and the Green Room report. From time to time, he would shout ‘Precisely!’ when someone said that,
since the remarks, if they had been made at all, had been made off air, the producers were making a mountain out of a molehill; but more often, he would sit, head in hands, muttering expletives
at those who wrote that such comments should never be thought, never mind uttered, and that Eliot was clearly a mindless buffoon who should be sacked immediately.
‘How many more times do I have to tell them? I didn’t say all that,’ he would say to no one in particular.
Anna felt as if she was living in the middle of a war zone. Her father sought solace in the whisky bottle, which made him alternately overconfident and then deeply morose; her mates at school,
with the exception of Shannon, kept asking questions and clearly relished all the gossip and comments in the tabloid press; Mallory rang from Swancote Hall every evening saying she was suffering
from stress and Gabriella stormed home at the weekend, accusing Anna of being the cause of all the trouble for associating with Felix in the first place.
‘I tried to tell her, Dad,’ she said in the honeyed tones she always used when maximising her position as Walter’s favourite. ‘I said that family were trouble but she
wouldn’t listen.’
‘I feel like Hamlet, more sinned against than sinning,’ Walter said, pulling open a drawer and taking out his binoculars.
‘King Lear,’ Anna muttered.
‘What?’
‘Lear, not Hamlet,’ she told him. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Kempton Park,’ he replied. ‘Surely you remember? Hampton Heroine’s running in the four-thirty. Gaby’s coming. Do you want to join us?’
Anna shook her head. ‘No, the band’s playing at that party I told you about,’ she said. ‘And I’ve loads to do first.’ The most important of which was emailing
Felix.
She had sent him a message straight after the show.
From:
[email protected]
Hi! I’m sorry – I didn’t know things would turn out like that. The programme, I mean? You did see it, didn’t you? Parents – what a liability! It won’t make
any difference to us, though, will it? Love you loads, Anna xxx
His reply had reassured her.
From:
[email protected]
Didn’t see the show but one of the guys here said my mum came over as really cool! Got to dash but will call later, OK? Miss you loads. F x
The following day, after all the papers had seen fit to splash the news of Walter’s faux pas all over the front pages, he emailed again.
From:
[email protected]
Mum has emailed me. Surprised words weren’t purple. She’s outraged about your dad’s remarks – I don’t know who he thinks he is thinking he can get away with
using language like that. Parents! F x
Anna had emailed back at once, telling Felix that her dad swore he didn’t say those things and avoiding any mention of what he did say. She said how much she loved him and how nothing but
that mattered.
‘So what does that mean?’ Anna demanded of Shannon as they prepared for the party at Mr Longhurst’s house. ‘There’s no kiss at the end. And what does “when I
can” mean? Do you think he’s going to dump me just because of my dad?’
‘You read too much into things,’ Shannon replied. ‘I mean, he probably had a load of mates peering over his shoulder – you know what boys are like, they can’t bear
to be seen as soppy.’
‘You really think that was it?’
‘Sure to be,’ Shannon replied airily. ‘Have you seen the buffet? I’m so glad I said we needed refreshments if we were going to play. There’s a chocolate pudding to
die for.’
Despite Araminta’s constant reassurances to Walter that the whole thing would blow over, it didn’t. Walter was suspended from any further shows and then, in mid
July, he was told that his contract would not be renewed.
For a couple of weeks, Walter was moody, depressed and angry by turns. Then, after putting the whole matter into the hands of some very expensive and highly regarded lawyers, he set about
entertaining all his friends and acquaintances in an even more lavish manner than before. Not only did he invite ten friends to a house he had rented on the Isle of Wight for Cowes Week, he booked
boxes at several race meetings and gambled heavily on every horse that took his fancy. He also threw several dinner parties with food from London caterers and enormous quantities of vintage
champagne. And at all these events, to Marina’s annoyance and Anna’s alarm, Araminta was more than happy to play the role of hostess.
‘Walter, don’t you think you should rein in a bit?’ Marina asked him on more than one occasion. ‘You don’t know what the future holds and, if you carry on at this
rate, you’ll run out of cash.’
‘I’ve plenty of irons in the fire,’ he assured her. ‘You wait – I’ll have a dozen channels clamouring for me by September. Let me enjoy my free time while I
can.’
He certainly seemed more relaxed and Anna was too excited at the thought of Felix’s return home to think of much else. She assumed that the lawyers were doing their stuff and that
everything would be sorted.
That might have happened, had it not been for the fickle public and the result of the Muckleborough and Bythorn by-election. Cassandra Wentworth got in with a majority of 242, which, while not
by any means a comfortable majority, was so unexpected that it hit the headlines in all the major national newspapers, many of which reminded its readers of what more and more were calling
‘The Walter-gate affair’.
And then Felix came up with his great idea.
CHAPTER 10
‘What wild imaginations one forms where dear self is involved.’
( Jane Austen
, Persuasion
)
‘W
HAT ARE YOU DOING THE SECOND WEEK IN AUGUST?’
The phone call from Felix came through on Anna’s mobile on the next to last day of the summer term, just minutes before the band were due to play in their slot at the Summer Spectacular,
the concert in which the college showcased its achievements for the year.
‘Nothing special. Why?’
‘Anna!’ Lauren hissed, nudging her elbow. ‘Get off the phone – we’re due on in five minutes.’
Anna waved her away, straining to hear Felix above the chatter of her classmates.
‘Zac’s grandmother has got this house on the Isle of Wight, right? She’s going off to Australia to see her sister, and has said that Zac and Phoebe can use it,’ he told
her. ‘Phoebe’s taking Jamie, Zac’s got this new girlfriend, Ursula, and well – he suggested you and I go too. What do you say?’
Anna’s heart raced. A whole week away with Felix; there was only one answer. An image of Marina and her father scowling angrily flashed through her mind but she banished them and took a
deep breath.
‘That would be amazing!’ she replied. ‘Look, it’s our school end of year bash – I’ve got to go but . . .’
‘We need time together,’ Felix said. ‘But there is just one more thing. We’d have to go a day later than the others, because the day after I get back Mum wants us both to
join her. The thing is, it’s . . .’
‘Anna!’ Shannon poked her in the ribs. ‘Come on!’
‘Sssh – I’ll be there in a minute!’ Anna mouthed back.
‘ . . . so you see, it’s really important. Don’t you agree?’