Page 9 of The Wedding Pact
‘All right, we’re changing the subject now,’ said August, coming to a stop in front of a small cottage that sat at the foot of the hill, one street away from where Elizabeth Street began its ascent. The home was shaded on all sides by thick, emerald-hued trees and tall bushes. It was painted a pale yellow and had round windows and a thatched roof. The low oak tree in the front garden was still there, after all these years, though the old tyre swing had been replaced with a smart, rattan swing chair, which swayed in the slight morning breeze.
‘Whose house are we looking at?’ Flynn asked.
‘This was my grandmother’s house, when she was alive,’ she replied. A lump formed in her throat, which was silly really because she’d visited this place many times since her grandmother passed last year, in fact she walked past it every time she came up to the top of the hill to sit on the wall, and she said a silent hello to it whenever she did. Living close to this memory was something she wanted so badly.
Flynn stayed silent, giving her a moment.
‘We were pretty close,’ she explained after a while, and then forced a big smile back onto her face. ‘I used to come and stay with her a lot. It’s only a bungalow, really, though she’d turned the attic into a sort-of secret den that you could get to by a ladder, and I always wanted to sleep in there.’
‘Did she let you?’
‘Yeah, but we had to tell my mum I’d slept in the spare room because she would have freaked out about me falling down the ladder if I got up to pee in the middle of the night,’ August laughed at the memory of her funny, conspiratorial grandma.
‘And did you ever fall down the ladder in the night?’
‘Meh, once or twice.’ She turned to him. ‘Are your grandparents still around?’
‘Just the one grandmother. My mum’s mother lived in England and she died around five years ago. It was one of the reasons Mum felt it was a good time to move over to Japan. My dad’s mother lives over there too, and she’s very much still alive, living on one of the islands in the south. I’m not as close to her as I should be though.’
August gave him a sympathetic smile, and then turned back to the house, bidding a silent farewell to her grandma, for now. ‘I’m running out of time,’ she said. ‘Want to walk with me up to what I consider is the best viewpoint in Bath?’
They made their way slowly up the hill of Elizabeth Street, side by side, sunlight dancing on them.
‘I was here yesterday,’ Flynn remarked, but before she could question him, he harked back to her earlier comment and asked, ‘So I guess all this means you’re Team Austen rather than Team Romans?’
‘Oh yes, Austen all the way,’ said August, pleased that he remembered. ‘I remember the first time I ever walked up this hill. I was six years old, and I was staying with my grandma for the whole summer after my parents split up. On the first morning when I woke up I was confused and sad and missing my parents, and she took my hand, and took me right up to the very top of Elizabeth Street, and we ate Bath buns for breakfast on the wall I’m about to show you.’
‘Did you feel better after that?’ Flynn asked, probably wondering what a Bath bun was.
‘So much better. And every single morning for the rest of the summer we did the same thing. And every single morning my grandma would tell me these stories about women in big skirts and men in top hats who used to live here in Bath and have these great romances with one another. There were always a million sisters and everyone fancied the wrong person and there was a lot of sitting and sewing and waiting for invitations to great balls that would then happen down in the Assembly Rooms in the town.’
‘She sounds like a good storyteller,’ remarked Flynn.
‘She was, and she always did different voices for all the characters, and added details to make it really real.’ August smiled at the memory. That was one of her favourite things about voice acting – creating characters and voices and playing around, like her grandma used to do. ‘For example, in every story she always had somebody living in the house at the top of this hill, you’ll see it in a minute. So I would sit on the wall and instead of looking out at the view I’d look at the windows of the house, at the chandeliers I could see twinkling inside, at the steps up the front door, and the whole thing was like a tableau coming to life before me. Am I being really boring?’
‘Not at all, are you kidding? You’ve just entertained me for about two hours straight on a private walking tour. You aren’t boring at all.’
‘Well, thank you,’ August replied, and they carried on their trek upwards. ‘Of course, years later I found out that all the stories she was making up were actually stolen from the one and only Jane Austen. I was readingSense and Sensibilityone day for school and was like:This is really familiar!It turns out my grandma used to take the gist of the storylines, and the characters, transport them all to Bath, even those that weren’t set here, and pass them off as her own stories to me. I lapped them up like she was a genius.’ August laughed at the recollection. ‘Sometimes I credit her with my acting gene, or at least my acting bug.’
They reached the top of the hill and looked out across the city as it woke up only to remember it was Sunday and it could have a wonderful lie-in.
Her grandmotherhadinspired her into acting, actually. Not that she had been an actress herself, but something about the way she shone at storytelling, and the way she carried herself like a movie star from Hollywood’s golden age, all pearls and rubies and a streak of wickedness. Her grandmother’s penchant for taking risks and living wildly and to the fullest had rubbed off on August from a young age.
Now, when August looked back, she could see her gran’s effect on so much of who she’d shaped herself to be.
Her gran’s influence had been there in every money-making scheme she’d had as a child, from selling flowers that she’d pilfered from over her neighbour’s fence (her parents had quickly put a stop to that) to carol singing in July (she’d even been offered money tostopsinging at some houses).
Her gran’s influence had been there every time she took a backpack and a Bel and went zipping around the world, finding detours and drama aplenty. She smiled, remembering the time she and Bel had jetted to the south of France on a whim to attend the Cannes Film Festival. They had blagged their way into a party on a superyacht by pretending to be London socialites from a reality TV show that they made up. August had felt out of place for about two minutes, until she realised they weren’t the only fakers there. She could still remember Bel’s faux-Chelsea accent slipping more after each sip of Prosecco.
Her gran’s influence had been there every time she’d embellished her CV with skills and credentials and then allowed a fake confidence to push her to finish the job she’d been hired for. ‘Sure, I can do the splits!’ she’d told her first on-screen job, a commercial for yogurt, before having to spend two weeks wrestling her hips into ungodly positions so that when it was time to film she was able to hold the pose and a faux-smile just long enough for the three-second panning-shot to whizz past her.
‘Don’t wait around for someone else to make your dreams happen, girly,’ her grandmother had told August once. ‘Everybody has dreams, not just you, so they’re rightly all too busy fannying about with their own to take on yours too.’
She taught her to take risks and throw caution to the wind and just see what happens. But lately, since her grandmother had passed, really, if she had to pinpoint a time, August had grown more reserved. Not in personality, but in actions. She’d become more afraid of failing. More fearful of what would happen if thingsdidn’twork out. Moving to Bath had been her step to countering this, to taking a plunge and continuing with her plans even without much of a plan, but what then … ?
So no, she wasn’t successful enough to be able to afford the whole house on Elizabeth Street yet, like her gran had predicted. But this felt like a sign, a kick up the backside sent by her grandma.Live here and remember who you are, who you dream of being.
August turned to Flynn. ‘Well, that’s the end of the tour. What did you think?’
