Mr. Darcy Forever (41 page)

‘
You would have been one of England’s greats!’ Shelley assured her.

‘
Yes, like Lady Catherine de Bourgh would have been ‘a great proficient’ if only she’d learned to play the piano!’

‘
No! I’ve seen you act and you would have been fabulous!’

Mia smiled at her friend’s reassurances. ‘I guess we’ll never know now.’

‘
Nonsense! Who’s to say you won’t go back into singing and acting later on? Maybe when William’s at school?’

‘
But William’s my priority now,’ Mia said.

‘
Of course,’ Shelley said, ‘but you’ve got to have some Mia-time too.’

Mia thought about this for a moment. For the last few years, she’d put herself on hold and had been quite happy to do that but maybe – just maybe – Shelley was right, and she could allow a little bit of the old Mia to resurface again one day.

Just as she was beginning to daydream about William cheering her on from the front row of a West End theatre, Dame Pamela Harcourt entered the room. She was wearing a fabulous chiffon dress in the prettiest cherry-blossom pink. Round her neck, she wore three rows of delicate pearls and there were what looked like mini diamond chandeliers dangling from her ears. Her hair, which was the colour of the moon, was swept up in an elegant chignon and a diamond clasp sparkled from within its wispy depths.

A huge round of applause greeted her and Mia couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to live your life surrounded by such public adoration and, as soon as the thought crossed her mind, she realised that Shelley might be right and that she could one day tread the boards herself once again.

Dame Pamela began by talking about her life-long love of Jane Austen.

‘
Jane Austen has done
wonders
for my career,’ she said with a smile. ‘She might only have written six books but I think I’ve been lucky enough to star in most of them!’

She then started the readings with an extract from
Northanger Abbey
, celebrating Catherine Morland’s first ball, and many a knowing glance was exchanged when Dame Pamela read the lines: ‘Dress was her passion. She had a most harmless delight in being fine’.

Then, she read a scene from
Persuasion
– the wonderfully comic scene where Sir Walter is complaining about Bath. ‘The worst of Bath was the number of its plain women. He did not mean to say that there were no pretty women, but the number of plain was out of all proportion. He had frequently observed , as he walked, that one handsome face would be followed by thirty, or five and thirty frights’.

She finished by reading the scene from
Pride and Prejudice
where Lady Catherine visits Longbourn to confront Elizabeth Bennet about a ‘report of a most alarming nature’. It was wonderful. It was as if Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Elizabeth Bennet were in the room with the audience and nobody wanted it to end and there was many a call of ‘encore’ when the reading came to an end.

Questions followed. What was Dame Pamela’s favourite Austen role? Answer: Marianne Dashwood because she was so passionate. Would she have chosen Willoughby or Colonel Brandon? Both, she said which caused much laughter amongst the audience.

‘
Are you going to ask a question?’ Shelley whispered to Mia.

‘
No, I'm too nervous!’

‘
I think I'm going to!’

‘
Any more questions?’ the organiser asked the audience.

Shelley stuck her hand in the air, feeling like an anxious schoolgirl.

‘
Yes - the lady in the yellow muslin gown.’

‘
Dame Pamela, my friend here is a budding singer and actress and I'd love to know if you have any advice.’

Mia felt herself blush to the very depths of her being as she felt the gaze of Dame Pamela fix itself upon her.

‘
I am often asked for my advice and here it is,’ she said, ‘never give up. If you have a dream - no matter what that dream is whether it be to become a great actress or to open your very own sweet shop - never stop dreaming it because, if you do, life just become one long nightmare.’

Mia and Shelley sat riveted by her words and then the applause began as Dame Pamela left the stage in a cloud of pink chiffon, her floral perfume scenting the air behind her.

‘
Wow!’ Shelley said. ‘There’s a part of me that wants to run after her so I can listen to her forever. Wasn't she amazing?’

‘
Why did you ask that question?’

‘
Because I don't think you should give up on yourself so easily, Mia. I know you’re a mother now but you're also a human being in your own right and I so want to see that old Mia back again because she was so fabulous and I have a feeling that there’s a little part of you that would like to see her back again too. I’m right, aren’t I?’

Mia looked into the smiling face of her friend and realised that she was smiling too. ‘You might be,’ she said.

Later that evening, in the privacy of her room, Mia rang Alec’s number. It rang several times before going to voice-mail and Mia left a message for him to call her back. It was just as she was getting into her bed when her phone rang.

‘
Mia?’ It was Alec. ‘How great to hear from you although, I have to say, I didn't really expect to hear from you again.’

‘
I need to see you. Are you still in Bath?’

‘
No but I can get there pretty quickly if you need me to.’

‘
I need you to.’

‘
Then I’m there.’

‘
Eleven o'clock tomorrow.’ Mia gave him directions to a little café which was easy to find and he confirmed that he’d be there and she hung up. He probably thought that she had forgiven him and wanted to make a go of things together but that couldn't have been further from the truth.

‘
I can’t believe I’m an auntie,’ Sarah said as she walked out of a talk about gambling in Regency times.

‘
That must have come as a surprise,’ Lloyd said.

‘
It did,’ Sarah said.

‘
And you had no idea?’

‘
No!’ Sarah said, her expression pained. ‘It’s so awful. I’ve missed so much time not only with William but with my sister and I’m
so
angry at myself.’

‘
But you can make it all up now, can’t you?’

‘
I just wish I hadn’t missed it all and I can’t believe I didn’t see all this in Devon.’ They’d reached Queen Square and walked along one of the paths to a bench and sat down. It was a favourite spot of Sarah’s because, whichever direction she looked in, Georgian architecture greeted her. Three hundred and sixty degrees of beauty. It was like stepping back into the Bath Jane Austen would have known.

‘
I still don’t understand – how could Alec have made love to my sister but be making a move on me?’ she said. ‘How can men do that?’

Lloyd cleared his throat. ‘Not every man would pull a stunt like that,’ he said.

Sarah looked at him. ‘I’m sorry – I didn’t mean to sound like I was accusing you.’

‘
Well, I’ve not met your sister but I can promise you this right now – I will not fall in love with her.’

Sarah smiled. ‘What makes you so sure of that?’

Lloyd’s eyebrows rose over his dark eyes and he smiled back at her. ‘Because I’m falling in love with you.’

Sarah’s eyes widened at his declaration. ‘But we’ve only just met.’

‘
Doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘Haven’t you heard of love at first sight? As soon as I saw you, I knew you were the one for me.’

Sarah laughed. ‘But that sort of thing only happens in books and films.’

‘
Really? Are you sure - are you
absolutely
sure that it can't happen in real life too? Because I'm pretty certain I am in love with you.’

Sarah stared at him. He certainly did look sincere and hadn't she wanted to kiss him last night?

‘
Lloyd - I don't know what to say. You’ve been so wonderful to me and I've so enjoyed your company.’

‘
I can hear a “but” approaching, can't I?’

Sarah sighed. ‘I’m not sure I have it in me to fall in love again - not after Alec.’

Lloyd frowned. ‘You really think that? Are you going to let that one bad experience blight the rest of your life? Because that's a rotten way to live.’

‘
I can't help it. It's just the way I feel.’

‘
Then you’re letting Alec win. You're handing your life over to a man who doesn't deserve it,’ Lloyd said. ‘Are you sure you really want to do that? And are you absolutely sure you don't want to be kissed by the man sitting next to you on this bench?’

‘
You want to kiss me?’

‘
I wanted to kiss you last night.’

‘
You did?’ Sarah said. ‘Why didn’t you?’

‘
I didn’t think it was the right moment, you know, after everything that had happened that day.’

Sarah nodded. ‘And is it right now?’

‘
You need to tell me that,’ he said. ‘Because I'm not sure I'd want to waste a kiss on somebody who didn't want to return it.’

‘
But I do.’

Lloyd looked surprised. ‘But you said-’

‘
I know,’ Sarah said. ‘I'm so confused. My head is telling me one thing and my heart is telling me another.’

‘
And you're the sister that's usually ruled by the head, aren't you?

She nodded. ‘The last time I followed my heart, it nearly got broken.’

‘
But that was last time,’ Lloyd said, ‘not
this
time.’ He edged closer to her on the bench and picked her hands up in his. ‘What’s your heart telling you now?’ he asked.

She looked into his dark eyes. What was her heart telling her? It was telling her to kiss him. What was her head saying? It was saying be careful. And what could you do when your head and your heart were at odds with each other? Sarah thought about the books she had read and her beloved collection of Jane Austen novels. They all had happy endings. All the heroes and heroines met their perfect match even if their journeys towards each other had been fraught with pain and misunderstandings. But that was fiction. It didn't necessarily follow that Sarah was going to find such a happy ending, did it? What if she was destined to have her heart broken over and over again?

She looked at Lloyd. He didn't look like the heart-breaker type and, as he smiled at her, something deep inside her made her realise that she didn't want to shut herself off from love and she didn't want to deny herself the chance of a happy ending.

‘
My heart is telling me –’ she paused.

‘
What?’ Lloyd asked.

‘
That I still believe in happy endings.’ Sarah smiled and, despite the tourists strolling by, she leaned forward and kissed him.

Mia wasn’t thinking about kisses although it was kisses that had got her into this situation in the first place. She looked in the mirror for the umpteenth time. She knew that she was no longer the bright-eyed girl that had fallen in love with Alec - and she was glad of that – but she did rather wish that she didn’t look quite so
old
.