her hair, trying to save it from frizzing up in the moisture.
‘I like your hair like that,’ her mum said. ‘Very modern.’
Annie rolled her eyes, reached up self-concisely to touch the shorn edges of her hair. When she’d finished the shareholder document and presented the mortgage company with her stupidly large cheque, she’d decided that maybe now was the time to celebrate. She had finally achieved what she set out to do. No longer would she have to scrimp and save, squirrelling away money, in an attempt to prove herself. When she couldn’t pay her dad back her loan, it seemed vital to put that money into something else. To prove that she wasn’t the flake they all thought her. That she could create a business, she could be a success. She could invest as her father invested.
Why she never mentioned it to anyone still confused her. Especially when Jonathan’s every success was flaunted on the family WhatsApp group. But it felt like this was her little secret that none of them could take from her. She was triumphant. And none of them could tarnish it with their set-in-stone views of her character.
Sending over her finished files she wasn’t ‘Oh, Annie!’, she was Annie White, owner of White Graphics and Illustration, home-owner. For the first time she hadn’t felt like she was masquerading under a flashy title that she’d made up. It actually felt like her. Like she could relax and believe it. So, to celebrate, she’d bought herself a latte from Caffè Nero, one glossy magazine and one trashy one, a whole big round chocolate orange, and then as she was perusing a new scarf in the window of a far-too-expensive boutique she’d seen a girl walk out the salon next door with dip-dyed pink hair and she’d thought, I want pink hair. Or at least new hair. She felt like suddenly she was allowed to let a little bit more of herself back in. She had paid for her mistakes.
‘I’m all yours,’ she’d said to the hairdresser. He’d waffled on about side-swept fringes framing the face, textured ends and on-trend jagged cut layers transforming a traditional pixie cut. When he’d said that white-blonde streaks were very now she’d nodded and told him to go for it.
And when she’d left the salon, the man from the deli had wolf-whistled and given her a free cannoli.
But now, embarrassed by her mum’s attention, Annie lied and said, ‘It’s been like this for ages.’
‘Well I haven’t seen you for ages.’
‘It’s a teenager’s haircut,’ her brother called out as he came from the living room to the door and stood just behind her mum. ‘I don’t know what your clients think.’
Annie sucked in a breath. He could make her feel tiny. Like a snail on the doorstep looking up at his looming figure.
‘Anyway, look, Annie, before you go, you need to sort that business out. It’s just haemorrhaging money.’
‘Jonathan, I’ll deal with it.’
‘You can’t just ignore it, Annie. Get it sold. Better yet, tear it down.’ He crossed his arms in front of him and leant against the door jamb, talking as if there was no other possible opinion than his. ‘It’s not listed, it’s not a conservation area, they’d let you knock it down. If anything it’d be a blessing ‒ give a better view of the cherry trees. I mean, that’s why people come here, isn’t it? There’s better food at the pub, better views of the river. Flog them the cherry pie recipe and your hands are clean. I can do it for you if you want.’
‘Oh yeah, right,’ Annie laughed. ‘You must be joking.’
‘Annie,’ her mum warned.
She watched Jonathan’s nostrils flare as he breathed in through his nose. ‘I got a good price for that land, Annie.’
Annie scoffed. ‘You succumbed to a developer’s charm and you know it.’
The reminder of the land her dad had owned made Annie mad and she had to look away for a moment. Take in the rows of neatly planted mini daffodils that lined the front path and the foxgloves and delphiniums standing tall by the front gate. A lot of people moaned about the gardening conditions on Cherry Pie, too damp to grow anything. But her mother had never had any trouble. Her allotment was the same, competition-worthy vegetables every year without fail. And the Cherry Pie Veg-Off trophy on her mantelpiece year after year.
Jonathan was covering his back, waffling on about bringing the island into the twenty-first century, while Winifred tried to placate the situation. ‘Maybe you should talk to Valtar about the accounts?’ she suggested, waving away Jonathan’s snort of derision that implied the place wasn’t worth a penny.
Annie remembered the reading of the will, where it was revealed that the bulk of her father’s property portfolio had been left to her brother. Most of it she was happy for him to have; the shops in Soho, the restaurant in Vauxhall, the townhouses in Southampton. But the wasteland on the far side of the island, that her dad had been umming and ahhing about what to do with ‒ contemplating everything from a wetland centre to a cinema ‒ Annie had desperately wanted. Her intention being to preserve that land, and his dream. To do something good and beautiful with it. But it had all gone to Jonathan because he was the one they all trusted. He wasn’t the one who’d made the mistakes. He was the one with the bloody PhD. She’d ram that certificate up his nose if it wasn’t framed in his surgery.
And what had he done? He’d been duped by a smarmy developer and flogged the plot in a deal that still made people wince when they talked about it. Her father had been a wheeler-dealer, no bones about it. Alan Sugar crossed with Arthur Daley. He chucked a bit of money here. A bit there. Lackadaisical with a streak of ruthlessness. Built up an empire during the week based on shady deals done in the back rooms of pubs and cafes off the beaten track. Places where she sat at the counter and ate ice cream while he went out the back for a meeting that seemed, to little Annie, to involve mainly wild hand gestures and oodles of red wine. But however shady, it was all done with a heart of gold, a Robin Hood moral compass that made him continually bat away the very developers that her brother had fallen straight in with. A generosity of spirit that made people nod to him in the street as he walked past. Had people turning up on their doorstep at all hours needing help with their problems. He was like the unofficial mayor and while he was alive the island just knew it was safe.
Sadly, the only thing her brother had inherited from her father was his stubborn self-belief. The rest ‒ the entrepreneurial skill, the emotional intelligence, the Lady Luck chancer gene ‒ had skipped him completely. It was Valtar who had diplomatically stepped in and saved the rest of the portfolio. Securing sensible deals at good rates when the market was buoyant.
‘OK, I’ll talk to Valtar.’ Annie nodded.
‘He’ll just tell you what I’m telling you,’ Jonathan sighed.
Annie cracked. ‘Oh for goodness sake. You’re so annoying. You’re a doctor, you know nothing about how to run a cafe.’
‘Oh and you do?’ he scoffed.
‘Please don’t argue.’ Winifred held her hands up to quiet the pair of them. ‘Remember, Annie, Dad wouldn’t have minded what you do with it, so don’t feel under any pressure.’
Suzi had come to the door with the yapping dog in her arms. ‘We’ve got to go, hun,’ she said, stroking Jonathan’s arm.
‘Me too,’ Annie said, flicking the flicky hair that she was completely un-used to behind her ear, for ever ruined by Jonathan’s teenage haircut comment, ‘Thanks for having me.’
She
