Act Your Age, Eve Brown

  Dedication

  For Corey, who left their mark upon the world—

  and what a stunning mark it is

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Eve’s Act Your Age Playlist

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Praise

  Also by Talia Hibbert

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Author’s Note

  This book mentions childhood neglect and anti-autistic ableism. If these topics are sensitive for you, please read with care. (And feel safe in the knowledge that joy triumphs in the end.) You should also know that, while writing this book, I elected to ignore the existence of COVID-19. I hope this book provides some form of escape.

  Eve’s Act Your Age Playlist

  “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” Barbra Streisand

  “Big for Your Boots,” Stormzy

  “hometown,” cleopatrick

  “Remember,” KATIE

  “Bad Blood,” NAO

  “Papaoutai,” Stromae

  “Honor to Us All,” Lea Salonga

  “Sticky,” Ravyn Lenae

  “Hometown Glory,” Adele

  “Curious,” Hayley Kiyoko

  “Special Affair,” The Internet

  “From Ritz to Rubble,” Arctic Monkeys

  “Through the Rain,” Mariah Carey

  “Make Me Feel,” Janelle Monáe

  “Breathless,” Corinne Bailey Rae

  Chapter One

  Eve Brown didn’t keep a diary. She kept a journal. There was a difference.

  Diaries were horribly organized and awfully prescriptive. They involved dates and plans and regular entries and the suffocating weight of commitment. Journals, on the other hand, were deliciously wild and lawless things. One could abandon a journal for weeks, then crack it open one Saturday evening under the influence of wine and marshmallows without an ounce of guilt. A woman might journal about last night’s dream, or her growing anxieties around the lack of direction in her life, or her resentment toward the author of thrilling AO3 fanfic Tasting Captain America, who hadn’t uploaded a new chapter since the great titty-fucking cliffhanger of December 2017. For example.

  In short, journaling was, by its very nature, impossible to fail at. Eve had many journals. She rather liked them.

  So, what better way to spend a lovely, lazy Sunday morning in August than journaling about the stunning rise and decisive fall of her latest career?

  She sat up with a stretch, clambered off her queen-sized bed, and drew back the velvet curtains covering her floor-to-ceiling windows. As bright summer light flooded the room, Eve tossed aside her silk headscarf, kicked off the shea butter foot mask socks she’d slept in, and grabbed her journal from her bedside table, leafing through gold-edged pages. Settling back into bed, she began.

  Good morning, darling,

  —The journal, of course, was darling.

  It’s been eight days since Cecelia’s wedding. I’m sorry I didn’t write sooner, but you are an inanimate object, so it doesn’t really matter.

  I regret to report that things didn’t go 100 percent to plan. There was a bit of a fuss about Cecelia’s corset being eggshell instead of ivory, but I resolved that issue by encouraging her to take a Xanax from Gigi. Then there was a slight palaver with the doves—they were supposed to be released over Cecelia and Gareth for the photographs, but I discovered just before the ceremony that their handler (that is to say, the doves’ handler, not Cece and Gareth’s (I was their handler, to be frank)) hadn’t fed them for two days (!!!) so they wouldn’t shit all over the guests. But really, when one wishes to work with the wonders of the animal kingdom, one must respect their ways and resign oneself to the odd sprinkle of shit. One certainly must not starve the poor creatures to avoid said sprinkle of shit. Any sensible person knows this.

  So I may have lost my temper and released them all. The doves, I mean. Clearly, they were born to be free—hence the wings, et cetera. Unfortunately, the handler demanded I pay for them, which I suppose was fair enough. It turns out doves are very expensive, so I have had to request an advance on my monthly payment from the trust fund. Hopefully Mother won’t notice.

  Anyway, darling, here is my point: Cecelia and I have sadly fallen out. It seems she was very attached to the idea of the aforementioned doves, and perhaps her tongue had been loosened by the Xanax, but she called me a selfish jealous cow, so I called her an ungrateful waste of space and ripped the train off her Vera Wang. By accident, obviously. I did fix it—after a fashion—in time for the actual ceremony, so I don’t entirely see the issue.

  But knowing the lovely Cecelia as I do, I’m sure she’ll spend her Fiji honeymoon bad-mouthing my services on various bridezilla forums in order to destroy my dream career. Obviously, the joke is on her, because I have no dream career and I have already erased Eve Antonia Weddings from the face of the earth. And Chloe says I lack efficiency!

  Hah.

  Eve finished her entry and closed the journal with a satisfied smile—or else, a smile that should be satisfied, but instead felt a little bit sad and slightly nauseous.

  She’d known Cecelia since their schooldays. Had always felt somewhat nervous around her, the way Eve often did around—well, humanity in general. As if she were walking a cliff’s edge between being the easy, entertaining friend people kept around, and the irritating mess people kicked off the ledge.

  Now she’d leapt off that ledge with Cecelia, and it turned her stomach to a gently writhing pit.

  Clearly, Eve was in a mood. Perhaps she should go back to sleep, or binge-read a romance novel, or—

  No. No moping. Mood or not, she had responsibilities to fulfil. Someone needed to feed Gigi’s exotic fish, even if Gigi rarely forgot to do so these days and the fish were getting quite fat now. Someone needed to . . .

  Hmm. Eve was sure she did other useful things, too, but none were coming to mind.

  Shrugging off her funk, she chose her song for the day—“Don’t Rain on My Parade,” to cheer her up—hit Repeat, and popped in one of her AirPods. Soundtrack established, she got up, got dressed, and headed down to the family home’s vast marble-and-chrome kitchen, where she found both her parents in grim residence.

  “Oh dear,” Eve murmured, and stopped short in the doorway.

  Mum was pacing broodily by the toaster. Her pale blue suit made her amber skin glow and really highlighted the fiery rage in her hazel eyes. Dad stood stoic and grave by the Swiss coffee machine, sunlight beaming through the French windows to bathe his bald, brown head.

  “Good morning, Evie-Bean,” he said. Then his solemn expression wavered, a hint of his usual smile coming through. “That’s a nice T-shirt.”

  Eve looked down at her T-shirt, which was a lovely orange color, with the words SORRY, BORED NOW written across her chest in turquoise. “Thanks, Dad.”

  “I swear, I’ve no idea where you find—”

  Mum rolled her eyes, threw up h
er hands, and snapped, “For God’s sake, Martin!”

  “Oh, ah, yes.” Dad cleared his throat and tried again. “Eve,” he said sternly, “your mother and I would like a word.”

  Wonderful; they were in a mood, too. Since Eve was trying her best to be cheerful, this was not particularly ideal. She sighed and entered the kitchen, her steps falling in time with the beat of Barbra’s bold staccato. Gigi and Shivani were at the marble breakfast bar across the room. Shivani was eating what appeared to be a spinach omelet, while Gigi stole the occasional bite in between dainty sips of her usual Bloody Mary smoothie.

  Unwilling to be contaminated by her parents’ grumpiness, Eve trilled, “Hello, Grandmother, Grand-Shivani,” and snagged a bottle of Perrier from the fridge. Then, finally, she turned to face Mum and Dad. “I thought you’d be at your couples’ spin class this morning.”

  “Oh, no, my lovely little lemon,” Gigi cut in. “How could they possibly spin when they have adult children to ambush in the kitchen?”

  “I know that’s how I approach disagreements with my twenty-six-year-old offspring,” Shivani murmured. When Mum glared in her direction, Shivani offered a serene smile and flicked her long, graying ponytail.

  Gigi smirked her approval.

  So, it was official; Eve was indeed being ambushed. Biting her lip, she asked, “Have I done something wrong? Oh dear—did I forget the taps again?” It had been eight years since she’d accidentally flooded her en suite bathroom badly enough to cause a minor floor/ceiling collapse, but she remained slightly nervous about a potential repeat.

  Mum released a bitter laugh. “The taps!” she repeated—with frankly excessive drama. “Oh, Eve, I wish this issue were as simple as taps.”

  “Do calm down, Joy,” Gigi huffed. “Your vibrations are giving me a migraine.”

  “Mother,” Dad said warningly.

  “Yes, darling?” Gigi said innocently.

  “For God’s sake,” Mum said . . . rage-ing-ly, “Eve, we’ll continue this in the study.”

  * * *

  The study was Mum’s office, a neat and tidy room on the ground floor of the family home. It had an atmosphere of focus and success, both of which Eve found singularly oppressive. She fidgeted awkwardly under her parents’ stares.

  “Where,” Mum asked, straight to the point as always, “is your website?”

  Eve blinked. She had, in her time, owned many websites. Her oldest sister, Chloe, was a web designer, and Eve had always been a loyal client. “Erm . . .” Before she could formulate a response—a nice, precise one that covered all relevant information in exactly the way she wanted—Mum spoke again. That was the trouble with Mum. With most of Eve’s relatives, in fact. They were all so quick, and so uniformly relentless, their intellect blowing Eve about like dandelion fluff in a hurricane.

  “I directed my good friend Harriet Hains,” Mum said, “to your business, because her daughter is recently engaged, and because I was so proud of the success you made of Cecelia’s wedding last week.”

  For a moment, Eve basked in the glow of that single word: proud. Mum had been proud. Eve had, for a day, achieved something her brilliant and accomplished mother valued enough to deem it a success. Giddy warmth spread out from her chest in cautious tendrils—until Eve remembered that her success was now over. Because, behind the scenes, she’d fucked things up. Again.

  Why did she even bother? Why did she even try?

  You don’t, really. Not anymore.

  “Harriet told me,” Mum forged on, “that your website URL led her to nothing but an error message. I investigated for myself and can find no trace of your wedding planning business online.” Mum paused for a moment, her frown turning puzzled. “Except a largely incoherent forum post claiming you stole an entire bevy of white doves, but that is an obviously unhinged accusation.”

  “Obviously,” Eve agreed. “I paid for those doves, that lying cow.”

  Mum gave a glacial stare. “I beg your pardon, Eve Antonia Brown.”

  “Let’s focus on the issue at hand, shall we, love?” Dad interjected. “Eve. What’s happened to your business?”

  Ah. Yes. Well. There was the rub. “The thing is, Dad, Mum . . . I have decided that wedding planning isn’t for me after all. So, I dissolved the business, deleted the website and disconnected the URL, and closed down all associated social media accounts.” It was best, Eve had found, to simply rip off the bandage.

  There was a pause. Then Mum said tightly, “So you gave up. Again.”

  Eve swallowed, suddenly uncomfortable. “Well, no, not exactly. It was just an experience I stumbled into—Cecelia’s original wedding planner was rubbish, so—”

  “She was an ordinary woman who couldn’t deal with a spoiled brat like Cecelia Bradley-Coutts,” Dad cut in, his brow creased. “But you could. You did. And you seemed to enjoy yourself, Eve. We thought you’d—found your calling.”

  A cold bead of sweat began to drip, slow and steady, down Eve’s spine. Her calling? Eve wasn’t the sort of woman who had callings. “It’s for my own good, really,” she said, her voice aiming for light and hitting scratchy instead. “Everything went suspiciously well—you know I couldn’t re-create such success again. Wouldn’t want to disappoint myself.”

  Dad stared, crestfallen. “But Eve. You’re disappointing us.”

  Ouch. No pulling the parental punches today, then.

  “You can’t avoid trying at anything in case you fail,” he told her gently. “Failure is a necessary part of growth.”

  She wanted to say, That’s what you think. Eve’s parents had never failed at a bloody thing. Eve’s parents knew who they were and what they were capable of, as did her sisters. But Eve? All Eve really knew was how to be fun, and experience had taught her she ought to stick to her strong suit and avoid reaching too high.

  She used to reach, once upon a time. But it hurt so terribly to fall.

  “Enough is enough, Eve,” Mum said into the silence. “You’re twenty-six years old, perfectly intelligent and absolutely capable, yet you waste time and opportunities like—like a spoiled brat. Just like Cecelia.”

  Eve sucked in an outraged breath. “I am not spoiled!” She thought for a moment. “Well, perhaps I am mildly spoiled. But I think I’m rather charming with it, don’t you?”

  No one laughed. Not even Dad. In fact, he looked quite angry as he demanded, “How many careers do you plan to flit through while living at home and surviving on nothing but the money we give you? Your sisters have moved out, and they work—damned hard—even though they don’t need to. But you—you dropped out of performing arts college. You dropped out of law school. You gave up on teaching. You went from graphic design, to cupcakes, to those tiny violins you used to make—”

  “I don’t want to talk about the violins,” Eve scowled. She’d quite liked them, but she knew far better than to make a career out of anything she liked. Those were always the failures that hurt most.

  “You don’t want to talk about anything!” Dad exploded. “You dip in and out of professions, then you cut and run before things get real. Your mother and I didn’t set up the trust so you girls could become wastes of space,” he said. “We set it up because when I was a boy, Gigi and I had nothing. And because there are so many situations in life that you’ve no hope of escaping from without a safety net. But what you’re doing, Eve, is abusing your privilege. And I’m disappointed.”

  Those words burned. Her heart began to pound, her pulse rushing loud enough in her ears to drown out Barbra’s comforting beat. She tried to process, to find the right words to explain herself—but the conversation was already racing off without her, a runaway train she’d never been fast enough to catch.

  “We have decided,” Mum said, “to cancel your trust fund payments. Whatever savings you have will have to do until you can find a job.”

  Savings? Who the bloody hell had savings?

  Dad took over. “You can stay here for three months. That should be more than enough tim
e to find a place of your own.”

  “Wait—what? You’re throwing me out?”

  Mum went on as if Eve hadn’t spoken. “We’ve discussed things, and your father and I would like you to hold down a job for at least a year before we restart your trust fund payments. We know finding decent work might be difficult with such a . . . unique CV, so we’ve lined up positions for you in our own companies.”

  Eve jerked back in her seat, her head whirling as she tried to keep up. “But—I already quit law.” It had only taken a few seminars with hyperfocused geniuses for Eve to realize that she wasn’t nearly clever enough to get her head around the unwritten constitution.

  Mum’s mouth tightened. “Well, there’s always your father’s accountancy firm.”

  Now Eve was truly appalled. “Accountancy? I can barely count!”

  Mum narrowed her eyes. “Don’t be flip, Eve.”

  “You’re right. I don’t want to count. And I don’t want my parents to hand me a job because I’m too useless to get one on my own. I’m not.” Even if she felt that way, sometimes.

  “No,” Mum agreed, “just too feckless to stick with one. To do the hard work, after the excitement and glamour has faded. Too immature to be an adult. When are you going to act your age, Eve? I swear, it’s embarrassing—”

  And there it was. Eve sucked in a breath and blinked back the hot tears prickling at the corners of her eyes. They were more shock than pain, like the tears that came with a banged elbow—but she shouldn’t be shocked at all, now, should she? Of course her parents saw her this way. Of course they thought she was an immature little brat. She’d never given anyone a reason to think she was anything else.

  “I—I need to go,” she said, standing up quickly, her voice thick with tears. Embarrassing. She was so bloody embarrassing, crying like a child because her mother had told her the truth, running away from everything because she wasn’t strong enough to cope with the pressure.

  “Eve, darling,” Mum began, already sounding softer, full of regret. Next, she’d say, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that, and everyone would decide that was enough for today, and the poor, delicate baby of the family would be let off the hook for a while because everyone knew Eve couldn’t handle difficult conversations.