‘And what did you reply?’ I don’t really need to ask. It would have been music to her ears. She’d have been all,Yes, yes, good plan, Auds. Stay clear, I say.
She puffs up. ‘I said you were my sister and I just wanted to see you happy.’
What kind of half answer is that? I cut the slice of carrot cake we’re sharing and pick up a piece with my fork. ‘So you agreed to stop me?’ I’m recalling every previous conversation we’ve ever had about romance and all the times she’s warned me to stay safe, by avoiding entanglement like she does.
Sara softens in a way that makes me instantly suspicious. ‘Actually, Audrey, I said that I’d never, in more than forty years, seen someone as destroyed as you were over Fraser, which made me extrapolate that I’d never loved something or someone so hard that it could hurt this much to lose them. You broke apart. It made me realise I’d never properly lived—not full-out and recklessly in love the way you do.’
I pause eating the carrot cake, mid-chew. Of all the conversations for alcohol to have erased.
‘I knew you wouldn’t remember this, but when you asked me to step in and stop you if you ever found happiness again, I promised you I would do no such thing.’
I put down my fork.
‘So to see you talk about Beau and look at me like this … after all the time we’ve watched you break,willingfor the day when we’d see this expression in your eyes again—thishope…’ Now she’s crying. Actually crying.My sister!‘I just think you have to risk this, Audrey. Risk everything for it.’
This is the pep talk I was one hundred per cent certain she was not going to deliver. I came here to be talkedoutof this.
‘But he walks red carpets, Sara. He’s in magazines.’ I scramble for my phone and pull up the screenshots of Harlow and Lucinda that April sent me. ‘He dates women likethis!’
‘And he cooked you breakfast after you crashed into his car, engineered some clifftop creative epiphany, jumped with you into the ocean, rescued you from drowning and sunburn, and dropped everything for a road trip with you.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Is that everything?’
No. I think of the gentle way he listened to my sobriety story and supported it, but Sara needs no further ammunition. ‘That’s the gist.’
‘And that was just the first long weekend. What kind of sister would I be if I warned you off this?’
‘He thinks I’m not strong enough to withstand the spotlight. He said journalists will uncover my history—the drinking—and there’ll be all these headlines about him dating an alcoholic. He’s scared it will kibosh the career I’m scrambling to get back. So now I’m imagining them latching on to the fact that I am currently of no fixed address and living in a caravan and not realising it was a deliberate bid for creative freedom.’
‘Write what you know,’ Sara says.
Why is she giving me writing advice at this crucial moment?
‘You’re writing a musical about being widowed. That experience drove you to alcohol, which took over your life until you pulled yourself out of it again. Write a song about that. Write a whole character arc! Put it in the show. Take control of the narrative. Then what can they possibly do to you?’
Sara works with numbers. She doesn’t understand music or theatre or creative writing. But she does understand risk. She strategises risk every day, for enormous corporations. And she understands me.
‘Imagine the good you could do, talking about this. You could help people. Instead of seeing Beau’s public persona as a threat, think of it as a platform. Embrace it. Run towards it. You’ll strip the journalists of their power.’
My sister’s role in my life is to keep me grounded. She’s meant to dampen all my dreams to keep me safe.
She doesn’t know it, but Sara’s idea has injected an unexpected sense of purpose into my life that I think I’ve been missing for decades. It’s not just music. It’s storytelling.
‘Also, Audrey, the fact that he has halted this conversation while you think about the potential impact on your life says alot about him. He might be off rushing through his screenplay revisions, rewriting this film character, heavily inspired byyou—but he’s also giving you the space you need to figure this out. I have to respect the man.’
What has gotintoher, rushing through this landscape, tearing down all the red flags?
‘What you had with Fraser is more than most people get in a lifetime,’ she says, and I know she’s talking about herself. ‘If you get a second chance at this, don’t fuck it up.’
If nothing else she said has penetrated, that last statement has smashed through what was left of my crumbling resistance. It’s the first time in my life that I’ve ever heard my sister swear.
‘Sara, this is a one-eighty spin on romantic advice. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’d met someone!’
She picks up a piece of cake, holds it near her mouth, and smiles. ‘Can’t have my little sister cornering the market on epic love stories, can I?’
I get in my car after a surprising breakfast and remember a similarly thought-provoking conversation I had with my now sponsor, Ali, in my kitchen that night after my first support meeting. We had a cup of tea at the table, two bottles safely in the recycling bin, the wine having been tipped down the sink in possibly the second-scariest moment of my life.
