Mr. Darcy Forever (2 page)

As they reached the front door, Sarah turned around to admire the view down to the estuary. It was flanked with pale blond reed beds and a little lane ran alongside it.

Mia gasped. ‘That’s the lane Willoughby rode along, isn't it?’

‘
And Colonel Brandon too,’ Sarah said, wistfully glancing along it in the hope that Alan Rickman might show up on horseback at any moment.

‘
We’re going to have the best week ever here!’ Mia said.

‘
Of course we are,’ Sarah said. ‘A perfect week.’

But perfection is hard to come by - even in Devon - and Sarah had been wishful thinking when she’d hoped that there were no men in their little corner of the English countryside.

Sarah Castle woke up and couldn’t believe what she was seeing. What on earth had she been thinking of? How had she let that happen? She felt absolutely mortified and tried to shut her eyes, banishing the image from her brain but it was no good - it had to be faced head on.

Sitting upright, she flattened down her hair with her hands and then swung her legs out of bed. Then, she placed her left foot into its slipper and then the right one, careful not to touch the carpet.

It wasn't the first time this had happened and she swore silently to herself that it would never ever happen again. Taking a deep breath, she stood up and straightened the offending curtain, shaking her head at the kink that had somehow been left in it overnight, and then she sighed in relief. That was better. Now the morning could begin properly.

There then followed a strict routine of bed-making, washing and tidying before Sarah allowed herself to have breakfast. Not for her was the slatternly-slippered-shuffle into the kitchen for that morning cup of coffee. Oh, no. Sarah had to be immaculately dressed before she graced the kitchen. There, she would take breakfast whilst writing her first list of the day which was actually a list of lists. She would need to make a list of jobs for the week ahead, a list of all of the jobs that needed doing that day, and a list of things that needed doing around the house.

Today was different, however, because she was going away. Work could be forgotten for the next few days. Well, not completely forgotten – she wasn’t the type of person who could wholly switch off from work. But, being a self-employed accountant, it was easy to take time off when one needed and the Jane Austen Festival in Bath each September was an annual treat.

People would come from all over the world for the festival, taking part in the great costumed promenade through the beautiful Georgian streets and going to talks, dance lessons, and classes in etiquette and costume. It was an event that no true Janeite could miss.

Sarah had booked herself into a small bed and breakfast just off Great Pulteney Street - an area which would have been familiar to Jane Austen. She’d already made one trip ahead of her time in Bath to see the bed and breakfast because she couldn’t risk staying somewhere that wasn’t suitable. She’d only made that mistake once, booking a hotel room in Glasgow for an accountancy training day. It had been a disaster. The carpets looked as if they hadn't been vacuumed for at least two days, Sarah had reckoned, there had been a strip of wallpaper in her room that had unfurled itself in a most unbecoming manner, and nothing had been straight - the pictures on the walls, the curtains across the landing, and the dining-room place settings. Sarah had had to spend a good half hour of her own time going around straightening things before she could settle. It really wasn't the sort of thing she wanted to worry about when she was on holiday but it was impossible to switch off from such things.

Sarah had always known she was different. It had nothing to do with her looks because she was very pretty with rich brown hair and eyes to match. Neither did it have anything to do with her intelligence which was way above average. But, even from a young age, she’d felt removed from those around her because she seemed to see the world differently.

The earliest recollection she could pinpoint was when she was ten years old. She'd been shopping in Oxford Street with her mother and had paid a visit to the ladies’ toilets in a big department store.

Sarah had been very careful not to touch anything she didn’t need to touch and had washed her hands twice and then her mother had asked her something. It was a simple enough question but it stopped Sarah in her path.

‘
Open the door will you, darling?’

Sarah stared at the big wide door handle – a handle people would have touched – people who might not have washed their hands twice like she had or even washed their hands at all.

Her mother sighed. ‘Sarah – open the door for me.’

Sarah turned to her mother and saw that she was carrying four big bags and so didn't have a hand free. She bit her lip and looked, once more, at the door in front of her.

‘
What is the matter with you, child?’

‘
I’ve just washed my hands,’ she said but her mother didn't seem to understand her and, if it hadn't been for the little old lady who had come into the ladies’, Sarah and her mother might still be standing there today.

Her mother had never understood Sarah's profound fear of dirt - not just the sort of dirt that clumps around a pair of Wellington boots or blows in the summer wind and sticks to your sun cream. There was other dirt too - the invisible sort that came from other people and could make you ill. Microbes, bacteria and viruses - they were all out there and one had to be constantly on one's guard against them.

Sarah tried to avoid public toilets as much as possible now. If it was at all possible, she’d much rather go in a nice clean field where one didn't have to worry about door handles or picking up a bar of soap that would probably do you more harm than good.

But it wasn't just her fear of dirt that marked her out as being different. Growing up, Sarah had earned herself the nickname ‘The Neat Freak’ because she was forever tidying up and not just after herself but after everybody around her. Everything had to be in its right place. Didn't that make sense? Wasn't that the way things were meant to be? Why didn’t everyone agree with her? Why did everybody else seem to like living in chaos where keys and purses and umbrellas were constantly lost? It baffled her, it really did.

This determination for everything to be just right was noted by her first boss – Mr Henderson – who couldn’t understand why the teenage Sarah was taking so long to stack the supermarket shelves. But every tin had to be exactly right with the label not just facing out but facing out symmetrically. Then she’d notice some of the other products on the shelves which had been put out by others and would have to straighten those. It was all very time consuming and Mr Henderson had thought she was a slow worker and so she’d been fired. How ridiculous was that – to be fired for being too good at her job?

It wasn’t until Sarah was twenty-four that she heard the term OCD. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder - that's what she had. It was a well-recognised condition and she was by no means the only person to suffer from it. All over the world, people were straightening things and washing their hands until they cracked. They were counting things and scrubbing things, making lists and ordering their lives into a set of neat and regular routines. It was their way of controlling the world and it made perfect sense to them. There was no other way to live and, even though it might drive them crazy and they knew it was illogical, they couldn't stop themselves.

Sarah often tried to imagine what life might be like without OCD. She tried to envisage a different version of herself - a Sarah who was more relaxed, who could get out of bed and not worry about making it. A Sarah who didn't need to brush her hair with one hundred strokes and start all over again if she was interrupted.

Or, perhaps, OCD could be something that you could chose to suffer from on certain days of the week; you could mark it in your diary for Mondays and Thursdays, leaving the other days of the week free so that you could behave like a normal human being. But that was never going to happen and there was no use in wishing it so.

As she packed her suitcase for the festival, Sarah’s eye caught a little framed silhouette of Jane Austen that hung on the wall beside her bed. It was a dear little thing, framed in oval brass and with a traditional acorn hanger, bought on a previous trip to Bath. The reason it caught her eye now was because, like the curtain before, it wasn't hanging quite straight. She must have knocked it whilst dusting. Neatly folding her pair of jeans and placing them in the bottom of the suitcase, she walked across the room to straighten the little frame. As she did so, she couldn’t help remembering another frame she’d once straightened and how much trouble it had got her into.

She’d been about twelve and she’d been visiting a very posh art gallery in London with her school. She still remembered walking into a large airy room hung with beautiful landscapes in large gold frames, and standing in the middle of the room to admire them. It had been perfect. Even at the tender age of twelve, Sarah had been drawn to Georgian architecture. There was something intrinsically pleasing about the straight lines and symmetry of the rooms that made her feel calm and gave her a feeling of being oh-so-right.

But it hadn't all been perfect that day because one of the paintings hadn’t been straight. It was a landscape – a simple river flowing through the mountains but it was distinctly wonky. Sarah had looked around her because she felt sure that she wouldn’t be the only one to notice it but nobody seemed to be paying it any attention.

Sarah shook her head, bemused as to how had it gone unnoticed. In such a symmetrically pleasing room, the wonky painting was virtually screaming out loud to be straightened and, without even pausing to question her actions, she crossed the room and took the painting in both hands.

The alarm that had gone off had never been equalled in loudness before or since and it still made Sarah shudder to think of it.

‘
What on earth were you doing?’ Her teacher's face had been scarlet with embarrassment as security staff sprung into action and they were escorted into a book-lined office.

It was soon pretty obvious that a twelve-year-old girl had no real intentions of stealing the priceless artwork and she’d been allowed to go on her way without further questioning. Now, as she fixed the little silhouette on the wall, she couldn’t help but smile. OCD had certainly made her life interesting.

Catching sight of her reflection in the mirror, Sarah smoothed down her hair with her hands. She kept it in a neat bob, its edges so sharp that they looked in danger of slicing her cheekbones. Her mother used to let Sarah’s hair get completely out of control and Sarah had hated her for it because she knew that once it got to chin-length, one side curled outwards and the other inwards which was absolutely appalling and not to be endured.

Everything about her was controlled from the way she styled her hair to the neat skirts and jackets she wore for work. Straight lines were featured heavily. Not for her were the ruffles and flounces that came in and out of fashion - they were far too messy and unpredictable. You knew where you were with straight line; it didn't mess around.

Mia would often make fun of her for dressing so neatly and precisely.

‘
You work from home! You could hang around in your pyjamas all day and nobody would notice.’

‘
But I don't want to hang around in my pyjamas all day,’ Sarah said. ‘It just isn't right.’

One of the reasons Sarah had become an accountant was so that she could work from home. Home was an environment she could control. She didn't have to worry about co-workers and the mess they made and there was a certain calmness that came from knowing exactly where everything was at a given time. Imagine trying to work in an open-plan office with other people - the thought was just preposterous. She would have to share her space with total strangers who might pick up her things. No, working from home was a much safer option.

Post was an issue, of course. She found it irritating that anybody could pop a filthy envelope through your letterbox. So she employed a pair of fine cotton gloves which she donned before touching anything that landed on her doormat.

Her clients were harder to control. When she could, she met them in a local pub which she knew to be clean.

If anyone turned up at her home, she would show them through to the room that she kept specifically for that purpose and would vacuum and polish any surfaces that she had seen them touch during their visit.