The Rapunzel Dilemma Read online

  July had been manic with all the wedding preparations, so she’d been rapt when her dad and Simone had suggested they delay their honeymoon for a month so they could all spend August together at Grandmama’s villa at Cap Ferrat in the south of France.

  But instead of having family time, they’d been besieged by visitors.

  Barely a day had gone by when one or more of Philip’s old friends hadn’t arrived at the villa, eager to congratulate the newlyweds, meet Simone and Angel, and find out what the Comtesse de Tourney really thought of her son’s marriage to his housekeeper. Grandmama had welcomed them all with characteristic grace and invited them to stay. She’d been at pains to ensure her guests knew that, however much she may have disapproved of Simone eleven years earlier, she now welcomed and loved her new daughter-in-law.

  Lily could see her grandmother trying to make up for more than a decade of being estranged from her and Philip on account of Simone and she’d probably have loved it if she hadn’t been so miserable.

  If only her dad understood how much acting meant to her. Couldn’t he see that was why she’d persuaded Angel to take her place in Paris last June? Swapping places had been the only way Lily could attend the Academy summer school. Okay, so it had been a massive deception, but it had only been for two weeks and it had all worked out in the end.

  More than worked out. Because, if Angel hadn’t gone to Paris, Philip and Simone might never have discovered the truth about what had kept them apart all those years.

  Only – ever since last July, when she’d left the Academy and run off to Paris to save Angel from disaster – Lily had felt like she was still running – not physically, but inside, as if she hadn’t had a moment to draw a breath, let alone talk to her dad like they used to.

  Maybe if they’d gone back to New York after the wedding, she thought wistfully. Maybe then things might have been different. Back home she and Philip might have sat by the fire in his study and talked – really talked – and she’d have finally convinced him to believe in her dream the way he believed in Angel’s.

  Angel. Her very best friend and the person Lily had always confided in – until now.

  Lily leaned her head against the mirror with a sigh.

  If only her dad would see reason. If only he hadn’t made her promise –

  She felt the old flame of resentment flare inside her. She’d tried everything to make her dad understand her passion, but the truth was Philip didn’t want her to be an actor. Period. He hated the idea of a theatrical career and he’d only agreed to wangle Lily a late audition because she’d asked him at the Versailles Ball. He’d been so happy that night, he’d have promised her the moon.

  And when her audition letter had finally arrived she’d foolishly believed he’d come round. She remembered it so clearly: running down to the little beach below Grandmama’s villa and thrusting the permission form triumphantly into his hand. He’d glanced at it and frowned and she’d felt a sudden clenching in her gut. ‘You promised if I got an audition, you’d let me go,’ she’d reminded him. He’d nodded and she’d felt a momentary surge of relief before he’d dropped his bombshell.

  ‘You can audition,’ he’d said quietly, ‘and, if you get into the Academy you may go – the training may even be beneficial – but it changes nothing, Lily. When you turn twenty-one you will take your place in the family business –’

  ‘No!’ Lily had been aghast. ‘No, Dad. I told you, I want to be an actor.’

  ‘There’s no future in it, Lily. I don’t want you wasting years of your life on some empty dream.’

  ‘It’s not an empty dream! If I get into the LDA I’ll be training with the best. People like Arathula Dane –’

  ‘A one-in-a-billion success story. You’re reaching for the stars in a world where too many people crash and burn.’ He’d reached out and untwisted the long strand of hair she’d wound nervously around one finger. ‘Your whole life you’ve benefited from what our family has achieved. You must see that you have a responsibility –’

  She’d cut him off. ‘Please don’t ask me to give up my dream, Dad.’

  He’d looked at her with an expression in his eyes she’d never seen before – a curious mixture of sadness and determination that had made her heart miss a beat.

  ‘A member of our family has to learn the business, Lily. It’s been that way for six generations.’

  ‘I’m too young –’

  ‘I was only fifteen when my father died and I had to take my place on the board. I’m not expecting you to give up your youth, Lily, or even the Academy. You’ll have until you are twenty-one to pursue your acting ambitions.’

  ‘And then what? A lifetime of amateur theatricals? No thanks. There has to be another way.’

  ‘There isn’t. Our company has passed from parent to child for nearly two hundred years and I’ll be damned if that’s going to end because of some ridiculous obsession with the theatre!’

  ‘It’s not ridiculous!’

  ‘As my daughter you have a responsibility –’

  ‘What about Angel? She’s your daughter, too, and she’s six months older than me. Why can’t she –’

  ‘I couldn’t do that to Angel,’ he’d said gravely. ‘Not after all she’s been through.’

  ‘But you’d do it to me?’ Lily had demanded angrily.

  ‘You were raised a de Tourney, Lily. Angel has only just discovered she’s my daughter. It’s a huge adjustment for her. Besides, she already has a place at Vidal’s. You know how hard she worked to earn it. Would you really ask her to give it up?’

  Lily was silent.

  ‘I see.’ The disappointment in his voice had cut her like a knife, but still she had not spoken.

  ‘Very well then, Lily.’ Philip’s voice was sombre. ‘Here’s the deal: you can audition and, if you get in, I’ll support your three years of training at the Academy. But, before this year is out, you will have to decide which of my daughters will follow me into the family business.’

  ‘No –’

  ‘Yes. The choice, my darling Lily, is yours. Either you or Angel will have to give up your ambitions and learn the family business.’ Philip had pulled out a pen and held it over the permission form. ‘And you will promise not to tell Angel any of this.’

  ‘But I tell her everything.’

  ‘Then this will be the exception. Either you promise not to breathe a word of this to Angel or I don’t sign.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because I’m pretty sure that if Angel knew what I was asking of you, she would not hesitate to sacrifice her dream for yours.’

  And that had been that. Lily had promised. Philip had signed the vital form and she’d begun preparing for her audition. Outwardly, she’d put on a happy face and done her best to enjoy the summer and her new family and act as if everything was right with her world.

  But inwardly . . . Inwardly, Lily had raged at the injustice of it all. Her dad had given her an impossible choice and she fiercely resented it. It was totally unfair to burden her in such a way and then prevent her from talking to Angel about it. And the worst part about it was that sometimes she found herself resenting Angel – even though she knew it wasn’t her fault.

  Had anyone suspected that she wasn’t as happy as she appeared? Lily wondered. Had they realised that underneath the happy façade she’d adopted all summer she was in turmoil?

  She considered her smile in the mirror for a moment – it definitely looked genuine.

  The only person who’d seemed to notice anything had been Angel, and she was the last person Lily could confess her feelings to. Instead, she’d deflected Angel’s questions by blaming her bad moods on her clashes with the Comtesse.

  It wasn’t a complete lie.

  Lily knew it was her own fault that she and Grandmama clashed so often because Angel and the Comtesse got on brilliantly – and not just because of their shared love of fashion and haute couture. No, the truth was, Grandmama approved of Angel and she didn’t ap
prove of Lily. She’d made that crystal clear when she’d signed her up for the Debutante Club.

  Of course, she’d meant it as a wonderful surprise, but Lily knew differently. All that talk about country-house parties, musical soirées, dinners, dances and even a weekend trip to Scotland were all just another way of saying that Lily’s behaviour needed refining.

  She’d refused to even consider it, and had told the Comtesse that she was going to London to study acting, not prance about with a bunch of stuck-up English girls learning how to behave properly while drinking tea and eating cucumber sandwiches. Even more to the point (as she’d told Grandmama angrily), the whole idea of a Debutante Club was offensive. They were living in the twenty-first century, not the nineteenth, and the idea of being turned into a presentable female and paired up with a ‘suitable’ upper-class English boy made Lily feel ill.

  Naturally, her grandmother had denied that was her intention, but the argument that followed had been the worst one yet. The only good thing about it had been the massive release of a whole lot of Lily’s pent-up emotion.

  It hadn’t been pretty though, and it had upset her dad and Simone as well as Grandmama.

  Lily stared at herself in the mirror. She’d hated those fights. She hated feeling angry with her dad and she hated not being able to truly talk to Angel. But most of all she hated being faced with an impossible choice.

  Lily sighed and lifted her hair to her shoulders. Grandmama was right about one thing – it would look better short.

  But long or short, it wouldn’t make Lily a better person. Why couldn’t she be noble and self-sacrificing, give up her ambition and do what her dad wanted? Would spending her days in an office really be so bad? Lily tried to imagine it, but all she could see was her life stretching ahead of her, long and bland and soulless, with none of the joy or passion that acting brought her . . .

  A vision of Angel enduring that same dull life rose in Lily’s mind. She pushed it away. She no longer had to make that choice. After today’s terrible audition she wouldn’t even be coming to the Academy.

  Lily bit her lip. At least she wouldn’t have to join the Debutante Club.

  That was one fight she was not going to lose.

  CHAPTER 3

  Lily dragged her hair into a ponytail and picked up her bag. She’d get the taxi to the Hallidays’ and call Angel from there to tell her she’d be coming home on Monday. As she moved towards the door, she heard voices in the hall.

  ‘Old Wilson said she’d be in here.’

  ‘Well, hurry up. I’ve got fencing practice in ten.’

  Lily looked around for an escape route. She didn’t want to meet anyone, least of all Academy students. Not after her audition. For all she knew, they might have witnessed her humiliation in the theatre.

  But before she could move, the door opened and a tall girl stepped into the room, followed by two others.

  Lily could see at once that the girl was someone – or, if not actually someone, then someone who thought she should be. From the top of her head, with its smooth ponytail of thick copper-coloured hair, to the tips of her manicured fingernails, and all the way down to her elegant leather flats, she oozed confidence. Lily could practically see the air in the room part to make way for her, and she was sure that if Angel had been there, she could have instantly identified the girl’s outfit as the latest designer fashion.

  The girl had light-brown eyes and a perfectly sculpted nose, down which she now looked at Lily. ‘You must be the girl who needs the taxi,’ she said. Her voice was rich, clear and very English. Exactly the sort of voice that wins you a place at the London Drama Academy, thought Lily enviously.

  She smiled. ‘That’s me.’

  The girl did not smile back. ‘Mrs Wilson asked me to show you where to wait.’

  Forcing herself to ignore the hostility, Lily said cheerfully, ‘Thanks, that’s kind of you.’

  ‘Actually, it’s not,’ replied the girl. ‘I’m only doing it because I was asked.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Lily, eyeing the door and wondering if she could make a run for it.

  ‘I just don’t want you to be under any illusion,’ added the girl frankly.

  ‘Today’s the last day of Orientation Week and Charlotte’s just been elected first-year representative,’ explained the girl beside her. She was a couple of inches shorter than Lily, with wide grey eyes beneath a fringe of soft curly brown hair. ‘So Mrs Wilson has assigned her to help the new students.’

  ‘She isn’t a new student, Phoebe,’ said Charlotte firmly. ‘She’s just someone who auditioned for a place.’

  ‘Yes, but it was a pretty special audition, Charlotte,’ said the third girl. She was stocky with strawberry-blonde hair and a sharp, eager face that reminded Lily of a fox.

  Lily turned to her. ‘You liked it?’ she asked eagerly.

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ said the girl. ‘You misunderstood. I should have said unique – as in a one-time thing.’

  Lily’s heart turned to stone. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Don’t play games,’ said Charlotte crisply. ‘You know exactly what Gemma means.’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ said Lily.

  ‘She means that no one gets to audition outside of an Academy summer school,’ said Phoebe.

  ‘There were three summer schools this year,’ said Charlotte. ‘You weren’t in mine or Gemma’s, so I checked the audition list and your name wasn’t on it.’

  ‘No one’s ever been allowed a one-off audition this close to the start of term before,’ said Gemma.

  ‘I would have auditioned at the end of my summer school,’ began Lily, ‘only –’ She stopped.

  ‘Only?’ repeated Charlotte sceptically.

  Only I left early. ‘Only I couldn’t,’ said Lily firmly. They’re pretending they haven’t heard the story, but they must know, she thought.

  When her ex, Brett, had called after the final performance of Our Town, to tell her he was breaking up with her, he’d also told her how word had got around. He’d been so angry with her the night of the dress rehearsal that Lily hadn’t really been surprised by his call.

  And he had every right to be angry. He and the understudy and everyone else in the cast. She’d only given them five minutes’ notice before she’d run off to Paris without a word of explanation.

  What they didn’t know – and what she’d never had the chance to explain – was why she’d done it.

  Lily contemplated the three girls in front of her. She wondered what they’d say if she told them about Angel and the Teen Couture and Grandmama and her dad and Simone and that night at the Versailles Ball. Maybe they’d be less aggrieved. Maybe they’d understand. Maybe they’d even be friends.

  Or maybe not.

  ‘I did two summer schools before I got accepted,’ said Phoebe.

  ‘And I worked two part-time jobs to pay for extra drama classes so I’d get into a summer school and have a chance at an audition,’ added Gemma, her sharp little nose twitching with dislike.

  Lily looked from one to the other. She could see that she was never going to win this argument. ‘You know, I can find my own way out,’ she said, moving towards the door.

  Charlotte blocked her path. She folded her arms. ‘You must have pulled some pretty big strings to get Marshall Drake to agree to see you.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ protested Lily, not quite meeting Charlotte’s gaze.

  ‘Really? Then why don’t you tell us what it was like?’

  Lily hesitated. She’d never actually asked her dad how he’d swung her an audition. She just figured he’d talked to some people. Once she’d got her letter from the Academy she’d been so excited she hadn’t thought any more about it.

  She pursed her lips. ‘I don’t know Marshall Drake or any of the judges, if that’s what’s worrying you. But if they do decide to offer me a place, it’ll be because they think I’m good enough, not for any other reason.’ She shrugged. ‘I think how I got my audition is ir
relevant.’ She could see at once it was totally the wrong thing to say.

  ‘And I suppose it’s irrelevant that you left the Academy last July without telling anyone where you were going?’ Charlotte snorted. ‘So – what? You think you can run out on people the night before a show and break the rules and still get special treatment?’ She wrinkled her nose as if Lily were a bad smell.

  ‘I’m not –’ began Lily.

  ‘Then leave,’ cut in Gemma.

  ‘What?’ gasped Lily.

  ‘She’s suggesting you leave,’ said Phoebe quietly. ‘Try again next year, like everybody else.’

  ‘Why should I?’ said Lily.

  ‘Why should you get special treatment?’ snapped Charlotte.

  ‘I didn’t,’ said Lily. ‘All I got was a – a make-up audition.’

  The three girls looked at her incredulously, then they all spoke at once:

  ‘You’re kidding!’

  ‘She’s delusional.’

  ‘There’s no such thing!’

  Lily tried again. ‘Look, I’m sorry if it upsets you, but I don’t see what the big deal is. I’ve done my audition and now I’ve got the same chance of getting in as everybody else.’

  ‘Except you’re not the same as everyone else, are you?’ Charlotte looked contemptuous. ‘You’re Lily de Tourney, and a cheque from your super-rich daddy is probably sitting on Marshall Drake’s desk just waiting to be cashed.’

  ‘That’s not true!’ cried Lily.

  ‘It’s what everyone will think if you start at the Academy on Monday.’

  Lily stared at her, aghast.

  ‘The truth is,’ said Gemma triumphantly, ‘the truth is, Lily de Tourney, you’re not wanted here.’

  CHAPTER 4

  Lily ran out of the locker room and down the hall. She wasn’t going to cry. She just needed to get outside into the fresh air and away from those girls. She wished she’d left sooner – before Charlotte had said that stuff about her dad.