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1st Anniversary
They have the perspective argument at least once a week. Will just can’t understand why Anna gets so worked up about the paparazzi all the time. Yes, being followed when all you want to do is pick up a pint of milk is a pain in the arse, but it’s all so irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Anna, however, has lost roles based on what some casting director’s PA’s boyfriend read in The Sun about how she was seen buying Ben and Jerry’s and therefore must be getting fat. Everyone knows you don’t hire the fat girl. Will sleeps on the couch for two nights after bringing a newspaper into the house.
2nd Anniversary
The pregnancy is an accident. Anna and Will are both still thrilled, of course, although perhaps Will more so than Anna. As it happens she doesn’t have anything huge on her shooting schedule, so a year or two out isn’t a big deal for her and she’s mostly concerned about getting back into shape afterwards.
The arrival of the baby is a joy. Clara is good natured and bouncy and smiles at everyone, even with a cold she doesn’t grumble, and Will and Anna are so thrilled to be parents. They take Clara out with them everywhere, and Anna even forgets about the bounty on photographs where one of the trio looks disheveled.
3rd Anniversary
It turns out that being married to a movie star isn’t all it's cracked up to be. Will adores Anna, couldn’t be more in love and yet he always suspects that it’s not quite as mutual as he’d like. Of course Anna does love him, but he’ll catch her looking at him with a hint of disappointment when he fails to appreciate the gravity of one director or another praising her work.
When grey drizzly day follows grey drizzly day in London, the shine soon wears off. Sitting on their bench is no fun in that weather, so she holes up with the scripts her agent sends her and pretends she can’t hear the shrieking toddler.
Will spends a lot of time with Bella and Max so Clara always has people around her. It’s Spike that points out that her initials - Clara Avery Thacker - spell out cat, and from then on she’s known as nothing but Kitty. Only Anna insists on calling her by her full name.
At 13 months, Kitty calls Bella ‘mama’.
4th Anniversary
Anna’s been away for eight weeks on set in New Zealand when Clara and Will turn up unexpectedly. She’s initially thrilled, but is so distracted with the shoot that she doesn’t realise how miserable they both are, and the third time he gets yelled at by the director for Clara making noise at an inopportune moment he takes her back to England. Anna doesn’t notice they’ve gone for 48 hours.
She apologises with a first edition of The Voyage of the Beagle. If nothing else, Anna does know how to say sorry with the grand gesture. Will would rather she didn’t behave in a way that made such frequent apologies necessary.
He doesn’t get what he wants.
5th Anniversary
For two nights Will sleeps on the bed in Kitty’s room after their fight about her birthday. Anna wants to have the party in Hollywood and Will thinks that a tea party in the garden is a much better idea. It ends with a hideously awkward phone conversation with Bruce Willis, who wants to know what address to send his gift to, and Will gives in.
Kitty cries for the entire flight. The four-storey dolls’ house she’s given never leaves the mansion that Anna keeps in LA and is never touched by any child. All the photos from the party show a panicky film star and hysterical red-faced little girl.
When the others go home, Anna stays in Hollywood.
6th Anniversary
They still go to film premieres together, and something in Will’s heart hardens everytime she smiles at him for the cameras. Somedays he forgets that he’s married to an Oscar winner who professionally pretends to be something she’s not . He was sure that he’d got the real Anna, the one who liked too-big jumpers and melted ice cream, but he’s fairly sure that was just a role she played for a while and called it normal.
Will’s been taking Kitty to nursery for two mornings a week. It gives him time to organise things at the shop and generally remind himself that he’s a grown-up. Kitty loves it - she gets to play with other kids and eat Play-Doh to her heart’s content. Anna picks her up one day, and when the assistant calls her Mrs Thacker she has a screaming fit that rivals any toddler. The already-dwindling London visits trickle to a stop after that.
7th Anniversary
Will takes Kitty to the cinema to see the latest Disney release, something involving talking animals. One of the trailers is for Anna’s latest film, a Christmas adventure sort of thing. Kitty doesn’t even acknowledge it’s her mother she’s looking at. Will’s not sure that his daughter even knows her face.
Max, Bella and Honey spend over an hour debating who’s going to show Will The Mirror, with its grainy photos of Anna kissing her director, but it turns out he’s already seen them. He’s not the same man as he was years ago, Hello and Heat are now regular reading. It’s simple self preservation, and if he has to steel himself everytime he turns a page, no-one else needs to know. He and Kitty do perfectly well together, and it’s actually something of a relief when the divorce papers arrive.
He signs them and sends them back with the Chagall. If love and happiness is a violin playing goat, he wants nothing to do with it. Give him a smiling child with sticky fingers and pink cheeks any day of the week.
15th Anniversary
Being a single parent suits Will. He’s a little fazed by the loss of his cuddly daughter who wanted nothing more than to build a fort or snuggle up while he read her Swallows and Amazons, and her replacement with a creature that insists on wearing leggings and rolling her eyes whenever he speaks to her, but he’s taking it in stride. He’d never admit it to anyone, but the child support from Anna means that he can spend all his energy on making sure Kitty is as well raised as can be without having to concern himself with money. He makes sure that she still understands the value of hard work, and she refuses to accept the majority of overcompensating gifts that Anna sends.
17th Anniversary
Will loses Kitty to stage school for the summer, after she shyly mentions it might be interesting to know more about what Anna does. She’s home every afternoon raving about the stage fighting they learned and special effects makeup, and then spends evenings out with a small video camera, happily narrating tales about the snail trails in the garden.
She never tells Anna how she spent her summer holiday.
20th Anniversary
Despite only going to university two miles from their home, Kitty insists on moving out and doing the whole student thing properly. She lives in grotty halls and manages to hide her parentage from her class for most of the winter term, a pretty surprising feat for someone studying at RADA. The awe, jealousy and feigned nonchalance are entirely predictable, but luckily fade when everyone realises that Kitty’s not going to get anyone a part in a Hollywood blockbuster and neither is she getting a free ride onto a set herself.
Kitty gets her first job working backstage at the Old Vic, and no-one even suggests it wasn’t entirely based on merit.
25th Anniversary
Will is nervous to be back in Hollywood. It’s been years since he was last in that world, the occasional phone calls with Anna to update her on her daughter notwithstanding.
He tries to fit into the tux he last wore to one of the premieres but it doesn’t come close to buttoning up, so he settles on a nice navy suit instead. He sees Anna from a distance on the red carpet and nods in her direction; she’s glittering under the lights and doesn’t look like she’s even aged a day. Will’s sitting up on the third level, way back in the crowd, but that doesn’t matter at all when he stands to applaud his daughter’s first Oscar for Cinematography. She looks gorgeous and confident and painfully like Anna. Her speech is short, and he’s crying when she thanks him.
It’s only when he rewatches the next day that he realises she didn’t mention her mother at all.