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Evie likes to think her apartment is shabby-chic, but really it's cluttered-chic. It is, however, currently her favourite place in the city. She loves her adorable pastel kitchen, which she rarely uses because she's a rather awful cook, but her bookshelf-stroke-wall has plenty of cookbooks on it, and she has been practicing. The antique mirror in her bedroom, her easel and her fourposter bed were shipped over from her parents house, but for her first three weeks in the city, she was sleeping on her couch. However, Evie's favourite thing about the appartment has to be the closet. She can't really afford to buy new clothes, but it's kind of an addiction. While the apartment is Evie's haven, it is also technically her dads property, for the timebeing, anyway. Richard Smith-Harrington has agreed to fund his only daughters dream for three months, by paying her rent the first quarter of her year in New York. However, after the three months are over, she needs to pay her way and learn to support herself. Until the three months are up, she's been using up the credit card that is still signed to her dads bank, and she may or may not have spent a little
too much time on Fifth Avenue.
Evie means well, but she can sometimes come across as being a little spoilt. Having grown up with two rather successful parents, she's never wanted for anything. Nevertheless, Evie has made the bold decision to strike out on her own, not naive enough to assume that her parents were going to support her forever. She has known a life of luxury, and now she's about to start living the life of a pauper.
Evie is sweet, always willing to offer her help and advice to anybody who needs it but she's an especially independent individual when it comes to being told what to, having grown up defying her parents rules and regulations from a very young age. Evie doesn't do well with rules, and sees them as challenges, meant to be broken. She's definitely her mothers daughter, having too much pride and not enough space for it. She gets embarassed and defensive easily when people assume she can't take care of herself, especially when men assume she needs protection or support. Evie isn't opposed to being taken care of, but she'd not going to let a guy assume that's what she wants or needs. She's going to be an equal partner in any relationship she's in and nothing less.
Though she's never had to support herself or really do
anything for herself, Anna is still a well educated and intelligent individual, having gone to the same private school both of her parents went to and subsequently going to Cambridge School of Art to explore and express her creativity. While she is academically advanced, Evie isn't very well acquainted with the kind of street smarts one needs to survive New York City. For example, Evie is still under the impression that strangers can be nice and that when people act like they want to help you, they're genuine, because people in England are polite and considerate like that. She's in for a rather unpleasant surprise in NYC.
Evelyn grew up in Oxford, England, the only daughter and youngest child of two lawyers and the baby sister of three older brothers. Having had an excessively sheltered life, Evie found herself constantly looking for adventure. Instead of being the sweet and ladylike daughter her mother, Eliza, always wanted, Evie was like a fourth son in her younger years. She spent a lot of time with her older brothers, although Michael, the oldest Harrington child was sixteen when Evie turned five, and as such was much too old to play with his nine and six year old brothers, let alone the little sister who always seemed to be getting under his feet. The only time Michael liked to pay her any attention was when he was trying to impress his girlfriends, who always swooned more over Evie than they did over Michael.
Evie was always getting into scrapes with her brothers, climbing trees and scraping her knee's, wearing clothes that belonged to her brother Adam, who was barely older than her, instead of her own pretty dresses and shirts. Friends of her parents sometimes mistook her for a boy, when her mother was holding luncheon and Evie would run through the drawing room, trailing mud behind her. That independence never left her, but as she grew, Evie did learn what it meant to be a girl in high society in England. By Evie's fifteenth birthday, her mother decided it was time for her to take up a more ladylike pastime than racing horses and swimming in their lake with her brothers and friends. Though an extremely compassionate and lovable woman, Eliza still wanted her daughter to grow up elible for a good marriage and a happy life with a successful husband, and she simply couldn't see that happening if Evie kept breaking bones and earning scars from her outdoor escapades.
And so it was that Eliza began her daughters obsession with paints and colour and shapes. Little did Eliza know that it would be this that unintentionally drove her daughter away from the family, all the way to the US. At first, Eliza was thrilled that Evie seemed to have found something that excited her more than immitating everything her brothers did. Michael had been married for years, with a few children of his own, Christopher had gone off to University and Adam was too busy studying to spend much time with the sister he'd grown up so close too. She was lonely and unsure of what to do with herself, and painting was her new love.
So when Evie intercepted her parents one night after they'd been entertaining guests, and requested their permission and support to move to the US and pursue the muse that seems to have evaded her in the past few years, Eliza sighed, too tired to argue, rolled her eyes and told her daughter that she would miss her but she could hardly say no. Evie received a lecture from her father about how this meant she would have to learn to be independent, but he hugged her and told her he loved her and to follow her dreams.
Evie isn't an assumptious individual, and she likes to think she's a true, modern 90's woman, which means that she's adaptable and fluid. However, the truth is, while she loves hew new apartment because of the privacy and independence it offers, it's hard going from her parents house to a place that is the size of what her old bedroom was. She also goes by Evie Smith in New York, wanting to create for herself an entirely separate identiy from the one she has in England. But, the question is, how long can she keep this secret?
