‘Oh, yes, and to what do we owe this pleasure?’ Jenny asked him, tucking her chin in. ‘You haven’t been round for your dinner in weeks, and then you just stroll in off the street, treating the place like a –’
‘B & B? Thought I’d pop in, say hello to my lovely mother, that’s all,’ Ted said, putting his arms around Jenny and kissing her on the cheek, making her giggle like a girl.
‘Get on with you,’ she chided him. ‘Sit down and don’t be rude to our guests. You’ve met Rose, and this is her daughter, Maddie.’
‘Hiya.’ Ted smiled at Maddie, who observed him from beneath her fringe, clearly feeling it wasn’t necessary to return the greeting.
Unoffended, Ted grinned across the table at Rose, who couldn’t help returning the smile. He looked like he was always in on some private joke, a smile constantly playing round his eyes and lips. Maybe it was her he was laughing at in her mutton
clothes
, Rose thought, self-consciously pulling up the off-the-shoulder top again. It had been a long time since she wondered what anyone, let alone men, thought of her, mostly because she was certain that they didn’t think of her at all, not as an individual. She was the doctor’s wife, the odd child’s mother, the nice one behind reception. Now, of course, putting aside the dreadful mess that she had left behind, pretending it didn’t exist in exactly the same way as Maddie did, Rose realised she had no idea how men – how Frasier – would see her, or what he would think of her, dropping everything and following him on a whim. He’d think she was insane, someone he’d met briefly years ago who was fixated and obsessed, and he’d be right. Acutely aware of her situation, Rose watched Maddie chewing her way diligently through beef stew, scowling at Ted. This wasn’t right, dragging her this far from home on such a spurious whim. This was not Rose, this wasn’t how she did things. Rose always did the right thing, the best thing, the safest thing. This was none of those. She couldn’t go on pretending nothing had happened, because soon there would be consequences. It was more than twenty-four hours now since she’d left Richard. He could be calling the police, reporting her missing. Very soon the real world would be crashing after her, catching up with her and forcing her to face what she had done.
‘How’s work, son?’ Brian asked Ted, glancing up from finishing the matchbox that he was meticulously turning into a TV with the aid of some silver foil and a black marker pen. ‘They’re looking for some summer help over in Keswick, you know.’
‘Work’s fine, Dad. We had a hen night in last week. Those girls were scary. At one point I thought they were going to rip
me
to shreds,’ Ted said, inhaling the scent of the food that his mother set before him. ‘Besides, I can’t do manual work. Got to look after these hands; they’re going to make us a fortune one day.’
‘How?’ Maddie asked him, testing a dumpling with the tip of her tongue and then carefully placing it on her side plate.
‘With my music,’ Ted grinned at her. ‘I’m going to conquer the world with my song!’
‘Which song? What does it go like?’ Maddie said.
‘Well, when I say song, I mean all of my songs, my entire opus,’ Ted told her.
‘Hum one,’ Maddie said. ‘Hum a song.’
‘Maddie,’ Rose began, knowing how tenacious her daughter could be when she got her teeth into something. ‘Leave Ted alone.’
‘I’m just saying, if he’s going to take over the world with a song then it had better be a really good one …’
‘Anyway,’ Ted said, ‘what are you two girls up to tomorrow?’
Rose looked at Maddie, who returned her gaze.
‘What are we up to?’ she asked, suddenly unsettled.
‘Nothing yet, especially,’ Rose said. ‘I’ve got a few more things to do here, and then …’ Rose had no idea about the ‘and then’ part. What would it change if she went to see her father, or if she met Frasier McCleod again? And as for what would happen afterwards, what she and Maddie would do next, Rose didn’t have the courage to think about that.
‘I could take you out for a sightseeing trip,’ Ted offered. Not got much on in the afternoon. We can go up the mountain, look at the view and stuff.’
‘I don’t like walking much,’ Maddie said.
Ted looked at her, nodding. ‘I know what you mean, but the thing is, walking up a mountain isn’t the same as walking to school or to the shops. It’s like walking in the clouds. And like you are looking down on a world of ants.’
‘I do like miniature things,’ Maddie conceded thoughtfully. ‘And clouds.’
‘So pick you up at lunch?’ Ted nodded at Rose, who really could not understand why this strange young man would be so keen to spend time with a married woman and her daughter. Maybe Jenny had put him up to this; perhaps she was deploying him as her secret information-gathering weapon.
‘I could pack us a picnic,’ Ted went on. ‘One I’ve prepared myself, something to save you from the terrible food you’ll get here.’
He winked at his mother and earned a stiff punch in the arm for his cheek.
‘Brian, say something!’ Jenny told her husband, who set a perfect miniature television down in front of a delighted Maddie.
‘Say what, woman?’ Brian grumbled. ‘It’s your fault he’s like this. You’ve always been too soft on him and now he thinks he’s God’s gift.’
‘I’m just being friendly!’ Ted protested.
‘It’s why you’re being friendly that worries me. If you were a real man,’ Jenny scolded Brian, ‘he wouldn’t have grown up so unruly.’
Brian chuckled, shaking his head as he tucked into his dinner, entirely unoffended by Jenny’s jibes. ‘Only a real man could be married to you for thirty years, my love. You ask anyone hereabouts and they’ll tell you, I’m a hero.’
‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ Jenny exclaimed, half cross, half laughing.
‘It means you’re damn lucky I agreed to marry you all those years ago,’ Brian told her with an affectionate smile. ‘Disagreeable old bird that you are.’
‘That is more true than the “right looker” thing,’ Maddie nodded in agreement, apparently entertained by the friendly banter, even though this was the sort of gentle joking and teasing within a family that neither Rose nor her daughter were used to. Cross words at home were always cross, and barbed comments were always meant to be cruel. It came as something of a welcome surprise to Rose that Maddie, who did not like noise, or crowds of people, or people full stop, and who was a child that people didn’t always readily take to because she wasn’t sweet or funny in the same way as other seven-year-olds were, seemed completely at home and relaxed here. Her precious book was looking neglected on the bed upstairs, and even Bear was looking rather put out as he sat unattended on the sofa in the living room, staring unblinkingly at the TV.
‘I think,’ Rose said, interrupting a kiss between husband and wife that Maddie thought was hilariously revolting, ‘I think that, actually, tomorrow I will be busy.’
‘And that’s the brush-off!’ Brian said, slapping Ted on the shoulder.
‘No, it’s not that,’ Rose said. ‘It’s just I came here for a reason, and I don’t know how long I’ve got to see it through.’
‘You make it sound like you’re on a deadline,’ Ted said, tilting his head curiously.
‘I am, sort of,’ Rose said. ‘And so I think tomorrow I’d better just do it. I’d better just go and see my father.’
Rose had not come here to find her father, she had come chasing a spectre, a half-dreamt ideal that might be as far away from reality as her hundreds and hundreds of daydreams of Frasier. And yet, here her father was, real and solid and for certain, and he couldn’t very well be ignored, no matter how much she might want to. And somehow the prospect of seeing her father, which she knew would be painful and most likely disappointing, was not nearly as frightening as actually, really seeing Frasier, who in reality could be so very different from all the dreams that had sustained her for so long. Rose wasn’t ready to find out if that was the case, not quite yet.
Rose left Maddie sitting on the floor of the small en-suite shower cubicle, with a drizzle of warm water pouring down on her, as she chatted away to Bear, who was sitting safely on the sink. Leaving the door into the bedroom open, Rose sat on the edge of her bed and switched on her phone. It chirruped angrily into life immediately, buzzing with a throng of text messages and her voicemail service ringing. Her stomach filling with dread, Rose collected her messages.
He had left the first one just after she had bundled Maddie into the car and gone. It was quiet, apologetic, reasonable, kind. There was that ever-present implication that she was over-reacting again, that she was irrational, tired, doing too much, needed help.
‘Just come home, darling,’ Richard’s voice nestled in her ear. ‘Come home and let me take care of you. We can sort this out.’
Rose deleted it and listened to the next message, and the next. He’d left more than twenty in all, filling her voicemail, each angrier and more frustrated than the last. Rose listened to
a
part of each, and then deleted it, knowing what was coming next; knowing his patterns and habits inside out. For most of her married life she’d learnt to defuse his fury in its early stages, to back down, to agree, to nod and smile and keep her mouth shut. But this time she was not there, and her voicemail was taking the brunt of his wrath. Rose knew if she wanted to hear how her husband was really feeling then she needed to listen to his most recent message, left at seven twenty-two p.m., when they had been eating dinner. That’s when the real Richard had finally shown his hand.
‘I’ve had it with you this time, Rose.’ His voice was tight, thick with rage. ‘I try, and I try to deal with all your … stupidity, but this time you’ve gone too far. You can’t take our child and disappear without expecting repercussions. Everyone
knows
that you haven’t been yourself, everyone
knows
how difficult and unbalanced you are. And that Maddie has a delicate disposition. Let me tell you there are serious question marks over your fitness to be a parent. If you don’t contact me today I will have no choice but to inform the police, and social services, if need be. Because, believe me, Rose, I will find you and when I do, I’ll make sure you never see Maddie again. You have until midnight, and if I haven’t heard from you by then, well, gloves are off, Rose.’
Stifling the sob of anxiety that clogged her throat, Rose deleted the call and stared at the phone sitting so benignly in the palm of her hand. This was how Richard always won, by persuading her she was being foolish, that she was over-reacting, being irrational, seeing things all wrong, and finally, most recently, by implying that she was losing it altogether, that her fragile mind was finally cracking, disintegrating. She was the
daughter
of an alcoholic father and a suicidal mother so it was hardly surprising really that her mental health was finally giving in to genetics, despite the care that Richard had taken of her.
‘You see me as the enemy,’ Richard had said to her on that final afternoon. ‘But don’t you see, Rose, you are your own worst enemy? Without me to protect you, you have no idea how to survive.’
What if he was right? After all, here she was, hiding in a picture postcard, chasing a signature on a letter that was nothing more than a half-formed memory, a delusion. What if she was more like her mother than she ever realised? Anyone looking at this situation from the outside would be on Richard’s side. She knew anyone sensible would be, and that’s what frightened her the most. A trusted and respected GP, Richard had it well within his powers to carry out his threat to the letter, and the whole world would be on his side. And yet, there was
one
person who knew the truth.
Peering round the door to check that Maddie was still happy composing songs to conquer the world under the drizzle of the shower, Rose dialled the number of the only person in the world she could truly call a friend. She phoned Shona.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ Shona greeted her. ‘I thought he’d done for you. I thought you were under the floorboards, babe. I tried phoning you but all it said was that your voicemail was full. Full of that shit, no doubt.’
‘How did you know I’d gone?’ Rose asked. She’d had no plans to meet Shona that she hadn’t turned up for, they rarely spoke on the phone, or texted, always making their arrangements in person, face to face.
‘He came here looking for you this morning,’ Shona told her.
‘All polite concern, sweetness and light, “It’s Maddie I’m worried about, Rose hasn’t been herself for weeks, there’s no telling what she might do,” and all that bollocks. I told him, I haven’t seen you in months, so why would I know anything about you?’
Rose wasn’t sure when her friendship with Shona became a secret that both of them kept from their partners, she only knew that it seemed like the only way of keeping it intact. Richard didn’t like her to have friends that he didn’t approve of, and as for Shona’s boyfriend … he hated Rose with a passion, blaming her completely for his and Shona’s breakup. Shona often joked that all the sneaking around they did to see each other was just as complicated as having an affair, and without any of the sex.
‘So you’ve left him, then?’ Shona said. ‘What happened to make you finally go, what did he do?’
‘He …’ Rose closed her eyes, images and words flashing behind them too quickly to make any sense, things she couldn’t face seeing or hearing, even in memory, just yet. ‘I just couldn’t take another minute. Before I knew what I was doing I had the car keys, Maddie and I were gone. He ran down the street after us. I didn’t think it through, Sho. I just went and … and now I don’t know what to do next.’
The gnawing fear at the empty chasm that represented Rose’s future bit fiercely at her heart again, as Rose remembered she had nothing like a plan that stretched beyond the next few hours.
‘I don’t blame you for getting out. About time, too,’ Shona said. She’d hated Richard from the moment she set eyes on him, more than fourteen years ago, when the two of them waitressed in Marley’s Famous Ice-cream Parlour on the front
as
teenagers, Shona a bolshy, mouthy sexy girl with more front than the town, and Rose, an alternative, gothic, odd-looking girl, with a scowl that could turn anything to stone. They shouldn’t have hit it off, Rose, pale, thin and glowering in her candy-striped uniform, and buxom Shona nonchalantly making sure she left more buttons undone than she should, a sure-fire way of boosting her tips from harassed dads. And yet the two of them had become instant friends, making each other smile when they least expected it, and as Rose began to find her feet in the world as an adult, it was Shona who made her realise that her life wasn’t going to be an endless stream of nights alone in her big empty house, that if she wanted it there would be travel, university, boys, fun, a whole world waiting for her whenever she was ready to explore it. That there was more to her than her family, more to her future than her past. It had been exactly at that moment of realisation that Rose had met Richard and fallen madly in love with him. Within months she had left the café to get married. Caught up in her husband and the life he created for the two of them alone – where Rose existed only for him, where for most of those early years she had wanted to exist only for him, allowing him to decide they weren’t ready for children, what she did, where she worked, what she wore, even how she felt and thought – Rose had embraced every single one of his desires willingly. As a consequence she had barely seen Shona for years. When they had come across each other again, it was at exactly the right time for both of them, each equally grateful and in need of the other, each changed by the life she’d learnt, too late, had conquered her instead of vice versa.