by Eva Woods
Past Rosie said, “What does it matter, Serge? It’s all coffee.”
Serge—she remembered him now, her boss at the café, expert in Krav Maga, ran an ironic blog about fried chicken; oh God, she’d slept with him too, hadn’t she, that one time when she was feeling particularly low?—gritted his teeth. “Rosie! There is a big difference between Sumatran and Kenyan!”
“Which is...?”
“Well, they’re on entirely different continents, for a start. It’s all about terroir. Provenance.”
“It’s hot brown liquid, Serge. Which we charge a fiver for.”
“Shhh!” He looked around frantically, even though every single customer was plugged into headphones on their laptops and couldn’t have heard. “Honestly, Rosie—you’re late all the time, you laughed when someone asked for a black decaf low coffee shot...”
“Water, that’s what that is. Hot water. If they want to pay a fiver for that, then fair play to them.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think your heart is really in organically sourced coffee.”
“No. It’s not. Sorry, Serge. I know you care about it, almost as much as you care about who’s going to play the next Spider-Man, but I just...can’t.” Rosie was untying her apron. “I need to stop kidding myself. I’m not an actress who makes coffee to pay the bills. I’m a barista, and a bad one at that. I think...maybe I should try to get a proper job. Give up on the dream. I’m sorry. I’ll come to see your ska band sometime. Bye.”
Now Rosie was trying to piece it all together. “So... I quit?” She’d left her job a month ago, been holed up in that flat ever since, fallen out with her family...what state of mind was she in when she walked into the path of that bus?
“Now, what’ll happen next is you’ll get headhunted to your dream job, and earn more than you ever did, just like Rachel.”
“See, Mel, what you’re doing again there is mixing up American TV of the nineties with real life twenty years later. What happens nowadays if you quit a perfectly good job is you can’t afford your rent and you end up on the street. Or back with your parents.” And if they weren’t speaking to you, well, then what did you do? Rosie had a horrible feeling she would soon be finding out. “What am I doing now?”
“You’re getting out your phone. Isn’t it amazing how everyone has one now? Maybe if I’d had a phone back then, I wouldn’t have been so lonely.”
“I...I’m not sure that’s necessarily the case, Mel.” Rosie watched her past self leave the coffee shop, already calling up Tinder, swiping her thumb over and over in a kind of fever. She knew what she was doing. Looking for company, anyone she could drag back to her nasty flat or meet in a scummy pub and drink all night with, anyone at all, just to not be alone with her thoughts. She remembered now. Some guy called...Ben? At least half of men her age seemed to be called Ben, so that was a safe bet. They’d met at the huge Wetherspoons up the road, the one that smelled of stale beer and chips, and the next morning she’d woken up to see him curled in her small bed, smelling faintly of cigarettes and garlic, this man she barely knew at all, didn’t even know his surname or how old he was, and realized this was not the way to cure the ache inside her. “No,” she repeated sadly. “Having a phone doesn’t always make you less lonely. Not at all.”
“Shall we go back?” said Melissa. “I think this one is over.”
“So, a whole memory about me stupidly leaving my stupid job then sleeping around. Great. This is soooo useful.”
“You sound just like Chandler,” said Melissa, cheerfully, as the coffee shop and Serge and the gluten-free cakes and the hipster patrons all faded like smoke.
Daisy
“I’m sorry, Maura, I really am. It’s just...she’s in a coma, you know.”
Down the phone, Daisy heard her boss’s deep sigh. She pictured Maura in her office, where she liked to position herself early to watch her employees arrive, pumping tiny hand weights in her suit and heels. “They’re a huge client for us. They have nearly seventy percent of the UK paperclip market. That’s not nothing, Daisy.”
“I know. I know. What can I do though? She’s my sister.” Was she really arguing about this? What a crazy job it was. Daisy had woken up late, haunted all night by dreams of buses slamming into people, brakes screeching. Now she was dashing round the house trying to find her shoes (and ideally put them on the right feet). Gary had already left, kissing her on the forehead after he’d zipped up his biking gear and mixed his kale smoothie. He’d cycle the five miles to his office, shower there, drink his smoothie, then tackle the day with his usual efficiency. She felt exhausted just thinking about it. “I’ll come by the hospital later,” he’d promised. “As soon as the morning meeting’s out of the way.” He’d left her a helpful checklist of things to do for the wedding. Buttonholes. Dove release. Cupcake tower. It all seemed so trivial.
Maura sighed again. “I suppose I’ll have to ask Mai to do the pitch.”
Mai, who got in even earlier than Maura, who never wore less than four-inch heels, who had shiny, lacquered nails. Daisy felt a spasm of fear. Mai would do a great job. Better than her, most likely. Something that Maura was bound to take note of during the next round of appraisals.
But Rosie was in a coma. “I’m sorry,” she said more firmly. “It can’t be helped.”
“No, I suppose not.” Maura had not expressed any concern about Daisy’s sister, or sympathy at what they were all going through. She was grooming Daisy for a leadership position, she said. It’s why I push you so hard, Daisy. I want you to reach your full potential. Was that what you needed to succeed? Ruthless efficiency? Daisy wasn’t sure she had it.
Before she left the house, she put the dishes in the dishwasher, wiped the counters and plumped the cushions in the living room. That way Gary wouldn’t come home to any mess, which he hated. Then she put on her coat and determinedly left the house, later than usual. The day had a strange holiday feel to it, almost. As if something was going to change. She only hoped it wasn’t for the worse.
* * *
At the hospital, her mother, who’d spent the night in the relatives’ room, was standing rigid by the door, clutching her hands together so hard they were white. It was 8:00 a.m., but she was in full makeup and subtly glinting jewelry, a cashmere jumper and little heeled boots. Daisy hadn’t put on any makeup at all—it didn’t seem right when her sister was lying there with cuts all over her poor face. “Hi, Mum.”
“Darling!” Her mother was putting on her “stranger” voice. “Isn’t this nice, Rosie’s friend has come to see her.”
A woman was sitting in the chair beside Rosie, gazing down at her with that combination of discomfort and dismay that Daisy was beginning to recognize when people saw her sister’s blank pale face, covered in cuts and bruises. One of Rosie’s acting friends, who Daisy had met once in a pub maybe, cigarette-thin, her hair in dreads, a beautiful sculpted face and multiple ear piercings—what was her name again?
Her mother said, “Caroline, this is Rosie’s sister. Are you sure I can’t get you a drink, dear, or something to eat?” As if she was hosting them in her living room, not at Rosie’s hospital bed. It was Caz, of course. One of the names on the list in Rosie’s flat.
“No thank you, Mrs. Clarke.”
“Oh, call me Alison, dear. I saw you in that Lear you know. You were wonderful.”
“Oh thanks, I’m in a play at the Donmar right now, but, Christ! Rosie! What happened? Leo said something about a bus?”
Daisy said, “We don’t know. It hit her.” The bus hit her. A simple way of saying it, but there was so much to unpick in those four words. The bus hit her, yes, but did she walk in front of it?
Although Caz was simply dressed in jeans and a baggy gray top, she exuded a nighttime glamour, an aura of glitter and smoke and worn-out dawns. Beside her, Daisy felt frumpy and plain. She said, “It’s really good of you to come, Caz. Do y
ou...when did you last talk to Rosie? It’s just we’re trying to piece together what she was doing in the last few weeks.” Because Daisy hadn’t spoken to her since the engagement party. The dull ache of shame was like heartburn in her chest.
“She left me a weird voice mail yesterday. But before that...well, to be honest, it’s been a few months since we talked. When I got the part in this play, I think Rosie felt...bad.”
“Jealous?” Daisy offered.
Caz chewed her lip. “Maybe. God, that sounds awful, I know. But it’s unavoidable. You’re always competing in this job, always being judged, even against your friends. I’d have understood a bit of jealousy. But she just stopped answering my texts. Didn’t come to see the play, even when all our mates got tickets... I was a bit hurt, to be honest.”
“What did the voice mail say?” asked Daisy.
Caz sighed. “Said she was sorry about what happened between us. I...I didn’t reply. I would have, probably but—I needed a bit of time. But then Leo called me last night, before I went onstage. You know, her neighbor, he’s sort of a mate. He said she’d been in an accident. I just felt so bad. If only I’d replied!” She buried her head in her hands, and it was a strange sensation, to realize other people were aching for Rosie too, not just her family. “I was such a bitch to her. I knew she was finding it hard, me getting these parts, doing okay, and I didn’t...I didn’t try to make that easier for her. I didn’t really try to understand. Oh shit. I wish I could say sorry.”
A picture was building in Daisy’s mind. Her sister, alone and isolated, not speaking to her family, estranged from her friends. Living in that horrible studio flat with the sleazy guy downstairs. Making a list of names, people she’d fallen out with... An idea occurred. “Caz? Have you ever heard Rosie talk about someone called Luke?”
Caz thought about it. “I don’t think so, no.”
So why then was his name on Rosie’s lips at the moment of impact? If he was so important to her, why had her family and friends no idea who he was?
Daisy had forgotten her mother was still there until a discreet cough reminded her. “Caroline? It’s so good of you to come, dear, but if you don’t mind, they said two visitors only, and we have Rosie’s father coming soon. I’m terribly sorry.”
“Oh.” Caz, who still looked rather dazed, began to gather her parka and her tatty ethnic bag. “Will you let me know if anything—if there’s any change?” She bent over and unselfconsciously kissed Rosie’s cold white cheek. “Get better soon, babe, yeah. And I’m sorry for everything I—I’m just sorry, okay? I’ll come back when I can.”
Rosie said nothing. Of course. Looking down at her fluttering eyelids, mauve with bruising, Daisy wondered if she could even hear them at all. She reached out a hand, tentatively, and touched her sister’s, tracing the blue veins on the inside of the pale wrist. As her mother saw Caz to the door, Daisy whispered, “Oh Rosie. Please wake up. Please?”
Rosie
Caz. Caz! I’m here. I can hear you. Caz!
Nothing. She couldn’t so much as get a finger to twitch. Come on, please? I know I’ve neglected you too, I never get manicures and I bite my nails and forget to use hand cream, but...please? Nothing. It was torture, this, to lie there like a lump and listen to her family and friends talk about her, not be able to join in. Her body lay perfectly calm, immobile, while inside she raged like a storm. At least Caz still cared. Or was it just guilt, at how badly they’d fallen out? Because this was Caz, of course. Her best friend. How could Rosie have forgotten her?
“Are you remembering what happened with you two?” Mr. Malcolm’s voice crept to Rosie’s ear.
“Sort of.” The edges of the memory were there, the overall feeling of it. And that feeling was...shame. “Please, Mr. Malcolm—I don’t want to relive it. I know it was bad. I know I...I wasn’t nice to her.”
“I’m sorry,” he said sympathetically, materializing in front of her. She could see Caz’s retreating back through his spectral body. “You don’t get to choose the memories. That’s not how it works.”
“Why do you all keep saying that?” Rosie said, irritated. “How does it work?”
“Your brain’s in a real muddle, so it’s pulling out certain memories it thinks you need to see. Like your computer scanning its hard drive. Or like...picking files up from the floor when you’ve knocked over the cabinet.”
“But why these memories? They’re nearly all terrible! I...I must be a horrible person. Is that what my brain’s trying to tell me?” If everything about her life was so terrible, could she have tried to kill herself? She still didn’t feel it was possible. But the memories were so bad.
“I don’t know. I’m sorry.” He looked so sad, in his green vest with the hole in it, that Rosie’s heart ached.
“It’s okay. If I have to do it, I have to. Let’s go, then.”
“Close your eyes.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know the drill by now.”
Dial. Spinning. Noise, blur. 20 4 2006. When was that? She couldn’t remember.
The world was gone.
20 April 2006 (Eleven years ago)
The smell of the place always hit first, like a ghostly path into the memory. Here it was dust, and paper and a slight undertone of feet. A theatre. Rosie’s favorite smell in the world, ever since she was five and her mother took her and a small squirming Daisy to see a regional performance of The Nutcracker. Daisy had fallen asleep within minutes, but Rosie had watched, transfixed, determined that one day it would be her up there onstage. She looked around for her past self, and winced. “That was when I had the fringe. God, it really did nothing for me.”
“You’d suit a nice bob, you know,” said Mr. Malcolm, surprising her. “Let people see your face more.”
“Oh. Do you think so?”
“Oh yes. Like that Amy Adams, you know.” He sighed. “She is just fabulous.”
Past Rosie was crouched in a corner of the theatre, stretching her limbs and swallowing hard every few minutes. She wore her audition clothes, baggy jeans with holes in them and a vest top. Trying to be like the kids from Fame, and instead looking like a reject from New Kids on the Block. This was one of the cruelest things about being forced to relive your memories—realizing all the terrible fashion choices you’d made along the way. As Now Rosie watched, hidden in shadows, a slim black girl approached, dumping a large tote bag on a chair beside her. She wore leggings and a big jumper and moved with a sort of innate focus, like all the best performers did.
“Not this shit again,” she declared, scanning Rosie quickly, her sharp South London accent in striking contrast to the grace of her movements, like a debutante at court. Sizing people up was what you did in these situations. Is she taller, is she prettier, is she up for the same part? The differences between her and Caz, not just skin color but height and weight and style too, had always made it easier for them to be friends, because they likely wouldn’t be up for the same roles. “Cordelia?”
“Goneril.”
“Isn’t that the worst name? Sounds like an STD. Old Willie really had issues with strong women, didn’t he? You show a bit of gumption and it’s all like...” Here the girl rather startlingly cupped her breasts and declaimed: “‘Come ye spirits, unsex me here!’ A bit much, methinks.”
“Gosh, she’s wonderful,” said Mr. Malcolm approvingly. “If only we’d had her for that sixth-form production of the Scottish play, you know the one where I gave the lead to Janine Campbell, and she was five months’ pregnant by the time we went on stage? It made that scene a lot more disturbing.”
Rosie was watching as her past self blinked. Caz had that effect—you wrote her off as a small pixie thing, swathed in layers of jumpers and scarves and cardies (like many actors she was terrified of getting ill), then she stood up straight and spoke and you were just mesmerized. She had “it.” Whatever it was.
“Sorry.” Caz snap
ped back into her own self, peeling off her layers. “Did the Scottish play last year on a tour of the Scottish Highlands. It’s never really left me.”
“You played Lady M?”
“God no. I played the second page from the left, and sometimes one of the dead Macduff kids. It’s a tough old business, eh?”
“Sure is.” Past Rosie had thawed a bit, deiced by Caz’s warm charm. “I’m Rosie.”
“Caroline Harper. Caz.”
“Good stage name.”
“Thanks. It’s really Hazada—Portuguese.”
“I’m plain old Rosie Cooke. Sounds like a kitchen maid in a Dickens novel, doesn’t it.” They smiled at each other, the flash of sudden friendship running between them, that immediate clicking that was just as powerful as attraction, and lasted far longer. Falling in friendship. Rosie tried to remember when she’d last done that. This was actually a nice memory. Soon they would do their audition pieces—Caz’s Lady Macbeth, her own rendition of Juliet’s “Romeo” speech—and they’d both get the parts, because it was a truly terrible production with an insane director who wanted them all to do King Lear as if they were in an African military junta, and made them get into character by flinging buckets of fake blood at them and screaming, but it paid Equity rates and was Rosie’s first proper acting job, plus she and Caz went to the pub every night afterward and became best mates and it was all great.
“Time to go,” said Mr. Malcolm regretfully.
“But it’s not finished! I got the part! Caz and I became friends!”
“It seems this is going to be more of a...montage memory.”
“What?”
“Your brain’s gotten impatient I think. It wants to show you more. Allons, cherie.”