by Eva Woods
He stepped back, a blank hurt look coming over his eyes. “Right. I see.”
“I didn’t mean...”
“I’m going back to the hostel,” he said, turning away. “Are you coming?”
“You don’t want tea and baklava?” Rosie loved it, the mint tea in the ornate cups, just the right amount of bitter cutting through the cloying sweetness of nuts and honey.
“No. Not today.” And he walked off, leaving her in the souk among all that color and noise and smell.
Rosie’s current self said, “I let him go, didn’t I? And he married someone else.” She’d lost him. But then why were they having an affair ten years later? Why couldn’t she remember? The truth was, Rosie knew, that she did remember. It was all in there, and she could access it if she tried hard enough. She just didn’t want to. For just a moment longer, she wanted to leave them as they were, young and happy, with the possibility of being together still alive. She sighed. “I wanted to keep them. The nice memories of us.”
“The trouble with nice memories is they have to end sometime. No one can be happy always. Every day of your life, something will have been good and something bad. So. Shall we go?” Melissa dragged her on, efficient, and the bustling bazaar faded and Rosie opened her eyes again on another scene. The same day, she knew. The dingy staircase of the youth hostel they were staying in, Arabic music blaring from the TV downstairs at the reception desk, a smell of incense and old tobacco smoke in the air. The halls echoing with slapping sandals and high youthful voices. It was evening, growing cool and fragrant. The call to prayer from the mosque had gone up, and Rosie had showered and changed into a long patterned dress. At this time, she would usually join her fellow travelers on the roof to drink beers, and later still fan out in search of grilled meat, and flatbread and dancing, and maybe she would find more time to sit with Luke and talk to him, while the others got drunk. But not tonight. They had to sort things out, and Rosie had decided, while washing her hair in the gross communal showers, that she was going to take his advice. Because it was that simple, of course it was. She was twenty-one. Of course she could break up with Jack and carry on traveling with Luke rather than going home and working in some dingy office. She could do anything she wanted.
“But that’s not what happened,” said Mel’s voice. “Is it?”
A nasty feeling was working its way up Rosie’s legs. Not that these were her real legs; those were flopped on a hospital bed a thousand miles and twelve years from this moment. She knew what happened next. And she also knew one thing: it had been entirely her own fault.
The rooftop of their hostel. The warm night air, the bulk of the mosque just streets away, the city skyline and the birds that circled endlessly. The high keening of the call to prayer and the smell of incense. Her memories of Morocco came down to this, honey and nuts and olives for breakfast, music seeping out of taxi radios, a dry circling heat and Luke. Luke beside her walking down the hot bright streets. He was there, he and Ingrid, sitting on cushions around a low metal table, intricately carved. They were in a group of young people, Irish, Australian, French, Israeli... Rosie could not remember any of their names. They were just people she’d spent one night drinking with, never to be seen again. Likely they were now back in their own countries, living their lives, perhaps married with kids, and if she died in her hospital bed, they would never even know or care. So many lives she had streamed through without touching.
Past Rosie was walking toward the group, a resolute expression on her face. At the same time, Jack was approaching from the bar, a beer in his hand, his face red with the heat. The four of them, she and Jack, and Ingrid and Luke sitting so close together, converged like the points of a triangle. And as Rosie and Jack watched, Ingrid suddenly put her arms around Luke’s neck and kissed him.
Her best friend. Her boyfriend. And the boy that, really, she actually loved. Why else would she feel like someone had punched her in the stomach? But she had no right to be upset. Ingrid was single, Luke was single. Rosie was not single.
As Past Rosie looked up, she saw Jack standing beside her. And he was also staring at Luke and Ingrid, and he looked just like she felt—gutted. And suddenly it all made sense, and she turned and ran.
Jack caught up with her in the stairwell, which smelled of feet and cheap deodorant. “Rosie!”
She turned, tears in her eyes. “It’s over, Jack. Isn’t it? Why do we keep pretending?”
“What? I’m not pretending!”
“Oh, come on. I saw the way you looked at them. It’s her you want. And you and me, it’s not been good for months now, has it. Oh God, I’m sorry, Jack. I just...” Rosie watched her past self grope for the words, to try and explain that she just didn’t love him. That she was only twenty-one and there had to be more to life than sitting bored while he talked about skiing while coked off his head, or listening to him play maudlin songs on his acoustic guitar about the burden of having a trust fund. That she’d even heard sex might be something fun and exciting, rather than a chore she’d rather put off in favor of a hot bath and good book. “I just...we’re not happy, are we?”
“I’m happy,” he said, unconvincingly.
“But we don’t make each other laugh, or have fun together, or even get on that well.”
“Life’s not about having fun, Rosie. You need to grow up a bit. I’ll be starting at Goldman Sachs next year, it’s a big responsibility. And we have plans—we’ve already got the lease on the Clapham flat. We can’t just break up now!”
“But I’m only twenty-one! And I want to have fun, and try new things, not just get an office job and move to Clapham.”
“Yeah, well, it’s dangerous to have no life plan. What do you want, to end up unemployed and alone in some studio flat?”
“I do have a plan.”
“Acting’s not a real job, Rosie. Why don’t you temp or do a law conversion course or something?”
“I’m sorry,” said Past Rosie, miserably, to Jack. “I just want more. More than this. And you... I think you want more too. Don’t you? I really think it’ll be best for both of us. I’m going home tomorrow. Alone.” She risked: “You and Ingrid need to talk.”
He stared at her. “You really are impossible, Rosie.”
Then Jack was marching away, back to join the group, and Past Rosie was wrapping her arms round herself, tears in her eyes.
“Well,” said Now Rosie. “He wasn’t wrong. I am all alone and unemployed in some studio flat. Is my memory trying to tell me I should have stayed with Jack, become a lawyer, got really good at skiing?”
“Just keep watching,” said Melissa, agog. “Honestly, this is better than Hollyoaks.”
Because now Luke was there. “Hey. Are you okay? I saw Jack come storming out.”
Past Rosie stared at the dirty floor of the staircase, making her voice cold. “Fine. None of your business.”
Luke’s face creased in confusion. “Did I do something?”
“Other than stick your tongue down my friend’s throat?”
Confusion was briefly replaced by annoyance. “She kissed me. It’s not... Anyway, Ingrid and I are both single, Rosie. And you’re not. Remember?”
“I am now.”
“Oh. Right. I’m...I’m sorry.” They looked at each other, and for a moment in that dirty stairwell, the future stretched ahead of them. The silence between them. The place it had felt too dangerous to go to, maybe because the emotions might overwhelm them. If only she’d been brave enough to say Hey, Luke, I’m in love with you, and I should have broken up with Jack months ago, but I’m a coward. But what if he didn’t feel the same? What if he preferred blonde, confident Ingrid to gawky red-headed Rosie? Ingrid whose pretty face he’d just been sucking?
Rosie hadn’t been brave. Instead, she’d said, “I’m going home tomorrow.”
“What?”
“I...it’s time I g
rew up and settled down. So no more traveling for me. Back to my crappy old life.”
“I... Jesus, Rosie. Let’s talk about this or something or...” If she’d let him carry on speaking, she could see it now, they could have gone on together. Been a couple. Seen the world.
But Past Rosie had shut down. Put her armor on. Easier than letting herself get hurt. “I’m fine, Luke. You carry on with your plans.”
“So...it’s our last night?” The hurt in his eyes. Why couldn’t she see that? That he’d no interest in Ingrid? That Ingrid, too, had been doing it only to make a point, though not the one Rosie thought? “I’m not going to see you again?”
“I guess not. I better go and pack.” And she’d gone to her uncomfortable bunk in the dorm, and cried for hours, and the next morning she’d left without saying goodbye to any of them, and Luke had gone on, bewildered, trying hard to forget about the girl he’d known only for a few weeks, finally fetching up in Thailand where he’d met an Australian girl and moved to Sydney with her, and they hadn’t seen each other again for another five years, when Rosie had walked into that pub and there he was, with his beautiful fiancée, but all the same the thing that was between them didn’t care about that, and so from this moment here, this decision, the rest of her life and Luke’s life had been blown apart. Stupid Rosie. Stupid, stupid girl.
Daisy
“Shh, Mum. It’s okay. She’s breathing again. It’s okay.”
Her mother was doubled over on the green pleather seats of the waiting room, crying solidly, her chest rasping in and out like she could hardly breathe herself. She didn’t even seem to notice or care that people were watching. Daisy couldn’t bear it. Hearing her mother sob like this, it brought back too many memories of the bad time. She was three, and Mummy wouldn’t get out of bed and Rosie was the one who walked her to nursery school every day, hand in hand, and read her stories and made up different ones when she couldn’t figure out all the words.
Her mother sucked in a breath. “Oh Daisy. I can’t lose her as well. I just can’t.”
“I know, Mum, but you haven’t. She’s still here.”
“I heard them talking—if she doesn’t wake up soon it’s a very bad sign. She might live on for years like this, Daisy. We might never hear her voice again. Is that what she’d want? I don’t think it is.”
Daisy patted her mother’s back ineffectually, trying desperately to think of something hopeful to say. “People wake up from comas all the time. After years sometimes.”
“Oh darling, they might wake up, but that doesn’t mean they’re the same as before. Oh God. She’s just like me, isn’t she? After...after everything. The way I was, so depressed, staying in bed for weeks. They say it can be passed on. And now look. She’s tried to...hurt herself. And I could have stopped it.” Her mascara was running now, leaving trails in the smooth mask of her makeup. “It’s my fault, darling. My fault she did this.”
Daisy sat back in the seat, which was broken and torn. Like everything here, including the people. “What?”
“Rosie rang me that morning. The day it...the accident. Early. I found it on 1471 but I...I wasn’t in, I missed the call.”
Daisy frowned. “But...where were you?”
Her mother turned red. “I was...darling, I was next door. With...John.”
“Oh. Oh!”
“So, you see, she finally got up the courage to call, and I wasn’t there, and so she must have decided to...”
“We don’t know that she—”
“Oh Daisy. Can’t you see? The doctors think she did it. The police think so too. Everything points to it. She...she wanted to leave us. Oh, my poor Rosie. If only I could go back, Daisy, I would. I’d do everything differently. Everything. Since she was little. You’ve no idea how much I wish that.”
“Mum, she rang me too. And Dad. None of us picked up.” Daisy didn’t say the rest of what she was thinking. Would that have been a reason, if you weren’t in your right mind, to step under a bus? If you turned to your family and none of them answered? “But we still don’t know that she...meant to.” It was there all the same, horrifying, in the doctors’ eyes, in her mother’s face, in the silences between them all. “We have to hope, at least, don’t we?”
“Of course, darling. No one is saying we can’t hope. But if she does wake up, and she did this to herself, well...we have to be prepared for the worst.”
Daisy got to her feet. She had to get out, find some air, think. “I need to go and do something, Mum. Maybe I can find out something that’ll help.” Although what, she didn’t know. It wasn’t as if she could actually speak to Rosie about her life, even if she was awake.
As she walked off, she thought what a strange thing it was her mother had said. When it came to Rosie, Daisy had been prepared for the worst for years now. Prepared for her to fall, and shatter. Trying to be the good girl, so at least her parents didn’t have more worries. Living up to her namesake, the insignificant weed to her sister’s bright, overblown bloom. And now it had happened, and Daisy was realizing she’d had no idea about the truth of Rosie’s life. No idea at all.
Rosie
She was back. Back to a reality she didn’t want—helpless in a bed, estranged from family and friends, unemployed, a failure—and no Luke. She wondered how she hadn’t felt it before. Of course they weren’t together, of course she hadn’t seen him in years. His absence was like a hole in her middle. That happy, cinnamon-scented time with him had been just a brief burst. Her heart ached. Everything ached, from her feet to her head, but this was a different kind of pain. The pain of knowing you’d ruined your own life.
And there was her mother bending over her bed, lines of worry etched into her face. Finally talking to her. “Rosie? Can you hear us? I know they said to talk to you but I just can’t... I just don’t feel you in there. Please, darling, if you can hear us, give us some sign!”
Yes, yes, I can hear all of this. I can see you and hear you and this is torture. But my memories are even worse. If only I could get away from myself. Escape...me.
Rosie seized on the thought, a clear shard of memory: she had thought this very thing before. Stepping in front of a bus, was that a very permanent way of escaping herself? Had it all just got too much, living with her mistakes day in, day out?
“I think something’s wrong.” Her dad’s voice, worried. “Rosie, love, do you know we’re here? Can you say anything, or move a finger or anything?”
Say something. Make a noise. Any noise. With all her might, she strained every muscle in her body, finding a puff of air deep down in the bottom of her deflated lungs and trying to force it out her slack mouth. AAAAAAHHHHHHHH.
Nothing. What would Mr. Malcolm have said? Come on, Rosie, enunciate. The lips the teeth the back of the throat.
I’m here. I promise, I’m still here.
“Oh Mike, it’s no good. She can’t hear us. Rosie is...she’s not here. We have to admit that.”
TRY GODDAMMIT TRY. I’m here. I’m still here, and I don’t want to die. I don’t!
The sound of her parents crying. “Maybe this is...maybe this is what she wanted, Ali. Just to go.”
Rosie was exhausted. The effort it had cost her to try and speak was immense, worse than when she’d climbed that mountain in Scotland that time (when?), and she still hadn’t managed to do it. They thought she was already gone, dead inside a technically breathing body. And now—now, the black was reaching up to pull her down, the edges of the room fading and blurring. No. I’m not ready. I’m not! She focused on the faces of her father and mother—please, I love you—trying to cling to them like a life raft, but she was sinking back down, the waters overwhelming.
“Mike. Mike! Something’s wrong! Rosie. ROSIE!”
Rosie was gone.
5 February 2011 (Six years ago)
“Well. That was a bit dramatic, wasn’t it.” It was Darryl, his
voice in her ear as the memory warmed to life.
“What happened? I didn’t see any dials this time.”
“Dunno. You sort of blacked out. I mean, more so than usual. Mate, I think you’re getting worse. They said this would happen didn’t they, that you’d have to go on to long-term life support. You need to try and wake up.”
“I am trying! Where are we?” The flat they were in was cozy and modern, wood flooring, colorful cushions, the radio playing low classical music. The kind of place Rosie would have liked to live, instead of that nasty little room she called home. She could see her past self standing by a window, looking out over the illuminated city. She wore a navy dress with a white collar, as if trying for a demure look. It didn’t suit her and Rosie remembered it had shrunk in the wash, so she kept having to tug it down. In the living room of wherever this was stood several young people, twenty-somethings, the men in beards and lumberjack shirts, the women in skinny jeans and with flat, straightened hair, except for Rosie’s, which curled and corkscrewed of its own accord. Who were these people? She counted: six including her. A dinner party, then. Two couples, and in the kitchen a woman she recognized. It was Luke’s fiancée. Soon to be his wife—Rosie caught sight of a pile of hand-lettered invitations on the desk in the corner, in the process of being addressed. A hollow feeling settled in her stomach, and she could see that in the memory her past self was smiling with the kind of desperate jollity you put on only when your heart is breaking. Although she was in her own home, the fiancée was wearing leather trousers, enormous heels and a loose floaty top. Her back was turned, chopping something on the counter, and her hair was long and shiny. Rosie remembered how out of place she’d felt beside this seamless beauty: awkward, too tall, dressed once again in something ill-fitting and unfashionable.
And...then, coming into the room with another man in tow, perhaps from answering the door, was Luke. He took her breath away, the beloved lines of his face. So why weren’t they together? He wore a blue buttoned shirt that he seemed uncomfortable in, fiddling with the cuffs. Perhaps the fiancée had bought it (what was her name? Rosie’s mind seemed to blank on it). And in the memory, Luke was walking straight to Rosie. She watched herself smile, tug down her dress. “Hey!”