The Lives We Touch

by Eva Woods

  ‘That’s why I wanted you,’ said Mr Malcolm, the ghostly one, sadly. ‘She had range but just no heart. Her voice was so harsh.’

  ‘And I let you down,’ said Rosie, watching her past self. ‘I just walked out of the show? What on earth was I thinking?’

  ‘Two days before curtain-up. What a to-do it was. Sarah was right, though, she did know every word. Malheureusement.’

  And she’d been the toast of the school, Rosie could now remember, and gone to the Leavers’ Dance with Drew McKinnon, the lazy-smiled semi-Goth who took all the male leads in the school plays, and now had a recurring role on Hollyoaks. Though, now that she thought of it, she was pretty sure Drew was gay. And Rosie, what had she done? There was a big blank in her memory where the ball should have been. No dress, no date, no limo, no pictures. Had she missed her own Leavers’ Dance?

  ‘Why did I do it?’ she asked, semi-rhetorically. ‘Why would I walk out on a big role like that?’

  As if to answer her question, the door at the back of the hall opened and in slunk a boy in a leather jacket, with jet-black hair and blue eyes that went right through your heart. The same one from the memory near the bike sheds. Boy was just about correct – he was sixteen – but he looked like a thirty-something playing a teenager in Dawson’s Creek. Both Drew and Sarah paused in their romantic duet to stare at him. And as for Young Rosie, a quiver seemed to run right through her body. Her face, which had been twisted, as if she might cry, lit up, and she threw off the remnants of her costume, revealing ripped jeans and a tight black vest, like Sandy in Grease. Tell me about it, stud. Rosie noticed that her past self had new and painful-looking holes punched all through the cartilage of her ear, which seemed to be infected. She raised a hand to her own ghostly ear, feeling the bumps there. She had to put make-up over them for auditions now, and secretly she had always regretted getting them, though she would have undergone considerable amounts of torture before admitting that to her mother.

  ‘I think that’s why you dropped out,’ whispered ghostly Mr Malcolm.

  ‘Bryn,’ Rosie said bleakly. So that was still ongoing. The School Bad Boy, the kind who shoved younger kids down toilets and set fire to science labs and already had a tattoo even though he wasn’t legally old enough. Bryn thought some things were cool – fire, tats, booze – but most things were lame, and that included being the lead in the school play. And, it seemed, Rosie was pretending she thought so too. ‘So I just quit. For a boy.’

  Mr Malcolm sighed. ‘It was such a shame. You were made for Gilbert and Sullivan, with your Titian hair. So very Pre-Raphaelite. Look at Past Me, I’m a wreck.’

  As Young Rosie fled down the aisle and leapt at Bryn, her legs locking round his as her mouth suckered onto his like a remora fish, Sarah Martin declared, ‘What an amateur. Drew, let’s do this.’ And the school band started up again and the lacklustre singing resumed. In the darkness of the hall, the younger Mr Malcolm took out a cotton hanky and shakily wiped his face. He looked devastated.

  Rosie turned to his later incarnation. ‘You … you really wanted me in the part? You weren’t upset just because I left you in the lurch?’

  ‘You were so good, Rosie. You had a softness, a vulnerability. It would have been wonderful. And the show was all I had. I was a lonely single teacher in a country school, with a cat and a sick mother in a nursing home. It meant so much to me.’ He looked back at the door, where Rosie had disappeared. ‘Not that I really blamed you. He had something, that Bryn boy. Bane of the teachers’ lives, but still – he’d have been dazzling onstage.’

  Something occurred to Rosie. ‘Mr Malcolm … were you … eh?’

  ‘Batting for the other team?’

  ‘We just say gay now, usually.’

  ‘I suppose. I never … found out, exactly.’

  ‘You mean, you never …?’ It was strange to be discussing this with her old teacher, even though he was a) dead and b) a figment of her imagination.

  ‘I was engaged to a woman when I was younger, but in those days you waited till marriage before you did … any of that business. She broke it off, of course, thank goodness. She’s happily married now, several grandchildren – we sent Christmas cards while I was alive. And me, well, attitudes had changed so much. I was working my way up to maybe doing something about it … then I got ill. Cancer. And that was that. Fin. Not very much to show for a life, I know.’

  Rosie bit her lip. They’d made fun of him at school, his shiny bald head, his smell of mothballs, the tweed jacket he wore every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, his slight stutter when he had to tell anyone off. And all the while this man had had his own joys and sorrows and dreams, and his life had run itself out in obscurity. ‘But you had so much impact, Mr Malcolm. You’ve got a former student who’s on TV! And me, I did some acting, even if I didn’t exactly … And Sarah Martin! She must be up to something high-powered these days.’

  He smiled. ‘She’s at the Arts Council. Gives out grants and tells people where they’re going wrong.’

  ‘Sounds about right. And I bet you had hundreds of other students who were in your plays, who love music and drama even now because of you, or who got really good at French and went to work at the UN or something.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Of course. I know I love it. Loved. Sorry, I don’t know what tense to use.’

  ‘But Rosie … you’ve given up acting, haven’t you?’

  ‘Um … no. Not exactly.’

  ‘You haven’t been to an audition in over a year. You’ve been applying for office jobs and thinking about training as a teacher. That sounds like giving up. And you were doing so well before. I followed your career, you know. Before I shuffled off.’

  Rosie looked at the floor, where the ghostly markings for different sports looked like crime-scene diagrams. Mr Malcolm wasn’t real, she had to remind herself. Anything he was telling her was something she already knew, in some deep recess of her mind. ‘I … I lost my confidence. And Caz, that’s my friend – or was – she’s having this insane run of success.’

  ‘You were jealous.’

  ‘Yes. I know that’s pathetic.’

  ‘Rosie, I’m going to tell you what I told Sarah Martin when she came to me in tears because I’d given you the lead in Pirates. Just because someone gets an opportunity in life, it doesn’t mean it’s been taken away from you. It just means it was for them. Yours is out there somewhere. Your job is to find it.’

  ‘And how did she take that?’

  ‘Not well. Her mother came in to shout at me.’

  Rosie smiled ruefully. ‘I guess I really messed up. Then and now. I loved Pirates, too. I used to secretly listen to the soundtrack when Bryn wasn’t about. I hid it inside an urban grime CD case. I’m so sorry, Mr M. What a stupid, selfish thing to do.’

  Mr Malcolm looked at his ghostly watch. ‘We better go back, dear. This has been a long epiphany for you. Rather exhausting, all those revelations.’ The school, and Sarah Martin’s harsh top notes, Drew McKinnon’s louche posings, and all the pirates and policemen and ladies began to fade.

  ‘Wait!’ Rosie clutched the sleeve of his cardigan. ‘I meant what I said. You were such an inspiration to me, you have no idea. I’m sorry I never told you that while you were alive.’

  He chuckled. ‘Nobody who teaches teenagers expects gratitude, Rosie dear. But merci.’

  ‘Mr Malcolm … will I get another chance? To go back to acting, I mean?’ Rosie was afraid of what she was really asking. Will I wake up? Will my life still be there or is it stopped, over, frozen in the terrible mess I made of it?

  ‘I don’t know, dear. Let’s go back now.’

  Curtain down, lights, exit, pursued by a Bryn.

  Daisy

  ‘There was no need for you to drive me, darling. I’m perfectly capable of getting the train.’

  ‘It’s OK. There’re some things in the house that might help Rosie, jog her memory, maybe.’

  ‘I don’t feel right le
aving her by herself.’ Her mother had been fidgeting the whole way in the car, checking her old Nokia phone every few minutes, fiddling with the heating, scratching at her arms. Daisy recognised the signs of anxiety. She also didn’t like leaving Rosie – what if something happened while they were gone? And tomorrow would be day three – but she felt strongly that this was the way to help her sister. Rosie had written that list for a reason, and Daisy had to find out why those names were on it. Starting with Angie Timmons, who as it happened still lived in the village.

  She said, ‘I know. But it’s just for the night, and Dad’s there anyway.’

  Her mother’s face was stricken. ‘I just don’t know what to tell people. She walked in front of a bus! What would make her do a thing like that?’

  ‘She fell in front of a bus,’ Daisy corrected her. ‘It’s not the same thing.’ But given the list of names, and what Caz had said about Rosie’s message, was her mother closer to the truth? You didn’t start contacting people from your past unless you were having some kind of life crisis. What if she’d been trying to make amends? Or say goodbye?

  ‘Darling, don’t drive so fast. We don’t need another accident.’

  ‘I’m five miles under the speed limit, Mum.’ But she slowed down all the same. Thankfully the traffic was light, and it wouldn’t take too long to reach the house. ‘Honestly, Mum, she’s got people with her. You need to look after yourself anyway. Let Dad do some of it.’

  It was the right thing to say. Unlike Rosie, Daisy was very good at managing her mother. She’d had to be. ‘It was like this when you were younger too. You don’t remember, you were too little. But he was always away, at conferences, at the office – of course, we know now what he was really up to some of the time. I was very lonely. Especially after … everything.’

  Daisy kept her eyes on the road. ‘I know, Mum. It must have been very hard.’

  ‘You’ll find out. Wait till you have small ones and Gary’s working late and you’re sitting there alone night after night watching Open University films about the mining industry because it’s the only thing on telly. At least you have that Netflix thingy, darling. Your generation has no idea of your advantages.’

  Daisy didn’t know how to explain that, to her, the idea of children seemed as distant and terrifying as the sun turning to a supernova. And especially having children with Gary. ‘You know, Mum, just because we’re getting married doesn’t mean that’ll happen right away …’

  ‘Of course it will. Don’t worry, darling, there’s so much they can do nowadays.’

  Sometimes Daisy wondered if her mother wilfully misunderstood her.

  ‘Anyway, you’re young. Sensible. You know time’s ticking on and you’ve grabbed a good man, settled down.’

  Was that what she’d done, grabbed him? As if the music had stopped in some game of Musical Chairs, and she’d seized on Gary as the most promising chair? Good prospects. Domesticated. What more did she want? ‘I didn’t mean because we couldn’t have kids, Mum, I meant … maybe we’d wait.’

  Her mother sighed. ‘That’s all you young people do. Wait to grow up, wait to settle down … Well, life doesn’t always work that way, darling, and that’s just a fact. Sometimes time runs out. I was only twenty-six when I had you, you know. And twenty-eight when—’

  She stopped. The atmosphere in the car thickened into syrupy silence. Daisy held her breath. Now was the moment to discuss it. Be really open. Say what they truly felt. Talk about all the reasons Rosie might, just possibly, have fallen (or walked) in front of a giant London bus. ‘Mum …’

  Her mother leaned forward and turned the radio dial, letting out tinny music. ‘Goodness, what a racket. Is that what they call pop nowadays?’ And complaining about modern music took them over the brief hump, and all the way to the house.

  Rosie

  It was dark on the ward. Almost the end of her second day in a coma. Time running out. The lights were lowered, and outside evening was drawing in. Rosie was, for the first time all day, alone. Just her in the small room, and the beep of machines and the sound of hushed voices outside, nurses passing to and fro. At least she could see again, through the small crack in her eyelids, after that strange blip. That was some relief.

  OK. Review what she knew so far. She was Rosie Cooke, aged mid-thirties-ish, from Devon, one uptight mother, one harassed father. One quiet sister who was, it seemed, three years younger, and one half-sister who was a lot younger and seemed like kind of a cool kid, despite her taste in music. She was single – but where was Luke? – and lived alone in a studio flat with a dodgy neighbour. Until recently she’d worked in a coffee shop and had for a number of years tried to be an actress.

  And she’d hurt so many people. She’d been the worst daughter, sister, friend imaginable. She’d failed at everything. She’d lost touch with poor dead Melissa, let Mr Malcolm down, and neglected her grandma, and, well – she could hardly have been nicer to Darryl, seeing as they’d only met when his chest was being cracked open by a rib-spreader. But could she perhaps have communicated more kindness to him in that one look they’d shared?

  ‘You’re driving yourself mad,’ Darryl commented. He was sitting in the chair beside her bed, flicking through the copy of the Times Literary Supplement her mother had brought. Rosie was in hospital with her brain smooshed and her mother still wanted her to have improving reading material.

  ‘There’s not much else to do here. Any chance you could use your ghostly powers to switch on Escape to the Country?’

  ‘Mate, I’m not a ghost. And there’s no time. We’ve got to go.’

  ‘Maybe it’ll be another memory with Luke?’ She could hear the longing in her voice. ‘I mean, that wasn’t the last time I ever saw him, was it? In the park?’ It couldn’t have been. She could sense that the memories marked ‘Luke’ were in a huge towering filing cabinet, the doors secured with padlocks that were bulging under the strain. ‘We were happy. We spent the day together. There must be more to our story. Can you show me that?’

  ‘It doesn’t work that way, sorry, mate. Come on.’

  The world faded. The dial spun: 15 7 2005. She knew when that was. That summer. The one she’d met Luke. And for once she fell into her memory smiling.

  15 July 2005 (Twelve years ago)

  The first thing Rosie felt was sand under her feet. She inhaled deeply, smelling the sea and flowers and sizzling meat. It was a beach at night, a little harbour with boats bobbing in it, and further along the sand, a small taverna where the delicious meat smell was coming from. ‘I know this,’ she said. It was Crete. It was a few days after she’d met Luke on the beach. ‘Where am I? Oh, there.’

  Past Rosie was coming down the beach with her sandals in her hand, long bare legs in cut-off denims. Her hair was rippling down her back, a pink flower stuck over one ear, and despite her caution in the sun she had a soft glow all over. ‘I look so happy.’

  Of course she was. She was in Greece, a perfect sunny day fading into a beautiful warm night, the moon turning the calm sea to a silver mirror. She looked good, and she was on her way to meet the cute boy from the beach, a whole night with just the two of them. Plus, she was already slightly drunk from the bottle of toffee vodka she’d downed before leaving the holiday apartment.

  She watched her past self almost dance across the sand, like in a Duran Duran song, and pause at the taverna to brush sand from her feet and put on her raffia sandals. When she saw Luke, her face almost split with smiling. Waiting for her at a table with a beer in front of him, his tanned arms resting on the checked table cloth. He wore a short-sleeved shirt and the bridge of his nose was slightly red. He too was grinning like an idiot. ‘Hi!’

  ‘Hi!’

  ‘Just you tonight?’

  ‘Oh, yeah, the others were a bit worse for wear. I hope that’s OK?’ Rosie still couldn’t remember who she’d been on holiday with. Ingrid and Jack, maybe, based on the earlier memory. But if she had a boyfriend, why was she grinning at this new guy
like an idiot?

  ‘God, of course!’ They could hardly look at each other without smiling.

  Luke fumbled for a menu, written in tourist English, laminated with pictures of the food on it. But they were twenty-one. This passed for fancy. ‘Um, what would you like? A fillet of turbo fish? Sounds racy.’

  Rosie played along. ‘I might go for the stack with pooper sauce.’

  ‘It does not say that?’

  ‘It does!’ They giggled.

  ‘You need a drink.’ Luke looked round for the waiter. ‘Er, giasou …’

  ‘Yes,’ the waiter said, bored. Past Rosie ordered some hideous concoction called a Malibu Sunrise, and when it came it was in a huge frosted glass with sparklers, straws and lurid pink liquid inside. They ordered food they wouldn’t eat – too nervous, too excited – fried calamari and dolmades and pitta bread and tzatziki.

  ‘So,’ said Luke, when they were both a drink in and slightly less nervous. ‘It’s tomorrow, isn’t it? Your flight to Morocco?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Past Rosie visibly drooped. ‘Last leg of our trip, then it’s back to rainy old Devon. My parents want me to temp while I find an office job in London. Mum thinks accountancy would be great for me.’

  ‘But you don’t?’

  ‘God no. I …’ She turned shy, afraid he might laugh. ‘I want to go to drama school. I should have done it at uni, but Dad was worried it was a “soft” option.’ You’ve got to work out what you want to do with your life, Rosie! Rosie didn’t know what she wanted. Except she did, but she didn’t think she could actually be an actress. You needed money for that, to tide you over in lean times. You needed contacts. And you had to be good. She’d starred in three shows at university, and after the last one, a production of The Tempest, the director had clutched both her hands and said, ‘Rosie. You MUST go to drama school. Promise me.’ And she’d laughed uncomfortably and gone to get drunk with the cast, but her heart had swelled up and up in her chest. Could she? Maybe she could. But she knew what her mother’s face would look like when she said she wanted to go to drama school and she couldn’t bear it. So instead of making a decision, she’d run away.