‘Bedroom right at the end of the hallway upstairs, past the bathrooms. Sophie is down that end too, in the studio.’
‘Oh, dear little Sophie, how old is she now?’
‘Fifteen, I believe.’
‘Fifteen …’ Helen says, drawing breath. ‘How did that happen?’ She stands up. ‘Thanks for letting me have my smoke. Outside from now on, scout’s honour.’ She makes a gesture with her fingers against her chest. Then laughs loudly. ‘I don’t know what that was, I’m no scout. But I’m honest, you can trust me.’
‘Okay, I trust you,’ Juliette replies.
‘See you in the morning?’ Helen asks.
‘I’ll be here.’
Just before Helen leaves the kitchen, one hand on the door, she turns back, a frown on her face. ‘Hey, where is Max?’
Juliette stares. Then she glances at the wall clock before looking back to Helen. Officially, it’s now the next day. Very late, even by Max’s standards.
‘Not to worry,’ Helen reassures. ‘He’s always late. He’ll get here.’
But what is more worrying is that Juliette isn’t all that concerned about Max. She’s more disconcerted by the way Helen’s slight, shadowed outline fills the doorframe and how her pale fingers curl around the brass door handle.
Saturday – samedi
Chapter 3
Rosie
The weak morning light creeps over Rosie’s skin like warm kisses. Here they are, so close to England and yet everything feels immediately different. Even when she is only half-awake. Truth is – everything feels French. Soft light like soft cheeses, warm breezes like chansons. The Breton light reminds Rosie of the spring afternoon picnics she’d had with her boys when they’d each been little. Dragging a blanket, sometimes just a towel, into the garden to share their sandwiches and strawberries, to throw crumbs to sparrows. They’d always been the best days, those picnic days, when Rosie planned nothing and time seemed to slow right down. She had been so busy when the boys were small, wondering, at times, whether they would ever grow up, if she would be changing nappies and getting up for night terrors for the rest of her life. But then they’d suddenly grown, the baby days had vanished. That was why Rosie had so longed for Patrick; her last. As challenging as those days had been, again, for the third time, they had been full. Full of work and joy combined. Full of wet baby kisses on her cheeks and the sound of heavy, learning footfalls in hallways.
Rosie turns her head to her husband. She can no longer sleep in, too many years of getting up, too early, for the boys but Hugo is fast asleep. His mouth is open, his legs spread. Hugo has never had to make himself smaller in bed. Sometimes Rosie misses the tiny single bed with the thin quilt they had kept in the nursery. She had slept in it for years in the end, the scent of a baby’s head right beneath her nostrils. Of course there was no use for the bed, or a nursery, once the children had grown out of being babies. Hugo had made the room a study, the single bed sent off to a school garage sale fundraiser. A wife should sleep in bed with her husband; Rosie agreed it was right. Plus, the boys no longer really needed Rosie to sleep in with them. Sometimes that thought made her heart physically ache.
Rosie looks to the closed door. She had heard Helen come in last night, but hadn’t gotten up. She had heard, through the floorboards and the thick, countryside silence, murmuring in the kitchen. Too faint to wake anyone else but Rosie was a light sleeper these days. Her ears were acutely trained for whimpers and whispers. Lying in the dark Rosie had tried to make out words, but hadn’t been able to. Rosie and Helen were less close than they once had been. Rosie and Nina caught up often but Helen was different, you never knew when she would make contact or simply appear, a surprise visit from New York, normally on the way to somewhere else. At college the three of them – Rosie, Nina, Helen – were like points on a tripod, making one another steadier. Rosie first met Helen in a life drawing class. Rosie – determined and anxious – and Helen – dishevelled and nonchalant. Rosie had reason to be anxious; she knew, pointedly, how much the course cost and Helen had no clue; Rosie wanted something out of it and Helen, at least at the beginning, just seemed to want to run away from home. It wasn’t really Helen’s fault, they came from different worlds. Rosie’s dad was a butcher and her mum stayed at home with Rosie and her three brothers. Conversely, Helen’s dad was a wealthy businessman whose pugnacious face was often a cartoon in the papers and her mum looked like a royal. A royal with breast implants. But still, Rosie and Helen were closer then. They made each other laugh, they balanced each other out.
Rosie had been convinced she was the one who had things sorted. Rosie was the grown-up. She had a husband and three children. She had a beautiful home. She was on the PTA and her bake stand at the school fete made record profits. She went to the gym four days a week and looked good, she knew it, looked younger than her age. She had given up smoking a long time ago; her skin thanked her for that. She had more in her fridge than a bottle of wine and a hardened lump of Parmesan cheese. She grew vegetables! Rosie did not envy Helen’s life – her New York life – with her gallery, the bars she went to, the men she attracted like moths to a flame. Rosie didn’t wish for late nights, for sleep-ins, to be able to wear silk without the risk of someone putting their marmite-covered fingers all over it. Plus, despite all the men that flocked to Helen’s flame – artists, of course, with tortured souls, beautiful bodies and thick heads of hair, entrepreneurs, a race car driver once, musicians, quite a few of those – Helen had never maintained a relationship longer than a few months. As though she just couldn’t find what she was searching for – despite their money, looks and talent. Rosie thought she was being foolishly fussy, she told Helen once too, to which Helen had laughed. Helen just didn’t care. She didn’t seem to want the normal things like marriage and kids. That bewildered Rosie. Their lives were in such stark contrast. When Rosie was knee deep in Lego or stepping in a puddle of pee left on the bathroom floor, Helen was in Guatemala, inspecting a three-storey high art installation or drinking a whiskey sour in a Chelsea jazz bar.
And yet, they did love one another. It was something about being such old friends. They were more like family than friends. Whatever happened they had their pasts in common. Plus, when Rosie started Fleet, they did communicate more often. It was Helen who encouraged Rosie to make it a small business rather than just a hobby, after Rosie made her the ring. The ring with the stone the same colour as Max’s eyes. It wasn’t her best work, Rosie had had so much more practice since then, but she was still fond of it. The women Rosie was friendly with nowadays, who had children the same ages as the boys, were on the PTA and possessed similarly abundant veggie gardens, were sweet but unfussed about Fleet. One of them had been honest with her eventually; she said the pieces were too costume-like, too raw, too wild, see? Rosie understood.
Rosie hears the sound of a shower being turned on, the water slapping against a floor. Then, a person, filling the space between. Hugo turns, still sleeping, towards Rosie. She studies the softness of his skin, loose under his chin, the lines that usually frame his mouth smoothed by the gentle hand of sleep. Hugo looks more like her sons when he is sleeping. And, on the other hand, he could be a stranger. Rosie has taken to staring at Hugo when he is sleeping more and more these days. Sometimes, when they go to Hugo’s medical conferences and all the other wives are there, rapping manicured nails against champagne glasses and laughing so widely, Rosie wonders if she has been living someone else’s life. It almost makes sense, she had been nursing a baby for much of the last twelve years, sleep deprived and stumbling through life like a zombie. Only now that Patrick is older does it feel as though a fog has lifted, that she can have a life for herself, can have Fleet. But Rosie chose this life. She chose Hugo. Rosie still remembers the moment in the pub when Hugo had said he was a surgeon and Rosie told him her father was a doctor. Rosie hardly ever lied. Not if you didn’t count the little lies you have to tell children. Back then, in
that pub, Rosie had felt herself lying and didn’t flinch for a second. She leaned into it. She made it real in her mind so she could win the prize in front of her. Hugo had been so handsome, so nonchalant, so knowledgeable. His voice had that delicious, fancy edge to it, like Helen’s. He didn’t look anything like the guys that Rosie was used to. Not like Max and Eddie had been then, always crumpled and smelling and laughing maniacally, acting like a pair of young boys. Hugo was a gentleman. Hugo would look after her. Rosie saw what she wanted and reached for it. Rosie was culpable for all this. More culpable than Hugo.
Rosie turns the other way, towards the wall. The sun is growing in strength now. She closes her eyes and listens to the sounds of the house waking up in its heat; the gentle creaking and groaning like an old lady with sore joints. The cottage, if you could still call it that, was stunning. Max had done a good job with the renovation. He had taste, it was clear, in design and music and young women. Those were Max’s specialties. Rosie hears muffled voices, recognises Nina’s whisper and lifts the duvet from her body. She opens the door and steps into the hallway. Nina, showered and dressed, smiles at her.
*
‘How did you sleep?’ Rosie asks her friend.
‘Not too bad. Feeling a bit hungover. I need a coffee. You?’
‘Fine,’ Rosie lies. ‘It’s nice being out here, away from the city, don’t you think?’
‘It really is,’ Nina agrees. ‘It’s so quiet.’ She surveys the clean, empty kitchen with hands on her hips and then goes to the espresso machine on the bench opposite the kitchen windows. ‘Do you think I’ll be able to get this thing going?’
‘If anyone can …’ Rosie replies, hopping up onto a stool and watching Nina stare at the knobs and dials. Nina doesn’t function well without her morning cup of coffee. She carefully removes a part from the machine.
‘Did you hear Max come in last night?’ Rosie asks. Nina is searching through cupboards now.
Nina shakes her head.
‘Isn’t today his actual birthday?’
Nina triumphantly holds up a large foil bag of ground coffee, the top folded down and secured with a clip. ‘Yes, it is, I think.’
‘The first of us,’ Rosie says. ‘Do you think about it?’
Nina scoops out some grinds with a spoon and adds them to the part of the machine she has removed. She shakes her head. ‘Turning forty? Not really. I think about Sophie more. Who she is talking to online, who her friends are, finishing school … why she is so angry …’ Nina pushes the part back into the machine.
‘Do you think about it?’ Nina asks, pressing a button. The kitchen fills with the sound, the rage, of it working.
Rosie thought of it a lot. She hadn’t expected to, she still has a couple of years before she will face it. For Hugo’s fortieth Rosie had planned a surprise dinner with workmates, parents and some of their friends at a local restaurant. Three courses, speeches, white flowers as centrepieces. It had been very fitting. Everyone told Rosie she had outdone herself. Rosie had bought Hugo gold cufflinks and fishing rods. One for him, three for the boys. They hadn’t been out with them yet, though. Hugo preferred fly-fishing and he wasn’t sure the boys were up to that.
Rosie thought of turning forty mostly when she was in the bathroom, staring at her reflection. The wrinkles, the softness, the thinning eyebrows, the hairs above her lip. Rosie pulled her cheeks and stomach taut, turned to observe the sag of her arse. When the boys had been little she had no time to notice the years dashing by, now they got themselves ready for school and made themselves breakfast, the house was very quickly empty in the mornings and quiet, too quiet, despite a few city noises – garbage bins being emptied or retrieved, dogs padding on past the gate, joggers close behind, bikes, cars, robins in the tree out front, arguing. Rosie began to see herself in reflections in doors, wineglasses, wing mirrors … everywhere.
The coffee is now coming out of the machine in satisfying dark spurts. Nina lifts a full cup to her face and breathes in. Fingers wrapped around it, like an embrace.
‘I’m worried about you,’ Rosie replies, diverting the subject. Nina gives a soft smile.
‘Oh Rosie, I’m going to be fine. I’m always fine. I come from hardy stock.’ She raises her eyebrows. Nina isn’t slim like Rosie. She hates the gym. She sends Rosie YouTube videos of people falling off treadmills.
Rosie nods. Nina is hardy. Everyone would agree with that description. But Rosie remembers the time Nina wasn’t so hardy, after Sophie was born. She had bled too much, she had needed transfusions, had to stay at the hospital for a week. And then, when she came home, Nina hadn’t been hardy at all. She’d been pale and thin, too thin for a woman who had just given birth, and teary too, which wasn’t like her. Lars and Rosie took turns looking after her and Sophie, like the two of them were babies. Rosie cooked and brought over dinners, Lars fed Sophie bottles and soothed her and changed nappies. Rosie did the grocery shopping when the cupboards were empty, they both ferried cups of tea and tucked Nina into clean sheets. It took months for Nina to get back to her normal self. And now they never spoke about it. Not Rosie, not Nina, not Lars. Like it had never happened.
Nina blows on the top of her coffee and reaches out with one hand to pat the top of Rosie’s. ‘This is supposed to be a holiday, remember?’ She takes a sip from her cup. ‘If you want to worry, you can worry about Max. He’s easy to worry about. He’s late, he’s probably drunk somewhere with some poor young thing …’
Rosie nods. Poor young thing indeed. Max isn’t nice to the women he sleeps with. He doesn’t call them back, he forgets their names, and yet they continue to swarm to Max without him even trying; knowing, somehow, that he may not care about them but he will know how to sleep with them. How to make them feel good and disposable all at once. It never ceases to amaze Rosie how many women Max manages to sleep with. How many women seem to want exactly what little he has to offer. The funny thing is that as careless as Max is with the women he sleeps with, he is loving and kind to the women he is friends with. Helen especially. Max and Helen are so close they sometimes seem not to have to speak, already knowing what the other is thinking. When they are together they are always laughing. They go to art galleries together, get drunk and argue about Francis Bacon, whose work Max loves and Helen doesn’t. They light one cigarette and share smoking it. At college Max made tiny sculptures out of wire for Helen, which filled her bedroom, even a pot-plant holder once – from a coconut shell and a bedspring – and wrote notes in her textbooks for her to find. ‘Fuck you and your existentialism’ and ‘Helen Barnett has great tits’. Things that would have annoyed Rosie to no end had he written them, in pen no less, in her textbooks, but sent Helen into peels of laughter. They were love notes. Max adored Helen.
People said that Rosie and Nina were ‘peas in a pod’ but the real peas were Helen and Max. From different worlds and yet made the same way, broken in the same way. Rosie had thought they had nothing to envy. Just two lost and fractured drunks still acting like teenagers. They have no plan. They never have a plan. But even without having seen them yet, Rosie suddenly has the uneasy feeling she has been wrong; that they might have something Rosie no longer has.
That if anyone is lost it might be her.
*
Brighton beach, 1993
They weren’t supposed to be a couple. Not in Rosie’s mind, anyway. Not that she told Eddie that, as they lay back against the stones digging into her skin. It was June but the weather was dreadful. That’s England for you. That’s Brighton for you. Grubby ocean scent in the air, the stink of the wet wooden boards of the pier, tobacco, sweat, Eddie’s of course. Eddie was not part of Rosie’s plan and yet here they were. Again. He passed her the smoke.
‘Supposed to be summer. Almost. Weather’s crap.’
His hair was too long. His jeans were too short. His sweat smelled like onions and brine.
‘It’s crap,’ Ro
sie agreed.
Eddie rolled on to his side, looked her up and down and gave her a grin. ‘You’re a picture, Rosie.’
‘I need a shower.’
‘You look good without one.’
Not long and they’d be done with study and Rosie would be somewhere else. With someone else. Not under the Brighton pier, sharing a smoke with Eddie.
‘Is Max going to class these days?’ Rosie asked, still lying on her back.
Eddie looked out towards the sea. There were seagulls nearby arguing over something. Probably a cold chip. Their cries struck the air like slaps.
‘Not much,’ Eddie replied. ‘I don’t think he’s fussed. He’s getting good gigs. He says there was a producer at their last one. Came and had a word. Pretty famous apparently.’
‘He won’t finish his degree?’
Rosie shivered from the cold.
Eddie shook his head. ‘Doubt it.’
‘He should finish.’
‘Think he’s happier with his music to be honest.’
‘He spends too much time arsing about. He’s almost finished.’
Rosie tried not to sound scolding, but failed.
‘He’s happy,’ Eddie murmured. He reached over and touched Rosie’s hair. The gel had lost its hold. It was limp and gritty-feeling. ‘I like it like this,’ he said.
‘Dirty?’ Rosie sniffed. She hated the sound of her voice. Too much like her mother’s when she was looking at herself in the mirror.
‘No. Short,’ Eddie replied.
Eddie and Rosie had first kissed at the pub, a night Max had been playing. It wasn’t on purpose. It was cider. Rosie didn’t usually drink cider and it made her feel weird, that was her excuse, so that when Eddie started chatting to her he suddenly seemed different. Maybe it was because Max wasn’t with him and Rosie wasn’t sure about Max. He was reckless and blunt, he took too many chances, he made Helen wild. He was the kind of person Rosie’s mother warned her about and Rosie was inclined to agree with her mother about that kind of thing. But with Max on stage and occupied with the band, Eddie was on his own. He asked Rosie questions. He seemed kind and funny and sweet. Easy to be around. He seemed interested. It felt good to have someone interested. Then he leaned in too close and his lips were just there and he was, well, handsome enough.
A French Wedding Page 7