Rose’s smile was rueful. ‘Oh, stop trying to be kind, Frasier. They are not the qualities you’d normally put on an internet dating profile, are they?’
‘Are you thinking of internet dating?’ Frasier asked her, alarmed.
‘No! Look around you. If Dad has got this mythical laptop you speak of, I’ve yet to find it. And no, no, no to internet dating or indeed dating. If I know anything now, it’s that I’m nowhere near ready to have anything to do with men. Kissing Ted proved that.’
Frasier nodded, his expression unreadable.
‘And kissing him was all that happened,’ Rose said, deciding she might as well grasp the nettle while she had the benefit of most of a glass of wine inside her. ‘And I’m not sorry I did it, even though it … changed things between us. Ted was good to me, and kind. He understood. He gave me back something I’d lost and didn’t need anything in return. I’m sorry his feelings got caught up in it all, and most of all I’m sorry that I messed everything up between you and me. But I’m not sorry I kissed him, Frasier. Ted reminded me that kissing is actually really wonderful.’
‘I’m glad,’ Frasier said, adding ever so slowly, ‘I would have liked to have been the one to give you that gift.’
Rose looked up at him sharply. ‘Don’t do that again,’ she said, suddenly angry.
‘Don’t do what?’ he asked, taken aback.
‘You are impossible to know how to be around,’ Rose told him bitterly. ‘One minute you’re holding my hand, the next talking about how great Cecily is. Or saying you’ve always loved me and then actually sorry, no, that was a terrible mistake. That we can only ever just be friends, and now that you wished you’d kissed me instead of Ted. It’s not fair, Frasier!’ Rose got up, walking over to the sideboard where the rest of the wine was. ‘I know where I stand now. You made it very clear. And that’s how I want it to stay. You, there, on the sofa, me upstairs in the bedroom, working together as friends for Dad. If I ever could handle anything more, that’s gone now. You made sure of it. Now I just want to be alone and let my heart rest for a while.’
Frasier sat back in his chair saying nothing. Two bright spots of red were colouring his cheeks.
‘Rose, I didn’t mean to upset you …’
‘Good night,’ Rose said, picking up her glass of wine, and, even though it was barely nine, ‘see you in the morning.’
It took until Rose had reached the bottom stair for Frasier to speak.
‘Rose,’ he said, ‘for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.’
‘For what it’s worth,’ Rose said sadly, the anger draining out of her, ‘I know.’
Chapter Nineteen
‘SO?’ ROSE ASKED John, who now, two weeks after his operation, was at least able to get out of bed for most of the day, even though he looked thinner, greyer and more gaunt than ever. ‘It’s opening night, are you excited?’
‘I’m a quivering wreck,’ John said drily. ‘Can’t you tell?’
‘I’m excited.’ Maddie hopped from one foot to the other. ‘I’m the most excited of everyone, because Frasier told me that there is a surprise for me. And I am the most excited about that. I don’t know what it is going to be. It might be a television for my bedroom, that would be good. Or an iPad.’
‘It’s not either of those things,’ Frasier said, coming down the stairs, his hair wet, a towel around his neck. Despite the lingering awkwardness between Rose and him, he had been good to his word, and moved into the cottage, running his business as much as he could from his laptop, even going so far as to have a sofa bed delivered and a wireless router fitted, just as he had threatened, and much to John’s disgust.
‘I’ve had that sofa for fifteen years,’ John had said unhappily as it was moved out of the living room and into the barn, for the time being at least. ‘I got it at a house clearance. It had belonged to the woman who died for fifteen years before that. She died on it. Never heard her complain about it being bumpy.’
‘Maybe that’s why she died,’ Maddie had said thoughtfully. ‘Maybe the bumpiness killed her.’
‘It’s only temporary,’ Frasier had reassured John. ‘As soon as things are settled, I will put your old sofa of doom back, and take this one with me. I’m going to need to find a new place to live anyway. Cecily seems to have decided that she’s got rights to my flat in our separation, which doesn’t matter so much, it was only a rental, but it does rather leave me homeless, and the office at the gallery isn’t ideal.’
Frasier was obviously stretched to the limit, running his business from the cottage, making regular round trips to the gallery and back, supervising the removal of John’s secret paintings, which Rose still had not seen, determined to honour her word to her father until they were hanging in the gallery. Even though Rose did her best, on scant experience, to help him organise the marketing, guest list, the news and media, at the end of every day he looked tired out and more besides, as if he were carrying some other unknown burden. He probably missed Cecily, Rose thought. It would be only natural. And he probably wondered why and how his life had become so completely intertwined with theirs. Secretly Rose worried that they had become a burden to him, but she said nothing, supposing that as soon as the exhibition was over he’d be able to quietly withdraw, and in many ways she would welcome the peace that would come from not having to see him every day and know she’d lost him.
Frasier had managed to drum up quite a storm of interest in the show. Not that they mentioned that to John, who was certain that anyone who came would only be there to mock him, and who was in fact working on the basis that no one would come at all. As that seemed something of a comfort to him, neither Rose nor Frasier had done anything to change his opinion.
What he had clearly enjoyed, though, was spending time with Frasier, talking over his work with another living human being for the first time, explaining what he felt inclined to, remaining silent on what he did not. As it wasn’t practical for him to travel to Edinburgh before the opening, Frasier brought the plans to him, including a scale model of the gallery, with numbered squares of cardboard, each representing one of a list of almost thirty works. Rose would watch as John and Frasier argued constantly about which work should go where, Frasier always acquiescing in the end. It was a trait that made Rose love him all the more, as futile as that was. Frasier was always going to let John have his way, but he knew that John enjoyed the argument and the discussion, the back and forth and the debate. And Rose suspected that John knew he knew it too. This was simply a demonstration of two very good friends, telling each other how much they cared for one another in the best way they knew how, with sustained disagreement.
Tilda had been there too, for much of the time, not every day, although Rose knew she would be if she could. The running of her business, which didn’t turn over enough to employ staff full time, demanded that she could not be absent from it as much as she would like. And although they never spoke of it, Rose was sure that she had taken a conscious step back, to allow Rose the time she needed with her father, uninterrupted by the demands or needs of another. Whenever Tilda was there, the love she still felt for John, despite everything he’d put her through, and the equal affection he felt in return was palpable, as clearly written in their expressions and gestures as it would have been in black and white on a page. With supreme politeness Tilda would always ask Rose what she could do to help, and Rose would respond by always having something ready. The laundry mostly, which could not be done at the cottage because John had never acquired a washing machine, entertaining Maddie sometimes while Rose and her father talked, and always Rose would make sure that John and Tilda had time together alone, usually in John’s room.
One afternoon she had ventured in there to ask them if they wanted tea, to find them both asleep on John’s bed, Tilda’s head resting on his chest, his arm wrapped around her. It was such an intensely personal moment that Rose had quickly backed out of the room, quietly closing the door behind her. Nevertheless, Rose was glad that she had se
en it.
As soon as the opening night of the exhibition was out of the way Rose was going to ask Tilda to come and stay with them, to use some of the great deal of money that John had released to her to pay for someone to run the shop for as long as was needed. This, Rose realised, was not a time when John should have to choose between the people he loved and cared for, and if she had unwittingly become the cause of that, she was determined not to be, for one moment more.
Rose was quietly optimistic about Maddie’s chances of settling in at her new school. The head had enjoyed all of the seven-year-old’s many questions as she showed her around the small school, seeming undaunted by Maddie’s trademark bluntness and lack of tact. Maddie had liked what she’d seen and even been on a successful play date with a local girl who would be in her class, managing to go a whole afternoon without offending or upsetting anyone.
Rose had taken the opportunity to drive to Carlisle again and buy herself some more clothes, including something for the opening. It had been a strange experience, walking around the shops with money in her pockets and no one to please but herself, and she had spent several minutes wandering about before she realised that she had just begun to get a sense of her own style. She knew it wasn’t Richard’s idea of what she should look like, or Haleigh’s haphazard approach to youthful fashion, it was just wearing what made her feel good inside. Initially lost, Rose had laden herself down with item after item, gradually working her way through shop after shop until she found clothes that she liked, that she felt comfortable in and herself, finally choosing a knee-length sea-green pencil dress for her father’s exhibition, which set off her slender figure and contrasted with her blonde hair. As Rose examined herself in the dressing room mirror, she ran her fingers through her hair, which was longer now, and dark at the roots, discovering that she was very keen that her old hair did not come back, not yet. It was still too much of a reminder of who she’d once been.
Still wearing the dress, she sat down on the little stool provided in the cubicle and dialled Shona’s number.
‘Will you come and do my hair again?’ she asked, making Shona chuckle.
‘No, go to a bloody hairdresser or sheep shearer or whatever it is they have up there. So you’re keeping it blonde then?’
‘Yes,’ Rose said, looking at herself in the mirror. ‘Yes, I like Blonde Rose, Blonde Rose is the one that hits husbands with planks.’
‘How are you now, about all that?’ Shona asked her. ‘I told Mum, Mum’s told the town all about it. And after the police visited him at the surgery for a chat it’s been brilliant. It was in the local press and everything. “Local Doctor Quizzed over Domestic Abuse!” I’m sending you a copy.’
Rose already knew, but she didn’t say anything. She knew because despite her reservation about pressing a charge against him, she had been left with no choice but to go ahead, when Richard continued to call and text her, becoming increasingly menacing. Finally she had asked the police to intervene, and then after only a moment’s hesitation she had left an anonymous message on the local paper’s news desk answerphone, tipping them off about the scandal. Her only weapon against Richard returning was to show him how she could destroy his precious reputation, and for once in her life Rose did not hold back.
‘It’s Dad’s exhibition coming up,’ Rose said. ‘That’s all I’m thinking about. I wish you could be there. Things OK your end?’
There was the briefest pause. ‘Yes, yes, you know me. We’re all great,’ Shona said.
‘Good,’ Rose replied uncertainly. ‘Shona, you would tell me, wouldn’t you … if –’
‘I’m fine,’ Shona had said. ‘I’ll call you, OK? Speak soon …’ Rose had thought she’d heard Shona talking to someone else as she’d hung up the phone, and a moment later, just as she’d been unzipping her dress, the phone rang, showing Shona’s number. But when Rose answered it the line went dead, and when she tried to call back it was switched to answerphone. When Rose had called her again, later that evening, Shona had been bright and cheerful, and Rose reminded herself not to read too much of her own life into other people’s. As Shona kept reassuring her, she knew what she was doing.
The visit with the solicitor that her father insisted on had gone as well as could be expected. Frasier had accompanied her for moral support and Rose had felt a curious mixture of fear and exhilaration as she took the first steps to filing for a divorce. What she did not feel, though, she noted, as the solicitor tried in vain to persuade her to claim maintenance and child support from Richard, something she absolutely refused to do, was regret. No, there wasn’t even a trace of regret.
‘But it’s your house,’ the solicitor said.
‘And I’ve never been happy there,’ Rose said. ‘Let him have it. I want nothing to do with it or him.’
‘Are you OK?’ Frasier had asked her on the drive back afterwards.
‘I think so,’ Rose said. ‘I think I have a lot of things – thoughts, feelings – I need to untangle. I still haven’t really thought about everything that Maddie and I have been through. Haven’t processed it, as the Americans would say. I suppose I probably will need to do that, won’t I, to really move on, and make a fresh start?’
‘I suppose you will,’ Frasier said, ‘yes.’
‘Well, today was a start,’ Rose said, smiling at him. ‘I’ll take that for now.’
At least things between Rose and Frasier were manageable, and she was glad to have him in her life at the crucial time, even though it was not how she had spent so many unhappy hours imagining it.
There had been one moment, the previous night, when Rose had been uncertain again of the way things were. After days of being resolutely careful around her, Frasier had slipped a little again. They’d stayed up late, talking over plans for the big day, laughing about Maddie and how she’d almost successfully turned the whole event into being about her, about John’s reluctance to be involved at all, despite the obvious enjoyment he was getting from it, and how Jenny and Tilda had faced off that morning over the vacuum cleaner, neither one wanting to relinquish its powerful suction.
‘You are beautiful when you laugh,’ Frasier said thoughtlessly. ‘When you really, really laugh you radiate light. It’s quite extraordinary to see.’
Rose held her breath as he reached out and touched her hair. ‘And now the blonde is growing out, I can see you again. The girl I met all those years ago.’
‘I’m getting the roots done in the morning, for the exhibition,’ Rose said sharply. ‘I don’t want to be that girl, that trapped, frightened woman. This is me now, blonde and bolshy, so … there.’
‘Oh, I know that,’ Frasier said, ‘and you make a very good blonde, one the finest I’ve ever seen. I was just –’
‘Don’t,’ Rose said.
‘Rose, I’ve been thinking …’ Frasier began, but Rose got up, promptly walking away from him. Whatever he was thinking, whatever he wanted to say she wasn’t ready to hear it, not yet.
‘There’s still so much to do before tomorrow,’ she said brightly as if he hadn’t spoken at all. ‘I really hope it goes well. That’s really all I want: for it to go well and for Dad to be happy. That’s really all I want to think about now. Good night, Frasier.’
‘Good night,’ Frasier said.
When Rose had reached her room, she’d taken out the postcard that he’d sent her all those years ago, read it again, just the way she had the first time, and fell asleep with it folded in her hand.
When it came time to leave, Frasier, Tilda and Maddie were already outside, Maddie fussing over who sat where in Frasier’s enormous car. It was the first moment that Rose had had alone with John all day.
‘How are you feeling, though?’ she asked him. ‘I mean really.’
John shrugged. ‘Like a man on the point of imminent death, I suppose.’
‘Stop joking!’ Rose protested. ‘I can’t talk to you about anything important without you wanting to brush it off, make light of it.’
‘My dearest Rose,’ John said, smiling fondly at her, ‘a man does not want to spend the last days of his life dwelling on the last days of his life. He doesn’t want to spend it sitting for hours in a car going to the hellhole that is Scotland either, but as you have made me do one of those things, then the very least you can do is let me get away with the other.’
‘I suppose that is fair enough,’ Rose said, impulsively covering his hand with hers. ‘It’s just there is still so much I want to say to you, Dad. So much I want to talk about. All those years that I missed – I can’t help wanting to try and cram them all in now.’
‘But that would be no good,’ John said, putting his arms around her and hugging her to his frail chest, ‘because for most of those years you missed I wasn’t a good enough man to be your father, and now, now that I finally am close to being good enough, the best that I can do for you, and you for me, is to live in the moment, with you and Maddie, and Tilda and even Frasier, I suppose. You are my family, and that is so much more that I have any right to hope for.’
Rose nodded, leaving her head where it was for a moment, enjoying the rare embrace.
The car horn sounded outside, signalling that Maddie had finally chosen her seat and that Frasier was ready to take them to Edinburgh.
‘Ready to meet your public?’ Rose asked John.
He sighed heavily. ‘With a little bit of luck I might die on the way,’ he said.
Chapter Twenty
FORTUNATELY IT WAS a warm evening when they arrived outside the gallery, strong sun giving the dour grey stone of the building a rosy glow. Frasier helped Tilda and John out of the car, Maddie racing ahead to find Tamar was waiting in the doorway, waving madly at her with a youthful enthusiasm that almost matched Maddie’s.
‘We’re all ready,’ Tamar said excitedly as John and his entourage mounted the steps. ‘Everything is exactly as you wanted it, Mr Jacobs.’
‘Not exactly, my dear,’ John said, smiling at her, ‘given that I wanted it all locked up in my barn until after I was dead, but still, I appreciate your efforts.’
Dearest Rose Page 37