Her Name Was Rose

by Claire Allan

  Ingrid Devlin, well, he spoke more quietly to her. In hushed tones. Said that he might be employing me. As his housekeeper – so anyone who wanted to ask questions about why I was staying over could be told it was a professional relationship.

  He had been so happy when he finished on the phone – as if there was a light at the end of the tunnel. He had kissed me and then he sat, fidgeting on the sofa, sipping his wine, jiggling his leg, occasionally smiling at me.

  ‘Would you mind if I wrote for a bit?’ he asked. ‘I feel inspired. God, Emily, do you understand? I feel inspired for the first time since she died. I want to write – to lose myself for hours in it. My hands are almost itching with the need to write.’

  ‘Of course I don’t mind,’ I said.

  ‘I may be some time – hours maybe. When the mood takes me …’

  He looked so excited that even though I had hoped he would take me to him and hold me tenderly and make me feel cherished, I couldn’t be annoyed. His expression was so joyous. So animated. It was endearing. Shades of Jack when presented with his favourite toy.

  ‘You have to write when the notion takes you,’ I said, smiling. ‘I know how you’ve struggled. Look, Cian, I’ll go home. Leave you to it. It’s been a long and stressful day all round.’

  ‘You don’t mind?’ he asked, his eyebrow raised.

  ‘Not at all,’ I said, leaning over to kiss him. Even though a part of me did mind because when we were alone like this – kissing, drinking wine – I could pretend everything was perfect.

  So I dressed, drove home. Looked around my flat. Considered Cian’s offer.

  I could leave behind the saggy sofa. The heating that rattled in the middle of the night. The taps that either delivered freezing cold or boiling water and nothing in between – to live in a house that looked like it belonged in an interior design magazine. With a handsome, successful man. And a beautiful baby boy.

  I was changing out of my uniform, debating whether to simply bin it or launder it and take it back to Scott’s, when my phone rang. Donna’s name flashed up and I answered.

  ‘Emily, are you at home? Can I come over? I need to talk to you.’

  ‘I was just getting ready for bed,’ I lied. I wasn’t sure I was in the mood for Donna to come around and try to persuade me that Owen was actually just misunderstood.

  ‘It’s important that I talk to you,’ she said. ‘Really important.’ Her voice was shaky.

  ‘Are you okay, Donna?’

  ‘I’m fine, except that I really, really need to talk to you. And the sooner the better.’

  I sighed. Donna had been nothing but kind to me. I didn’t want to brush her off. I had a feeling people brushed her off a lot. ‘Okay,’ I said.

  ‘Great. I’ll be with you in ten,’ she said, hanging up.

  *

  Just over ten minutes later the buzzer went on my door and I hit the button to let Donna in. I opened the door to the flat waiting for her to come up the stairs.

  What I was not expecting – not at all – was that she would be accompanied by Owen. When I saw him, my heart quickened. ‘No,’ I said without even thinking about it. ‘I didn’t say he could come over. I don’t want him here.’ I moved to push the door shut but Donna was too quick for me, getting her hand, and her weight, behind it before I could close it. I pushed as hard as I could but when Owen put his hand to the door, pushing it too, I was no match for them.

  I stumbled backwards. ‘I’ll call the police,’ I said, my hands shaking, heart thumping trying to remember where I’d left my phone. I had got changed in my bedroom – had I left it there? It was on the other side of the flat and they were in front of me. Blocking my path.

  ‘There’s no need for that,’ Donna said calmly. ‘We’re here to help you, Emily. We’re your friends.’

  ‘Please,’ Owen said. ‘Just let us explain. I know I got things wrong earlier.’

  I thought of how he had grabbed my arm. I had told him he was hurting me. I didn’t want him in my space. This was all wrong and I felt a surge of panic build up inside me until I couldn’t quite catch my breath and I started to feel dizzy. Everywhere I looked, they were there. I couldn’t get past them. I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to run. I wanted to open a window. Suck in air, or throw myself out of it.

  ‘Please, Emily,’ I heard Donna’s voice – still calm. ‘Just breathe. I promise we’re on your side. Owen begged me to come with him so you wouldn’t be scared. Oh Emily, he feels wretched – but when you know why – when you understand why he reacted the way he did, you’ll understand.’

  ‘You scared me,’ I said to Owen, with a sob I hadn’t expected.

  ‘I’m so, so sorry, Emily. Truly,’ Owen said. ‘I promise I never meant to hurt you. I’m so ashamed.’

  I felt Donna’s hand take mine. ‘Come and sit down, pet,’ she said, leading me to the sofa. ‘Take some deep breaths. Owen, get a glass of water. I’m sorry for springing this on you but if I’d told you he was coming with me you wouldn’t have let me come over.’

  I nodded.

  ‘But what he has to tell you, it’s important. You need to know the truth about Rose. And about Cian. And about Owen too for that matter.’

  She sounded so sincere and her touch was so reassuring that I felt my breathing start to slow and steady. Still, I felt nervous when Owen came back into the room and handed me a glass of tap water. ‘Just a sip,’ he said. ‘Take your time.’

  He walked across the room and sat on the armchair opposite us. I was thankful for that – for him giving me the space to breathe. I sipped the water, felt Donna’s hand in mine and centred myself.

  ‘So you wanted to talk to me,’ I said when I found my voice.

  I felt Donna tense a little. Owen took a deep breath. ‘I’m not proud of all of this,’ he said. ‘I want you to know that. I never thought I would be a man who fell in love with a married woman.’

  So Cian was right – Owen had harboured feelings for Rose.

  ‘I certainly never expected her to love me back – but the thing is, Emily, she did.’ I straightened my back, tried to make sense of what he was saying. ‘We tried to fight it for a long time. We didn’t intend to hurt anyone. You have to believe that Rose was the sweetest, most gentle creature you could ever meet. Everything she did was with the intention of helping others. She was the kind of woman who would have gone hungry to make sure everyone else was fed. That’s why I fell in love with her – and I was the luckiest man in the world when she fell in love with me too.’

  ‘That’s not Cian’s version of events,’ I said.

  ‘No – well Cian has always had his own world view, Emily. Rose did love him – at one stage. I’m not even going to try and deny that. But in the end, Emily, she was terrified of him. He controlled every aspect of her life – everything. What she wore. Who she spoke to. Where she worked. He even posted on her social media accounts for her. He pulled all the strings and she was too scared to fight back. He isolated her from her family – kept them at arm’s reach. She learned it was easier just to go along with what he wanted – and when Jack was born, everything got worse. It was like she lost her fight. She told me she didn’t want her baby being caught up in their arguments so she allowed him to have whatever he wanted. But when she was at work, well, things were different. That was our own stupid bubble of happiness. I don’t know if he suspected something between us, but he became insistent she quit, stayed home to raise Jack. He thought it looked bad for “a successful literary author to have his wife out slaving in a dental surgery”. That he sent his son out to a nursery when he was more than able to provide enough to have her at home caring for him. She fought him on it. That was the last straw for her. She knew if she gave up working she would spend her days in that big house, at his whim and she would lose what little of herself she had left. And it would be impossible for us to ever see each other. He would be always be there – always.’

  I shook my head. ‘No. They were happy. They were trying for
another baby. Cian is devastated by all this. He misses her so much. He’s broken.’

  ‘He doesn’t know broken!’ Owen said. ‘Jesus, he is such a good actor. But that’s all it is. He was losing her anyway, so he had to do it on his terms. We were going to start again. The two of us. When he started pushing her more and more to leave work, we made the decision we didn’t want to wait any more. We couldn’t risk waiting any more. She was leaving him anyway, Emily.’

  My head hurt. Donna was squeezing my hand tightly. I looked to her. ‘He’s telling you the truth, Emily. They were together and yes, Owen made her very happy.’ Donna’s eyes were sad, her words sounded so genuine. ‘She was hopeful for the future. She didn’t want to be scared any more.’

  ‘He’s a bully,’ Owen cut in. ‘Nothing more …’ He looked directly at me when he said that. Tilted his head just a little – an almost imperceptible nod towards my neck and the bruises he had seen. ‘He said he loved her – cherished her – but he treated her like she was his possession. If you haven’t seen that side of him yet, Emily, it’s only a matter of time. Don’t confuse control with passion. Don’t excuse bad behaviour because he’s grieving. Most of all, don’t think you can fix him – or that he will change. Rose made so many excuses for him – tried so hard to fix what was wrong in her marriage. But she never really had a say in any of it. He was always in control.’

  I thought of his home. Even with a toddler running around, it was always show-home perfect. Everything in its place. Permanently photoshoot ready. Did that make him a bad person? Was it just that he liked nice things and he liked them kept nice? Imagine how I would have felt if I had arrived to find the place with overflowing bins, plastic toys scattered everywhere, a washing pile that had taken on a life of its own? I was supposed to think he was an abusive control freak because his house was clean? But then I thought of how he had reacted when I had gone to sit on the sofa in my wet coat. How when he told me to make myself presentable there was a hint of distaste, or was it disgust, in his voice? How he had reacted strangely when I had showed up at his door – how he had been with me on the phone when I told him the police had spoken to me. How he didn’t correct Ingrid when she said we were just friends. How cosy he looked with her. How she looked at me with the same dismissive look on her face as he had. Each memory hit me like a slap. I desperately wanted to push them down again but they kept floating to the top. No – it wasn’t possible that I had been blind to a man’s control once again. Then again, maybe I just wanted my happy ending and I would take less than perfect to get that.

  Even if less than perfect bordered on abusive.

  I shivered, felt tears prick at my eyes. I didn’t want any of this to be true. I was scrambling for ways to ignore what they were telling me. I thought of all the things Cian had told me. He had appeared so sincere.

  ‘He said you were the abusive one. That Rose was leaving work and she was scared of how you would react because you were obsessed with her. He said she couldn’t work there any more because you were making her life miserable.’ I whispered the next bit. I felt so fucked up putting it out there. ‘Owen, he thinks you might be responsible for hiring Kevin McDaid.’

  Owen swore under his breath, shook his head. Donna pulled her hand from mine. ‘I’ll make tea,’ she said, standing up and walking to the kitchen. ‘I can see we might be some time.’

  ‘Oh Emily, for fuck’s sake, he is so full of it,’ Owen began. ‘I would never, ever have hurt her.’

  ‘But he told me the same – he would never hurt her,’ I said.

  ‘And you believe that? I saw the bruise, Emily. I bet it’s not the only one,’ he whispered, so that Donna wouldn’t hear.

  ‘No, it’s not. There’s a bruise on my arm too. The one you left,’ I said, rubbing my temples. I didn’t have a clue who to trust, if anyone. I thought life was complicated enough with Ben. This was a whole new level of messed up.

  ‘I’m sorry. I can’t apologise enough for that,’ he said. ‘I’ll regret that for the rest of my days. But you have to believe me that I’m telling the truth. The day she died she was on her way to me. We were supposed to meet for dinner and then we were going to go and view a house – a place we could share together. Somewhere out of town – somewhere he wouldn’t know. She was so excited. Cian was away at a book event so for once she had the freedom to do something without him. It was all she could talk about – she was already planning how to decorate the house. Bright colours. Cushions. Upcycled furniture. Vintage-style trinkets – the kinds of things he would never let her have no matter how much she wanted them. She was so creative – artistic. She wanted to make things. She wanted a home – Cian kept a show house. We had spoken just half an hour before on the phone. She said she had picked up a few design brochures, bought a few funky photo frames. She couldn’t wait to show them to me.’ He looked up at me, his eyes filled with tears. ‘We were so excited. So happy. I wanted to give her everything he didn’t. Then it all ended – just like that. In a split second. As if that wasn’t nightmare enough, Cian is trying to push the blame onto me? Jesus Christ!’

  My mind flashed back to that day – to how happy Rose had looked. How she was going to ‘meet a friend’ for dinner. How she knew she would have a lovely evening. She had a glint in her eye. She looked beautiful – glowing.

  ‘She was happy,’ I stuttered. ‘She was so happy that she was going to meet you.’

  I could see the confusion written all over his face. I needed to tell him she had been happy until that very last moment. If what he was telling me was true, he deserved that comfort.

  I took a deep breath. ‘I maybe should have told you before. But I didn’t know how – and I didn’t want you to judge me. I just wanted to be happy – and your workplace – you all looked so happy. Rose looked so happy in all her pictures with your staff.’

  Donna had walked back into the room carrying two mugs of tea, which she put down on my coffee table before she sat down – the look on her face mirroring the look on Owen’s.

  ‘I was with Rose when she died. Or just before she died. I travelled down in the lift with her and Jack. We chatted, briefly.’ I looked at Owen, his eyes wide. ‘She told me she was on her way to meet a friend and she knew she would have a lovely evening. When the lift stopped, I told her to go ahead. To walk out ahead of me. She had a buggy and shopping bags and I just wanted to let her go first – so she did. She walked through the hall onto the street. She was singing to Jack. And then … she stepped onto that road and …’ My voice was shaking. I closed my eyes as the memory of the impact assaulted me again. As did all those nights I had woken after dreaming of Rose, twisted and bloodied, telling me it should have been me.

  ‘Was it instant?’ Owen asked, blinking back tears. ‘Like they said? Did she suffer? I know they said she didn’t, but they would say that. I’ve wondered, all this time, were they lying?’

  ‘They weren’t lying. She was there and then she was gone and I wish, I really wish, that she wasn’t. I wish it had been me. All this time, all I can do is blame myself. If I hadn’t let her go first … if I had walked out first, then I’d have been the one who was hit by the car. It should have been me. It always should have been me. I even convinced myself that my ex – a man as controlling as you say Cian is, was behind it all. I was crippled with guilt because if it had been me who had died, nobody would have cared. Not really.’

  I saw Owen recoil a little.

  ‘I’m sure that’s not true,’ he offered. I appreciated his words. I was sure he was wishing that it had been me even as he tried to comfort me.

  ‘Oh, it’s true, Owen. I’m not saying it to get any sympathy – I’m telling you to explain. I carried that around with me – that feeling that the wrong woman was dead. I still carry it with me. But anyway, I looked her up on Facebook and I saw this happy woman – who was so loved and cherished and had everything I’d ever wanted and I … God this sounds awful … I wanted some of that happiness. It wasn’t all that del
iberate at first. I was out of work. I needed something. I didn’t want just another job that paid the rent but gave me nothing else. I was so lonely,’ I said, the tears that had been threatening started to fall – cooling my cheeks, which were burning with shame. ‘So when the job was advertised I applied for it because Rose looked so happy – and she had friends and I wanted that. I wanted it so much and I was sure, when you offered me that job, that I was getting my second chance.’

  Owen put his heads in his hands. Donna sat as if frozen. I’m sure they were running over everything that had happened in the last few weeks – even down to my friendship with Cian – and wondering just how unhinged I was. Saying it out loud – thinking of how I had kept it from Maud, from my parents – maybe I was unhinged? There was no way to spin this in a positive way.

  ‘I thought I’d finally got it right for once in my stupid life. I was actually happy – and now, now I don’t know who I am any more. I don’t know who to trust, or what to believe. For all his faults – and you mightn’t want to hear this – I know Cian did love Rose very much. And Jack, I don’t see that he would ever risk Jack. I just don’t see it.’

  ‘It was a lie though,’ Owen said. ‘What you saw of Rose and her life – that was an illusion he made sure she put out there. He said he wanted to help her win friends and influence people – but it was more sinister than that.’

  Flashes of memories, wedding plans, pictures, the perfect relationship I had painted online with Ben – while everything was going wrong. But no – Rose looked happier than that. It looked genuine. Cian wrote her long love messages – messages she replied to. Heart emojis and smiley faces. Ben had never done that. Never engaged with me online. Not the Facebook type, I told people. I pinched the bridge of my nose, realised Owen was still talking.

  ‘He has a twisted idea of what love is. He may have loved her – but not in the right way. Not in a healthy way. I don’t think he knows how to love any differently than that. But Jack? That’s the one thing I can’t get my head around – when the police said it was on purpose – how he could risk his son? I didn’t think even Cian Grahame was that much of a monster.’