He leaned forward slightly, holding her hands.
‘What does, Rosie?’
She pulled her hands free. ‘I don’t know. I just feel frightened.’
‘Of me? Surely not of me. The last thing I want or intend on this earth is for you to feel anything but utterly safe with me.’
She looked at him uncertainly.
‘No. Not you.’
‘Who then?’
‘I don’t know. Life, perhaps. Or myself. Perhaps I’m frightened by myself.’
He took a step closer. He said, ‘That’s what I’m here for. To see you are never frightened again. To make sure of it.’
‘Tyler,’ Rose said, ‘we can’t undo our lives up to this moment. We are as we are. We are what we’ve become. So I might not want to feel scared about selling this house, but I find that I am. Very. So I have to try and deal with that, and so do you. You’ve never lived anywhere that mattered to you, after all, have you?’
He said energetically, ‘I’m longing to.’
‘I get it. I understand that. I know it makes you want to get on with things. Well, I’m the reverse. I don’t want to sell this house; I don’t want to live somewhere else, however much I want to live a new life with you. I’m torn. I’m really torn. And you will simply have to be patient with that; you will have to go along at my pace rather than yours.’
He put his hands on her shoulders. ‘Why?’
She looked at him directly.
‘Don’t make me spell it out.’
‘Because you have more money than I do?’
She said nothing. He tried to smile.
‘How sad,’ he said.
‘In what way? Sad that it should be so or sad that it isn’t more romantic?’
‘Both,’ he said. He dropped his hands. ‘Why can’t we decide everything together? Do everything together?’
She reached out and laid a hand on his chest.
‘I’ve had seven years of doing and deciding on my own. I can’t flip the switch of those seven years just like that.’
‘How long do you think it will take?’
‘I have no idea. I’m still getting used to falling in love, after all.’
He said seriously, ‘You are in love?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Rosie . . .’
‘What?’
‘Sweetheart, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for rushing you. I don’t want to rush you. I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to at a pace that doesn’t suit you. I want you to be safe and happy. I want you to feel like you’ve never felt before, in all your life.’
There was discreet throat-clearing from the doorway. They both glanced up. Sherif Yilmaz stood there wearing the expression of one who has consciously seen and heard nothing.
‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘if I might look at this room and the kitchen? And the garden possibly?’
‘Of course.’
‘I have to say, Mrs Woodrowe, that from what I have seen so far, this is, as I said before, an exceptional property.’
‘Oh,’ Rose said. ‘Yes. I know.’
‘How very gratifying it will be,’ Sherif said, advancing into the room, ‘to be marketing such a gem.’
‘If you do.’
He gave a little half-bow. ‘Of course.’
Rose did not look Tyler’s way. She gestured towards the kitchen.
‘As long as that’s understood, then. Please. Help yourself.’
*
‘It’ll be my dad,’ Nat said to Jess Ballantyne. ‘It’s my turn for the Sunday morning call. Except he’s playing golf or something so it’s Saturday night instead.’
They had just come back from supper in a tapas restaurant with a whole crowd of Jess’s friends. Nat was an exotic in such a circle, cherished for his preppy weekend clothes and mocked for his work with – ugh – money. He was blithe about the latter. As he said to Jess, handing over his credit card for yet another meal or round of drinks, he had the dignity and the freedom afforded by having the means to pay for what they had just consumed. Didn’t he?
Jess had been amazed by his flat. The first time he took her back, she had looked around her in astonishment, and then tiptoed round it touching surfaces in awe as if, he said affectionately, she was used to living in a squat. Or a cardboard box.
‘I practically do,’ she said, gazing at his bathroom as if she had never seen such a phenomenon before. ‘You wouldn’t believe where I’ve lived. I’d never let my mother anywhere near where I lived. She’d have a fit.’
‘I think,’ Nat said, trapping her against a doorframe, ‘that you exaggerate in an actressy way to make a drama.’
She tipped her head back. ‘Maybe.’
He kissed her neck. ‘That’s a yes, then.’
She laughed her throaty theatrical laugh, and put her arms round his neck.
‘Show me,’ she said, ‘where your bedroom is.’
Now, of course, she was living there. The bathroom, which previously had only contained the shower gels and facial scrubs of Nat and his male lodger, became a – to Nat – seductive chaos of cosmetics and discarded scraps of lingerie. He adored being unable to find his razor, or toothbrush, in the disorder round the washbasin as much as he enjoyed the male ritual of grumbling about it. His sheets smelled of her perfume, her hair clogged up his shower, there was purple nail varnish by the coffee maker and lipstick-smeared cigarette butts – appalling and thrilling in equal measure – in cheap glass ashtrays that she had half-inched from outside tables at bars, and brought back to sit beside his carefully sourced items from Alessi. He was electrified by all of it, from her presence in his flat to the evenings in her friends’ voluble company. He had never, he thought, felt so alive.
But there was a problem. It wasn’t a big problem, but it was there. That, and the other thing. The Emmy thing. Nat reckoned that the Emmy thing would iron itself out in time, but the first problem was something he needed to talk to his father about, and it was his turn for his father to ring from Melbourne, and report on another extraordinary and flawless Australian sunrise.
Nat indicated to Jess that he was going to take the call into the bedroom. She was already lolling on the sofa with the TV on, and merely blew him a kiss for encouragement. He had said that he needed to talk to his father about his mother, and Jess had worn her caring and respectful expression in response.
‘Absolutely, babes. You do what you need to do.’
Nat closed the bedroom door and sat down on the edge of the unmade bed. He would never, in the past, have left his bed unmade, but Jess was encouraging him to live, to obey his impulses, not to give in to thinking ahead all the time, planning for eventualities that might never happen, exhausting himself with pessimistic apprehensions.
‘Dad,’ Nat said. ‘How’s Oz?’
‘Well,’ William said, his voice pained with the obligation to be honest, ‘it’s raining. Of course, we desperately need the rain. The cattle and sheep farmers are really suffering.’
‘Mm,’ Nat said. His eyes strayed to the crumpled pillows, to a wisp of black netting that might be what passed for underwear in Jess’s wardrobe.
‘Otherwise,’ William said vigorously, ‘all more than well. Job good, health excellent, everything splendid. And you?’
Nat lay back on the bed and pulled the scrap of netting out of the folds of the duvet. It was underwear. He laid it on his forehead and closed his eyes.
‘Dad,’ he said, ‘it’s fantastic. Fantastic, here.’
‘Good Lord,’ William said, ‘you sound as if you’re in love.’
‘I am. Completely.’
‘Right,’ William said. ‘Right. Splendid. It was bound to happen. Who is she?’
Nat put a hand up to his forehead and opened one eye.
‘She’s an actress. She’s called Jess Ballantyne. A serious actress. She’s just been in an Ibsen and is waiting to hear about an audition for the Young Vic.’
‘An actress.’
‘Yes, Dad. I h
ad no idea Shakespeare was so brilliant. I’ve been to some auditions now. He knew about everything.’
‘You did Shakespeare at school,’ William said repressively.
‘Yes, but Henry V and battles and all that. Boy stuff. Not all this wonderful insight into the human psyche, you know?’
‘Well,’ William said. ‘Good. Always good to widen one’s horizons.’
‘The thing is, Dad, I want to ask you something.’
‘Ah.’
‘I – kind of want this flat to myself now. I mean, just Jess and me. You know? I’d quite like Tim to go. Tim, my lodger. I mean, he’s fine and out a lot and pretty unobtrusive, but I really want it to be Jess and me.’
There was a pause, and then William said, ‘But Tim pays the mortgage.’
‘I know, Dad.’
‘So if Tim’s contribution goes, what will make up the shortfall?’
Nat closed his eyes and laid his hand flat on Jess’s underwear.
‘I was hoping – you might.’
‘Me!’
‘Well, the flat’s yours, really, isn’t it, so I thought you would think it was in your interests . . .’
‘No,’ William said.
Nat opened his eyes and sat up, dislodging the underwear.
‘Please, Dad.’
‘Nat,’ William said weightily, ‘I can’t afford it. I can’t afford any more help. I’ve done my bit by all three of you as far as property is concerned, and I can’t do any more. Ask your mother.’
‘Mum?’
‘Yes,’ William said, his voice gathering energy, ‘ask your mother. She’s the one with a valuable property. She’s the one who apparently wants to kick over the traces and marry again, for God’s sake, so ask her. When did you last see her?’
Nat was suddenly bewildered.
‘I don’t know, maybe a couple of weeks ago.’
‘I thought you went with her to see a solicitor?’
‘I did. I—’
‘Well? I gather the solicitor was pretty clear.’
Nat picked up the black netting again and crushed it in his palm.
‘She was.’
‘And your mother didn’t like it.’
‘No.’
‘Of course she didn’t,’ William said triumphantly. ‘She didn’t like being told she couldn’t indulge a whim. A mere whim. Any more than you do. She doesn’t want a pre-nup and you don’t want a lodger. Well, Nat, sorry but we can’t always have what we want.’
Nat shouted suddenly, ‘How dare you!’
A second later, the bedroom door opened. Jess stood there, adorably, insanely, wearing only one stiletto. She mouthed at him, ‘You OK?’
He patted the bed beside him, indicating that she should limp across and sit down. He put an arm round her and pulled her close.
‘I shall ring off now,’ William said in a stately voice, ‘I shall conclude this call, and leave you to reflect a little.’
Nat pressed his mouth into the side of Jess’s head. He dropped his phone onto the bed beside him and from it, from Australia, came the sound of William’s voice, comfortingly ridiculous in its disembodiment.
‘Goodbye, Nat. Take some time to calm down. And give my love to your sisters.’
*
Mallory had gone to stay with a friend who had a basement flat in Brooklyn, and with her laptop open on the friend’s cluttered table against a backdrop of famed posters from the Cuban Revolution, she Skyped Emmy in London.
‘Miss you already,’ Mallory said.
It was the evening and Emmy was lying on her sofa, her laptop balanced on her stomach.
‘We’re mad,’ Emmy said. ‘We wasted all those months. We could have been friends all along.’
‘Better late than never.’
‘Come back.’
‘No,’ Mallory said, ‘you come here.’
‘I’d love to.’
‘Come!’
‘There’s less and less to keep me here.’
‘Em,’ Mallory said, ‘have you met Jess yet?’
‘No. And you didn’t let your father come to the airport.’
‘But you did. Come, I mean. And I called him. I called him from Heathrow and I called him from here.’
‘Was he miffed?’
‘No,’ Mallory said. She was eating what looked like a bagel while she was talking. She added, round a mouthful, ‘He only wanted to talk about cottages.’
‘Cottages!’
‘He and your mother are planning to go live in the country in a cottage.’
‘What?’
Mallory wiped some cream cheese off her lower lip. She said, ‘Why don’t you ask her?’
‘Mal . . .’
‘Why don’t you ask her,’ Mallory repeated, chewing her bagel, ‘what she and my father think they’re doing?’
Emmy said sadly, ‘I wish you were here.’
‘Are you coming on to me?’
‘No,’ Emmy said, still sadly, ‘not like that. I just need an ally in all this.’
‘Nat and Jess—’
‘Them too.’
‘Then get your ass over here,’ Mallory said, leaning towards the screen.
‘I can’t afford to.’
‘Sure you can! I’ll find you somewhere to stay.’
‘I haven’t got leave left, at work. I haven’t got the fare.’
‘Sugar,’ Mallory said, ‘ask your mom.’
‘What, for an airfare?’
‘Sure. Why not?’
Emmy squirmed a little.
‘I can’t. She’s always been – so generous. I can’t ask her for more.’
Mallory leaned back. She screwed up the bag her bagel had come in and that she’d been using as a plate. Emmy watched her aim for a bin in the room behind her.
‘Gee,’ Mallory said. ‘Missed.’
‘Whose flat is that?’
‘It’s called an apartment here, Em. It belongs to someone who used to teach fight movement at my drama school. Mostly, he’s with his boyfriend in Queens. You could stay here. Yes! Come stay here.’
‘Oh I wish!’ Emmy said. ‘I wish.’
Mallory leaned so close to the screen that her mouth was almost touching it. Emmy watched her with fascination.
‘Ask your mom,’ Mallory said again. ‘What’s to lose? Ask her.’
*
‘Oh,’ Emmy said.
She looked past her mother into her mother’s sitting room where Tyler sat, in an armchair, looking very much at home.
‘What, darling?’
Emmy shrugged.
‘I thought – I kind of thought it’d just be you and me. When I rang. I thought, when you said come round, that it would be like it used to be here.’
Rose gave her a second kiss.
‘Sometimes it is, Em. But not this evening. Tyler’s here for supper and . . .’ She stopped and then she said, ‘And now you are. I’ve made a prawn curry. You know, one of those aromatic Thai ones.’ She turned and called to Tyler, ‘Emmy’s here!’
He got up at once and came across the room, smiling broadly. Then, despite Emmy making no indication that she would welcome an embrace, he put his arm round her and kissed her warmly on the cheek.
‘How lovely,’ Tyler said. ‘A daughter. And one who can tell me all about mine.’
Emmy stood there in his embrace. Then she said, ‘She said she rang you.’
Tyler didn’t take his arm away.
‘She did. She did indeed. And she said that you were there to see her off.’ He gave her shoulders a squeeze and dropped his arm. ‘As long as someone was there, you know.’
Rose said carefully, ‘I don’t think you should disguise how hurt you were, Tyler.’
He smiled genially. ‘I wasn’t hurt, exactly.’
‘You were.’
‘Well,’ he said, shrugging, ‘I did think it was a bit odd, just leaving like that after these months together. I mean, I wouldn’t even have come to London if it hadn’t been for Mallory. And then’ �
�� he glanced at Rose – ‘I never would have met your mother again.’
Emmy let a beat fall, and then she said, ‘Exactly.’
Rose walked quickly across the room, saying over her shoulder, ‘I’m just going to check on my prawns.’
Tyler looked at Emmy. He said quietly, ‘Are you and Mallory determined to play aggrieved teenagers over this forever?’
Emmy didn’t look at him. She looked over his shoulder instead. She said, ‘Woodrowes are used to talking frankly to our mother, about everything, so it’s taking us a little time to adjust to her having secrets from us.’
‘Secrets?’
Emmy moved away from him towards the sitting room. ‘This cottage idea . . .’
‘Yes?’
She halted and looked pointedly at the slew of papers and brochures on the carpet around the chair in which he’d been sitting. She said, in an accusatory voice, ‘Mallory says you are planning to buy a cottage together.’
He laughed. He said easily, ‘Emmy, that’s no secret.’
‘Then why hasn’t Mum told me? Us? Why are there suddenly all these plans we don’t know about?’
Rose appeared in the kitchen doorway, untying the apron she wore – had always worn, Emmy thought, with a rush of bitter nostalgia – while cooking. She said, almost too brightly, ‘I love that you can get everything you ever want in London, however exotic. I’d never even heard of sumac a few years ago.’
Tyler said, ‘Emmy didn’t know about us looking for a cottage.’
Rose began to fold her apron with elaborate care.
‘Darling Em, it’s just an idea. No more than that.’
‘Mallory knew about it.’
‘I told Mallory,’ Tyler said. ‘I’d have told her a whole lot more if I’d only had the chance to see her.’
Rose said to Emmy, ‘We’re just thinking about the future. Trying ideas out, that kind of thing.’
‘Sweetheart,’ Tyler said, ‘I think it’s all got a bit further than that, don’t you?’
Emmy was staring at Rose’s hand. ‘What’s that?’
Rose, encumbered still by her apron, immediately clasped her left hand with her right, as if for protection.
‘It’s my ring. It’s a present from Tyler.’
‘It’s an engagement ring,’ Tyler said proudly. ‘A nineteenth-century aquamarine, which, amazingly, has survived all this time, because aquamarines aren’t as hard as diamonds. Isn’t it pretty?’
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