An Unsuitable Match

by Joanna Trollope

‘Ah,’ Prue said again. There was a pause and then she added, ‘May I ask you something?’

  ‘Anything. You know that.’

  ‘I’m just wondering,’ Prue said, ‘if you love this cottage more, if differently, than you love Tyler?’ She regarded her sister, who had gone from staring at the floor to staring fixedly out of the window. ‘The thing is, Rosie, that if Tyler means to you what I think you intend to convey he means to you, wouldn’t you be happy to live with him anywhere?’

  *

  Jess watched television drama, or films, Nat thought, the way he watched sport: with that kind of deaf, focused attention that could not be distracted. If he sat right next to Jess while she was watching a play, and kissed her neck or tried to touch her in the most seducing manner, she took no notice at all. She didn’t try and swat him away as if he were no more than an annoying insect, she simply could not feel him or be affected by him in the smallest degree. She was, he thought admiringly, completely and utterly impervious to him. Impervious, in fact, to everything but what was happening on screen. So he knew to wait until the weekend television showing of Citizen Kane was entirely over, before he spoke.

  ‘Jess?’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘Can – can we talk?’

  She turned to look at him. ‘About what?’

  He fidgeted a bit on the sofa, turned himself sideways, slung an arm along the back.

  ‘This flat.’

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘What about this flat? I think it’s lovely.’

  ‘It is,’ Nat said. ‘It’s not the flat. It’s Tim.’

  Jess made a sweeping gesture. ‘Tim? What’s the matter with Tim? I like Tim.’

  ‘So do I,’ Nat said hastily, ‘he’s cool. He’s a great guy. But you know we thought we’d like the flat to ourselves?’

  Jess turned to regard him. Her eyes were huge.

  ‘Did we?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, we did. We thought how great it’d be if it could just be us, here. No Tim. So I had an idea of asking my parents if they could help, with money I mean, and – well, I’m really sorry, Jess, but they can’t. I’m so sorry. Really I am. But it looks as if – Tim’ll have to stay.’

  Jess gazed at him. Then she shook her head. ‘What?’

  ‘I’m so sorry, but—’

  ‘Nat,’ Jess said, smiling broadly at him. ‘Whose idea was this? Was it mine? Was it? I mean’ – she gestured at the living space – ‘this flat is about a million times more luxy than anywhere I’ve ever lived, and you think I think sharing the space with Tim is a problem?’

  ‘I just thought you and I might like—’

  ‘Listen,’ Jess said, leaning forward, putting her hand, to electrifying effect, on his thigh. ‘Listen, babe. It is so cool here. It’s amazing. I haven’t lived anywhere like this, ever. But . . .’ She paused, and took her hand away.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘It’s lovely, being with you. I love it. Sometimes it’s more than lovely, it’s fantastic. But, babe, it isn’t really my scene. You aren’t my natural scene. I love your sister. I’m sure I’ll love your twin sister in time. This is all great, you are great, but don’t get heavy with me, don’t start wanting more from me than I ever signed up for, just don’t.’ She leaned further forward and kissed his cheek and he caught a breath of the scent of her, warm and slightly spicy. ‘Live in the moment, babe,’ she said, her mouth almost touching his. ‘Don’t plan, don’t be so serious about everything. What’s that tag? Carpe diem? Well do it, babe, do it. Seize the day and fuck tomorrow. OK?’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Rose had appeared to be in no hurry to get back to London. Prue had assumed that they would have coffee together, and then Rose would gather up her bag and her jacket and start talking about the train she needed to catch, but, on the contrary, Rose had wanted to look at Prue’s garden and, while staring at the ginkgo tree that Prue had grown from a cutting given to her by a colleague twenty years ago, said rather vaguely that she supposed she had better be back in London by early evening.

  So Prue, ever decisive, had taken her into Lewes for lunch in her favourite cafe, where she urged Rose to have a glass of wine.

  ‘No. No, I really don’t want one. Especially if you’re not having one.’

  ‘I’m driving,’ Prue said.

  ‘Then I can’t, I really can’t.’

  ‘I think you should.’

  ‘Why? Why do you think I need a glass of wine?’

  Prue was studying the menu. ‘It will relax you,’ she said.

  ‘For heaven’s sake!’ Rose exclaimed. ‘I don’t need relaxing! What do you mean?’

  Prue put the menu down. ‘Just that.’

  Rose gazed at her, mutely.

  ‘Have a glass of wine,’ Prue said, ‘and then you can tell me what is the matter.’

  Rose said, almost in a whisper, ‘I don’t know what is the matter.’

  Prue grunted. ‘I usually have the salad of the day here, and then a slice of apple and cinnamon cake with my coffee. Would that suit you?’

  ‘Lovely,’ Rose said absently.

  ‘Rosie.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You didn’t answer my question.’

  Rose looked past her sister, and out into the cafe.

  ‘Which question?’

  ‘You know perfectly well. When you were raving about this cottage and I asked you whether you were more in love with the cottage than you were with Tyler because if you were madly in love with him, presumably you’d live anywhere as long as you could be together?’

  Rose said obdurately, ‘The salad of the day sounds a very good choice.’

  ‘I’ll order two then,’ Prue said. ‘And then we’ll wait. I can wait for a very long time, Rosie. I spent my working life dealing with children, after all. I’m very used to waiting.’

  Rose sighed. Then she said slowly, ‘I love Tyler. I really do. And nobody in my life has ever been as sweet to me as he is. All the time.’

  ‘But?’ Prue said.

  Rose retrieved her gaze from across the cafe. She rearranged the cutlery on the table a little.

  ‘I’m a bit frightened . . .’ she began.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About – money,’ Rose said, lining up the forks. ‘About being dependent again. Or maybe having someone, who isn’t one of my children, being dependent on me. About not being able to control how other people – someone else – spends money or thinks about money.’

  ‘Yes,’ Prue said.

  There was a silence. Then Rose said, as if she was thinking aloud, ‘I suppose I’ve got used to my independence. And the freedom of that. I mean, I’d made a perfectly good life for myself, hadn’t I? I was more than managing, I was taking a kind of pride in managing. And I’m not saying I wish this had never happened, I wouldn’t dream of suggesting that this glorious thing would have been better as a fantasy than a reality, but I’ve just had some sobering thoughts recently, I’ve found myself less – well, carried away if you like. I can’t seem to match his utter certainty about everything to do with the future.’ She raised her head and looked miserably at Prue. ‘I feel such a killjoy.’

  Prue picked up the menu again.

  ‘Men are such romantics. Far more romantic than women, when it comes to it. What woman would ever have thought that founding an empire was a good notion?’

  ‘Prue?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Do you think I am a passionless killjoy?’

  ‘Has he said that?’

  ‘No,’ Rose said. ‘He wouldn’t, probably, even think of saying such a thing. But I think it. Fear it.’

  ‘No,’ Prue said calmly, ‘I don’t and you aren’t. It’s sense and sensibility again. Most women grow out of sensibility. Less glamorous but more useful.’

  Rose spread her hands and regarded her aquamarine.

  ‘It’s really unfair even to ask you this, but what do you think I should do?’

  ‘Exactly what we’re doing now,’ Prue sai
d. ‘Just wait. Don’t do anything. Just wait. And while we’re waiting, I am going to order you that wine.’

  *

  Nat stood gazing up at the façade of Emmy’s building. He had told himself that walking past Emmy’s front door was on his way home from the Clerkenwell Road anyway, but he was well aware that he didn’t need to stop outside and look up the dark-brick façade to the full-length double windows, behind a black-iron balustrade, that indicated her studio flat. He observed that the windows on the floor above hers were shorter and garnished with flowering window boxes, and that the ones on the floor below hers had deep pink heart shapes stuck to the glass. It was only when he looked back at Emmy’s windows, on the third floor, that he realized she was standing behind them, and looking straight back down at him.

  For a full half-minute, neither of them moved. And then Emmy reached up to unlatch half the window, and opened it back into the room behind. She leaned forward and put her hands on the balustrade.

  ‘Come up,’ she said.

  He swallowed, still standing in the street, staring upwards.

  ‘I was just passing.’

  ‘Of course,’ Emmy said, ‘it’s on your way home. I said, come up.’

  ‘Em . . .’

  She bent over the balustrade. ‘We’re not having this conversation in the street, Nat. Come up.’

  Her front door was open when he reached her landing.

  ‘No need to hiss at me.’

  Emmy was standing in the middle of the room, holding her phone.

  ‘I wasn’t hissing. I just didn’t want the whole of Crawford Passage hearing our conversation.’

  ‘Are we going to have a conversation?’

  She put her phone down on the coffee table, on a pile of magazines.

  ‘Of course we are. Isn’t that why you were standing in the street?’

  He gave her a quick glance.

  ‘I don’t know why I was standing in the street.’

  ‘Instinct?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Nat,’ Emmy said, ‘don’t be such a prize muppet. You were standing there because we need to see each other. I asked you up because we need to see each other. We’ve got ourselves at real cross-purposes. Haven’t we?’

  He nodded slowly. He said, ‘You look great.’

  She surveyed him up and down. ‘You look a bit thin.’

  He grinned, sheepishly. ‘Not a lot of sleep.’

  ‘Don’t want to hear about that,’ Emmy said. ‘Don’t want to think about that.’

  He came across the room and embraced her awkwardly.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘About everything.’

  She didn’t fight him off, but she didn’t return his embrace either.

  ‘Me too,’ Emmy said. She moved back a pace or two. ‘Coffee?’ she asked. ‘Glass of water?’

  He said heavily, ‘Just water, thanks,’ and then, as if remembering his manners, ‘How’s work?’

  ‘Brilliant,’ Emmy said, taking a plastic bottle of water from the fridge and handing it to him. She indicated the sofa. ‘Why don’t you sit?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Nat,’ Emmy said, ‘why don’t you be normal? Why don’t you stop behaving like someone I’ve hardly met and just help yourself to the sofa like usual?’

  Nat sat down on the edge of the sofa and put his elbows on his knees, swinging the water bottle by its neck.

  ‘Sorry.’

  Emmy came to sit beside him. She reached to take the bottle out of his hand and put it on the table.

  ‘What’s happened, Nat?’

  ‘Nothing, really. Nothing major anyway.’

  ‘Has she dumped you?’

  His head jerked round to stare at her.

  ‘Why d’you ask?’

  ‘Because,’ Emmy said impatiently, ‘you look so abject. On top of coming round here and wanting to make it up with me.’

  ‘She hasn’t.’

  ‘What? Finished with you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What then? Work? Mum?’

  Nat’s head swung back again to stare at the floor between his knees.

  ‘She just said – that I wasn’t – The One. The forever and ever one. That I was kind of fine for now, but that I wasn’t really her type.’

  ‘Of course you aren’t!’

  He muttered, ‘I thought I was. She is, for me.’

  Emmy leaned back into the sofa cushions.

  ‘No, she isn’t. She’s just mind-blowingly different and exciting because she’s different.’

  Nat leaned back too, slowly and carefully as if he were an invalid. He said, ‘I think my heart is broken.’

  Emmy turned her head against the cushions to regard him.

  ‘No it isn’t, you fuckwit. It’s a bit bruised, or your pride is a bit bruised, but it’ll recover. There’ll be other Jesses.’

  ‘I don’t want there to be. I just want her.’

  ‘Look at me,’ Emmy commanded. He rolled his head so that their eyes were a foot away from each other.

  ‘It isn’t her,’ Emmy said. ‘Or it isn’t basically her. It’s not being The One for her that’s getting you.’

  He said unhappily, ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Emmy said, ‘but I’m guessing. I’m guessing that when it’s The One, you feel safe as well as blown away. I’ve been thinking a bit, lately, about relationships and things. I’ve been thinking, actually, about Mum.’

  ‘What about Mum?’

  Emmy turned her head back to stare at the ceiling.

  ‘I don’t think Mum was very happy with Dad. I don’t think she was relaxedly happy.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I mean,’ Emmy said, waving her hands for emphasis, ‘he’s fine and all that, and we love him because he’s Dad and everything, but he was a bit of a player, always, wasn’t he? And it wasn’t just him being unfaithful that Mum had to put up with, it was him being so superior to her always, the great heart surgeon and the little wifey doing a spot of medical translation in her spare time for pin money. If you think about it, he was always patronizing her. And Tyler doesn’t. Whatever we think about the situation with Tyler, he thinks the world of her, he doesn’t ever put her down; in fact he does the reverse, he thinks everything she does and says is a kind of miracle of loveliness and cleverness. I think, Nat, she feels safe with him like she never did with Dad.’

  ‘Mm,’ Nat said. ‘D’you think she knows that?’

  ‘Not really. But maybe it explains why she gets ratty with us about this marriage thing, because she can’t understand why we don’t seem to get it.’

  Nat thought for a moment, lying back against the sofa cushions, staring at Emmy’s profile. Then he said, ‘Good thinking, Em.’

  She peeled herself upright. ‘I think you’d better go home, lover boy. There’ll be supper.’

  He sat slowly up, beside her. ‘Jess doesn’t cook.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘So it’s takeaways. We practically have our own Deliveroo team.’

  Emmy took care not to smile. ‘There you go, then. And Tim?’

  Nat got to his feet. ‘Tim’s staying.’

  Emmy stood too. She bent to glance at the time on her phone. ‘Good. And I must go, anyway.’

  ‘Go? Go where?’

  Emmy shot him a quick look. She had the ghost of a smile. ‘I’ve got a date.’

  ‘Em!’

  Emmy picked up her phone and put it in her pocket.

  ‘Thank you for sounding so astonished. It’s just Matt, from work. Ginger with a line in checked shirts. Completely not my type.’ She grinned at him. ‘So who knows?’

  *

  All her working life, Laura had been able to compartmentalize mentally. Whatever Angus might think and say about her commitment to work hovering perpetually over their domestic life, Laura had clung to the conviction that everyone in her life knew, without doubt, that when she was at work, she was at work, and when she was home, she was firmly home. It was therefor
e disconcerting to find that her mind these days was refusing – or was unable – to change gear as cleanly and completely as she had always relied upon it doing. Gradually, over the recent weeks, her preoccupation with Rose, and the declared prospect of Rose’s future, was seeping into at least the neutral zones of her carefully constructed life, and taking over the journeys to and from the surgery or the hospital or – even – on a much-discouraged home visit. In the time it took to make one home visit, the senior partner in the practice was fond of saying, a doctor might see four or five patients in surgery.

  Rose’s situation was increasingly, Laura thought, like a car – or some other vehicle – whose brakes had failed and which was careering ever faster downhill and out of control. Rose had told her about the Canadian Gaffneys, who had so fallen for her house and had made an offer on the spot, which Rose, to Laura’s dismay, appeared to have immediately accepted. She had also described, in lyrical terms, the Hampshire cottage and declared that the offer, below the asking price, that she and Tyler had made had also been accepted. And to crown it all – and, Laura felt, almost the worst plan of all in its blithe gallop into sheer folly – was this party.

  Laura was trying very hard not to encourage the case in her mind against Tyler, not to share Jack’s dislike of Rose’s engagement ring. But it was hard, she admitted to Angus, very hard. It hadn’t been Rose’s idea, after all, to sell the mews house or to go house-hunting for a country cottage, and it hadn’t been her idea, either, to throw a party. Rose’s friends were the small circle of chiefly women friends she had known in Highgate, friends made at the school gate or on the professional circuit of their husbands’ lives. Those whom Laura had spoken to had been divided into the romantics and the disapproving prudent, but had been united in telling Laura that her mother’s choice was her mother’s undoubted choice, and had to be gone along with.

  ‘It’s no good,’ Jenny Dodds had said on the phone to her, ‘you three sitting in judgement and reproof. You may well be right – in fact, I personally think you are – but Rose is choosing for herself at long last, and she has the opportunity and means to do so. She’ll be more than aware of what you all think, but in the end, she can do as she pleases, and unless you three go along with her, you’ll find yourselves missing one of the fundamental relationships of your life. And I can tell you, having fought with my own mother all my life, you don’t want that. Especially not with a mother like Rose. It would be a criminal waste.’