From Notting Hill with Love Actually

by Ali McNamara

  “Do you know something? It’s not!”

  Rose looked down at the tablecloth while I stared hard out of the window again. This time I didn’t even see the cars as they pulled up at the traffic lights. It had started raining, and the wet glass was a blur of colored lights merging like the inside of a kaleidoscope.

  “So?” I demanded, turning back to face her again after a few seconds. “Where were you when all this was going on?” I was on a roll now—a floodgate had been opened on thoughts, feelings and questions that I’d had bottled up inside me for over twenty years. And it was going to take a lot to stem the fast-flowing river that contained them. “Living it up in London? Or was it New York then—or Paris?”

  Rose looked confused. “How do you know I’ve lived in those places?”

  “I…I don’t. Lucky guess, I suppose.”

  “Scarlett, it’s a very, very long story.”

  “So, we’ve got all night—unless you’ve got something better to do?” I challenged her, our eyes meeting across the table.

  “No, nothing better.”

  “Plus, we have a bonus,” I said, glancing behind her.

  “We do?” Rose asked, looking confused again.

  “Yes, it looks like we now have apple pie to sustain us through your long story,” I said, as Greta placed two large helpings of apple pie covered in fresh cream on the table in front of us. There was a scoop of vanilla ice cream on the side of each plate.

  “Now, if Greta can get that right, I’m sure you’re going to be able to tell me just exactly why you ran out on us all those years ago, aren’t you, Rose?”

  Twenty-Eight

  By the time Rose had told me what she’d been doing over the last twenty years, her ice cream had all but melted, without the need of a hot apple pie to help it along.

  Rather than the wonderful, exciting life I’d thought my mother had had working in fashion and living in London, New York, and Paris, it appeared she’d spent most of her time rolling from one disastrous relationship to the next. It had been the men in my mother’s life that had taken her around the world, not her career.

  “So, Scarlett, my life has been quite a rollercoaster ride. One minute I’d be up in the air, living the dream with a rich man on my arm and a glamorous job to wake up to every morning. And the next, when it all went wrong, I’d plunge into the depths of despair, and sometimes even poverty, while I got myself back on my feet again. Now is one of those down times, I’m afraid, that’s why I took the job at the cinema.”

  “But at least you’ve had an exciting life. It hasn’t been boring, has it?”

  Rose laughed bitterly. “No, it certainly hasn’t been that. But if I could just go back in time…would I choose to do it all that way again? I’m really not sure I would.”

  “What do you mean, if you could go back in time? Are you saying you wouldn’t have left us if you’d known then what you do now?”

  Rose shook her head. “I really don’t know, Scarlett. Things were different back then. Your father is probably a completely changed man now from the Tom I knew.”

  “How do you mean?”

  Rose looked across the empty table at me. Greta had long since cleared our plates away—there were only two empty cups left now, and the rest of the café was deserted too. I think Greta and Charlie—the man in the white apron—were hoping to close up for the night. “Scarlett, do you really want to sit here and listen to me criticize your father? I don’t think you do—because it’s obvious that you won’t agree with me, and then we’ll just end up fighting, and I don’t want that to happen.”

  “I won’t say anything in Dad’s defense, I promise. I’ll just sit here and listen to your side of the story. All I really want to understand is why you left.”

  Rose looked around at the empty cafe. “Perhaps we should continue this elsewhere, then? I think they’re waiting for us to leave.”

  “All right,” I agreed. “But you will tell me the whole story, won’t you? You at least owe me that.”

  Rose nodded. “Yes, I’ll tell you.”

  We stood up and paid the bill. I insisted we go halves, even though Rose tried to pay for everything.

  I still couldn’t think of calling her anything other than Rose. Thinking of her as Mum was still too painful to contemplate.

  “Where should we go?” Rose asked, once we were standing on the pavement. “My flat is only a few tube stops from here.”

  “Let’s go to mine,” I said. “It’s just around the corner and the rain seems to be easing up now, so we won’t get wet.”

  Our walk to Lansdowne Road was quiet. Occasionally one of us would make a comment about the weather or something in one of the antique shop windows we passed. When I turned off the Portobello Road in the direction of my house, Rose spoke again.

  “You live along here? Either the popcorn business pays a lot more than I thought these days, or you’ve a very rich man in tow!”

  “Neither, I’m afraid.” Actually that wasn’t altogether true. David was quite wealthy—but he wasn’t the reason I was living here. “I’m house-sitting for friends,” I explained, taking the easy option.

  As we reached the house, I noticed that Sean’s light was on in his hall, and my hopes were raised for a moment. But then I remembered that light had been on every evening since we’d returned from Paris. He must have one of those night light things set up on a timer.

  I opened my own door and rushed through to deal with Buster.

  “Gosh, this is very nice,” Rose said, spinning around in the hall. “You’ve fallen on your feet here. How long are you staying for?”

  “About a couple of weeks,” I said, trying to remember how long I’d been here. Gosh, over halfway through my time already. “Coffee?” I asked, going into the kitchen. “Or perhaps something stronger?”

  “Coffee is just fine. But don’t let me stop you if—”

  “No, I’ll just take a coffee too.” I still couldn’t quite shift the aftertaste of the brandy.

  “So?” I asked when the coffee was made and we were sitting down in the lounge together on one of the brown leather settees. “Let’s hear it.”

  Rose took a sip of her drink, then put it down carefully on a glass coaster on the coffee table.

  She sat back in the seat and looked at me before speaking.

  “Scarlett, your father and I, we were always just a bit too different, I suppose. He was the calm, sensible one in the relationship—whereas I was livelier and much more…impulsive, I guess you’d call it.” She thought for a moment. “It was fine while we were courting; our differences were what kept our relationship fresh and exciting. And your father—he was a bit of a looker in those days, Scarlett. I always thought he had a touch of Harrison Ford about him.”

  Try as I might, I couldn’t help but smile at that image.

  “In the early eighties Harrison Ford was considered to be a bit of a catch,” Rose explained. “It was the height of the Star Wars craze.”

  I nodded. “Yes, I know.” But I still couldn’t see my father as anything but Dad, let alone Indiana Jones.

  “Anyway, eventually we got married. Everything was fine at first. Things weren’t a lot different than they were before. Except we now had the added worry of bills and mortgage payments every month—something your dad took a lot more seriously than me. And to be fair to him, it’s a good job someone did. Tom always wanted us to save our money, put it away for a rainy day, that kind of thing. And I wanted us to go out and continue living our lives as we had done before we’d got married. I wanted to enjoy life while I was still young. So as you can imagine, that caused many an argument.”

  I nodded; this all matched up to what little Dad had told me.

  “But whatever arguments we had over money, the bottom line was we still loved each other deeply, Scarlett, you have to remember that.”

  She paused and thought again.

  “About a year after we got married I fell pregnant with you. This put Tom into s
uper-saver overdrive, I’m afraid. We had to save money for the baby, for when I had to give up work, for when we needed to buy nappies, cots, and prams. I wasn’t allowed to buy anything without your father wanting to know why I’d bought this or spent money on that—every penny had to be accounted for. And it drove me mad, Scarlett.”

  I couldn’t blame her for that—it would have driven me mad too. David was bad enough, but at least I still had my own source of income.

  “But then you came along, and for a while everything changed. I was besotted with you—I think that’s the only way to describe it—really I was. You were the most important thing in my life—you have to believe that.”

  “So, what changed?” I had to ask. I’d been silent up until now.

  Rose shook her head. “I really don’t know for certain. I think now I may have had a form of postnatal depression. You have to remember back then it wasn’t as widely recognized in all its various forms as it is today. Yes, we knew about the ‘baby blues’ and no doubt if I’d sat at home all day sobbing I might have been diagnosed. I’ve done quite a lot of reading on the subject since the Internet came along. I can’t excuse what I did, Scarlett, but I can’t take all the blame either.”

  “Why? What happened to you? What made you so different from all the other mums who chose to stay with their babies?” My questions were all asked in the same detached voice. It was as if I was a journalist interviewing Rose for a story that had nothing to do with me. It was the only way I could deal with all of this—by keeping myself as far removed from the subject matter as I possibly could.

  Rose stared down at her hands which she had clasped together on her lap. “My emotions went in the opposite direction. There was no crying or endless sobbing; quite the opposite, in fact. I was so happy at becoming a mum that I wanted to go out and celebrate. The problem was I kept wanting to go out all the time. I think part of me wanted to cling to the fact I was still me—and not just someone’s mother.” She looked up at me. “You wait until it happens to you, Scarlett. You’ll know what I mean then. First you’re always Mrs. O’Brien when you go to the clinic, then Baby O’Brien’s mum, then suddenly everyone only knows you as Scarlett’s mother. You start to lose your own identity; no one calls you by your own name anymore.”

  “And this is the reason you left us?” I hadn’t been very impressed so far by her weak excuses. I was sure that everything she was telling me was the truth, but it just didn’t add up. Something was missing.

  “Partly, but I’m afraid there’s more to tell you yet.”

  Rose looked at me as if she was considering something.

  “You said you’d tell me everything,” I urged.

  “Yes, I did, you’re right.” She took a deep breath. “Well, these feelings grew worse, until I felt completely trapped within my own life. I can’t explain to you how awful that feels unless you’ve been there yourself, Scarlett. I almost felt I couldn’t breathe sometimes, as if my life was being suffocated out of me. I was just desperate to get away from it all for a while.”

  I could appreciate that feeling.

  “My only escape back then was going to the cinema. The funny thing is your dad and I actually met in a cinema; we used to love going to the pictures together. But when all this happened your dad changed—he wouldn’t go with me anymore, even when we could get a babysitter. He said it was filling my head with all sorts of nonsense, and it was the films that were making me unhappy, not anything else. He said they were giving me unrealistic expectations of how life should be.”

  This sounded a familiar tale too.

  “One day it all came to a head. I’d snuck off to the cinema to see an afternoon matinee while your father was at work. Unfortunately, he came home early that day and found you with one of our neighbors. He went mad when I came in. He said I was neglecting you and I wasn’t fit to be your mother.”

  Rose paused as she took another deep breath. This obviously wasn’t an easy story for her to tell. “He told me that if I thought life was so much better in the films I wanted to go and watch so badly, then perhaps I should go out and try to live my life in some of them.”

  I sucked in my own breath now. No…Dad would never say that, would he?

  “Then he seemed to calm down a bit. He suggested I go away for a while to clear my head and think about what I really wanted from my life. I think he thought some time away would get all the—well, he called it nonsense—out of my system once and for all.”

  “And did it?” I asked, already knowing the answer to my question.

  “I think you already know the answer to that, Scarlett.”

  “But how could you just abandon me like that? I was a baby, for goodness’ sake!” I knew I was being slightly hypocritical about this, considering my own current situation. But it was different. I’d only left David behind in Stratford—she’d left Dad and a six-month-old baby.

  “I didn’t want to at first. I thought your father meant for me to take you as well, but he insisted that you remain with him. He loved you so much I knew he couldn’t bear the thought of losing you. Plus, I think he saw you as a sort of security that I’d return home again.”

  “But you never did?”

  “No, I never did. But you have to believe me, Scarlett, at the time I didn’t think it would be forever. I just saw it as a break from you both—time to get my head around everything. Like I said before, I wasn’t thinking straight. I honestly thought I would return a better person and a better mother.”

  “So what happened, then?” I asked, unmoved by her excuses. “What was so wonderful that made you forget all about us?”

  “I never forgot you, Scarlett. Never.”

  I just stared at her, waiting for an answer.

  “I met someone else,” she said quietly.

  “Is that it?” I exploded, leaping to my feet. “You met someone else! You left your family behind forever because you got chatted up by some guy in a bar!”

  “No, it wasn’t like that, Scarlett. Please sit down, will you?” Rose held her hand out and gestured to the settee. “I am trying to explain.”

  Sullenly I sat back down.

  “You did say you wanted to know everything,” Rose prompted gently.

  “Go on then,” I said, folding my arms in front of my chest and leaning back against the cushions. “Explain away.”

  Rose took a sip of her coffee before continuing, as if a small delay in proceedings might allow me to calm down. “I met this man,” she began again, “not in a bar, but at the cinema, strangely enough. He was there on his own, and so was I. He was so different from your father—the complete opposite, in fact.” Rose became lost in her memories as she spoke. “Nothing happened at first; we were just friends. But then it became obvious we both wanted more from the relationship, and the inevitable happened.”

  I didn’t like this. It was all far too close to home.

  “He lived abroad—France, to be exact, on the south coast. He asked me to go back there and live with him, and I agreed. He just seemed like my perfect soulmate…” Rose re-emerged from her reverie. “Scarlett, you must know that feeling when you meet someone special? You feel wonderful when you’re in their company. Then when the two of you are apart, you both feel miserable and alone. After a while these feelings become so intense you simply can’t imagine your life without the other person being a part of it.”

  I knew just how that felt.

  “So I took the coward’s way out. I left the country without anyone knowing I’d gone.”

  “And me and Dad? What of us?” I demanded, feeling myself tense up again.

  “I wrote your father a letter a few weeks later, telling him where I was and what I was doing. I also told him that I’d be coming back to get you once I was settled in France with Jacques.”

  “But…”

  “I know—I never came back. Not immediately, anyway. It was six months later when I returned to England again. Jacques had ditched me for another woman—that was my first
experience of being dumped for a younger model. I tried to make ends meet in France, but I could hardly speak the language and so my job prospects were limited. I had to come home again. I took bar work for a while, a trade that’s seen me through many lean times since, I can tell you. But the hours weren’t suitable for looking after a young baby, so I promised myself that once I’d got my life sorted, I’d call around and see you and Tom again. I didn’t expect him to take me back or anything, but I was desperate to see you. And I knew if I had a good job and a nice place to live, there might be a chance I could regain custody of you again, or at least see you on a regular basis.”

  “So, what happened?”

  “I never got myself sorted. Well, I did, but that was only through a man again. Another rich one—this time he lived in London. Scarlett, I was living in a horrible little bedsit at the time. I saw a way out, and I took it.”

  “But at the expense of your family,” I said without feeling.

  Rose nodded sadly. “None of these men were interested in having children around—let alone one that wasn’t their own. So by the time that relationship had gone down the pan—like all the others did eventually—you would have been about two years old.”

  “We moved when I was two, to Stratford.”

  “Oh, is that where he took you? I did try to find out where you’d gone, but no one would tell me. Tom’s family just clammed up when I tried to get in touch. I can’t say I blame them, really.”

  I didn’t comment on this.

  “So that was it, end of the line—I had no choice but to get on with my own life then. But you have to believe me: I never wanted any of it to happen that way. I never wanted to abandon you. I always thought I’d be able to come back for you. And you have to know, Scarlett, I’ve always thought about you and wondered how you were doing—especially on your birthday.”

  “Which is?” I asked, testing her.

  “The 19th of March, of course.”

  She was right. I stood up and aimlessly wandered about the room. I couldn’t get my head around all this.