Rose left Maddie sitting on the floor of the small en-suite shower cubicle, with a drizzle of warm water pouring down on her, as she chatted away to Bear, who was sitting safely on the sink. Leaving the door into the bedroom open, Rose sat on the edge of her bed and switched on her phone. It chirruped angrily into life immediately, buzzing with a throng of text messages and her voice mail service ringing. Her stomach filling with dread, Rose collected her messages.
He had left the first one just after she had bundled Maddie into the car and gone. It was quiet, apologetic, reasonable, kind. There was that ever-present implication that she was overreacting again, that she was irrational, tired, doing too much, needed help.
“Just come home, darling,” Richard’s voice nestled in her ear. “Come home and let me take care of you. We can sort this out.”
Rose deleted it and listened to the next message, and the next. He’d left more than twenty in all, filling her voice mail, each angrier and more frustrated than the last. Rose listened to a part of each and then deleted it, knowing what was coming next, knowing his patterns and habits inside out. For most of her married life she’d learnt to defuse his fury in its early stages, to back down, to agree, to nod and smile and keep her mouth shut. But this time she was not there, and her voice mail was taking the brunt of his wrath. Rose knew if she wanted to hear how her husband was really feeling then she needed to listen to his most recent message, left at seven twenty-two p.m., when they had been eating dinner. That’s when the real Richard had finally shown his hand.
“I’ve had it with you this time, Rose.” His voice was tight, thick with rage. “I try, and I try to deal with all your . . . stupidity, but this time you’ve gone too far. You can’t take our child and disappear without expecting repercussions. Everyone knows that you haven’t been yourself, everyone knows how difficult and unbalanced you are. And that Maddie has a delicate disposition. Let me tell you there are serious question marks over your fitness to be a parent. If you don’t contact me today I will have no choice but to inform the police, and social services, if need be. Because believe me, Rose, I will find you and when I do, I’ll make sure you never see Maddie again. You have until midnight, and if I haven’t heard from you by then, well, gloves are off, Rose.”
Stifling the sob of anxiety that clogged her throat, Rose deleted the call and stared at the phone sitting so benignly in the palm of her hand. This was how Richard always won, by persuading her she was being foolish, that she was overreacting, being irrational, seeing things all wrong, and finally, most recently, by implying that she was losing it altogether, that her fragile mind was finally cracking, disintegrating. She was the daughter of an alcoholic father and a suicidal mother, so it was hardly surprising really that her mental health was finally giving in to genetics, despite the care that Richard had taken of her.
“You see me as the enemy,” Richard had said to her on that final afternoon. “But don’t you see, Rose, you are your own worst enemy? Without me to protect you, you have no idea how to survive.”
What if he was right? After all, here she was, hiding in a picture postcard, chasing a signature on a letter that was nothing more than a half-formed memory, a delusion. What if she was more like her mother than she ever realized? Anyone looking at this situation from the outside would be on Richard’s side. She knew anyone sensible would be, and that’s what frightened her the most. A trusted and respected GP, Richard had it well within his powers to carry out his threat to the letter, and the whole world would be on his side. And yet, there was one person who knew the truth.
Peering round the door to check that Maddie was still happy composing songs to conquer the world under the drizzle of the shower, Rose dialed the number of the only person in the world she could truly call a friend. She phoned Shona.
“Fuck’s sake,” Shona greeted her. “I thought he’d done for you. I thought you were under the floorboards, babe. I tried phoning you, but all it said was that your voice mail was full. Full of that shit, no doubt.”
“How did you know I’d gone?” Rose asked. She’d had no plans to meet Shona that she hadn’t turned up for; they rarely spoke on the phone or texted, always making their arrangements in person, face-to-face.
“He came here looking for you this morning,” Shona told her. “All polite concern, sweetness and light, ‘It’s Maddie I’m worried about, Rose hasn’t been herself for weeks, there’s no telling what she might do,’ and all that bollocks. I told him I haven’t seen you in months, so why would I know anything about you?”
Rose wasn’t sure when her friendship with Shona became a secret that both of them kept from their partners, she only knew that it seemed like the only way of keeping it intact. Richard didn’t like her to have friends he didn’t approve of, and as for Shona’s boyfriend . . . he hated Rose with a passion, blaming her completely for his and Shona’s breakup. Shona often joked that all the sneaking around they did to see each other was just as complicated as having an affair, and without any of the sex.
“So you’ve left him, then?” Shona said. “What happened to make you finally go, what did he do?”
“He . . .” Rose closed her eyes, images and words flashing behind them too quickly to make any sense, things she couldn’t face seeing or hearing, even in memory, just yet. “I just couldn’t take another minute. Before I knew what I was doing I had the car keys, Maddie and I were gone. He ran down the street after us. I didn’t think it through, Sho. I just went and . . . and now I don’t know what to do next.”
The gnawing fear at the empty chasm that represented Rose’s future bit fiercely at her heart again, as Rose remembered she had nothing like a plan that stretched beyond the next few hours.
“I don’t blame you for getting out. About time too,” Shona said. She’d hated Richard from the moment she set eyes on him, more than fourteen years ago, when the two of them waitressed in Marley’s Famous Ice-Cream Parlour on the front as teenagers, Shona a bolshie, mouthy, sexy girl with more front than the town, and Rose, an alternative, Gothic, odd-looking girl, with a scowl that could turn anything to stone. They shouldn’t have hit it off; Rose, pale, thin and glowering in her candy-striped uniform, and buxom Shona nonchalantly making sure she left more buttons undone than she should, a surefire way of boosting her tips from harassed dads. And yet the two of them had become instant friends, making each other smile when they least expected it, and as Rose began to find her feet in the world as an adult, it was Shona who made her realize that her life wasn’t going to be an endless stream of nights alone in her big empty house, that if she wanted it there would be travel, university, boys, fun, a whole world waiting for her whenever she was ready to explore it. That there was more to her than her family, more to her future than her past. It had been exactly at that moment of realization that Rose had met Richard and fallen madly in love with him. Within months she had left the café to get married. Caught up in her husband and the life he created for the two of them alone—where Rose existed only for him, where for most of those early years she had wanted to exist only for him, allowing him to decide they weren’t ready for children, what she did, where she worked, what she wore, even how she felt and thought—Rose had embraced every single one of his desires willingly. As a consequence she had barely seen Shona for years. When they had come across each other again, it was at exactly the right time for both of them, each equally grateful and in need of the other, each changed by the life she’d learnt, too late, had conquered her instead of vice versa.
“I suppose he wants you to get in touch. Trot back home like a good little wifey.”
“Yes,” Rose said. That was something of an understatement.
“Where are you, babe?” Shona asked her softly, hesitantly, as if she didn’t really want to know.
Rose understood her friend’s reservations. Listening to Richard’s messages and speaking to Shona was making all this real. Up until this point it had been a sort of a dream, a flit in the night, an eccentric landlady, findin
g her father and Frasier all at once. Even Maddie settling in and getting on with people she barely knew. It was as if as soon as she stepped away from Richard, her life just fell neatly into place, and everything was as it should be. But that wasn’t how it was; she couldn’t just pretend she hadn’t been married for thirteen years and now she’d changed her mind. Richard was coming, he would find her, and when he did, Rose couldn’t imagine what would happen next, but she knew it would be bad.
“If I tell you where I am, you’ll think I’m insane.”
“Well, according to your darling husband, that’s a given,” Shona said. “Where are you? Say it’s somewhere good, without an extradition treaty.”
“I’m in Millthwaite,” Rose said, bracing herself.
“Millthwaite? Which part of the Costa del . . . fucking hell, Rose, you went to your fucking postcard!” Rose braced herself against the string of expletives that blasted into her ear, as Shona tried to come to terms with what she had done.
“Well, yes, I know but . . . I had to go somewhere, Shona, somewhere far away, and it was the only place I could think of.”
“Not, you know, London or Leeds or New York?” Shona asked her, before adding, “Millthwaite, Rose? What, did you think Mr. Perfect, whatever his name is, would be sitting on a bench in the village green waiting for you?”
“Well, the thing is,” Rose said, biting her lip, “he sort of is.”
“What the fuck!” Shona exclaimed.
“He’s in Millthwaite a lot . . . visiting my dad, who lives up the road.”
“Did Dickhead give you those antipsychotic drugs he’s been threatening you with?” Shona asked her, with her usual acidic bluntness.
Rose was used to Shona’s way, knowing that no matter how harsh Shona might sound, it was only because she was, as far as Rose knew, the only person in the entire world who really cared about her. And that was Shona in a nutshell: she spent her life roaring at the world, but in reality there could not be a kinder, sweeter, more loyal, or more thoughtful best friend. It was just hard to spot that sometimes when Shona was in full sail.
“You know, the ones that make you hallucinate,” Shona continued. “Are you sure you’re in Millthwaite, not gibbering on the floor of the ladies’ loo in some service stop, staring at your postcard?”
“I know it sounds crazy,” Rose said, smiling at Shona’s outrage. “It is crazy, isn’t it? I came here expecting . . . well, nothing really. I just wanted to be here and not there. And they are both here. Frasier and my father.”
“Fucking ridiculous,” Shona said, sighing with obvious frustration. “Babe, this is only going to make things worse. This Frasier, he’s not going to know who you are, and if he does, he’s going to be freaked out by you. And as for your dad, well, I think you and I both know what he is, even if you have made me promise to stop using the C-word. He cut you out of his life and you’ve moved on without a second glance. How’s any of this going to help you now, when you’ve finally got away from him? You need to be finding your feet, not setting yourself up to be knocked down. You’ve made a clean break, so make it a fresh start too and run away from your past, not back to it.”
“So where should I go?” Rose asked. In her heart she knew Shona was most likely right, but Shona didn’t understand everything. She had been the only person Rose had ever confided in about the postcard, about how much of an impression Frasier had made on her, but Rose couldn’t tell even Shona how much he’d lived in her heart every single moment of every single day since. That was something too precious, too special, and quite possibly too insane to share with anyone, even Shona. “I can’t come to you. I’ve got no family, no friends anywhere else that aren’t really Richard’s. Only the cash that’s in my secret account to live on. My only family is here, even if I have found him by accident, even if I’m pretty sure I don’t want to see him. This is a sign, right? This is the universe telling me in ten-foot-high neon-flashing letters exactly what to do. I can’t ignore it.”
“You can’t handle this on your own,” Shona said. “You’re not strong enough.”
“Now you’re sounding like him,” Rose said unhappily, hoping for more support from her friend. “I’m not crazy, Shona. I see what this looks like, but it’s not how it is. You weren’t there, you don’t know how I feel. I’ve got to see Frasier again—I just have to—before I can do anything else. I’m not expecting anything to happen, or for him to sweep me into his arms and ask me where I’ve been all his life, but I have to see him. I have to know if what happened for me, happened for him too, because even if he’s moved on and forgotten me, if I know it was real for him too, then I’ll know. And I know there is something out there for me that’s better than Richard.”
“Hannibal Lecter would have been better than Richard,” Shona said bitterly.
“What’s wrong?” Rose asked her. “I mean apart from me and all this mess. Are you OK?”
Shona was silent, which could mean only one thing. Ryan was somehow back, wanting to be in her life again.
“What does he want?” Rose asked, her chest filling with heavy dread. The key difference between Shona and Rose was that Rose hadn’t loved Richard for a long, long time, if she ever truly had. Shona never stopped loving Ryan, no matter what he did to her.
“He wants me back,” Shona said quietly. “He wants another chance, he wants to give it a go. For us and the boys to be a family again.”
“But you know that can never happen,” Rose said slowly, to be sure that Shona was hearing her. “Not after the last time. He never changes, Sho.”
“But he sounds so sad,” Shona said softly, her strident tone now gentle, fragile almost. As far as Ryan was concerned she would always be like a moth to a flame, only ever seeing the light and never the danger. “He sounded so lonely and lost, and I . . . I miss him, Rose. Maybe he’s had enough of other women now. Maybe this time he means it.”
Not this time, Rose thought, not ever. She couldn’t drag herself away from darkness only to let her best friend fall back into the arms of the man who never tired of hurting her. There had to be some way of stopping Shona from making the same mistake again; telling her how wrong she was never worked. There was only one thing that Rose thought might be powerful enough to influence Shona, and that was loyalty. Shona’s unswerving loyalty to her.
“Come here.” Rose said the words out loud at exactly the moment the idea formed in her head. “Come here to me, please.”
“What?” Shona asked, incredulous. “What are you talking about?”
“Come here. You say I’m not strong enough to deal with this alone, and you’re right. I need you, Shona, I need you with me, and even if you don’t want to admit it, you need some time to think about what you’re going to do next. Run away too, come here and bring the boys and we can both hide for a while. I can help you clear your head, and you can make sure I don’t make a total fool of myself with Frasier or my father.”
“Mate, I can’t just disappear like you,” Shona said, distracted enough by the idea to sound like her old self again. “People will worry about me.”
“Oh, thanks very much,” Rose said.
“You know what I mean. My mum, my job, Ryan . . .”
“Ryan doesn’t care about you, Shona,” Rose said brutally, unable to contain herself any longer. “He wants you, maybe he does love you in his own particular, twisted way, but he doesn’t care about you. If he did, he wouldn’t have a bevy of women and four more children scattered across Kent. You know he only ever comes back to you when he’s broke and has nowhere else to go.”
There they were, the facts laid bare, the reasons why Rose couldn’t bear for Shona to make the same mistake again, and Rose had said them out loud, even though she felt like a hypocrite, even though she knew she could never tell anyone, not even Shona, what it was Richard did to her. But this wasn’t about her, it was about saving Shona.
“I know it sounds bad from the outside, but you don’t know . . .” Shona trailed off, aw
are that she was repeating exactly what Rose had just said to her. “No one knows, do they, what it’s like inside? How you feel stuff you don’t want, think things you shouldn’t. It’s like . . . it’s like you’re two people—the person who knows what to do, and the one who does what she wants, whatever the consequences.”
“Come here, Shona, please,” Rose begged, concern flooding her voice. “Please, come and escape with me for a bit. I’ve decided I’m not going to call Richard. I’m not going to let him get inside my head again. He’ll find me eventually, but not yet. We’ve got time, you and me, not much, but a little bit of time before everything catches up with us, and I’m determined to make the best of it. I’m sure there is room here—I’m the only guest—but I’ll book you in as soon as I get off the phone, and you can help me get my head straight and strong before I have to face him again. And I can help you finally move on from Ryan. Besides, if you come here, then I’ll look a whole lot less like a stalker when I ‘bump’ into Frasier.”
“OK,” Shona said, so quietly that Rose was unsure she’d heard her. “OK, I’ll borrow Mum’s car and drive up tomorrow. But I’m only coming because you need me, you bloody loser. And you better tell me where the hell the godforsaken shit hole of Millthwaite actually is.”
Chapter
Five
Rose sat in Jenny’s living room, the weak August sunshine battling through the silver clouds to illuminate the spotless room. Maddie was sitting on a dining room chair, her head buried in the enormous doll’s house where she was happily arranging its occupants around the new technological arrival of television into their nineteenth-century lives. She felt curiously at peace considering the hurricane of a day she was about to step into, Richard snapping somewhere at her heels, her father alone somewhere in the hills, oblivious to her just as he had been every single day for more than twenty years. And one step closer to seeing Frasier again.
After giving it some thought, Rose had decided not to wait for Shona to arrive before making the short drive to her father’s cottage. It would mean wasting another precious day before Richard found her and, besides, Shona had this curious effect on her life, reflecting back a true image of herself, of the way things really were, that Rose rarely enjoyed looking at. Shona was the one adult in her life who never lied to Rose, who was always straight with her. If Shona said something was wrong or insane or deeply misguided, then Rose knew she was right. Rose didn’t want that lens focused on her too closely on the day she first set eyes on her father again. It had been a brief, chance encounter with Shona years before they truly found each other that had made Rose see her marriage for what it was for the first time, an unveiling that Rose would have been content to live without.
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