The Runaway Wife

by Rowan Coleman

  “Me? Really?” Frasier replied softly. “And to think for all those years since, all I’ve been doing is thinking how crass and rude you must have thought me, turning up like that out of the blue, dragging up all sorts of terrible memories for you, and all so I could chase down a painting and make some money.” He turned to look at her and, sensing his gaze on her cheek, Rose met his eyes. “There was so much I wanted to say, to do that day. There was something about you that was so . . . compelling. You’ll laugh, Rose, you’ll think I’m foolish, but you’ll never know how hard it was for me to just leave you there. I didn’t want to. I barely knew you, and yet . . . Oh, well, there are only so many times a man can regret a thing. Can regret not saying or . . .”

  He stopped himself, dropping his gaze from Rose, who on impulse reached out and took his fingertips in her hand.

  “What you don’t know,” she told him in a barely audible whisper, suddenly spurred on by the look in his eye, the timbre in his voice, and the need to tell him the truth, “is that those few minutes you spent with me on that day have kept me going ever since, all these years, through the hell of my marriage. I was thinking about you and the way you looked at me and spoke to me that day. Every time I thought about you I became a little stronger, and the reason I—”

  “Darling, there you are!”

  Frasier tugged his fingers abruptly from Rose’s hand and turned to greet a tall, slender, perfectly put together natural blonde who was striding across the gallery toward them in a pair of pressed white linen trousers and a lacy white camisole top that left little to the imagination. She had a great body, Rose had to grudgingly concede, one that positively begged to be shown off.

  “Cecily, what a surprise!” Frasier said, going to greet her and seeming a little caught off guard when she kissed him full on the lips. “I didn’t expect to see you today. I thought you had that thing—”

  “The PR networking lunch, you mean,” Cecily said, beaming at Rose and Maddie in turn. “I do have that, but as you were showered and gone before I got up this morning, and I missed you, I thought I’d pop in and say hello before I have to spend hours pretending to care what other much less interesting people than me have to say!” Cecily winked at Maddie, who smiled at her.

  “Everyone I know is less interesting than me,” Maddie said eagerly, as if she’d just met a soul mate.

  “It’s a terrible bore, isn’t it?” Cecily said, smiling warmly at Maddie. “So, my darling, are you going to introduce me to your guests?”

  She turned to Frasier, the questioning look in her eyes enough to let Rose know that Frasier hadn’t told Cecily anything about them.

  “Of course. This is Maddie, and this is her mother, Rose Jacobs,” Frasier said, introducing them formally. Cecily took her hand and shook it once, with firm confidence. “John Jacobs’ daughter. She is staying with her father and wanted to see the gallery. Well, as John contributes about sixty percent of our annual turnover, I thought it was only right that I obliged.”

  “Rose!” Cecily said warmly, taking Rose by surprise by hugging her as if embracing a long-lost friend. “How nice to meet you at last. I’ve often wondered what it must be like to be the child of a great genius, which your father undoubtedly is. I think in many ways it must be as much a creative struggle for you to be his daughter as it is for him to be an artist.”

  Rose blinked. “Um, I don’t know really. We haven’t spoken to each other in about twenty years.”

  “Oh, of course,” Cecily said, dismayed. “I can be so crass. I’m so good at putting my foot in it, I sometimes think I need to employ my own PR company. I hope things work out, for both of you. I know I’m an old romantic, but I’m always hopeful of a happy ending.”

  “Me too,” Rose said, utterly dismayed that Cecily, whilst being a little over the top and inappropriately dressed, seemed to be a very nice, decent, not to mention beautiful, woman.

  “One day,” Cecily said, putting her arms about Frasier’s waist and holding him close, “we will both get our happy endings, I’m sure. I’d like to know what your dad is like when he’s happy. He scared me to death!”

  “You’ve met my dad?” Rose asked her, intrigued.

  “Well, once. Frasier took me with him once. He made a great show of pretending to loathe me!” Cecily’s laugh tinkled like shattering glass. “Who am I kidding? He really didn’t like me at all.”

  “I’m not sure he likes anyone very much,” Rose said, feeling a surge of affection for her father for succeeding where she was so far failing. If there was any choice to be made between small, broken Rose and beautiful, overblown Cecily, Rose knew whom she’d choose, and it would be herself.

  “Well, endless hours of pointless talking await me. I’d better leave you to it.” Cecily hugged Rose once again. “So nice to meet you, Rose. Make sure Frasier takes good care of you. And as for you, my darling, will you really not be home for dinner? I’m making one of my famous stir-frys.”

  “I . . . no,” Frasier said apologetically. “I’ll be taking Rose and Maddie back to Cumbria. It will be a really late night, I’m sorry.” He kissed the top of her head.

  “Well, then, I shall wait with bated breath until you return,” Cecily said flirtatiously. “I might even put on my best pajamas.”

  “You’re already wearing pajamas,” Maddie said, but Cecily was striding out of the gallery, the sound of her heels ricocheting off the wooden floor.

  “So that’s Cecily,” Rose said. “Frasier, she seems lovely.”

  “She is lovely.” Frasier looked after Cecily as the door swung shut behind her. “Probably a lot more lovely than I deserve.”

  “Well,” Rose said, struggling to compose herself and remember her manners. She had the distinct feeling that before Cecily had appeared and proceeded to be so charming, something was happening between her and Frasier, that in that moment she could have told him anything, and he would have been ready to listen, might even be ready to feel the same way. Now Rose couldn’t see any way of getting that moment back again, not when she had seen with her own eyes the kind of woman that Frasier went for. She could not be more different from Cecily, which meant she was light-years away from ever catching Frasier’s eye. “What’s next?”

  • • •

  Rose tried her best to keep Cecily’s visit out of her head as they sat and talked over tea and cake in the middle of the gallery, on a blanket spread out on the floor for an indoor picnic, an idea that Maddie was enchanted by.

  Of course, it couldn’t be so perfect that in one moment Frasier would look at her, realize he loved her too, and they’d live happily ever after. Rose didn’t really know why she’d allowed herself to think that that was even possible. Perhaps too many years of dreaming of Frasier, of always imagining him as the handsome Prince Charming in all of the fairy tales that she had read to a mostly disinterested Maddie, had truly given Rose rose-colored glasses. At least embarking on her own quest to follow her heart, full of folly as it might have been, had freed her from the tower that Richard had kept her locked up in and brought her home to her father. That was what she had to focus on, and that Frasier obviously cared for her a great deal. If she could only get this idea of being in love with him out of her head, and hating his girlfriend, then she would have a really good friend, and Rose knew that she needed as many of those as she could get right now.

  It was time for her to grow up, to be the mum that Maddie needed and deserved, to be the best daughter she could be to a man who was trying his level best to be her father, and to stop letting younger men kiss her on a rock under the moon. Rose sighed to herself as she watched Maddie question Frasier on the works that hung around her. It was just as well that she wasn’t in love with Ted, she supposed, since he’d gone off her so completely and abruptly, but it was a shame, especially as Frasier was so very taken, that there would be no more kissing Ted, even if she wasn’t in love with him. Maybe that was the ultimate test of being a grown-up. Being able to exist from day to day without
having to be in love with anyone at all, even if only in your head.

  “Come with me,” Frasier said, standing and holding a hand out to Rose. “I wanted to save this room until last. It’s just for you.”

  Rose elected not to take his hand this time, deciding that someone had to draw a line between what was acceptable behavior for just good friends, and it might as well be her. Nevertheless she followed him across the length of the gallery to a closed door on the other side.

  “It’s one of the very few pieces I have by John Jacobs that weren’t already sold before they were painted,” Frasier told her, his hand on the door handle. “He did it a few weeks before you arrived, which is why I think you are going to love it. He hates it, of course; I caught him trying to burn it in the yard one day. But I told him that if he did that he’d be basically burning money, which made him want to burn it all the more, but I managed to stop him in the end and it’s just as well . . . as I’ve just sold it for a hefty five figures.”

  Frasier opened the door onto a long, brightly lit white room, the whole of the far end of which was taken up with a John Jacobs painting, a vast landscape, half created from what rose around Storm Cottage, and half clearly from his imagination, giving it a magical, dreamlike quality, which made it feel just a little surreal to Rose, as if she had walked into her father’s dream playing out on a screen.

  “It’s beautiful,” Rose said, utterly absorbed by what she was looking at. “I just don’t see why he hates this stuff so much.”

  “There is a very interesting use of orange in the sky,” Maddie said. “Granddad is very clever at color. He wrote a book about it you know.”

  “Look at this,” Frasier said. He reached for Rose’s hand and then thought better of it after her last rebuttal, beckoning her over to the painting. On the crest of a hill she was just able to make out a tiny figure, the figure of a child, sitting curled up on the hillside, gazing at a view far away. Rose stared at it for a long time, tears filling her eyes, her heart swelling with emotion as she realized what she was looking at. It was an exact reproduction, recreated in miniature, of the painting her father had done of her as a child; it was Dearest Rose who was sitting alone on the mountainside, a tiny vulnerable figure abandoned to the elements. It was the way that John pictured her, lost and alone.

  “It’s me,” Rose said quietly as Maddie came to stand next to her, peering at the image that could almost have been completely dwarfed by the expanse and scale of the painting unless someone pointed it out to you. “He painted me.”

  “Or it might be me,” Maddie said, a touch jealously. “It looks a bit like me, actually.”

  Rose turned to Frasier. “That means, even before I came here, even before he knew that I was here, he was thinking about me. He did care. He did feel something.”

  “I think he always has,” Frasier said, putting an arm around her shoulders, making Rose instantly tense. “I’m so glad that you got to see this before it gets shipped to Texas. It’s proof, I think, of what your father might never be able to truly convince you of himself. That he’s sorry, so sorry that he lost you, and that you were never out of his thoughts.”

  “Thank you,” Rose whispered, tears sliding silently down her face, as she awkwardly allowed Frasier to enfold her in a hug. “You don’t know how much it means to me.”

  “You don’t know how much it means to me to be able to give you this gift, after all this time,” Frasier said, wiping a tear from her cheek with the ball of his thumb. Maddie turned round and stared up at Frasier and her mother, in each other’s arms, her mother in tears, and yet smiling at the same time.

  “Are you quite sure you are not in love with Mummy?” she asked.

  • • •

  It was late when they got back to the B & B, where Maddie and Rose would spend their last night before moving their belongings to Storm Cottage. For the rest of the day Frasier had shown Maddie the wonders of the National Gallery, escorted them around the beautiful city, taking in all the sights, and bought them dinner at the world-famous Witchery, where their table must have taken quite a lot of string-pulling to acquire at such short notice, before loading them back into his Audi and making another long drive back to Cumbria, this time, due to mutual agreement, without the tortures of I Spy.

  “I’m worried about all this driving that you’re doing,” Rose said as they pulled up, glancing at Frasier’s worn-looking, if very handsome, face. “What if you fall asleep at the wheel? I could never live with myself. Especially as it’s all been to ferry me and Maddie back and forth.”

  “You are probably right,” Frasier had said reluctantly. “I am starting to feel a little worn-out. The thing is, Cecily will kill me if I don’t show up tonight, but I’m sure she’d rather have me late and alive than on time and dead. Or at least I think I’m sure . . .” He smiled, leaning his head back against the headrest as he looked at Rose, his expression unreadable. “No, when I come to think about it, I think I’d really better stop over.”

  “If she does kill you,” Maddie said helpfully, her head and shoulders appearing between the two front seats, “we will call the police.”

  “Will you stay the night with Dad?” Rose asked him, reluctant for him to go, even though she knew she had no right to be.

  “I could,” Frasier said, glancing at the B & B and then back at Rose, some thought process that Rose could not follow galloping across his face. “Or how about I book a room at the B and B and then you and I can talk some more, once this little one is in bed, and perhaps even share a nightcap?” Rose knew that it shouldn’t thrill her that Frasier had chosen spending more time with her over getting back to Cecily, and that really he was just being sensible and choosing not to crash into a ditch over getting back to Cecily, but she couldn’t help being pleased that her attempts at setting up the boundaries of their friendship had been abandoned as soon as he’d shown her the painting her father had done of her, and she knew it was hopeless to pretend not to love him.

  The idea of spending a few more minutes with Frasier, even under the watchful eyes of Jenny, was too lovely to be spoilt by technicalities. And besides, bringing home a new guest, even just for one night, might make up for leaving Jenny tomorrow, which Rose knew her landlady was feeling very sad about, and not just because of the loss of revenue.

  Quietly pleased to have an unexpected guest, and clearly bursting to know more about what he was doing, staying the night under the same roof as Rose, Jenny had taken an uncomplaining, dog tired but happy Maddie up to bed, leaving Brian to book Frasier into a single room on another floor. (“We don’t hold with no bed hopping here,” Jenny had warned him, as she guided Maddie up the stairs, who’d replied, her voice gradually receding, “I bed-hop all the time. And bed-jump and bed-belly-flop . . .”)

  After completing the formalities, Brian wished them a good night, explaining that it had been a long day, but they were most welcome to sit up in the living room as long as they liked. As they pushed closed the living room door, Frasier and Rose overheard a heated exchange on the staircase, Brian doing his level best to dissuade Jenny from coming back downstairs and sitting in the living room, playing the role of curious chaperone. Even if there was no chance of any kind of romance, Rose was grateful that Brian managed to get Jenny back upstairs, with a few softly spoken words and what sounded like a firm slap on the rump. In any event, Jenny was giggling as she trotted back up the stairs.

  “Would you like some wine?” Rose asked him. “I’ve got a bottle in my room that Shona left me. It’s vintage twenty-four-hour garage, but still it’s not bad.”

  “Thank you, yes,” Frasier said, taking great care examining Jenny’s doll’s house as she left. “This is really quite remarkable . . .”

  Maddie was already asleep as Rose entered the room, her drawing pad tucked under her arm, a more than passable portrait of Frasier on the open page. Rose picked it up and studied it. The nose wasn’t quite right, and she’d shaded under his eyes a little too deeply, making him
look older than he was, but the most prominent thing that Rose noticed was that the drawing was done with affection. Maddie really liked Frasier.

  Rose picked up the bottle of wine from the dressing table and then thought for a moment. Perhaps, perhaps it should be now that she gave Frasier the gift she had brought with her on that first night. The gift that for more than seven years she had hoped to give one day.

  It would be hard to think of a better time than now to show him what she had brought with her all this way. The only thing was that once he had seen it, Rose felt her story with Frasier would be completed at last, and she wasn’t sure she wanted that. Nevertheless, she had promised herself that she would never spend another second stuck in a life that did not want her, and Frasier didn’t want her, not in the way she’d hoped for. Perhaps now was the perfect time to close that last precious chapter on her hopes and dreams for him, and to start a new one built on friendship and trust, which was the one thing Rose was more than certain of, after the time that they had spent together today. Frasier knew so little of what her life had been like with Richard, or rather he’d asked her so little, and she knew he sensed a great deal about that and more besides. Because only a man who really understood her could possibly have known how much it meant to her to see that painting. Frasier had given her every reason to trust in his friendship, and there could be no greater symbol of her trust in him than giving him this very precious object.

  Her mind made up, Rose knelt on the floor and pulled out her package, still tightly wrapped in a blanket, from under her bed and clutched it to her bosom, hugging it just as she would a child, whispering a final goodbye.

  Coming back into the room, she found Frasier with the glass cabinet door of the doll’s house open, his head deep inside its drawing room. “Do you know I think this might be an original?” he said in muffled tones.

  “An original doll’s house?” Rose asked him, confused.