Chapter 2
‘Taadaa!’ Rosie says, turning her palm skywards, revealing Waverly to Abi like a flamboyant waiter.
It’s hot, one of those syrupy summer days of autumn, and they’re puffed and sticky from walking up the steep footpath to the best viewing spot in town.
Abi makes her way to a bench, reading the little inscription, says, ‘Thanks, Barry,’ before she sits down.
‘It’s gorgeous.’ Abi extends her legs, crossing them at the ankles.
She lifts her arms to get the breeze in the hollow of her unshaved armpits, dropping her denim jacket on to Barry’s bench.
She’s wearing Birkenstock sandals, her feet tattooed in a beautiful lattice-like design, her skin still tanned, carrying the memory of summer.
The letters ‘L’ and ‘M’ are tattooed on her inner arm.
There’s something wonderfully unstudied about Abi that makes Rosie want to stare.
She has a tousled look to her but whenever Rosie looks into Abi’s eyes she knows the other woman is as solid as a rock.
Rosie sits next to her feeling pimply and pale but glad to be here, away from the kids, away from work, away from Seb. Just here with her new intriguing friend.
They met a few weeks ago– as so many parents do– through their kids.
Margot and Greer are in Reception together and have become firm friends.
Rosie noticed the way Abi shrank back at the school gates from the noisier, shrill women Rosie calls ‘friends’.
The ones who talk in high-pitched whispers about other people’s kids and marriages.
It was a quiet thrill for Rosie to leave those women and stand with Abi instead; she hasn’t made a new friend, independently of Seb, for so long.
Rosie offered Abi help in navigating the town, recommending the best kids’ swimming lessons, after-school clubs and the places to avoid.
They had a couple of play dates in the park and while the girls dangled from monkey bars Rosie found herself telling Abi things she hasn’t even told Anna.
How disconnected she feels sometimes from her own life, how her days feel like an endless ‘to-do’ list. Abi sates a part of Rosie she hadn’t even known was starving.
Some little forgotten wisp of her that had been banging a tiny internal cymbal, a lone protestor demanding attention.
Rosie hasn’t talked to anyone like this for so long.
Abi must have been an amazing therapist, her job for years in London before moving to Waverly.
Today, for the first time, Abi and her kids are coming back to Rosie’s after school. Seb is picking up a takeaway from the local Thai on his way home as a treat for the three adults.
‘Everything looks so simple from up here, doesn’t it?
’ Rosie says, noticing the perfect neatness of the doll’s house town, a place where nothing bad could ever happen.
She automatically places the Old School House, where all three of her kids will be, and, just across the road, Waverly Secondary, where Seb is at work.
Strange to think of everyone she loves muddling their way through another day down there.
Abi doesn’t reply because she’s rummaging around in her rucksack for something, before offering Rosie a bright-pink mini macaroon out of a small Tupperware.
‘I was going to save these for pudding when we’re back at yours, but sod it. Fancy one?’
‘Ha!’ Rosie laughs. ‘Wow! Hell yes, I do!’
She bites into the fluorescent sugary flakiness before the sting of the bright raspberry cream fills her mouth. ‘Jesus– they’re insanely good.’ She immediately wants another.
‘Well, they were my first attempt– I don’t know. I think maybe next time I—’
‘Wait. Are you telling me you actually made them?’
Abi shrugs. ‘Food’s my thing. I love making new stuff.’
‘Yes, but come on– you’re a single parent with two kids, you’ve just moved town, changed career and you’re making home-made bloody macaroons ? Honestly, you’re showing the rest of us up.’
‘Well,’ Abi says, inspecting a macaroon before popping it into her mouth, ‘at least it explains why I don’t have time for dating.’
Rosie takes another macaroon. ‘Ever thought about going pro? Being a chef?’
Abi’s face twists as she tongues her back teeth, freeing them of stuck sugar before she says, ‘Oh, when I was, like, twelve, I thought about nothing else.’
‘Twelve!’
Abi laughs before she pops another macaroon into her mouth, chewing slowly, considering how much to tell Rosie.
She swallows, runs her fingers through her cropped fair hair and says, ‘We were living on an estate in Hackney and a fancy chef set up a pop-up restaurant in an old service station– remember disused spaces were all the rage in the noughties? Anyway, I was twelve and they paid me a fiver an hour to wash up– totally illegal, of course, but I loved it. Some of the chefs would sneak me this insane food– beef cheeks cooked for twenty-four hours and baked oysters, stuff I never knew existed. The place became my way of escaping. I guess for some kids it’s books or video games. For me it was always food.’
‘What were you trying to escape?’ Rosie asks, emboldened by Abi’s honesty. Rosie has shared much more in this new friendship so far.
‘Oh, I don’t want to go all Angela’s Ashes on you,’ Abi laughs, ‘but we didn’t have much. My mum drank, my dad left. Same old, same old.’
‘Do you still see them?’ Rosie asks, quietly, like she doesn’t want to talk loudly and disturb these precious things Abi is sharing with her.
‘My dad not at all. Couldn’t even tell you where he lives. My mum– well, it’s complicated. We haven’t spoken in a long time.’
Rosie wants to ask more about her parents, but Abi looks back at the view before closing her eyes, feeling the sun on her face. Rosie won’t push it so instead she asks, ‘How did you go from being a kid washing pans to a therapist?’
Abi opens her eyes, looks briefly to the sky, turns back to Rosie and, smiling, says, ‘I went through a few wild years. Got really into boys– too into boys, my mum would say– partying, all that stuff, and then when I was eighteen found out I was five months pregnant. So, yeah, Lily was the wake-up call.’
Rosie can’t help it. She wants to know. ‘Did your parents help?’
Rosie notices for the first time the strain behind Abi’s equanimity.
‘God, no. Mum was often drunk and, like I said, things are complicated between us and Dad wasn’t around, so… no. No, they didn’t. I mean, there was this charity that helped quite a bit so, yeah, I had that…’
Abi’s silver bangles chime as she brushes bright-pink crumbs off her T-shirt, waves her arm in front of them and says, ‘And now, incredibly, we live here in this beautiful place.’
They both look again at the view. Talking about Abi’s difficult childhood in Hackney, Waverly seems claustrophobic and almost offensively twee, crammed as it is between the vast expanse of hills and sky.
Rosie knew early into their relationship that if she was going to love Seb, she was going to have to love this ancient, eccentric little town with its narrow streets and malty air from the brewery.
Seb was a bit like one of those people who marry the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty– but his lifelong love was a whole town.
And Rosie had come to love it too, in her own way. ‘How did you become a therapist?’
Abi smiles again, but the corner of her mouth shakes and she keeps staring at the view.
‘Oh, I did the training online, like a night-school thing. Turns out I had a kind of natural ability for it so, yeah, I set up my own practice, working when Lily was sleeping or in nursery, and it just grew and grew. Covid was obviously a boom for therapists.’
‘I bet you were brilliant. You must have helped so many people.’
Abi smiles in acceptance of the compliment before she asks, ‘How about you? How’s architecture?’
Rosie groans. ‘It’s not architecture. It’s a glorified admin role. I went back part-time when Greer was two and my salary covers the mortgage so it’s worth it financially, but the job is definitely not the reason I spent seven years training to be an architect.’
The only good thing about Rosie’s job is its flexibility: she can always be available for sick days and dentist’s appointments.
Rosie is constantly on call. Her nervous system braced like a vigilant guard, always ready for the next minor family emergency.
The job itself is just the bullshit no one else wants to do.
‘What would you be doing if you could do anything?’ Abi asks, and Rosie’s mind snaps straight to the Instagram message she received this morning from Maggie.
She tells Abi how she and Maggie studied architecture together in London and while Rosie got married, had kids and moved to Waverly, Maggie emigrated to Sydney and set up her own architecture practice.
She tells her about the photo Maggie sent her this morning of a huge partly demolished warehouse next to a sparkling slip of coastline– the plot her company is developing into a new eco art gallery and hotel.
And as she talks, she knows she’s smiling, feels her heart flood with possibility.
She looks back at Waverly, back to the school playground where her healthy, happy children play, and feels her shoulders drop, her heart wither again.
Jesus, she’s selfish, dreaming of a different life when she has so much.
Is envied by so many. What is wrong with her?
Abi, her arm still tucked over the back of the bench, looks right at Rosie but doesn’t say anything. Rosie can feel Abi listening and she feels exposed, flashing the most secret parts of herself.
‘Sorry, I’m really going off on one. Of course it makes sense, the focus being on Seb’s career, you know, while the kids are small. I think something had to give, right?’
‘Hmm,’ Abi says, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.