Chapter 2 #3
‘Hmmm,’ Abi says, like she wants to say more but chooses not to.
Rosie glances round as Abi picks up a framed photo from the bookshelf behind her.
It’s from Seb and Rosie’s wedding day almost twelve years ago.
It’s a close-up of Rosie in flattering black and white, Seb out of focus, slightly behind her.
Seb likes the photo because you can’t see the silver scar that runs from his nostril to his upper lip.
He was born with a cleft palate and had corrective surgery as a baby.
In the photo Rosie looks like she’s about to explode with laughter, but she can no longer remember what was so funny; maybe the photographer had asked her to laugh.
‘What a gorgeous pic,’ Abi says, peering closer. ‘You look so happy.’
‘Yeah,’ Rosie says, turning back to the pan, ‘it was a long time ago.’ She shakes her head. ‘That came out wrong’– thinking she should explain– ‘we’ve just been together for a long time.’
It’s over fifteen years since they met at a friend’s party in London.
They didn’t have the ripping-clothes-off, breathless, can’t-live-without-you kind of falling in love that Anna describes having when she met Eddy, but rather a slow, gentle tumble.
A dignified dawning that they wanted complementary lives; a strong, dedicated relationship, children, security.
Seb, who had grown up with all those things, wanted to replicate what he’d had.
Coddled in the rolling hills of Waverly with strong, dynamic Eva at the helm and his kind, steady older dad, Benjamin, as second mate.
Rosie, in contrast, had grown up in Stoke Newington with her two present but distant academic parents and older brother, Jim, who moved to Hong Kong ten years ago and whom they still haven’t visited.
There’s an explosion of giggles as the girls burst into the room in a puff of taffeta, calling out, ‘Get ready for the fairy show!’
They watch three chaotic shows, all of which involve at least one of the girls pouring ‘fairy flying dust’ over their heads and leaping from chairs, arms flapping to show off their flying.
Abi opens wine while the girls swap fairy costumes and Rosie dishes up the spaghetti bolognese and calls for Heath.
She notices how she barely needs to bend down to kiss his head any more– he’s growing so fast.
Lily arrives after walking herself back from school where she stayed late. Sylvie pats the bench next to her and says shyly, ‘You can sit here, Lily,’ and Lily, kind girl, does.
‘How was your life drawing class, Lily?’ Rosie asks, delivering water to the table.
‘Great, thanks. We had a new model, she was lovely.’
Sylvie giggles into her hand and assuming his sister is laughing at him, Heath remarks, ‘What?’
Sylvie looks to Lily, checking in with the older girl that her stupid little brother can handle the truth. Lily just smiles at her, shrugs, and Sylvie turns back to Heath and says with authority, ‘Life drawing means drawing naked people.’
‘What?’ Heath repeats, spaghetti falling from his mouth. ‘You’re lying.’
Sylvie widens her eyes and nods her head, replying with worldly authority, ‘They draw everything .’
‘No, they don’t,’ Heath insists.
‘Sylv…’ Rosie interjects, but Abi approaches the table and she’s nodding at Heath.
‘It’s true,’ Abi says. ‘Penises, bottoms, vulvas and breasts.’ Rosie’s kids shriek, cover their eyes and mouths and dissolve with horror and delight.
Abi laughs along. ‘Yeah, it’s pretty funny,’ she says before adding, ‘but those bits aren’t the hard bits, it’s the proportions that’s tricky with the body– isn’t that right, Lily? ’
‘The position they’re sitting or lying in totally changes the shape of their body and, like, the shadows and everything…’ Lily says, but Heath interrupts her, his face wrinkled with distaste as he says, ‘Not the balls, though. You don’t do balls, do you?’
After the kids have eaten, Heath, Lily and Sylvie go up to draw and Rosie puts Frozen on for the little ones.
Abi’s telling Rosie about Diego’s current boyfriend– an adorable-sounding man called Stephen who likes to dress like it’s the 1950s and keeps a house rabbit– when the front door opens and Seb calls out his usual self-deprecating announcement, ‘Only me!’
‘Hi, love,’ Rosie calls back, adding, pointlessly, because she’s always in the kitchen, ‘we’re in the kitchen!’
She hears Greer calling, ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ and Rosie listens to the creak of the floorboards as he moves towards the kitchen, Rosie and Abi sitting up a little on the sofa, and she can tell Seb’s in a great mood.
‘Hi, guys!’ he calls to them. ‘They had to double-bag the takeaway, so I hope you’re both feeling hungry!’
She hears the rustle of paper bags as he puts the takeaway on the kitchen table before he turns into the extension, and Rosie sees him in the way she thinks Abi will see him.
His tall, solid Danish frame made stronger by hours of tennis, his smile still warm even after a long day.
But there’s a scream followed by a great thud from upstairs and both Heath and Sylvie start shouting.
Shit. Bad timing. Rosie looks to Seb; usually he’d be halfway up the stairs by now to sort out the latest drama but he’s just standing in the extension.
He looks confused, panicked, like he’s forgotten Abi’s name, so Rosie decides to help him out. ‘Seb, this is Abi. Abi, this is Seb.’
Heath shouts something indistinguishable and Rosie rolls her eyes at Seb before turning to smile apologetically at Abi who doesn’t notice, because she’s frowning, staring at Seb.
Sylvie howls, ‘MUM!’
‘Coming!’ She rushes past Seb towards the stairs, calling behind her, ‘Sorry, guys, back in a minute.’
The problem is that Sylvie had taken Heath’s special sketching paper, which he got for his birthday last year, without asking, so Heath had jumped from the bed, tearing up Sylvie’s drawing.
Lily steps in to save the day, ripping out some pages from her own sketchpad, giving them each a few sheets and challenging them to draw their feet.
Rosie thanks Lily and leaves the three of them miraculously quiet and sketching side by side again after just a couple of minutes.
Downstairs, Seb is still standing in the extension, but he’s turned to the side, his hands on his hips, and Abi is in front of him, her hands raised, fingers flexed, whispering urgently.
Seb hears Rosie first and he turns quickly towards her, takes a step back, away from Abi.
His face is pale, his eyes wide, like she, Rosie, frightens him.
Rosie would usually laugh at him, but she doesn’t because Abi immediately turns to Rosie.
She looks strange, too. Her eyes are bright, her face flushed, but she doesn’t seem frightened like Seb. No, she looks fucking furious.
As she glances from her new friend to her husband and back again, Rosie makes herself smile. ‘You guys OK?’
Seb spins around towards the table and immediately starts pulling chopsticks and small cardboard boxes out of the takeaway bags behind him, saying too brightly, ‘Yeah, good!’
Abi and Rosie are left blinking at each other before Abi says, ‘Ro, I’m so sorry. I was just telling Seb I got a message from Lotte– there’s an urgent issue, at the restaurant; I’m going to have to go.’
And before Rosie can say anything, Abi turns away, gathering her denim jacket and rucksack, passing Rosie and squeezing her arm briefly as she walks past. ‘I’ll message you, yeah?’
Everything is changing too quickly for Rosie.
She feels like she’s just woken up on stage in the middle of a play and has no clue what all the other actors are talking about, how she should join in, if she should join in or if she should just watch.
She follows Abi dumbly to the bottom of the stairs as Abi calls up for Lily.
Abi hardly seems to hear Rosie as she tells her the girls can stay here until she’s finished whatever she needs to do at the restaurant, that they can heat up the takeaway, save it for later, maybe?
But Abi keeps moving, gathering coats and school bags and telling a grumbly Margot to please hurry up before ushering the girls outside and turning to Rosie on the doorstep.
‘Thanks, but I don’t know how long this thing at the restaurant will take to sort out, so better if the girls are home.
’ Rosie hears Seb walk down the corridor behind her, feels him stop close, too close; she can feel the breath of him in and out even through their layers of clothes.
She feels herself suspended, sandwiched between the two of them, like an intruder.
Abi’s eyes are hard as fists as she looks at Rosie’s husband, and whatever has just happened, the mammalian part of Rosie’s brain recognizes it as no good, so she doesn’t say another word as Abi looks back to Rosie and says, ‘Bye, Rosie.’ Then Abi and her children disappear into the inky twilight.
As soon as she closes the door behind them, Rosie turns around to face Seb. ‘I thought you guys hadn’t met before?’
Seb blinks but keeps his eyes fixed on her.
‘No! No.’ He shakes his head, a little too firmly.
‘I told you: she cancelled a meeting a couple of weeks ago, but we have been exchanging emails. Stupidly, I hadn’t realized Ms Matthews– the woman I’ve been emailing– was your new friend.
It’s a… it’s a school thing, an issue with her daughter.
She expressly asked to keep it confidential, so… ’
Seb shrugs his shoulders, tries to smile at Rosie, an unconvincing flicker of a thing, before he says, ‘We should eat before it gets cold.’
Rosie is still confused. ‘Why didn’t she mention that to me?’
Seb turns around to walk back to the kitchen and either he doesn’t hear her or he pretends not to, as Rosie’s words fall into the empty space between them.
Standing there, Abi walking away from her outside, Seb walking away from her inside, Rosie is left with the creeping, shuddery feeling that something significant has just happened but that both Abi and Seb want to keep her far away from it.