Chapter 4
Rosie knows as she walks down the stairs– even without seeing her or hearing her– that Eva has arrived.
The air feels calmer, and the kids have stopped bickering; they talk rather than whine and have become the kind of children Rosie imagined having before she actually had any.
Today, Eva’s arrived with a jigsaw puzzle she kept from Seb’s childhood, and the four of them are already gathered round the table sorting out the pieces.
The kids kneeling on the chairs, bums in the air, hovering over the table.
‘ Min skat ,’ Eva says when she sees Rosie, reserving her Danish words of endearment for those she loves best. Rosie bends to kiss her mother-in-law’s soft cheek.
It’s as soft as the kids’ skin but no longer springy, more like something worn and loved for a long time. She smells of fresh air and shortbread.
‘Thanks so much for this, Eva.’
Rosie is digging through a pile of dirty washing, left in a heap outside the machine, to see if her swimsuit is hiding in there.
‘I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be,’ Eva says, acknowledging Greer with a nod as she passes her a corner piece of the puzzle.
After more than five decades in the UK, Eva still sounds Danish, her accent warm like hot chocolate poured over words.
They all adore her. Even though she’s faced a few hard things in life– fertility issues, grief and living away from her beloved Denmark– she is still determined to experience joy whenever it comes her way.
She’d met Seb’s dad, Benjamin, when she’d sat down in one of his economics lectures at UCL, having got lost on the way to her English lecture.
He’d drawn her a little map of where to go so she wouldn’t make the same mistake the following week and, in a moment of uncharacteristic bravado, he’d written his number at the bottom.
Seb had the map framed after Benjamin died, peacefully at home, from cancer.
He’d never seen Eva sob the way she sobbed when she unwrapped the frame.
Now it hangs in her bedroom, above the side of the bed where Benjamin slept next to her for so many years.
Rosie discovers her swimsuit at the bottom of the washing, curled and limp like discarded skin, and decides it’s best not to smell it before putting it in her tote bag along with her towel. ‘I’ll only be a couple of hours.’
‘Take your time, elskede . Don’t rush for us.’
Rosie puts her hand on Eva’s shoulder and Eva squeezes Rosie’s arm.
Now Eva is here, the need to leave suddenly seems less urgent.
Having Eva in her life is like having a second chance at being a daughter.
But Anna will be waiting, so Rosie kisses all four of them again before she leaves, her heart aching with love as they call out their goodbyes.
At Anna’s gym, Anna strips her clothes off in the communal area while Rosie dips into one of the cubicles.
‘Ro, there’s no one here!’ Anna laughs, muttering, ‘Prude,’ as she undoes her bra, her breasts pouring into her hands.
Rosie peers at her friend like she’s snooping on a bathing nymph.
Anna’s naked body spills and sways and sinks as she rummages in her bag for her swimsuit, but the main difference between them is that Anna wears herself proudly, luxuriously, while Rosie beetles around, eyes swivelling in the shadows.
Rosie bets Anna masturbates regularly. Anna would probably tell her if she asked, not that she ever would.
Rosie is sure friendship is easier, clearer when some things, intimate things, remain private.
Rosie comes out of her changing room while Anna’s bent over. She’s stepping into her costume, pulling it up, groaning ‘Bloody thing,’ at the twisted straps, the complicated design.
Rosie moves forward to help and they’re both soon shaking with laughter as Anna puts her head through the wrong hole so when she pulls the costume up, her enormous breasts are forced out either side of the fabric.
They’re hanging like water balloons, almost under her armpits, and Anna slides her goggles on and while Rosie doubles over, stamping her foot and shaking with laughter, Anna says, ‘Perfect! Let’s swim! ’
And Anna starts to walk, duck-like, tits swinging free, towards the pool.
‘God, I honestly can’t remember the last time I laughed like that,’ Rosie says after their swim as she lies back on the bottom shelf of the wood-panelled sauna while Anna, breasts now safely contained, lies on the top.
Anna doesn’t say anything, but Rosie knows she’s smiling, glad.
She loves to make people laugh. Rosie bubbles up with giggles again before they both settle into a delicious, endorphin-charged quiet.
After a couple of minutes, her face just a few inches from the ceiling, Anna says, ‘You said you had something you wanted to talk about?’
For a moment, Rosie can’t remember what it was she’d wanted to discuss with Anna, but then the weird disquieted feeling blooms up in her again. ‘How often do you and Eddy have sex, Anna?’
Above her, Anna laughs.
‘Quite an opener,’ she says, but Anna doesn’t squirm like Rosie when sex is mentioned. ‘Umm. Once a week, every Sunday. He reads the papers, I read the supplements and then we have sex.’
Once a week?
‘How about you guys?’ Anna asks back.
‘We’re going through a bit of a dry spell, actually. I’m just kind of trying to get back into it, I guess.’
‘Oh, babe.’ Anna twists around, peering down at Rosie between the slats. ‘That’s so normal, especially with young kids. I wouldn’t worry about that. How often do you have sex?’
Rosie feels her veins leap before rushing with shame. She’s never talked with anyone about the drought, only argued with Seb about it. She can’t go straight in with the truth. She needs to ease in gently. ‘Umm, maybe it’s been three months?’
Anna’s eyes widen. ‘I prescribe a maintenance shag. It’s worked for us before. Even if you don’t feel like it, gets you back on the horse as it were,’ she says with a snort of laughter.
‘Yeah,’ Rosie says, irritation nibbling at her now because all the sex she’s ever had has felt like a maintenance shag.
She’d been trying to uphold and maintain some false version of herself– Rosie the sexual, generous, intimate lover– when really she had no idea who she was sexually.
No idea what turned her on or even how she liked to be touched any more.
Above her Anna is quiet, so she adds, ‘Yeah, that’s probably a good idea. Thanks, Anna.’
Rosie wants to ask, but could never without confessing how long it has been: is a year really just a dry spell?
Sure, after each baby they didn’t have sex for a few months.
A couple of months after Sylvie, around three after Heath and even a bit longer after Greer.
And perhaps this longer drought is simply an expression of their lives becoming fuller, busier.
Seb acts like sex is as urgent and necessary as breathing, something that keeps him alive. Rosie is sure she used to like sex, but she’s never felt like that about it. Never felt like she’d fade away without it.
‘I remember you saying that as soon as you saw Eddy after Singapore you knew something had happened.’
Anna peers down at Rosie again, wondering why Rosie’s asking this now. This time, Rosie avoids her eye completely.
‘Yeah. I did. He stepped through the front door and I knew something had happened before he even took his coat off. He had nervous energy; he’d spent the whole flight home trying to figure out what to say, eaten up with guilt.’
‘As he should!’ Rosie adds.
‘Yeah,’ Anna agrees, wiping sweat from her brow. ‘Women’s intuition, I guess. I knew something had changed.’
‘He told you right away?’
‘Yes, right there in the kitchen, and then I threw a plate at him.’
A drop of sweat falls off Anna’s chin as she shakes her head and half smiles at the memory.
It had been on one of Eddy’s flashy business trips two years ago.
Eddy runs a company specializing in car tech design and is frequently put up in five-star hotels, encouraged to order whatever he likes at the bar.
This trip had been to Singapore and the woman perched on the hotel bar stool next to Eddy laughed at everything he said.
Eddy told Seb that the woman was the opposite of Anna– dark, thin, spiky.
He knew she was bad for him in the way he knew smoking or having another whisky would make him feel awful the next day.
But Eddy was a glutton. He couldn’t– and he didn’t– resist. The flight home was the worst day of Eddy’s life.
It never crossed his mind to lie. Eddy was many things– selfish, an impossible flirt, arrogant– but he was not a liar. He could never lie to someone he loved.
Forgiveness took time. Anna and Eddy had counselling and Eddy– for a few months at least– gave up drinking and cut back on the business trips.
Both Rosie and Seb knew but never said aloud that Anna wouldn’t end their marriage.
For all his flaws, his maddeningly selfish behaviour, Anna loved the idiot.
An unexpected outcome of Eddy’s infidelity had been that for a time, at least, Rosie and Seb had been closer.
Rosie remembers feeling like a bit of a traitor, Anna going through the worst time of her marriage while Seb and Rosie were briefly golden.
For a few nights, after the kids were asleep, they’d sit in the bath together and talk.
Then they’d wash each other, shining and buffing the untarnished commitment between them.
They’d been beautiful, those baths and, yes, a couple of times Rosie thinks the slow washing had led to them having sex.
She remembers how connected they felt then, how easy it had been to fall asleep wrapped up in each other. Why couldn’t they go back there now?
‘Why is this coming up now, babe?’ Anna asks gently.