Chapter 26
As happy as she was to have the work, and of course the money, she couldn’t help but wish Max would be there too.
The gallery– and its rejection of Max’s work– had been the beginning of the end of their short but wonderful relationship.
How different things might have been if they were both going to be there tomorrow night, enjoying their relative successes together.
Thoughts of Max and the night they’d shared, the romantic canal boat ride and the first time he’d kissed her, played in her head as she made her way home, so that when she saw him on the deck of The Rembrandt , sitting out in the evening sun, she should have been prepared for the surge of emotion that hit her.
She longed to feel his lips on hers again and to shout and scream at him some more for throwing away their chance of happiness.
Because that was exactly what he’d done.
By pushing her away he’d given up any possibility they had of making it together.
And now he was back with Johanna. Their love hadn’t even been worth fighting for.
She pressed down her need to tell him again what a fool he’d been and instead, made her way towards her boat.
He was reading something on his phone and looked up, a nervous smile flitting across his features.
He raised a hand in greeting, which she pointedly ignored and continued onto the deck of the Forget-Me-Knot .
Zoon, however, had other plans and bounded away from Max, onto the street and around to her boat.
‘Zoon, come back here!’
Rosie tried to walk past, but he danced in between her legs. ‘Zoon, go home,’ she said gently, giving him just the lightest of fusses because she couldn’t resist his cute face and silly sad eyes.
‘Zoon! Come!’ Max bellowed, but he was completely ignored. With a sigh, he placed his phone down and came to retrieve him. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be, I’ve missed him.’
‘You have?’
The air stilled around them as she stood and met his gaze. She wanted to open her mouth and say how much she’d missed Max too, but she couldn’t force the words past the giant football-sized lump of hurt that still remained lodged in her throat.
‘You look tired,’ he said gently and though she knew he didn’t mean it as a criticism, but she still felt rankled.
Who was he to say such things to her? They weren’t friends anymore. And they wouldn’t be neighbours for much longer. Her anger burned like a flare lit into the night sky, sparking in her body.
‘Do I? Maybe that’s because I’m working all the hours I can to try and save my boat.’
Max visibly paled, rocking backwards. ‘Rosie, I—’
‘You know, you can’t just go around telling women they look tired. That’s like, bloke advice 101. No woman wants to be told that. Ever.’
‘I know, it was a stupid thing to say. I just... just wanted to make sure you were okay.’
‘I don’t know if I’m okay, Max. Ask me in three weeks when I know if I’ve saved my boat or not.’
As she hadn’t been given an extension on the repairs deadline, she’d be cutting it fine.
But she did have a month, so if the event went well and she got started on the repairs straight after it, she’d hopefully get most of it done before the deadline.
And they wouldn’t force her out when she’d nearly finished, would they?
She shook the thought away. There was too much to worry about already without thinking of things that hadn’t happened yet and that she had no hope of controlling.
‘Three weeks?’ he echoed, slightly puzzled. ‘Why? What’s happening?’
With everything that had happened, he hadn’t earned the right to that information as far as Rosie was concerned. She stepped away from him, hyper aware of his strong arms, of his woody aftershave and the distracting bulge in his biceps. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Rosie, I wanted to tell you that—’
She couldn’t bear any more of his platitudes or apologies. ‘Goodnight, Max. Night, Zoon.’
‘Rosie—’
She gave the dog a final scratch behind his ears and moved inside as quickly as possible. ‘I have to go. I have a date with my dad.’
***
When her phone rang and she saw her dad’s face on the screen, she almost cried.
She wanted to tell him everything that had happened and though she’d given him some highlights over text, he had no idea of how wrong everything was going.
Keeping up a cheerful exterior for the next hour was going to take all of her non-existent acting skills and a whole lot of grim determination.
‘Hey, Dad,’ she sang. ‘How was your day?’
‘Good, good. Oh, I’ve missed your face. But this is nice, isn’t it? Are you ready?’
She turned her camera around to show the table laid up again, just as she had before, and her salmon was plated and keeping warm in the oven. ‘All ready,’ she confirmed. ‘So, tell me all about what you’ve been up to.’
Her dad ran through all the gossip from his work, the day-to-day things he’d been up to, and started on the subject of someone he knew who was getting divorced after thirty-five years of marriage.
Rosie’s mind ran to Finn and all that he’d been dealing with until her dad said: ‘You know, I don’t think Linny would have let me get away even if I’d wanted to. Not unless she’d got to keep the house and garden. Sometimes I think she loved that garden more than me.’
Rosie couldn’t speak. She actually had it: the name for her shop.
Not that that was looking likely anytime soon, but she finally knew what its name would be: Linny’s Garden.
As she ran it around in her mind, she knew it was right.
The sound it made was perfect: soft and gentle as she was, welcoming and friendly.
Exactly the type of person her mum was, and it would be a place where people felt better just for being there.
The way she’d always felt around her mum.
How ironic that she’d found the name just as the chances of her making a success of life in Amsterdam were disappearing, the odds stacked against her.
No , she thought, straightening her spine.
No! She was done thinking negatively. She was done feeling sorry for herself, especially with the new-found friends she had around her, all of whom were working as hard as they could to make the festival idea a success.
She wouldn’t be the one to fail. Not when Linny’s Garden needed opening.
‘What are you smiling at?’ her dad asked. ‘That joke wasn’t that funny.’
‘Your jokes are always hilarious, Dad. But thanks to you, I think you’ve just nailed what my shop’ll be called when I finally open it.’
‘Oh yeah? What’s that? Not “Steve and Isla’s Divorce”, hopefully.’
She giggled. ‘No, Dad. Linny’s Garden. It’s perfect, isn’t it?’
Tears made his eyes glassy and bright. ‘Oh, sweetheart. That’s wonderful. She’d have loved that.’
He was right. She would have, and it was up to Rosie to make that happen.
Yes, her heart was bruised and sore from Max’s behaviour but she’d never once let a man affect her decision-making and she wasn’t about to start now.
If Max didn’t see how perfect they were together, then that was his problem.
She had her mum’s memory to uphold, her own future to carve out and a life to live here.
And she’d do everything she could to make that happen.