Dearest Rose

by Rowan Coleman

  ‘Ted!’ Jenny gasped. ‘How could you say such things?’

  ‘You are skating on very thin ice, young man,’ Frasier said, his jaw clenching tightly, his skin blanching along his clenched knuckles.

  Then first Jenny and then Frasier caught sight of the look of excruciating guilt that must have been writ large across Rose’s face, and the penny dropped for both of them at precisely the same moment: that Ted was not lying, at least not entirely.

  ‘Rose?’ Frasier asked her, his voice void of emotion. ‘Tell me that’s not true.’

  ‘It’s not,’ Rose said hurriedly, unhappily, unable to keep up with the turn of events. ‘Not the way that Ted’s saying it is. We did kiss, yes. But it was … it was because … it’s hard to explain really. But it was just some kissing, and it never meant a thing.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ Ted asked her angrily. ‘So we’ve not hooked up a couple of times then, Rose? We didn’t spend most of a night together, naked in that bed?’ He nodded at the stripped mattress behind them, and Rose felt Frasier’s arm slip from around her shoulders and fall heavily to his side.

  ‘It wasn’t like that, Ted,’ she said. ‘And you know it.’

  ‘I know exactly what it was like,’ Ted leered at her, all trace of the man she had grown to like so much gone from his face. ‘I know exactly what you were like.’

  ‘Please, don’t lie, not about this,’ Rose pleased quietly. ‘Please, I know you’re hurt, but –’

  ‘I’m not hurt,’ Ted said bitterly. ‘I couldn’t care less.’

  ‘You went after my boy, after everything I said to you?’ Jenny said, stopping Ted from saying more that his mother probably knew he’d regret. Until she spoke Rose had forgotten Jenny was there, so intent was she on stopping Ted from ruining everything with Frasier. It didn’t occur to her that he could ruin everything with Jenny too.

  ‘No!’ she insisted. ‘I didn’t go after him. It just happened, and we both knew it was stupid … and actually not very much did happen, did it, Ted?’ Rose said, looking again to Ted to tell the truth: that really all they had ever done was kiss, even though some of it had been without clothes on.

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that,’ Ted said, crossing his arms and lifting his chin in defiance, directing his comments at Frasier. ‘She was really up for it. You want to watch yourself, mate. This one’s a really live wire, take it from me. That’s if you know how to get her going. I could give you some tips if you like.’

  Rose gasped as Frasier crossed the room on one step and, grabbing Ted by the collar, shoved him against the wall, his fist hovering in mid-air.

  ‘Go on then,’ Ted spat at him. ‘Take a shot at me. I promise you it will be your last one, old man.’

  With some force of will Frasier dragged his hand down and let Ted go, releasing him as if he were some objectionable piece of rubbish.

  ‘Frasier,’ Rose began to try to explain, watching her happiness crumble away before her eyes, ‘it was when I was still very confused, before I thought that there was any chance of anything happening between you and me and Ted’s twisting it because he’s angry and hurt –’

  ‘So you’re saying that’s what I was? A way of passing the time?’ Ted asked her. ‘I’m not angry and hurt, I’m just pissed off that I wasted any of my time on you.’

  ‘You’d barely got here, Rose,’ Frasier said softly, his expression stricken. ‘We hardly had a chance to say hello, let alone work out how we felt about each other. I thought … I thought you felt the same about me as I did about you, that coming here was to finally make all those feelings we had for each other a reality. That after we’d both waited for so long you would be able to wait just a while longer. I didn’t think you’d opt to hedge your bets and jump into bed with someone else while you were waiting to see how things turned out.’

  ‘I didn’t jump into bed with him!’ Rose protested. ‘Not in that way!’ she trailed off as she looked at Ted’s grandma’s bed where she had more or less done just that. What a fool she had been, how stupid not to see where her curiosity would lead her. It turned out that Rose had picked exactly the worst moment of her life to be spontaneous.

  ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ Ted said angrily. Clearly upset, he left, slamming the door so hard behind him that it opened again.

  ‘Well,’ Jenny said promptly, her face clenched as tightly as her fists, which were balled at her sides. ‘You’ll be wanting to settle your bill and be on your way. I’ll go and make it up for you now. Oh, and if I could have my daughter’s things washed and folded and returned by tomorrow, that would be much appreciated. Thank you.’

  Rose watched, bereft, as two of the people who had been so kind and so welcoming to her when she’d arrived in Millthwaite, friendless and alone, walked out of her life, most likely for good. One or two moments of allowing herself to stop thinking and just feel had led to this, to her fledgeling happiness descending so quickly into chaos and recrimination. It was her own fault, and now she had to deal with the consequences.

  Rose turned to Frasier, who was standing rooted to the spot, unable to look at her. This couldn’t be happening, could it? She would be able to fix this, wouldn’t she? The universe wouldn’t take Frasier away from her, the moment that she found him, over one silly mistake that she hadn’t even known was a mistake until just now?

  Slowly Rose walked over to Frasier and reached out a hand, letting it hover in the air for a moment before it fell, dejected and rejected, to her side.

  ‘You have to understand,’ she attempted to explain. ‘I’ve been bricked up in my marriage for so long, I just wanted to taste what it was like to be free, to be normal. I did come here for you. Everything I told you last night was true, but when I got here … I felt like a fool to have even thought that you might feel the same way about me, and you had Cecily, and a life that looked already complete and perfect. I was reeling, trying to find my feet, trying to work out who I was, if I wasn’t married to Richard. Ted was kind to me. I know that’s hard to believe, but he was. He made me smile and laugh. He made me feel … human and … new. I told him right from the start that it was you I loved, and I’m sure that when he’s had a chance to calm down and cool off, he’ll tell the truth.’

  ‘And so do you always have sex with everyone who is kind to you?’ Frasier asked her stiffly. ‘Are you really that pathetic?’

  ‘I didn’t sleep with him!’ Rose said, finding her full voice at last, physically hurting from Frasier’s cruel words as they fell home, sharp end first. ‘But, you know what, I wish I had, I really do. Because I am sick of men telling me what I can and can’t do, what I can and can’t think or feel. And of treating me like I’m just some … some possession to be boxed up and put on a shelf, and to stay there until I’m wanted.’ Rose found herself marching up to him, her face in his, so overtaken was she by a sense of injustice and fury. ‘Seven years I waited for you, Frasier. Seven years, and you never came back. And I never stopped loving you, not for one second, not even when much worse was happening to me than being kissed by some boy.’ Rose had to pause to catch her breath, tasting the salt of her own tears on her tongue. ‘And even then, even where the chances of finding you were so small, I still looked, I looked for you the first chance I got, the first second. Doesn’t that count for anything with you? Or is all you can think about that, because I kissed another man, everything we said and shared last night is null and void? Because if that’s true then I really have been in love with a fantasy all this time, and you are not the man I thought you were.’

  Frasier still could not look at her.

  ‘I don’t know how to feel,’ he said, his tone cold, remote. ‘Last night I was ready to give my whole life for you, to end it with Cecily, do my best to win over your father, and Maddie. I thought that what we had was special, unsullied. But now … now I don’t know.’

  Rose stared at him in disbelief. ‘Frasier, I know I didn’t behave very well, I know I didn’t think things through. I rushed into something with T
ed, but that doesn’t change who I am, how I feel about you. At least not yet it hasn’t.’

  Frasier shook his head. ‘Then I’m sorry, Rose,’ he said. ‘I’m not the man for you. It seems I am not the man I thought I was. I wanted to be strong for you, but this … I’m sorry.’

  Rose watched aghast as he walked out, leaving her alone, in the bare, sorry little annexe, all her hopes and dreams dismantled in an instant. Completely dumbfounded, she sat on the edge of the bed where she and Ted had shared so many fevered kisses and tried very hard to make sense of it all.

  It was true, she had known from the start that getting involved with Ted, even just briefly, was a bad idea; she’d known in the pit of her stomach that the more she let him kiss her the more complicated it would become, and perhaps she had made the wrong decision, but after everything she had been through to reach that one perfect moment with Frasier, when she could tell him how she felt about him, did she do something so silly, so inconsequential, really to write off all that hope and love?

  ‘If the way he feels about me is really so fragile,’ Rose whispered to herself, ‘then Shona was right: all of this was an illusion, one that he was drawn into too, for a while. And now it’s blown away into the thin air again.’

  ‘Who are you talking to, Mum?’ Maddie asked her, wrinkling up her nose as she came into the annexe, which still smelt a little musty. ‘I don’t like it in here, but I don’t like it in there more. Jenny’s cross for no reason and she’s put all our bags outside the front door. I asked her why and she told me to ask you.’

  ‘Really?’ Rose sighed, feeling suddenly a lot less at home in Millthwaite, her new beginning in tatters. Steadying herself, she did the only thing she could do, which was to pick herself up and carry on.

  ‘Right then, well, come on,’ she said, mustering a smile for Maddie. ‘Let’s go and live with Granddad.’

  ‘I’m excited about living with Granddad,’ Maddie told her as they stopped in the hallway where Jenny was waiting, her arms crossed, an envelope, presumably containing Rose’s bill, crumpled in one hand.

  She offered it to Rose. ‘Your bill is in there. You can post payment through the door when you’re ready. No need to knock.’

  ‘Or I could just pay you now?’ Rose offered, beginning to reach for her bag. ‘If you’d just give me a minute to sort out the cash –’

  ‘I’d rather you just went,’ Jenny said, thrusting the envelope into Rose’s reluctant hand.

  ‘Goodbye, Jenny,’ Rose said, sighing. ‘You’ve been a good friend to me. I hope that soon you realise that I haven’t done anything nearly as bad as you think I have.’

  Jenny ignored her as Rose took the envelope and went outside to find her bags slung on the ground, her carefully rewrapped painting lying in the street for anyone to trample on. With a heavy heart Rose carefully picked the bundle up and laid it on the back seat of the car.

  ‘Why is everyone in such a bad mood, Mum?’ Maddie asked her, as she climbed into the back of the car alongside the painting. ‘What’s happened? This morning you were humming and Jenny was cheerful, and now Frasier has gone off without saying goodbye, Ted kicked a chair on his way out, and Jenny won’t look at me. Have I done something wrong again without realising? Have I said something I shouldn’t?’

  ‘No!’ Rose said, completely unprepared for the eventuality that Maddie might think all this sudden bad feeling had something to do with her. ‘No, darling, no. It’s just me. It’s all me. I’ve done something stupid and managed to upset everyone who I thought were our friends. I’m sorry. It’s all my fault, again. I haven’t been a very good mummy, have I?’

  ‘I think you have been fine,’ Maddie said, sincerely enough to bring a tear to Rose’s eyes.

  Suddenly feeling drained, Rose sat on the edge of the back seat next to her daughter.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Maddie said, clapping her on the back and rubbing her shoulder. ‘I do that all the time: fall out with people when I don’t mean to. It hurts for a bit when people don’t talk to you and stop liking you, but if you act like it doesn’t matter and pretend you don’t care, they leave you alone after a bit, and then at least you can pretend that you are OK even if that’s not how you feel inside.’

  Rose rested her palm against Maddie’s cheek, stunned by the revelation that suddenly put her troubles into stark perspective. ‘Is that what it was like for you at school?’ she asked. Maddie had never said anything about what life was like for her before, never in so much detail, at least.

  ‘Yes,’ Maddie said, matter-of-factly with a small shrug. ‘I annoy people, I always do. I am really unlikeable, I just am. I don’t even have to try. Sometimes I think there is no point in starting to be friends with someone because they will only go off me eventually. So a lot of the time I don’t bother.’

  ‘Oh, Maddie,’ Rose said. ‘I had no idea that you felt that way, because it’s not true, you are a lovely person.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mum,’ Maddie said. ‘I don’t mind, and anyway we live here now. And I feel different here. I feel … nicer. I’m sure it will be fine when I start school again, and whatever you’ve done to upset everyone we know, just pretend that you don’t care. Eventually you will stop caring for real and they’ll get bored and leave you alone.’

  ‘That’s good advice,’ Rose said.

  ‘And we’ve always got Granddad,’ Maddie said, opening the car door. ‘That’s what I like about him the most. He likes us even though we are very unlikeable.’

  Feeling closer to her daughter in that moment than she ever had before, Rose climbed into the front of the car, knowing that now she needed to begin again from scratch to rebuild what she had thought she was already halfway to rebuilding. Somehow, although she was sure the hurt and disappointment would come crashing in later, it didn’t matter as much as she had feared, just at that moment. Now for the first time in her life she understood what it felt like to be her daughter, and that insight was priceless. And she was going home to her father.

  Above and beyond anything else she had a place to call home.

  Chapter Sixteen

  MADDIE SCRAMBLED OUT of the car as soon as it came to a stop, racing to the barn first and, finding it locked once again, back to the cottage. Rose smiled as she watched Maddie, as happy as she had ever seen her, her thick hair flying behind her, her arms and legs flaying in her hurry to be the first to announce that they were home. Taking some of their luggage out of the boot, Rose paused for a second, allowing herself a moment to breathe in the air, admire the scenery around her, knowing with a small sense of pleasure that soon the majesty and wonder of the mountains would become commonplace to her, just like every familiar scene should.

  Maddie had left the front door swinging on its creaky hinges, so Rose only had to shoulder it open, without the need to put her bags down. It was when she came across the scene in the living room that she dropped them, frozen for a moment by shock.

  Maddie was sitting crossed-legged on the floor next to John, who was lying sprawled on his front, completely still. From what little Rose could see, his face lay smashed against the tiles, white and waxy. There was an acrid smell of urine in the air, and Rose knew with a dark, grim certainty that whatever was wrong, it was far more than arthritis.

  ‘He’s dead,’ Maddie said, looking up at her, clearly in shock. ‘He’s not breathing.’

  ‘Yes, he is,’ Rose insisted, suddenly galvanised from shock into action. There was a small pool of vomit by his head, which meant that it was a good thing he had collapsed on his front, Rose thought as she rolled him onto his side, into the recovery position. Frantically she tried feeling for a pulse and then, realising she was panicking too much to be able to concentrate, she rested her head against his chest and waited. After what seemed like an age, his ribs creaked, rose and fell beneath her head.

  ‘He’s breathing,’ Rose said, shaking him quite firmly by the shoulder, just the way she had used to with her mother. ‘Dad! Wake up!’

 
Unable to rouse him, Rose reached for a dusty cushion from the chair and put it under his head, rolling up a blanket that was strewn on the sofa and propping it against him to stop him from slipping onto his back.

  ‘Maddie, it will be OK,’ Rose told her daughter, who sat perfectly still in her original position, quiet and contained, her eyes big with fear. But she wasn’t about to panic – Rose knew that. Maddie had lived long enough with fear, even if she wasn’t entirely aware of it, to know that panicking didn’t help.

  Taking her phone, Rose touched John’s forehead, checking for a temperature and finding him cold as she dialled 999. It was a brief call, in which she explained, as calmly as she could, the symptoms and, having sent Maddie to fetch them, read out the names of the pills that were stacked by John’s bed. None of it felt real, and as the dispatcher told Rose that an air ambulance was on its way and would be with them in minutes, Rose felt utterly detached, separated from what was happening just as she had on the day she found out about her mother. Only this wasn’t happening now, she told herself. No one was dying now.

  Seeing her opportunity to get her away from the scene that she was so afraid would turn to one of loss, Rose sent Maddie to the yard to keep an eye out for a helicopter. Then she dialled Frasier’s number, unsurprised when it went straight to voicemail.

  ‘Frasier,’ she said as calmly as she could, determined not to let him hear the tears and panic that threatened in her voice behind the false façade of calm, ‘John’s collapsed again. It’s worse this time. He’s not conscious. I’ve called an ambulance. Please, please, for Dad’s sake, please come. He needs you. We both do.’

  Hanging up, and without a second thought, Rose called Tilda next, thankful that she’d decided to put the number in her phone after all.