An Unsuitable Match

by Joanna Trollope

  ‘That’s the arrangement,’ he would say, wagging a finger.

  Laura was never in a hurry to leave his bed, in any case. There was something eternally comforting and secure about lying there, idly watching the revolution of star shapes from his nightlight wheel across the ceiling and allowing her mind to float in neutral, bobbing about gently like a cork on water. Daydreaming, she supposed it was; or duskdreaming, more accurately: a peacefully unfocused contrast to the rest of life, which was so full of urgent need and demand. Those times on Jack’s bed, while he fought not to sleep, were some of the most luxurious of her days.

  His breathing was now definitely the breathing of someone properly asleep. She peeled herself slowly off his bed until she was upright and bent to look at him, his thumb half out of his slack mouth. She wouldn’t kiss him. Experience had taught them both that kissing him sometimes meant an instant, confused and miserable re-awakening which meant he could then take a whole evening to settle again. Instead, she blew a kiss into the air and barely touched his shoulder with a forefinger. Then she went in to check on Adam, asleep on his knees as usual, his cheek pressed to the sheet, his nappy-padded bottom in the air, and crept downstairs into the lamplit kitchen.

  Angus was standing by the table, his reading glasses pushed up onto his forehead, staring at his phone. ‘Asleep?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, at last. Is that my phone?’

  Angus held it out. ‘Sorry. All yours. It’s a message from your brother.’

  Laura took the phone. ‘Nat? He never texts.’

  ‘He has now.’

  ‘Goodness,’ Laura said. ‘Did you read this? He’s – wow, I’ve never known him like this. I think he’s met someone. I think Nat has really met someone!’ She looked up. Her expression was sober.

  ‘What?’ Angus said.

  ‘Well,’ Laura said, ‘lovely and all that. For Nat, anyway. But if he’s met someone, what about Emmy?’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Prue had always made a point of being straightforward. She did in fact, Rose often remarked, pride herself on it. So she didn’t just turn up unannounced at the mews house, to catch her sister in an unguarded moment, but rang ahead to say that she was coming up to London for the day and intended to see Rose and – if possible, although she made it plain that it was her settled wish – to meet Tyler.

  ‘Of course I’ll meet her,’ Tyler said. ‘I’d like to. In fact, as she’s your only sister, I’d love to. Shall we give her lunch here?’

  Rose was brushing her hair. Prue would notice her new highlights. She would also notice that Rose had a leather skirt and suede ankle boots and that her face had, these days, what could only be described as a glow. It had an inner light that cosmetic companies were always promising could be achieved with the application of a new and miraculously engineered foundation, but that in truth only ever came from a state of mind and heart. She couldn’t, she thought, leaning forward towards the mirror, manufacture that shine in her eyes. They’d been, all her life, perfectly acceptable unremarkable brown eyes, but these days they had a luminousness, a depth and texture that someone who had known them all their life couldn’t fail to observe. And, being Prue, also comment on.

  From where he was sitting on the edge of Rose’s bed, putting his socks on, Tyler said,

  ‘Selfishly, I rather hope she’ll be struck by how gorgeous you look.’

  Rose turned from the mirror. ‘D’you know, I wasn’t thinking exactly that because I’ve never thought of myself as anything more than perfectly OK to look at, but I was sort of realizing . . .’ She stopped.

  He said tenderly, ‘Of course you were.’

  She ducked her head. ‘Oh, Tyler . . .’

  ‘You’re a beautiful woman.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  He got up and crossed the room to stand behind her so that he could regard her over her shoulder, in the mirror. ‘Look at you.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘You look all of forty-two.’

  ‘Stop it!’

  He put his arms round her from behind and rested his chin on her shoulder. He said,

  ‘Do you like our faces together like this?’

  She nodded. He turned slightly to kiss her cheek.

  ‘Together,’ he said.

  She waited, still holding her hairbrush.

  ‘I think . . .’ Tyler said. ‘Well, I think two things. I think we should invite your sister for lunch here. And I think we should go shopping for an engagement ring.’

  Rose’s mouth fell open a little. ‘Goodness.’

  He released her slightly and stepped back. ‘It’s not a major decision for you, like selling this house now, is it? It’s something we are completely agreed on. And, my darling, it will be something we can show Prue together, won’t it? In fact, why can’t Prue be the first person to see us officially engaged?’ He smiled at her in the mirror. ‘Shall we look for something old? What do you say, future Mrs Masson, to an aquamarine?’

  *

  Prue arrived with a bunch of supermarket tulips for Rose – an uncompromising yellow – and the air of one who is resolutely opposed to being charmed. She kissed Rose briskly and glanced at Tyler as if she were assessing him as a possible new accountant.

  ‘Hello, dear. These are for you and the label on them promises that they will last for five days, which is the very least I would expect. I don’t know what you have done to your hair, but it’s very pretty. Dyed it, have you?’

  ‘It’s highlights, Prue.’

  ‘Ah. Yes. Well, you look very bonny altogether. I imagine leather is very practical, isn’t it?’

  ‘Prue,’ Rose said, moving the tulips to the crook of her arm, ‘this is Tyler.’

  Prue regarded him. ‘I guessed as much.’

  He held his hand out and after a moment’s apparent consideration, Prue shook it.

  Tyler said, smiling, ‘I suppose I’d better not kiss you.’

  ‘You suppose quite right, Mr Masson.’

  ‘Tyler. Please.’

  Prue transferred her gaze back to her sister. ‘To be perfectly frank, Rosie, I really need to see you alone.’

  Rose tried to laugh it off. ‘I don’t want to be ticked off by you as well, Prue. The children have been bad enough as it is.’

  ‘They have reason.’

  ‘Tell you what,’ Tyler said, as if an illuminating thought had just struck him, ‘I’ll go out. Why don’t I go out and leave you two alone together, and then I’ll come back at lunchtime.’

  ‘Suppose,’ Rose said, ‘I don’t want to be left alone with Prue?’

  ‘It’s quite safe,’ Prue said. ‘I only have things to ask, not things to say. That seems to me, Mr – Tyler, a very sensible suggestion.’

  His arm twitched, as if he had been about to put it round Rose’s shoulders, and thought better of it. He said, still smiling, to Prue, ‘Thank you.’

  She lifted her capacious cross-body bag over her head and shoulders, and handed it grandly to him. ‘I like a practical suggestion.’

  Tyler, stowing Prue’s bag on a hall chair and then coming quickly to help her out of her padded coat, said to Rose, ‘I can continue our jewellery trawl.’

  ‘Jewellery?’ Prue demanded.

  He removed the padded coat and hung it on the newel post of the staircase.

  ‘Tyler,’ Rose said, almost pleadingly.

  ‘Yes,’ he said to Prue. ‘Jewellery. We’ve been looking for an engagement ring. We really hoped – or, at least, I did – that we could find one to show you today, but so far nothing has been quite right. Has it, Rosie?’

  Rose shook her head.

  ‘What happened to the one William gave you?’ Prue asked, almost accusingly.

  ‘I sold it,’ Rose said. ‘It paid for the twins to go skiing and Laura and Angus to buy a new hot-water tank.’

  ‘And now you want another.’

  ‘No,’ Rose said, ‘I don’t. I mean, I don’t not, but I don’t need another ring.’

 
‘I do, though,’ Tyler said. ‘I want her to have a ring given to her by me. I want people to look at her left hand and know why she is wearing an engagement ring.’

  Prue looked at him thoughtfully. ‘Do you now?’

  He returned the look. ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Look what I’ve got?’

  ‘No,’ Tyler said. ‘No. It’s not about possession. It’s about my amazement, my . . . my rapture that she has agreed to marry me.’

  Prue moved back towards the front door and unlatched it. She opened it wide and made a sweeping, ushering gesture. ‘Then I think, Mr Masson, that that is your cue to leave us alone together for an hour. Don’t you?’

  *

  ‘He’s very personable,’ Prue said, settling herself into an armchair with her chosen glass of bitter lemon. ‘I’ll give him that. And nice manners. Tactful.’ She surveyed her sister. ‘You look extremely well, Rosie. Quite apart from your hair, that is. I’m intrigued by your hair. I don’t remember it ever being so thick before. In fact, I don’t remember it being the kind of asset it plainly is now.’

  Rose put her own glass of water on a side table and settled herself, with as much nonchalance as she could manage, on the sofa. She said firmly, ‘I’m happy, Prue.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘I don’t just mean I’m excited to have someone in love with me. I mean that I feel safe. I feel safe in the way he loves me. Of course it’s lovely being in love, but it’s even lovelier not being anxious, not feeling that he’s being comparative, not worrying that he’d love me more if I were just a bit different.’

  ‘Ah,’ Prue said. She took a thoughtful sip of her drink. ‘And might the unspoken corollary of that be that I wouldn’t know what you were talking about?’

  Rose sat very still, her suede-booted feet together almost primly. ‘That hasn’t crossed my mind. What I am trying to convey to you is that I haven’t lost my head.’

  ‘Why do you think I might suspect you had?’

  Rose shrugged. She looked out of the French doors to the garden where there was a green glaze on the shrubs as the new young leaves began to emerge.

  ‘Is that,’ Prue persisted, ‘what you think your children think?’

  Rose went on gazing at the garden.

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘I hate being out of step with them,’ she said eventually.

  ‘And they are used to being your priority. They have come first with you all their lives.’

  Rose switched her gaze to her lap. ‘Laura has told me that it is my life. That I must live my life the way I want to live it.’

  ‘And the twins?’

  ‘I think,’ Rose said unhappily, ‘that the twins and I have got thoroughly at odds with each other. Somehow.’

  Prue crossed one trainered ankle over another. She said, ‘Wasn’t Nat right about making you see a solicitor?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Rosie,’ Prue said sternly, ‘don’t be childish. Although I always think that using that adjective is very unfair to children. What I mean is, that refusing to understand your legal position would be a deliberate act of immaturity. Nat was quite right to insist on it. Just as he is quite within his rights to ask you to think, very seriously, about why you insist on getting married. I’ll ask you the same, Rosie. Why on earth, after all you’ve been through, all you’ve survived, all you’ve achieved, why do you want to get married?’

  Very slowly, Rose lifted her gaze from her lap and looked at her sister.

  ‘I love him.’

  Prue waved the hand not holding her glass of bitter lemon.

  ‘Not a reason.’

  ‘He loves me. He has never proposed to anyone before. He wants the world to know I am his wife.’

  ‘He,’ Prue said with emphasis. ‘He. He. He. What about you?’

  ‘I love him,’ Rose repeated, unblinking. ‘I’m in love with him. Nobody has ever made me feel as remarkable and as complete and as safe as Tyler makes me feel.’

  ‘All descriptions,’ Prue said steadily, ‘of being in love. None of them, as far as I can see, good, sound reasons to be married.’

  Rose looked back down at her hands, at her left hand where one day this as yet unbought aquamarine would sit.

  She said simply, ‘I just want to.’

  There was a silence. Then Prue replied gravely, ‘Do you?’

  Rose nodded. She said, almost in a whisper, ‘I really do. I can’t explain it to the twins, because it seems almost improper somehow, but I just want to. Long to. Perhaps a part of me wants to get marriage right, for once?’

  Prue took another swallow from her glass. ‘How long have you known him?’

  ‘Four months. Well, fifteen weeks, to be precise.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘What d’you mean, exactly?’

  ‘I mean that it’s very fast. If Emmy said she wanted to marry someone she’d known since Christmas, say, you’d tell her to wait a bit, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I’m not Emmy,’ Rose said, ‘I’m a grandmother. I’ve been around all kinds of houses she hasn’t even encountered yet.’

  ‘Rosie,’ Prue said. ‘Just wait.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said, just wait. Be engaged if you must, but don’t do anything else that might limit your options.’

  Rose said nothing.

  ‘For example,’ Prue went on, ‘this house.’

  Rose’s head jerked up. ‘What about this house?’

  Prue swivelled her head to survey the room. ‘A house like this, Rose, has to come into the equation.’

  Rose took a deep breath. She said, ‘Tyler isn’t interested in this house.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘In fact,’ Rose said in a rush, ‘he is so not interested in this house that he’d like me to sell it and give the proceeds to my children and then he and I could go and find a cottage in the country together.’

  Prue put her glass down and clasped her hands in her lap. She regarded her sister solemnly.

  ‘Oh, Rosie.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What do you feel about that?’

  Rose looked at the celling. Then she looked out at the garden again. Then she suddenly flung her arms wide in a clumsy gesture and said, with a kind of anguish, ‘Awful. If you want to know.’

  *

  It was really difficult, Emmy thought, to talk to Laura. Laura always said that she was – soap-opera phrase – there for her, but then she said the same to Angus, and the children, and their mother, and Nat, and her patients. It was fine in theory, as an attitude, but in practice it meant something quite different. It meant that Laura was almost always giving her attention to some person or cause that was absolutely unimpeachable, which in turn meant that you were earning yourself moral black marks by trying to claim even fifteen minutes of her focus. Emmy had sometimes wondered if this elusiveness had been one of the most powerfully attractive elements of Laura for Angus, and whether, one day, he might suddenly find it as pointless and exasperating as it had once been a turn-on. In Emmy’s view, it wasn’t worth risking relationships by taking such chances. But then, she wasn’t Laura, and Laura had inherited from their father just the same quietly determined confidence as he had, even if, since she was female, it had a subtler manifestation. Laura loved Angus, but she didn’t need him as he manifestly needed her. As Emmy had always known she needed Nat, and had, until this week, assumed that dependency was returned in full: was in fact – Emmy liked this word – symbiotic.

  When Nat asked her to come and meet an actress he’d met called Jess Ballantyne, and had sounded elated and – and, estranged, in a way he never had in all his life before, Emmy’s first appalled impulse had been to call a girlfriend. Her second impulse, hot on the heels of her first, was not to expose herself, not to divulge how violently, primitively, she felt abandoned and overlooked, to anyone outside this family. In the old days, she told herself, she would have gone to talk to Rose, but that was out of the question at the moment. The only thing to d
o, she decided, was to send uncompromising WhatsApp messages to Laura, entreating a conversation. She didn’t actually type the words, ‘as my big sister, you owe me’, but she implied them in a way even Laura couldn’t mistake. But even if she couldn’t mistake them, Laura could just sidestep them in that blithe but intractable fashion that seemed to come so naturally to her. And made other people, Emmy thought crossly, making the complicated tube journey to waylay Laura at her west London surgery, go far more than the extra mile for her in consequence.

  Laura’s surgery was a member of the West London Group Practices and her colleagues teased her about being their token white Englishwoman. With the exception of their senior partner, who had done his initial medical training in Dhaka, they had all been students, and junior doctors, in the National Health Service, and Laura, except for her skin colour, was no exception. Nor was she an exception in having a doctor father. Five of her eight general-practitioner colleagues were the daughters and sons of doctors, even if none of their parents had worked in the kind of shiny new premises that now housed Laura’s practice, complete with a primary-coloured play area floored in plastic-covered foam rubber. Stepping among the babies – Emmy was, being unfamiliar with them, nervous around babies – she arrived at the reception desk and announced to a girl in telephonist’s headphones behind it that she was Doctor Mayhew’s sister.

  The girl didn’t smile. She had an immaculate head of complicated cornrow plaits and painted nails decorated with Union Jacks. She said only, ‘I’ll tell her.’

  ‘Could you say it’s Emmy?’

  The girl indicated the line of chairs set out for patients, with a flash of flags. ‘Wait there.’

  ‘Well, I will, but I’d be really grateful if you’d tell Laura it’s me.’

  The girl said, into her microphone, ‘Your sister’s here, Doctor Mayhew,’ and then, not looking at Emmy, ‘I’ll tell her to wait.’

  Emmy marched over to the line of chairs and sat down with emphasis. She had never been in Laura’s new surgery before, with its Scandinavian skylights and general air of trying to look anything but medical. There was even, she noticed, a coffee machine, and a room designated for baby changing, and round the walls hung cheerful exhortations not to smoke or take drugs, to eat fruit and vegetables – to be part, in fact, Emmy thought sourly, of a jaunty modern population who had no trouble in being responsible for their own health. She looked at her phone and checked her messages. She looked at the spring sky fading through the skylights. She remembered how she had told her boss that there was a family crisis and she had to go and talk to her famously busy sister who was a doctor and so, you know? Her boss had looked very sympathetic and respectful. Of course Emmy should go: Emmy should go now, in fact. So she had, and here she was, sitting on a moulded plywood chair in the reception area of Laura’s surgery, waiting for Laura to finish having all the time in the world for everyone who wasn’t her sister.