“I do,” Ted insisted. “I have to say I’m sorry.” Rose waited for him to say more, but he faltered, gazing up at the battered fringed lampshade for inspiration.
“OK, great. Never mind, let’s forget about it,” Rose said, but before she could turn back, Ted was talking again.
“I’m sorry that I walked in the other direction the other day and pretended that I hadn’t seen you when I obviously had. And I’m sorry that I haven’t got in touch since the other night. You must think I’m a right dick.”
“It’s OK,” Rose repeated, edging towards the door. “You don’t have to be sorry, you don’t have to explain. I get it. We got a bit carried away—I got a bit carried away—let’s just forget about it and move on, right?”
Ted stared at her aghast. “That’s not what I’m trying to say at all.”
“What?” Rose asked him, looking longingly at the exit, which Ted was blocking. “Pardon?”
“You’ve got to me,” Ted said simply. “That’s why I never got in touch, after . . . the last time. I was trying to get my head round it. And to be honest, it’s taken me this long to pluck up the courage to tell you.”
“Oh,” Rose said, reluctant to hurt someone who’d been so kind to her. “Oh, Ted. I’m so sorry . . .”
“Please don’t tell me you don’t feel it too,” he said unhappily. “I know you did, because it would be impossible for me to feel something so strongly that was only one-sided, I know it would.”
“For a moment I did,” Rose said as carefully as she could. “I thought I might feel something for you too. And I do really care about you, but the truth is I don’t feel the same way. I just don’t.”
“I know,” Ted went on as if he hadn’t heard her. “I know what you’re going to say: you’re older than me, still married, and you’ve got a kid to think about. But if you do think about it, Rose—I mean really think about it—those are just excuses. You’re going to live with your old man, so you’ll have a permanent base near me. Just right for us to get to know each other, with no pressure whatsoever.” Ted spread his hand flat in the air to emphasize his point. “And you won’t be married forever. I can help you start divorce proceedings, even take care of your ex if he annoys you.”
“Ted,” Rose tried again, wrought with guilt and regret. Never, not once, had she thought that perhaps the first ever moment of spontaneity in her life would come to this, that she’d somehow end up hurting Ted. “We can’t, I don’t want to, you see. Because I—”
Before Rose could utter another syllable, Ted had grabbed her by the arms and was attempting to kiss her. Panicking, and suddenly very afraid, Rose twisted her head away and tried her best to wriggle out of his grasp, overwhelmed in that moment by her need to get away from him, away from any man intent on forcing himself on her.
“No,” she cried. “No, no, no!”
Just at that moment, Jenny and Frasier walked into the room.
“So you think it could be like a studio, like an artist’s, perhaps for traveling painters . . . ?” Rose was dimly aware of Jenny saying just as she and Frasier came into full view.
“Edward!” Jenny shouted, horrified. “Put that girl down at once, do you hear me?”
“What the hell is going on here?” Frasier asked, as Rose backed away, taking a breath, her heart racing as she struggled to shrug off the memories of Richard pinning her down and refusing to let her go. This was nothing like that, she told herself, this was just Ted refusing to hear what she was saying. But still, she couldn’t stop herself from trembling, from wanting to bolt from the room and find a safe place to hide as suddenly she was drenched in that sickening sense of shame once again.
“It’s nothing,” Rose said, all the tremor in her voice clearly indicating otherwise as she struggled to collect herself, her terrified body defying her. “Nothing. Just some crossed wires. Ted thought, he thinks that he likes me . . . but I’ve explained to him that it wouldn’t work. That I’m with you now.”
Too late Rose realized how cold and blunt her efforts to seem coherent must have sounded to Ted, who had done nothing really, other than offer her his heart on a plate, only to have it trampled on in front of an audience. He stared at her, his face a picture of pain and rejection.
“Ted, you idiot,” Jenny said, slapping him smartly across the back of the head. “Whatever were you thinking, forcing yourself on Rose like that? She’s practically old enough to be your mother, for one thing, and for another I’ve taught you better manners than that, you silly boy.”
“It didn’t look like Ted was really getting the message, it has to be said,” Frasier added, going to Rose and putting a protective arm around her, inflaming Ted’s already heightened color even more. “Are you OK?”
“I’m fine,” Rose said, sensing that Ted was about to explode with the buildup of rejection and humiliation, that he was on the brink of lashing out, and now it would be very unlikely that Rose would be able to stop him. “Seriously, none of this is Ted’s fault. It’s all mine.”
“Yeah,” Ted said, his demeanor becoming suddenly cold and fraught. “Damn right it’s your fault. Women who kiss men behind other men’s backs are usually to blame when things get out of hand. Anyway, who are you to ask?” Ted demanded of Frasier. “Because I wasn’t forcing myself on her. I’d never do that. I was trying to kiss her like I have done a hundred times before, since she got here, and she didn’t complain then. Far from it. She loved it, and more besides. You name it, Rose and I have done it.”
“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 pleaded 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 in one step and, grabbing Ted by the collar, shoved him against the wall, his fist hovering in midair.
“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 fledgling 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 Ted, 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 annex, 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, that for a moment she thought something could happen with Ted. Even though she’d known in the pit of her stomach that the more she let him kiss her, the more complicated it would become. But when she had been in Frasier’s arms last night, she had known for certain there was only one man for her. There had only ever been one man. One man who, after years of longing for her, had suddenly changed his mind.
If the way he feels about me is really so fragile, Rose thought, 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.
“What are you doing, Mum?” Maddie asked her, wrinkling her nose as she came into the annex, 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 realize th
at 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 backseat 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 realizing? Have I said something I shouldn’t?”
“No!” Rose said, completely unprepared for the possibility 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 backseat 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.
The Runaway Wife Page 30
