It wasn’t just having to wear Clare’s clothes that made Rosie feel vulnerable. In her hotel room in Tuscany, soap and water was pretty much all Rosie had to work with. Clare’s make-up bag might as well have been empty. There was nothing inside it but a tube of very basic cleanser, some Clinique City Block and a Kiehl’s lip-gloss with no colour to it at all. How had Clare managed to get to twenty-eight years old without owning a single mascara?
Rosie felt strange without her make-up on. When she looked in the mirror at her bare face, it was as though she was a pencil sketch of herself, waiting for her features to be drawn in. Without eyeliner, her eyes seemed to disappear into her face.
Ed disagreed. ‘You look great without make-up.’
Rosie just couldn’t believe him. Ed didn’t understand that Rosie’s relationship with lipstick was one of the longest and most important in her life. It had started early, secretly experimenting with her mother’s make-up in the bathroom when no-one else was looking. She started buying her own make-up not long after her father died.
It was important. No matter how bad Rosie felt, she could always paint on a smile. The red lips were what people always remembered. Not the sad eyes. Without her lipstick, Rosie wasn’t herself at all.
Gradually, the table began to fill up. Opposite Rosie was Nathan, Keira’s brother. Nathan had always been a pompous idiot and in the three years since Rosie had last seen him, he hadn’t changed at all. Next to him was his wife Michelle. ‘Danger Mouse’ was what Keira and Rosie had nick-named her when she arrived on the scene in the year when Keira and Rosie were both still trying to be actresses. Michelle had always been incredibly quiet. Now she was quiet and smug, as she cradled her belly and turned away the wine. She was expecting twins, she explained.
‘Perhaps Rosie would like to have my share of the alcohol,’ she added.
‘It looks like she already has,’ said Nathan.
He could talk, thought Rosie. Nathan was always ruddy faced and, after half a bottle, would stagger onto the dance floor with the elegance of a bull elephant half-tranquilised by a misplaced dart. Danger Mouse simpered at her husband’s joke.
Soon everyone was seated except for the chap to Rosie’s left. Danger Mouse explained that the missing guest was flying in from Canada. His transatlantic flight had been delayed, so he was going to be a little late for the lunch.
Rosie looked at the name again. Joe Herren. It took her a moment to put a face to the name but when she did, Rosie blushed to the roots of her hair. Just as Joe himself arrived at the table.
‘Hello!’ she said brightly. ‘Fancy seeing you here.’ A stupid line she knew.
But Joe looked at her rather quizzically, as though he didn’t remember her at all. Perhaps it was the clothes…
‘We met at Keira and Adrian’s house,’ Rosie tried to help Joe to place their first meeting. ‘It was a couple of years ago. Maybe even three.’
‘Oh, of course!’ said Joe, flashing her an enormous smile. ‘Rosie. I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you. Didn’t you used to have different hair?’
‘Different hair!’ Nathan guffawed from the other side of the table. ‘Rosie always has different hair. Never keeps it the same colour from one week to the next. Likes to match it to her handbags. If only her handbags were ever a colour that suited her.’
‘Well, I love the red,’ said Joe. ‘It looks perfect with the black suit. Very chic. Very graphic.’
‘See?’ Ed mouthed when Rosie looked to him for reassurance.
‘Thank you,’ Rosie said to Joe. ‘I have to admit, this isn’t actually what I intended to wear today. Bit of a luggage mix-up.’
‘We expected you to turn up in a tutu,’ said Danger Mouse.
Rosie forced a laugh.
Chapter Thirteen
Rosie liked Joe. She had liked him from the very first moment she saw him and had gone all out to make him notice her. Not that he could have failed to notice Rosie. At their first meeting – a dinner party for the groom’s birthday – Rosie had worn an actual German dirndl dress. She’d done her hair – which had been white blonde at the time - all ‘punked up’ Heidi and painted two big spots of pink blush on her cheeks. The effect was rather striking. A little bit Manga. A little bit milkmaid. Rosie was really pleased with it. She took several photographs and posted them on Instagram.
As she had feared, everyone else at that dinner at Keira’s house was dressed in very boring style. Most had come straight from the office where Keira and Adrian worked. They seemed dull beneath the clothes as well. They were drinking – Keira’s husband-to-be always had good wine in the house (he was in danger of becoming one of those wine-bore types) – but nobody was drinking very much. Certainly not enough to loosen up. Rosie had drained her first glass and gave up waiting to be served another. She helped herself.
‘Let me…’ said Joe as Rosie slopped burgundy all over the pristine white tablecloth. It was too late.
‘I can manage,’ said Rosie. ‘I’m not a little flower.’
No, as Adrian pointed out later on, she was nothing like a little flower. She was a force of nature. Before the end of the evening, Rosie had tried to rouse the other guests in a German drinking song. They joined in but only when it was clear she wasn’t going to shut up unless they did. As soon as the song was ended, people started to make excuses and ask for taxis to be called.
Rosie and Joe were the last of the guests to leave. While Keira was upstairs looking for a book she intended to lend Joe, Rosie overheard Joe and Adrian talking in the kitchen.
‘That was a bit mean of you,’ she overheard Joe say.
‘What was a bit mean?’
‘Telling Rosie it was fancy dress tonight. I can’t blame her for getting absolutely smashed as a result. I know I would have been mortified.’
‘Fancy dress?’ Adrian was confused. ‘Nobody told Rosie it was a fancy dress. That’s the way she always dresses. Like Heidi or Cruella de Ville from One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Some variation of the bizarre. And she always drinks like that too. I’m quite relieved that Keira isn’t sharing a flat with her anymore. She seems like a really bad influence.’
At the time, when she heard that, Rosie was quite proud of the ‘bad influence’ label. But Adrian continued and as Rosie remembered the scene, she felt her skin crawl.
‘She just can’t seem to say no,’ he told Joe. ‘If there’s a bottle open, Rosie will finish it. I’ve actually hidden half the contents of our drinks cabinet in the wardrobe tonight, so she can’t get her hands on it. The last thing I want is to be cleaning up after Rosie on half a bottle of gin. If you ask me, she’s got a problem…’
The conversation ended at that point, thank goodness, but only because Rosie had swayed backwards and knocked a vase off the console table in the dining room. Thank god it was the one she’d broken before. It fractured in exactly the same place.
Still it was a hard conversation to have to hear and it drove Rosie to do exactly what she shouldn’t. While Adrian, Keira and Joe were busy trying to find all the pieces of the vase, Rosie went upstairs, claiming she needed the bathroom. Instead, she went straight to the wardrobe in Keira and Adrian’s bedroom and knocked back a few swigs of hidden gin.
After that, she quickly fell asleep on the sofa and by the time the next morning rolled around (and Rosie remembered - too late – she had an audition), Joe and Adrian’s conversation was already fading in Rosie’s fuddled brain. If you’d asked her about it a week later, she wouldn’t have remembered a thing. Not the conversation about her drinking, not the broken vase and certainly not sneaking into the wardrobe in Keira and Adrian’s bedroom to top up her alcohol level.
Three years later in Tuscany, Rosie’s memory of her first meeting with Joe was suddenly horribly sharp.
Now that everyone was seated, the waiters started to bring out food and wine. Rosie couldn’t help but notice that Joe’s appearance had made all the girls at her table sit just a little bit straighter in their chairs. He was
as gorgeous as she remembered. And nice with it. Danger Mouse quizzed him about his trip to Canada and he responded with charming modesty. Unlike Nathan, who wanted everyone to know exactly how important he was, Joe had to be drawn on his super-successful career as an architect. His reticence was charming.
And now that he had reconciled this red-haired Rosie in the black suit with the blonde Rosie dressed like Heidi on drugs, Joe seemed to remember an awful lot about her, which was flattering.
‘You were going for an audition the day after we met,’ he reminded her. ‘Did you get it?’
‘Unfortunately not,’ said Rosie. ‘The director gave it to one of his friends.’
Joe didn’t have to know that Rosie had actually missed the audition altogether, having woken late on the sofa at Keira and Adrian’s flat with the hangover from hell. She couldn’t have acted her way out of a paper-bag that morning. There was no chance she would be able to pull off a half decent Ophelia. Except perhaps for the drowning bit. No, while Rosie should have been grasping her chance at greatness, she lay groaning on Keira’s sofa, as Adrian made her a restorative bacon butty.
‘I really admire your persistence,’ said Joe. ‘It takes some guts to follow a career path like yours.’
Rosie thanked Joe for his kind words though they made her shrivel inside. The truth was, Rosie hadn’t been to an audition in a long time. She had even lied to her sister about having an audition that week because she didn’t want to consider the possibility that perhaps Clare was right and it was time for Rosie to give up her dream.
Even her agent had called after the last audition to suggest that she made a few changes to her approach.
‘The thing is, Rosie, your persona is very young… almost childlike. The way you dress. The way you style yourself. It’s all very bright and energetic. But the fact is you’re pushing thirty and those young parts are going to the girls fresh out of college. Perhaps you should tone it down a bit. You’d have so much more to choose from. I know you could do just about everything – you could take on any role - but not everyone can see past the hair.’
Rosie shuddered at the memory. But as she turned the conversation over in her head again, Rosie wondered whether she had been focusing on the wrong aspect of her agent’s little speech. After all, she had said she thought Rosie could do just about everything. She could take on any role. Maybe that was what she needed to do now.
Taking a deep breath, Rosie decided to play a part. The part of Clare. She’d played princesses and paupers, drunks and drug addicts. How hard could it be to play a grown-up? Rosie found herself automatically sitting a little straighter.
A little later, when Nathan reminded the whole table about the time Rosie had danced on a table at some hunt ball, unaware through drunkenness that the back of her skirt was tucked into her knickers and giving the guests more than an eyeful, Rosie was able to say, ‘That was a long time ago.’ And somehow Clare’s suit made her able to be that woman who had moved on.
Rosie knew that Nathan liked to tell stories about her because his own life was not anywhere near so exciting as he wanted it to be. She very much doubted that Danger Mouse had ever danced on a table and flashed a red thong. By telling tales from Rosie’s nefarious past, Nathan was trying to make himself seem more interesting. That afternoon Rosie bore all the stories with grace. After all, she was playing Clare. Clare was always calm. Clare’s suit helped Rosie to deflect every barb.
Chapter Fourteen
Eventually, lunch came to an end.
‘Does anyone fancy going for a walk before the dinner?’ Joe asked. ‘Rosie? How about you?’
Nathan almost choked on his coffee. ‘Rosie? Go for a walk? You have met our Rosie before?’
Joe looked nonplussed.
‘Rosie doesn’t do ‘walks’,’ said Nathan. ‘Except from the limo to the door of the nightclub. And even then she needs someone to hang on to.’
Rosie shot Nathan a look.
‘Rosie has an amazing collection of ridiculous shoes,’ piped up Danger Mouse. ‘There was this one time, we all went to Newquay for the weekend… I swear Rosie wore high-heeled flip-flops to the beach.’
‘They were wedges,’ Rosie insisted.
‘They were ridiculous,’ said Nathan. ‘They were trimmed in bloody pink marabou.’
‘I took them off as soon as I got onto the sand,’ Rosie retorted. ‘Anyway yes, Joe. Going back to you question. I’d like to go for a walk.’
Nathan and Danger Mouse goggled in surprise. Rosie glanced at Ed for reassurance. He gave her a discreet thumbs-up. At least there was one person in her life who believed in her.
‘Excellent,’ said Joe.
So when the other guests left the pre-wedding lunch for an afternoon nap, Rosie went back to her hotel room and changed into Clare’s tracksuit bottoms and gym t-shirt. She was surprised and pleased to find that they were both rather flattering. Then she laced herself into Clare’s trainers. The trainers were pristine. Rosie thought they might actually be brand new. That thought gave her a moment of guilt but, really, what choice did she have? Besides, Clare might have got first wear out of the maxi dress Rosie had bought just the previous week. And those gold sandals! Looking at her feet in the bright white Nikes, Rosie felt a definite pang for those far less practical shoes. But she was going for a walk and Clare’s new trainers would be perfect.
Rosie did not expect to be the only person joining Joe for his hike up the hill, but when she got back to the hotel lobby, she discovered that everyone else had opted for the nap option. What Rosie didn’t know was that Joe had a reputation for leading rather difficult expeditions. He was a keen climber in his spare time and often forgot that what seemed like an easy amble to him was Ben Flippin’ Nevis to his less well-trained friends.
Thankfully, the landscape around the hotel was slightly gentler than the Cairngorms. However, an hour into the trek, Rosie was ready to sit down and refuse to move another inch. But she soon realized that it was her mind that was complaining, not her body. The trainers were comfortable. The t-shirt and tracksuit bottoms kept her nice and cool. She wasn’t actually tired. Rosie determined to carry on. And as the walk progressed and the conversation with Joe meandered easily through all sorts of subjects, Rosie really started to enjoy herself.
There was a gentle breeze. Birds soared high above. The path Joe had chosen was edged by pretty little wildflowers. Even the smell of the sheep they passed was strangely pleasant.
As they walked, Joe told her about his life. Rosie realized that while he seemed to know a great deal about her: thanks to that one dinner at Keira’s and the gossip mill, she knew shamefully little about him. What she learned on the walk only made her like him more.
He wore his achievements so lightly. Unlike Nathan and the other bores that seemed to populate the wedding, Joe didn’t feel the need to constantly trumpet his success by referring to the price of his house or the size of his car. Rosie loved the way he spoke about his day-to-day. He was grounded and smart and, she thought with a blush… quite loveable.
At last, they reached their destination.
‘Isn’t this view amazing?’ said Joe.
Rosie had to agree. Once she had got over the shock of the first hour, Rosie had gone on to walk for another hour without complaint. Somehow, Joe had brought her to the top of a hill without her noticing the hard work of getting there.
Tuscany rolled out beneath them like a gigantic green quilted blanket, embroidered with golden sunflowers and cypress trees. It was beautiful and Rosie would never have seen it – not like this at least – had it not been for the suitcase swap. Without Clare’s sensible training shoes, Rosie would have been stuck in the hotel bar. Without Clare’s cotton-rich gym clothes, Rosie would have roasted in her own brightly-coloured synthetics. This single view almost made up for three days in black. Rosie felt elated as she stood on that hill. She had a sense of being part of something so ancient and wonderful. She could imagine generations of people standing in this ver
y same spot, feeling uplifted and humbled by nature spread out below them.
‘It’s wonderful,’ she murmured.
‘Well worth the climb. Wherever I find myself, if I’ve got a couple of hours to space, I like to get out and explore. I find the highest spot I can reach in the time I’ve got available. There’s nothing like a bit of perspective.’
Perspective. Yes. That was always a useful thing to have, Rosie decided.
Rose took a picture of Joe on her phone. He duly took one of her, which she would send to Clare and their mother. They would definitely be surprised.
‘But we’ve got to do a selfie too,’ said Joe. He took Rosie by the hand and pulled her close to him. He slung his arm around her shoulders and held the phone high above them so that they were both in the frame.
‘Cheese!’ they said.
‘Wait,’ said Rosie. ‘We’re in Italy. We need to say ‘gorgonzola’!’
They took another shot. It was a good picture. Rosie liked the way her face looked after all that exertion. Happy and healthy. Even without her lipstick.
‘Shall I post this on Facebook?’ Joe asked.
‘You’ve got to,’ said Rosie. ‘No one will believe I made it all the way up here if you don’t.’
‘Maybe we could do another walk tomorrow morning,’ Joe suggested then. ‘Before the wedding. We could go up that hill over there.’
Joe pointed to a peak some way off.
‘Hmmm,’ said Rosie. ‘Yes.’
The new hill looked horribly high but Joe was very enthusiastic. And Rosie decided that the combination of her sister’s shoes and Joe’s smile might just get her that far.
Chapter Fifteen
Over in New Jersey, Holly’s assistance had given Clare a very important boost. She was ready to try her presentation again by chanelling her sister’s persona.
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