Rosie Meadows Regrets...

by Catherine Alliott

Back in the hall I encountered the twins holding court to my family. They’d obviously escaped from Martha and were enchanted to happen upon some strangers to entertain downstairs. Lucy was perched prettily on one of my mother’s knees and Emma on the other, playing with her beads and both flirting outrageously.

  ‘What delightful children,’ murmured my mother as I came in.

  ‘Martha told us to come and get you,’ said Lucy quickly. ‘She’s just tidying the bedrooms but she wants to go and get her dad now.’ She fingered Mum’s tasselled shawl with wonder. ‘I didn’t know your mummy was a Gypsy lady, Rosie.’

  Mum laughed softly. ‘Not exactly a Gypsy, my love, more a psychic time traveller.’

  Dad moaned, barely audibly, and shook his head.

  ‘Come on, Lucy, Emma,’ I said holding out my hand. ‘Let’s go and relieve Martha. Sorry you lot, but I’ve got to go. Martha’s collecting her father from hospital and since it’s his first night home, I’m staying over. Right now I need to go and bath the children for her.’

  ‘You mean – we’re going?’ asked Mum in surprise.

  ‘Well, you can finish your tea,’ I said generously, ‘no rush. Come on, you two.’ I went towards the stairs, grateful for the excuse.

  ‘How old are you?’ asked Lucy, staying put on Mum’s lap and peering up into her eyes.

  ‘Oh goodness,’ Mum tinkled nervously and patted her hair. ‘I believe I’ve lost count!’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, my pet, one does, you see, when one’s had as many birthdays as I have.’

  ‘Let’s have a look in your pants.’

  ‘Lucy!’ I gasped.

  ‘Well, look,’ she twisted round and hoiked her pants out of the back of her jeans, ‘mine say five to six years, see?’

  I seized her hand and pulled her firmly off Mum’s lap. ‘Come on,’ I said grimly, ‘we’re going now.’ I grabbed Emma as well. ‘Say goodbye to everyone, I daresay you’ll see them all again very soon.’ We headed for the stairs. ‘Oh, and don’t forget to bang the front door shut behind you when you go, will you?’ I threw back pointedly over my shoulder.

  ‘But we haven’t even discussed anything yet,’ protested Philly, coming to the foot of the stairs. ‘I wanted to get a copy of your statement on Gillian’s desk by first thing tomorrow if possible.’

  ‘Don’t think we’ll manage that, Phil. We’ve missed the last post, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Fax it up.’

  ‘Does rather, doesn’t it?’

  There was a startled pause. Miles sniggered. ‘No!’ Philly said angrily, sensing I was being deliberately obtuse. ‘Use the fax machine. Joss has got one, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Oh.’ I smiled. ‘Yes, he has. Righto.’

  She sighed wearily and folded her arms. ‘Okay, Rosie, what’s the matter? Don’t you want me to help you?’

  I paused and turned to look at her at the bottom of the stairs. Her cheeks were pink and her eyes bright with indignation. She looked hurt, baffled no doubt by my refusal to take advantage of her considerable intellectual ability and recourse to people in high places. But sister or no sister, I wasn’t at all sure I wanted anyone in my camp who didn’t believe in me.

  ‘Not right now,’ I said truthfully. ‘I’m sure a time will come when I’ll be begging you to bail me out, Phil, but for the moment, let me do this my way, okay?’

  I turned and went on up the stairs, leaving her open-mouthed and flummoxed at the bottom.

  That night I slept fitfully. I tossed and turned in Martha’s bed at Farlings and had a terrible dream that I was being hustled down some stone steps and thrown into a dungeon at the bottom. Just as the door slammed shut behind me, I turned to see Harry, dangling the key through the bars, smiling nastily.

  ‘Harry!’ I ran and gripped the bars. ‘It wasn’t me, I didn’t do it, I swear to God I –’

  ‘Save it for the parole board, Rosie,’ he snarled. ‘And meanwhile, twenty years’ hard napkin-folding for you, young lady!’

  With that, he thrust half a hundredweight of peach linen through the bars.

  ‘Come on!’ he cracked a whip. ‘Get folding!’

  ‘But Harry,’ I bleated, seizing the top one and folding frantically, ‘I didn’t do it, I –’

  ‘Call that dainty?’ he roared. ‘I’ve seen better efforts from these mass murderers!’

  I glanced into the neighbouring cell where, sure enough, my fellow inmates – huge, burly, tattooed men – were pleating away nimbly, humming happily as they tucked here and fanned out there, creating the most marvellous birds of paradise and tropical sunsets.

  ‘I can’t do it!’ I wept. ‘I can’t. I’ll never be able to do it – just kill me now!’

  I flung the napkin away and opened my eyes to find I was sitting up in bed, furiously pushing my duvet off, absolutely drenched in sweat. My hair was plastered to my head and the morning sun was streaming in through a gap in the curtains. I sat stock still for a moment, trying to get my bearings. Where was I? In prison? In London? At the cottage? No, Farlings. Martha’s bed. I turned and seized her alarm clock. I stared. Half past eight. Half past eight!

  ‘Bloody hell!’

  I leapt out of bed in panic. Half past eight and, oh God, it was term time now, no breakfast telly for the children to lounge around in front of in their pyjamas, I had to get everyone up and dressed! Had to get the twins to school. Where were they? And where was Ivo? Where was everyone?

  Hurriedly I dashed to the basin and splashed some water on my sweaty face, then I flung off my nightie and threw on a bra, pants, jeans and a sweatshirt. I briefly caught sight of myself in the mirror and recoiled in horror. God, I looked like an Old Master drawing or something. Pausing only to rake a comb through my hair, I flew out of the room and raced down the back stairs, only to be ambushed at the bottom by the urgent demands of my still very irritable bowels. Damn! Cursing their terrible timing, I dashed quickly into the downstairs loo. Once enthroned, I realized that the house was ominously quiet. I listened. No, not a peep, they hadn’t even switched on the television. Oh God, they must all still be fast asleep in their pits and the twins had to be at school in – I glanced at my watch – precisely ten minutes!

  ‘LUCY, EMMA!’ I roared.

  No answer. Hell. And oh bloody hell, there was no flaming loo paper! Typical! With my trousers down around my ankles I shuffled to the kitchen where I knew there was a box of tissues on the dresser, but as I burst through the door I met a quite terrifying sight. Round the table, fully dressed, wide-eyed and silently dipping soldiers into boiled eggs, were Toby, Lucy, Emma and Ivo. At the head of the table, looking grim, exhausted and very stony-faced, sat Joss. His eyes travelled down to my large white bottom, then up again.

  ‘Rosie. Good of you to join us,’ he drawled. ‘I gather you’re making very free with my son’s education.’

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Quick as a flash I pulled up my jeans. Probably not quick enough though.

  ‘Joss! I – didn’t know you were –’

  ‘Coming back?’ he inquired. ‘No, neither did I, it came as a complete surprise to me too, Rosie. Up until last night I imagined I was working in Europe for another two weeks, but then a scurrilous rumour regarding the future of my son’s education reached me and I suddenly found myself at the airport desperately trying to negotiate a flight. You could have knocked me down with a feather. I thought I was meeting up with my dealer to go over next year’s plans, but it was not to be, and here I am, home on the range.’ He reached for some toast, his face impenetrable.

  ‘Look, I can explain,’ I croaked, shuffling towards the table and surreptitiously doing up my flies.

  ‘Good, I’m glad to hear it,’ he said, calmly wiping his mouth with a napkin. ‘In fact I’m keen to be enlightened.’ He turned to face me for the first time, hazel eyes blazing. ‘Because imagine my surprise, Rosie, when, having been told by Annabel of a “minor incident” at Toby’s school, which had apparently rendered both you and Ma
rtha “panic stricken and hysterical”, I abandon my work, move heaven and earth to get back here, and stagger exhausted into my own home to find that it looks like the Mary Celeste! My children are nowhere to be seen, your child is screaming in a cot and instead of Martha, I find you fast asleep in her bedroom. When I finally run the children to ground watching unsuitable television in the sitting room, I am coolly informed by my son that yes, the rumours are perfectly true, and on account of him knocking a fellow pupil unconscious he’s ditched one highly expensive private school in preference for another.’

  ‘No, no, it’s not quite as simple as that. He hasn’t actually been signed up yet, all we did was pop over to Westbourne Park yesterday and talk to the head but –’

  ‘Oh good, good,’ he interrupted with ill-disguised sarcasm. ‘I’m pleased to hear it’s just a little bit more complicated than that, because for a moment there I was thinking I didn’t have any choice in the matter! I was thinking it was all cut and dried and that all I had to do was get my chequebook out and sign on the dotted line, and I have to say, Rosie, that if that had been the case I might legitimately feel that although I asked you to give Martha a hand and assume a little responsibility while I was away, you might have overstepped the mark and assumed just a little too much!’ His voice rose dangerously.

  The children, having clearly been read the riot act at an earlier stage in the morning, were still diligently dunking their soldiers, but the toast wasn’t quite making it to the mouths. Their eyes were out on stalks.

  I spread my hands on the table. ‘Look,’ I said in a low voice, trying to keep calm, ‘I know it seems like an extreme reaction, Joss, but seeing the situation at first hand as I did yesterday, I really couldn’t see any other option open to me but to take Toby away.’

  ‘Well, you could have left him there!’ he spluttered incredulously. ‘That was the other option surely.’

  ‘Yes, I could, but I was genuinely concerned for his safety and I thought it was far better to run the risk of incurring your wrath than to have an altogether different scenario on our hands.’

  ‘Oh really?’ He leaned back in his chair and regarded me with wide-eyed bafflement. ‘Like what? Like Toby committing hara-kiri with a pair of compasses perhaps? Or turning himself into a human pyre with a bunsen burner maybe?’

  ‘Well, these things do happen, you know! You read about it in the papers all the time!’

  ‘Oh, come on, Rosie, you panicked and you overreacted!’

  I nodded, trying to keep my temper. ‘Quite possibly, yes, I’m willing to accept that I was very emotional, but it’s easy to be dismissive in retrospect, isn’t it? Because we don’t know what would have happened if I’d left him there, do we? All I do know, Joss, is that you and Annabel disappear for weeks on end to pursue your precious careers at a crucial stage in your son’s life – like when he’s starting boarding school, for God’s sake, when most parents would be sobbing into their pillows at night wondering if they were doing the right thing – and you expect Martha to cope with every eventuality that comes her way. Well, she couldn’t and so she asked me and this is how I cope with it. This is my reaction to a young boy’s cry for help, and I’ve no doubt your reaction would have been to dismiss his distressed face and shaking knees as utterly shameful and tell him to brace up and knuckle down and rah-rah-rah along to the school song et cetera, but it wasn’t mine and you weren’t there and I was! Now I’m sorry if you think I made a monumentally bad decision and I’m sorry that I didn’t stop to consider which school would take Toby away for the longest period of time and get him out of your and Annabel’s hair, but at least my decision came from the heart with Toby’s best interests to the fore, which is more than I can say for some of the absentee parenting around here!’ I was trembling with rage now.

  He regarded me stonily for a moment. ‘Have you finished?’

  ‘Not quite.’ Oh, I was well away now, blood up and shooting straight from the hip. ‘Because what I suggest you do now, Mr Dubarry, is get in your car and take your son back to whichever school takes your fancy. I’m quite sure if you cross their palms with enough silver Jerry and Simone would welcome him back with open arms, and the head at Westbourne Park is waiting to hear from you, so instead of blaming me, why don’t you just get out there and sort it out for yourself!’

  ‘That would be all right, would it? If I had a say in the matter?’ He stood up, his eyes boring into mine. I glared back. In the stony silence that ensued, Toby got down and crept round the table to me.

  ‘Do I have to go back to Stowbridge House?’ he whispered.

  ‘I don’t know, darling,’ I muttered.

  ‘Get in the car, Toby,’ snapped Joss, still staring at me.

  ‘But Dad, you won’t take me back to Stow –’

  ‘JUST GET IN THE GODDAM CAR!’

  Toby fled obediently.

  ‘And I’ll take you to school too, girls,’ he said, ‘since it’s on the way.’

  Lucy and Emma slipped down from their chairs and, unusually silent, followed Toby out to the car, for once intimidated by the atmosphere. Joss turned to look at me before he went out.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ I quipped sardonically. ‘You’ll speak to me later.’

  ‘Don’t bank on it,’ he spat, before slamming the back door.

  I watched it reverberate in its frame for a moment. Then the house plunged into eerie silence. I turned to look at Ivo who was still wide-eyed at the breakfast table.

  ‘Well, darling,’ I whispered. ‘Things really couldn’t get much worse, could they?’

  ‘Don’t know, Mummy,’ he said in an awe-struck tone.

  With a lump in my throat, I tidied up the kitchen. I threw cereal bowls in the dishwasher, slammed the door shut, wiped down the surfaces, then flung the wet dishcloth miserably in the sink. I stared at it as it sank into the plughole. Don’t you bloody cry, I told myself fiercely. You’ve got enough on your plate without crying about this. One arrogant bastard in a foul humour is nothing to snivel about, okay? I blinked back the tears determinedly. Okay. And don’t start thinking it wasn’t so long ago that you entertained foolish ideas of appealing to the arrogant bastard either, because that’ll really set you off. That’ll really open up the floodgates. I gritted my teeth and nodded hard at the plughole. Right. I won’t think about that either then. No foolish ideas.

  Just as I was blinking away like a demon, the door flew open behind me. Vera breezed in on a blast of cold air.

  ‘Sorry I’m late, luv, his spastic colon’s playing up again. I had ever such a tussle wiv him in the lavvy this morning trying to get him out of ’is braces in time, it’s a wonder I got here at all today.’ She took off her headscarf and glanced at Joss’s suitcase still sitting in the middle of the floor. ‘He’s back then, I see.’

  ‘He is. And he’s not a happy man either.’

  ‘Why’s that then?’

  I gulped. ‘Just … this and that.’

  ‘Ah. Like that, is it?’ She bustled off round the kitchen, her back stiff, clearly offended that she wasn’t going to be privy to any secrets. But Vera couldn’t stay silent for long.

  ‘Did you get that note I left ’bout your brother then?’

  I turned, still hanging on to the sink. ‘What note?’

  ‘I left it by the phone. He rang last night. I popped up to get me knitting bag I’d left behind and the phone went just as I was goin’ out the back door. Said he’d got some funny message that you was on a murder charge and wanted to star in his next film, but your Mum thought your breasts might need liftin’ first.’

  ‘Oh God!’

  ‘Wanted to know if it was a joke.’ She eyed me beadily.

  ‘And?’

  ‘I told ’im it was.’

  ‘Oh, thanks, Vera,’ I breathed.

  ‘’Sorright. Don’t want any nasty rumours starting, do we?’

  I smiled my appreciation, but as I did she stopped strapping herself into her pinny and stared.

 
‘Lord luv us, you do look a sight this morning!’

  ‘Do I?’ I put a shaky hand to my hair and realized it was still plastered to my head from my nightmare.

  ‘Never seen you look so rough. Have you got your monthlies or something?’

  ‘No, I haven’t actually.’

  ‘Well, you look like you have. Our Eileen used to go a bit green and pasty-faced like that when she had hers. I tell you what, you go up and have a bit of a power shower like wot they’ve got up there, make a change from that rusty old bath of yours, and come back down when you’re feeling better, eh?’ She chuckled as she reached up into the cupboard for a duster. ‘I don’t suppose that did much for ’is humour this morning, did it? You lookin’ like that? You know what Her Highness looks like in the morning, all bronzed and made up and manicured up to the wotsits, I expect he took one look at you and went right off his breakfast!’ She bustled out to the hall with her duster, chuckling away, but not unkindly.

  I stared bleakly at the dishcloth in the sink. Ah, right, so you’re putting men off their boiled eggs now, are you, Rosie? Excellent. Couldn’t be more pleased.

  ‘Mummy! Out!’ Ivo was clenching and unclenching his hands demonstratively in his high chair behind me. As I went across to release him, I received a dazzling smile. The pure beam of unconditional love. I kissed him passionately as I scooped him up.

  ‘So he likes nail varnish and seamless tans at the breakfast table, does he? How shallow can you get, eh, Ivo?’

  I hoisted him brusquely on to my hip, but nonetheless made a quick detour to the mirror in the hall just to see what the fuss was all about.

  ‘Jesus!’

  I recoiled in horror, then peered a little closer. Crikey, it didn’t even look like me. Who was that sad creature with the dark blonde dreadlocks and the slitty little eyes peering out of the white face? I swallowed. Yes, well, perhaps I could just go up and wash my hair. Then at least when the Looks Fascist returned he could beat me without flinching. I turned and trudged gloomily up the stairs with Ivo in my arms, but as I got to the landing window I paused. Something had caught my eye. The first-floor window offered the most marvellous view down the back garden to the hills beyond and out to the open countryside, but somewhere to the left of the vista, through some trees, a blue light was flashing. It was outside my cottage. Yes, outside my cottage a blue light was flashing … on top of a police car. I stared. Then Ivo spotted it too. He jabbed his finger on the windowpane.