‘Hmm,’ Anna says, unconvinced, before adding, ‘she just seems a bit aloof. I can’t help but feel like she’s patronizing us, treating us like sweet little provincial wives. You know, the other day she asked me if I work? I was like, “Hell yes, I work!”’
Anna works in communications for a hedge fund. Three mornings a week she gets the 6.30 a.m. train to London and can often be found on the 7 p.m. back to Waverly, still tapping away at her spreadsheets.
‘Oh, Anna,’ Rosie scolds, ‘the woman has just upended her whole life, changing town, jobs, and doing it all on her own with two kids. I mean, imagine! Maybe don’t write her off just yet.’
Anna lies back down; Rosie watches the flesh on her back fill the spaces between the wooden slats like rising dough.
‘Saved by the bell!’ Anna says, relieved, lifting herself immediately up again, sweaty face glistening, illuminated by a call coming through the screen of her smart watch.
Rosie shuffles over so Anna can clamber down, Anna’s bum and legs branded with red welts from where she’s been pressed against the wooden slats.
‘I’ll be out in a mo!’ Rosie calls after her but Anna doesn’t acknowledge her. As the sauna door slowly closes, Rosie can see her friend already searching the pocket of her dressing gown for her phone. She watches Anna for a moment through the square sauna window, pacing by the showers, her eyes swivelling around the echoey swimming pool.
Rosie, her head back against the wooden slats, feels her sweat run down her body, and she wonders at Anna’s fragility. Her friend is loud and bright, but easy to bruise and quick to judge. Abi, with her different approach to life, would trouble Anna. How delicate it could be, sharing lives so closely but resisting the urge to collapse into each other’s prejudices. Rosie feels in her root that she is more aligned with Abi, but time and conditioning have made her twist and grow alongside Anna. She’ll text Abi later, see if she’s up for going for a drink soon.
Rosie sits up, her body feeling like a long-burnt candle collapsing in on itself, and she stumbles out of the sauna into the coolness of the pool. She’s surprised to see that Anna’s standing across from her, call finished but holding her phone over her heart like a nun with a Bible, her head tipped to one side like she’s trying to solve a problem she can’t quite see, staring directly at Rosie before she blinks and points towards the showers.
Once they’re dressed again, they sit side by side in front of a large mirror, Rosie towelling her hair while Anna massages cream on to her face.
‘Bloody hell, I look like a boiled ham.’ Anna laughs, before adding, ‘That was Lotte calling while we were in the sauna.’
‘Oh yeah?’ Rosie replies. ‘Is she OK?’
‘She’s feeling stressed about the restaurant. Apparently, her and Richard have been rowing loads, which is kind of predictable.’
‘Yeah,’ Rosie agrees. Lotte is always moaning about Richard.
‘She was asking if we could get there for seven thirty p.m. sharp next Saturday. The opening-night nerves have definitely set in, she’s already having nightmares about no one turning up.’
‘OK, I’ll ask Eva if she can come earlier and do bedtime.’
They’re both quiet. Anna applies her trademark red lipstick while Rosie tips her head to one side and runs her fingers through her damp hair, strands catching in the webbing of her hands like weeds. Next to her, Anna’s reflection stills in the mirror; she smiles with freshly painted lips but her eyes are weighted, sad. Rosie stops towelling her hair and asks, ‘You all right?’
Anna shakes her head softly. ‘Yeah, sorry, it’s just a work email. It’s put me in a funny mood – my fault for reading it now.’
‘You’ve got to stop doing that,’ Rosie agrees. ‘Boundaries,’ she reminds her friend.
‘Boundaries.’ Anna nods, gathering her make-up before she stands and moves behind Rosie, her hand on Rosie’s shoulder. They stare at each other in the mirror; they look like a staged photo from a hundred years ago – Anna fair and flowing, her full arm reaching up for her dark-haired friend. They’ve shared so much. Thanks to Eddy and Seb, they’d had no choice, really; they had to be friends. They’ve babysat each other’s kids; Rosie knows their alarm code and the trick to opening the sticky back-door lock. Anna knows the names of Greer’s favourite cuddly toys and that Rosie is allergic to penicillin. They are more than neighbours and more than friends. Bound together, living life side by side.
‘You know I love you, don’t you, Ro?’ Anna says, her eyes shining in the mirror.
‘Course I do,’ Rosie says, patting her friend’s arm. ‘What’s brought this on?’
‘I just want you to know that I’m always here for you.’
‘OK!’ Rosie says, smiling and turning to face her friend. ‘And I’m always here for you. Come here.’ She opens her arms and, as they hug, Rosie feels how tightly her dear, bold, emotionally brittle friend clings on to her.
None of her kids move their eyes from the TV as Rosie kisses them hello, offering only monosyllabic answers to her questions about their afternoon. She picks up a discarded mug, a few plates scattered with crumbs, and puts Heath’s abandoned school rucksack on a peg in the hall before she walks into the kitchen. Seb is wearing the ‘Kiss the cook!’ apron Eva bought him for Christmas a few years ago. He’s bent over the kitchen sink, frowning and scrubbing something hard. He turns towards her, holding his hands in Marigolds in the air, like a surgeon pre-op.
‘Hi, love,’ he says. ‘You OK?’
‘Yeah, fine,’ she replies before she leans forward and gives him a bouncy kiss on the lips. She notices his eyelid twitch as he turns back to the sink.
‘Think I found some bacon from 2006 on this pan.’
‘Still tasty?’ she asks and he laughs.
‘Delicious.’
‘How were the fajitas?’
‘Well, Heathy and I loved them, the girls not so much. We set the smoke alarm off again, though, and it’s a bit mangled, I’m afraid.’ He looks over to the table where the alarm sits, an alien mess of cables.
‘Jesus, did you just yank it out of the ceiling?’
‘Ro, it was uncontrollable – it was only charred chicken. Greer was screaming and the big kids started beating each other up in the garden – what was I supposed to do?’
She stares at the broken alarm. ‘Um, press the “stop” button, remove the batteries … basically do anything else than pull our house apart.’
His eyelid twitches again, his jaw pulses. He sounds like it’s very much a big deal even as he says, ‘Look, it’s not a big deal. It’s been glitching for ages; we had to do something about it eventually, didn’t we? I’ve already called someone; they’re coming over tomorrow to replace it.’
There is a brief pause, then over his scrubbing Seb asks, ‘How was it? Anna OK?’
Rosie laughs into the glass cupboard at the memory of Anna’s breasts bursting out either side of her costume. ‘Yeah,’ she says, ‘Anna’s great.’
Seb turns and smiles at her; he once told her he loves watching her laugh.
As he looks back down at his pan, Rosie keeps her eyes on him, noticing how quickly his smile drops. It’s as if he is suddenly lit differently, new, unfamiliar shadows darkening his features.
She moves towards him, puts her hand on his scrubbing arm, feels his tendons leap against her touch as he stops abruptly and she asks, ‘You OK?’
He turns, just slightly towards her. Their eyes don’t meet but his voice is unusually sharp as he says, ‘Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t I be?’
She pulls her hand away. ‘You just seem a bit … I don’t know, a bit tense.’
‘Do I?’ He lifts the pan out of the sink, suds running, his eyelid pulsing. ‘Well, yeah, sorry. The smoke alarm thing put me on edge, to be honest, and, you know, Sylvie and Heath arguing the whole time.’ He stares at the still-blackened pan in his hand and says, doleful, ‘I think we’re going to have to throw this away, sadly. What a bloody waste.’