Eddy looks at the ground.
‘Anna, you could have told me on my own. You could at least have let me have that.’
Anna starts crying, which makes Rosie want to scream in her face, but instead she says, ‘Tell Seb I’ll get a room at the Travelodge. Tell him I don’t want to see him. That I’ll come home tomorrow. When I’m ready.’ She takes out her phone and searches for the number for the hotel.
‘Rosie, it’s late, you don’t have any stuff … There might not be a room …’
But someone, thank God, answers and her voice only shakes a little as she asks, ‘Oh, hi there, please can you let me know if you have a room available for tonight?’
She lets Anna and Eddy walk her the short distance to the hotel, but she won’t talk, won’t answer any of their questions. Eddy reluctantly takes his coat back as Rosie goes to get her key. The receptionist smirks at her wild hair, her running make-up, and Rosie smirks back, emboldened by the drama of it all. As the door clicks shut behind her in her small, blank room Rosie’s heart fills with pain and suddenly she realizes it was always there. This feeling, the subtle vibration that she was being lied to, that she’d tried to ignore for so long. But now there’s no hiding because there’s no one she can call, no one who can help. She’s alone with it now and all she can do is climb into the tightly made bed, curl up into a ball and let herself go.
Her phone wakes her, rattling on the table next to her head. Seeing it’s Anna, she doesn’t answer, but then a few seconds later the phone in her room starts ringing. Her children flash into her heart and with a heavy arm she lifts the receiver.
‘Good morning, it’s reception.’
It’s immediately clear from the receptionist’s chirpy tone that none of her children are in hospital or in danger.
‘Hi.’ Rosie’s voice is gruff from her night of crying.
‘Just to let you know that your friend is here and she’s … oh, hold on …’
On the other end, Rosie can hear Anna saying, ‘Tell her I don’t need to come up, tell her I’m only here to drop off a bag of stuff for her …’
‘She says she has a—’
Rosie cuts her off. ‘Can you leave the bag outside my room, please?’
And then she hangs up.
She thinks of her children. Panics that they’ll be worrying and feels herself harden against her own sorrow. She looks for her phone on the bedside table, but as soon as she picks it up, the battery goes dead.
She urgently wants to know the time so she can place her children in their Sunday morning, know whether Greer has had a good breakfast and if Heath will be out playing football already; will Sylvie be back, exhausted from her sleepover? Or will they be collapsed, sobbing, trying to understand what’s going on, why Rosie isn’t home? She opens her room door and there is Anna’s favourite overnight bag. She pulls it inside and rifles through it, ignoring a handwritten note, clothes and toiletries until she finds a phone charger.
As soon as her phone is plugged in, it lights up with a call. Seb. She pauses but the pull towards her children is even greater than her rage. She answers, ‘Seb,’ just as her son in his high voice says, ‘Mummy?’
Rosie’s heart somersaults and before she’s even said anything, he starts crying. As he sobs, she can’t help but lie to him: ‘It’s OK, my love, it’s all going to be OK.’
When he calms a little, he asks, ‘What’s happening, Mum, where are you?’ But Heath’s never been good at waiting for anything, so before she can answer he says, ‘Dad was standing in the garden this morning – I watched him. He’d been crying, Mum. He couldn’t stop. He said you’d had a row, that you would be back soon.’ Now Heath’s started talking, his words avalanche. ‘He keeps crying, Mum, I don’t know why. He’s let us watch TV for ages, which never, ever happens. He said he’d talk to us later, when you’re home and things are a bit clearer, so can you come back? Please. We just need to know what’s going on.’
She pictures him, standing in the corner of the kitchen, the phone pressed close to his mouth, his beautiful brown eyes full of too much worry for someone so young, and she aches to be with him. She swallows hard so she doesn’t cry and says, ‘OK, darling, I’m coming home, I’m coming home now.’
She showers quickly and dresses in Anna’s softest clothes, tucking her crumpled dress into the bottom of the bag and ignoring the receptionist as she rushes out into the grey, expressionless morning.
Heath is waiting for her at the front door when she arrives, and they hurry to hold each other. His body is tense, full of shock, and she tries to soften her own to calm him. Heath has always feared anything he can’t control. Across the road, their neighbour Martin, his youngest daughter hanging off his arm, calls her name. She waves, briefly, and says to Heath, ‘Come on, let’s go in.’
Heath holds on to her, like he’s worried she’ll make a run for it if he doesn’t cling on. The house feels empty even though it’s not. Greer has fallen into a slack-faced, wide-eyed trance in front of the TV. Rosie kisses her and now it’s Greer’s turn to cling to her. Upstairs, Rosie can hear Sylvie singing to herself. They’re all here. They’re all fine.
‘Dad’s probably still in the kitchen,’ Heath says, still holding her hand.
Rosie kisses Greer’s forehead again and gently pulls her hand away from Heath. ‘Give us a couple of minutes to talk, OK, sweethearts?’ Heath looks worried, thinking they’ll argue, that Rosie will run again, so she explains. ‘We need to talk so we can figure out if we’re ready to say sorry,’ she says and he nods in agreement before he slumps down on the sofa next to his little sister.
Seb is still in his pyjamas, sitting on the sofa in the extension, his legs wide and his elbows balanced on his knees, his fingers in his hair. He looks up at the sound of her footsteps and in his weary face Rosie sees her own fear and confusion reflected back. He stands up. ‘You’re here.’
‘Heath called.’
Seb pats his pockets, realizes he doesn’t have his phone. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know …’
‘Doesn’t matter.’ Rosie shakes her head; she doesn’t want to be distracted when they only have a few minutes to figure out how they’re going to break their children’s hearts. ‘They know something’s happened. We need to work out what to say.’
Seb nods. ‘I’ll go along with whatever you want to tell them.’
‘I want to tell the older two the truth,’ she says with a snap.
Rosie closes her eyes and hates Seb and what he’s done anew for putting her in this position. Because what, really, would her children do with the truth? She doesn’t even know if Heath knows what sex is yet. But they know what a liar is – how would it break them if they knew their daddy was one of the worst?
‘Wait,’ Rosie says, holding up her hand; she’s too angry to make such huge decisions. ‘I need more time.’
Seb nods.
They stand in silence before she asks, ‘What do you think would be best for them?’
Seb glances around the kitchen as though the answer might be hiding under the table or on top of the dresser. ‘I think we should buy time so you can figure out what you need.’
She wants to kick him, but instead her body sobs, ‘How?’
‘We confirm what they already know. That we’ve had an argument, but we’re trying to work it out.’
‘If we tell them that, they’ll panic, think we’re splitting up.’
Seb doesn’t say anything, and Rosie can’t bear to look at him, so she closes her eyes again as she says, ‘We’re going to do what we’ve always done.’
Seb widens his eyes, needs her to explain.
‘Pretend,’ she says, coldly.
Seb grimaces.
‘Don’t act like you don’t know how, Seb.’ He looks to his feet as she keeps instructing him. ‘We’ll pretend we’ve made up, that everything is normal, and we’ll put on a united front until we figure out how to tell them.’