On Monday morning she keeps herself busy and heads into the restaurant. It was, Richard gloats, rocking in his leather boat shoes, a resoundingly successful evening but there is so much, of course, to improve.
Lotte pops into the restaurant briefly to refresh the flowers, fussing with the display on the reception table while Abi is on hold with an IT team.
‘You heard, did you, Abs, about the row outside?’ Lotte’s eyes gleam. Abi hates being called ‘Abs’; it makes her feel like a member of a nineties boy band.
With the phone to her ear, Abi nods. ‘Any idea what it was about?’
Lotte scrunches up her face. ‘Nope. You?’
Abi shakes her head and Lotte turns, a little disappointed, back to her flowers, plucks a couple of wilting roses from the vase before adding, ‘I’m guessing it’ll be something about Eddy – it usually is. He had an affair a couple of years ago that ricocheted around the town. So much more embarrassing with it being so public.’ Lotte shudders, then keeps talking. ‘I bet he’s been up to no good again and that’s why Anna’s not returning my calls. I never understood why she forgave him in the first place, to be honest. But anyway, I’ll keep trying and, trust me, the truth will come out. It always does. Especially in Waverly.’
Abi walks to pick up Margot from school. It’s a beautiful afternoon, gold pouring from the sky, the air fresh, the earth partying with a few more bursts of light before the long rest. A few parents glance at Abi, smiling easily when she makes eye contact, which is a good sign. There’s no problem here, she chants to herself, the row wasn’t about her. There’s no problem here.
She’s outside the school a bit early, so she thinks about going to the park opposite to sit in the sun and crunch through some of the pistachios she bought for Margot’s snack. She notices a Volvo estate indicating to turn into the car park, waiting for Abi to cross. Suddenly the driver leans forward, nose practically touching the windscreen, staring at her. It’s Rosie. Abi can tell from the way Rosie is staring at her that she knows. Rosie knows, because she’s staring at Abi like she’s the most dangerous and the most fascinating thing she’s ever seen.
Abi moves first, lifts her hand to Rosie, breaking the silent, clear channel of understanding between them. They’ll mess it all up with words now. Rosie leans over to the passenger side and opening the door says, ‘Would you get in, Abi?’
She doesn’t want to, she wants to run as fast and as far away as she can, but there’s something in Rosie’s voice, like she used her last ounce of strength to say those words. Rosie desperately needs this and so Abi reluctantly gets in.
Rosie turns the car around quickly and they drive in silence to a quiet cul-de-sac just a few yards away. It’s double yellow, but Rosie pulls in anyway. She yanks the hand brake, cuts the engine and turns to face Abi. Her skin is white, her eyes wide. She looks like she can’t believe what she’s doing.
‘I was coming early to have a quick chat with … Doesn’t matter. I didn’t think I’d see you.’
Rosie’s hair glows in the afternoon light; her eyes are darting, her mouth pinched, knitted with tension. She’s nervous. But that’s OK. Abi’s nervous, too.
‘Rosie, I …’
‘You were never a therapist, were you?’
Abi looks at Rosie before she looks out of the car. So, there it is. How simply, how easily her new life could be destroyed.
‘No, no, I wasn’t.’
Abi can’t look directly at Rosie but out of the corner of her eye she can see she’s biting her bottom lip, the surface crisp, flaky. She senses Rosie needs to keep leading, so she lets her.
‘My husband paid you to have sex with him.’ Rosie’s voice is calm, her words simple, but she’s breathing heavily.
‘Yes,’ Abi replies carefully.
Rosie lifts her hand to her sore-looking mouth and sobs briefly, into her palm, before swallowing, turning to look at Abi fully. ‘You fucked men for money.’
It’s a strange relief to have another woman say the truth out loud so plainly. Abi nods. ‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I needed the money, Rosie. Because I couldn’t exist on handouts, and I couldn’t raise my kids the way I wanted if I was working all hours for minimum wage.’
Could she tell her that scrubbing other people’s shit off toilets for ten hours a day was, for her, worse than taking men like Rosie’s husband in her arms? Would she understand? Would she try?
‘The truth is I sold sex because it was a better option, for me, than any other at the time. I know I was one of the lucky ones. It was a choice. I sold sex because I got to choose when I worked, how much I was paid, and because I got to choose my hours and, in all honesty, I was good at it. Did I love it? No, not really. Did I sometimes hate it? Of course I did. But you know what? Most of the time it was just like a lot of other jobs. It was fine. It paid the bills. It served a purpose.’
She was one of the more vigilant workers. She had to be. She’d heard the horror stories of kids being taken into care. She could never risk being arrested or spending time in a hospital because who would look after her girls? She made sure she worked legally, which eventually meant working alone, which, ironically, was more dangerous. She devised a raft of safety checks before she’d accept a new client, installing a camera outside the studio flat she rented for work, putting in an alarm button that looked like it was connected to a security company but was actually just a dummy, hiding a can of pepper spray under the mattress.
But now she realizes she has no checks or alarms against the good people of Waverly. It is another irony that she feels more afraid of women like Lotte and Anna, stuffed full of centuries-old prejudice, fascination and derision, than the men who used to knock on her door to forget their loneliness for a little while.
‘He paid you,’ Rosie repeats, carefully. ‘You had sex and now you’re here, in our lives – why? What do you want?’
Rosie narrows her eyes at Abi, who shakes her head.
‘Nothing. I don’t want anything from you. I’m here because I needed a change, just like everyone else. That’s all. I wanted this job, and I wanted my girls to have a better education, more choices. It’s that simple.’
Rosie forces a laugh, hard and disbelieving. ‘You expect me to believe that?’
Abi keeps her mouth shut, worried she’ll shout if she doesn’t. Why is it so hard for Rosie to believe that Abi could want the same things as most other people? That she too wants the chance to make changes in her life? Why is it so hard to believe that she is just fairly ordinary?
‘If you don’t want to blackmail us and you don’t want to be with Seb, this is all just really fucking unlucky?’
Abi nods, breathes out through her mouth. She notices how Rosie is watching her now, seems to be studying her mouth, her hands. Imagining all those things her mouth and hands have done, all the licking and sucking and stroking.
‘Did you never think about us? The families, the marriages you’d be wrecking?’
Abi looks at Rosie and suspects that deep down Rosie knows the answer.
‘Rosie, I was never a threat to your marriage—’
But Rosie shouts, interrupting Abi, ‘My husband paid you for sex – of course you were a threat to my marriage!’
Abi mustn’t say any more. She needs this to end. ‘What do you want, Rosie?’
Abi thinks Rosie isn’t going to answer, so she’s surprised when Rosie, her voice taut but clear, says, ‘I want to know what he wanted. I want to know what you did with him.’
‘Oh, Rosie,’ Abi says, her heart aching for them both, ‘please don’t …’
‘Tell me!’ Rosie says, angry suddenly.
Abi tells her the truth. ‘I don’t remember much.’
Rosie’s face lifts with shock before her eyes narrow, disbelieving, repulsed. ‘You don’t remember?’