‘Look at you, so beautiful,’ Seb says, resting his hand on her lower back. Close, but hopefully not too close.
‘You reckon?’ Rosie says, doubtful, cocking her head to look at the photo from a different angle. ‘I was thinking how knackered I looked, and I think that’s breast milk leaking through my T-shirt.’
‘Still totally gorgeous,’ Seb says, before adding, ‘That photo must have been taken before we moved down here.’ He remembers back then; they were still living in London. He’d just started teaching while studying at the same time, Sylvie a boisterous toddler and Heath crying with reflux all night. They’d spend most weekends trekking down to stay with his mum, Eva, and he longed to move, craved the simpler, safer life Waverly offered his young family. Now, living in Waverly, just a ten-minute walk away from his mum and with so much to be grateful for, Seb still feels hungry. It seems he is always yearning for something.
Next to him, Rosie sighs, her eyes fixed on herself in the photo, the woman she hardly recognizes. The wine is making her maudlin. For a mad moment he thinks about picking her up and carrying her home. He wants to lie skin to skin, wants to feel the mysterious electric pulse of her, the pulse that will remind him of his own precious aliveness. Rosie glances at her phone and he knows she doesn’t want that. She never wants that any more. As she reads a message, he looks at her and tries to imagine how it used to be, Rosie naked and lovely on top of him, her head thrown back, immersed in pleasure. For a long time, that image had been almost painfully erotic but now, mostly, it makes him sad. He’d tried everything he could think of. He’d tried talking, not talking, he’d back off and then he’d come on strong – buying Rosie an expensive silk nightie he thought she’d love but which she said made her feel like mutton – and so he’d retreated into despair. He was usually so good at being who people wanted him to be, expert at denying himself to make others happy, but this – this sex thing – and Rosie’s complete detachment – no, her complete rejection of him – gnawed at him until he felt he was disappearing inside his wanting.
In the first few months they hadn’t had sex, she said she was ‘touched out’ – the kids still grabbing, so demanding of physical touch. Now they are all at school, she has more time without them, but nothing has changed. She still flinches every time he even touches her hand. It’s the confusion that is slowly dissolving him. The feeling that she is wilfully keeping him from understanding. She says it isn’t that she doesn’t desire him, it’s that she has to relearn what she wants, what will turn her on. She needs time to figure that out. That’s as far as they’ve got and nothing – as far as Seb knows – has changed in months. What has become clear – crushingly, devastatingly clear for Seb – is that sex, and specifically their sex life, is, for Rosie at least, simply not that important.
Vita and Patrick shift furniture around to make a tiny dance floor and Eddy puts a Prince record on. He’s trying to pull Anna up to dance with him, but she’s squirming away, saying, ‘No, Eddy! I don’t want to, stop!’
Eddy gives up on his wife and instead grabs Rosie’s hand. Rosie drops her phone back into her bag again and because it’s Prince and because it’s Eddy’s birthday, she lets herself be led to the makeshift dance floor in front of the sofa. Rosie loves to dance. Her body flows like liquid, natural and free as she lets the music pour through her. Seb looks at Rosie – she’s laughing and for the first time tonight she seems at ease, like she’s shrugged something heavy off her shoulders – and, as he looks at her, he feels for an insane moment like he might cry, because all he can think, when he sees his wife’s happiness, is:
How could you, Sebastian?
How fucking could you?
Chapter 2
‘Taadaa!’ Rosie says, turning her palm skywards, revealing Waverly to Abi like a flamboyant waiter. It’s hot, one of those syrupy summer days of autumn, and they’re puffed and sticky from walking up the steep footpath to the best viewing spot in town. Abi makes her way to a bench, reading the little inscription, says, ‘Thanks, Barry,’ before she sits down.
‘It’s gorgeous.’ Abi extends her legs, crossing them at the ankles. She lifts her arms to get the breeze in the hollow of her unshaved armpits, dropping her denim jacket on to Barry’s bench. She’s wearing Birkenstock sandals, her feet tattooed in a beautiful lattice-like design, her skin still tanned, carrying the memory of summer. The letters ‘L’ and ‘M’ are tattooed on her inner arm. There’s something wonderfully unstudied about Abi that makes Rosie want to stare. She has a tousled look to her but whenever Rosie looks into Abi’s eyes she knows the other woman is as solid as a rock.
Rosie sits next to her feeling pimply and pale but glad to be here, away from the kids, away from work, away from Seb. Just here with her new intriguing friend.
They met a few weeks ago – as so many parents do – through their kids. Margot and Greer are in Reception together and have become firm friends. Rosie noticed the way Abi shrank back at the school gates from the noisier, shrill women Rosie calls ‘friends’. The ones who talk in high-pitched whispers about other people’s kids and marriages. It was a quiet thrill for Rosie to leave those women and stand with Abi instead; she hasn’t made a new friend, independently of Seb, for so long. Rosie offered Abi help in navigating the town, recommending the best kids’ swimming lessons, after-school clubs and the places to avoid. They had a couple of play dates in the park and while the girls dangled from monkey bars Rosie found herself telling Abi things she hasn’t even told Anna. How disconnected she feels sometimes from her own life, how her days feel like an endless ‘to-do’ list. Abi sates a part of Rosie she hadn’t even known was starving. Some little forgotten wisp of her that had been banging a tiny internal cymbal, a lone protestor demanding attention. Rosie hasn’t talked to anyone like this for so long. Abi must have been an amazing therapist, her job for years in London before moving to Waverly.
Today, for the first time, Abi and her kids are coming back to Rosie’s after school. Seb is picking up a takeaway from the local Thai on his way home as a treat for the three adults.
‘Everything looks so simple from up here, doesn’t it?’ Rosie says, noticing the perfect neatness of the doll’s house town, a place where nothing bad could ever happen. She automatically places the Old School House, where all three of her kids will be, and, just across the road, Waverly Secondary, where Seb is at work. Strange to think of everyone she loves muddling their way through another day down there. Abi doesn’t reply because she’s rummaging around in her rucksack for something, before offering Rosie a bright-pink mini macaroon out of a small Tupperware.
‘I was going to save these for pudding when we’re back at yours, but sod it. Fancy one?’
‘Ha!’ Rosie laughs. ‘Wow! Hell yes, I do!’
She bites into the fluorescent sugary flakiness before the sting of the bright raspberry cream fills her mouth. ‘Jesus – they’re insanely good.’ She immediately wants another.
‘Well, they were my first attempt – I don’t know. I think maybe next time I—’
‘Wait. Are you telling me you actually made them?’
Abi shrugs. ‘Food’s my thing. I love making new stuff.’
‘Yes, but come on – you’re a single parent with two kids, you’ve just moved town, changed career and you’re making home-made bloody macaroons? Honestly, you’re showing the rest of us up.’
‘Well,’ Abi says, inspecting a macaroon before popping it into her mouth, ‘at least it explains why I don’t have time for dating.’