Rosie takes another macaroon. ‘Ever thought about going pro? Being a chef?’
Abi’s face twists as she tongues her back teeth, freeing them of stuck sugar before she says, ‘Oh, when I was, like, twelve, I thought about nothing else.’
‘Twelve!’
Abi laughs before she pops another macaroon into her mouth, chewing slowly, considering how much to tell Rosie. She swallows, runs her fingers through her cropped fair hair and says, ‘We were living on an estate in Hackney and a fancy chef set up a pop-up restaurant in an old service station – remember disused spaces were all the rage in the noughties? Anyway, I was twelve and they paid me a fiver an hour to wash up – totally illegal, of course, but I loved it. Some of the chefs would sneak me this insane food – beef cheeks cooked for twenty-four hours and baked oysters, stuff I never knew existed. The place became my way of escaping. I guess for some kids it’s books or video games. For me it was always food.’
‘What were you trying to escape?’ Rosie asks, emboldened by Abi’s honesty. Rosie has shared much more in this new friendship so far.
‘Oh, I don’t want to go all Angela’s Ashes on you,’ Abi laughs, ‘but we didn’t have much. My mum drank, my dad left. Same old, same old.’
‘Do you still see them?’ Rosie asks, quietly, like she doesn’t want to talk loudly and disturb these precious things Abi is sharing with her.
‘My dad not at all. Couldn’t even tell you where he lives. My mum – well, it’s complicated. We haven’t spoken in a long time.’
Rosie wants to ask more about her parents, but Abi looks back at the view before closing her eyes, feeling the sun on her face. Rosie won’t push it so instead she asks, ‘How did you go from being a kid washing pans to a therapist?’
Abi opens her eyes, looks briefly to the sky, turns back to Rosie and, smiling, says, ‘I went through a few wild years. Got really into boys – too into boys, my mum would say – partying, all that stuff, and then when I was eighteen found out I was five months pregnant. So, yeah, Lily was the wake-up call.’
Rosie can’t help it. She wants to know. ‘Did your parents help?’
Rosie notices for the first time the strain behind Abi’s equanimity.
‘God, no. Mum was often drunk and, like I said, things are complicated between us and Dad wasn’t around, so … no. No, they didn’t. I mean, there was this charity that helped quite a bit so, yeah, I had that …’
Abi’s silver bangles chime as she brushes bright-pink crumbs off her T-shirt, waves her arm in front of them and says, ‘And now, incredibly, we live here in this beautiful place.’
They both look again at the view. Talking about Abi’s difficult childhood in Hackney, Waverly seems claustrophobic and almost offensively twee, crammed as it is between the vast expanse of hills and sky. Rosie knew early into their relationship that if she was going to love Seb, she was going to have to love this ancient, eccentric little town with its narrow streets and malty air from the brewery. Seb was a bit like one of those people who marry the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty – but his lifelong love was a whole town. And Rosie had come to love it too, in her own way. ‘How did you become a therapist?’
Abi smiles again, but the corner of her mouth shakes and she keeps staring at the view. ‘Oh, I did the training online, like a night-school thing. Turns out I had a kind of natural ability for it so, yeah, I set up my own practice, working when Lily was sleeping or in nursery, and it just grew and grew. Covid was obviously a boom for therapists.’
‘I bet you were brilliant. You must have helped so many people.’
Abi smiles in acceptance of the compliment before she asks, ‘How about you? How’s architecture?’
Rosie groans. ‘It’s not architecture. It’s a glorified admin role. I went back part-time when Greer was two and my salary covers the mortgage so it’s worth it financially, but the job is definitely not the reason I spent seven years training to be an architect.’
The only good thing about Rosie’s job is its flexibility: she can always be available for sick days and dentist’s appointments. Rosie is constantly on call. Her nervous system braced like a vigilant guard, always ready for the next minor family emergency. The job itself is just the bullshit no one else wants to do.
‘What would you be doing if you could do anything?’ Abi asks, and Rosie’s mind snaps straight to the Instagram message she received this morning from Maggie. She tells Abi how she and Maggie studied architecture together in London and while Rosie got married, had kids and moved to Waverly, Maggie emigrated to Sydney and set up her own architecture practice. She tells her about the photo Maggie sent her this morning of a huge partly demolished warehouse next to a sparkling slip of coastline – the plot her company is developing into a new eco art gallery and hotel. And as she talks, she knows she’s smiling, feels her heart flood with possibility. She looks back at Waverly, back to the school playground where her healthy, happy children play, and feels her shoulders drop, her heart wither again. Jesus, she’s selfish, dreaming of a different life when she has so much. Is envied by so many. What is wrong with her?
Abi, her arm still tucked over the back of the bench, looks right at Rosie but doesn’t say anything. Rosie can feel Abi listening and she feels exposed, flashing the most secret parts of herself.
‘Sorry, I’m really going off on one. Of course it makes sense, the focus being on Seb’s career, you know, while the kids are small. I think something had to give, right?’
‘Hmm,’ Abi says, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.
They sit in silence, and for a moment Rosie feels the eternal pacing inside herself rest. But it doesn’t last long, the disquiet from the night before Eddy’s birthday seeping into Rosie’s stillness.
They’d been on the sofa. Seb was finishing off some work admin before putting his glasses and his school laptop – the one he uses for everything – on to the floor and opening his arms to Rosie. She leant into him, putting her head on his chest so she could feel, hear and see his heart beating, steady and true.
He started stroking her hair, the way he knew she liked. She wished more than anything that that could be enough, but it never was for Seb. Sure enough, his hand moved, quickly slipping under her shirt and into her bra, searching for her. And as his body grew, she felt her own shrinking, curling away, searching for somewhere to hide.
‘Seb.’ Her voice was a warning. ‘Seb, I think Sylvie’s still awake.’
‘Well, let’s go up to bed, then,’ he said, his mouth in her hair.
She sat up suddenly, clumsily pulling herself away from him.
‘No, I – I should just go up and check on her.’
Seb’s head drooped. ‘Ro, we need to talk about this …’ But Rosie was already at the door as he tried again. ‘Rosie, it’s been a year.’
‘What?’
‘It’s a year, sweetheart, since we last … made love.’
Rosie’s always disliked the phrase ‘making love’ – it sounds weedy to her, the sex equivalent of a limp handshake. She’d rather ‘have sex’ or even ‘fuck’.
‘No, it isn’t,’ she replied, unsure, trying to remember. They’d argued about their sex life so much recently. She couldn’t bear to go over it again, what Seb wanted versus what she felt she could give. She’d told him so many times to watch porn, to satisfy himself however he wanted, just not to put any pressure on her.
Gently, he started, ‘It was just before Eddy’s birthday last year; the kids were staying at Mum’s.’ She remembered the night. Greer had only recently – at long, long last – started sleeping through the night. Rosie’s body felt like it was finally coming back to her after so many years of the kids needing it. For years, she’d been an incubator, a feeding machine, a comfort blanket, a punch bag and a carrier. Her body jangled with their fears, their joys, their anxieties along with her own and now, at last, she’d thought that night, she could return to herself. She wanted to get reacquainted with her body when she was ready, privately, on her own. But Seb had stroked her, just like he’d stroked her the other night and as he’d become more alive in his body she’d felt a deadening, a closing down. She’d been wrong. Her body was not her own. It never would be.