He appeared in the doorway.
‘Well,’ he said. He was smiling. ‘How lovely’.
Edie regarded him.
Maeve said, ‘And how did it go?’
Russell was looking at Edie.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Good. Several nibbles that might well amount to a bite or two’.
He put the battered canvas bag in which he carried papers down on a chair and went round his desk, stooping to kiss Edie.
‘Hello’.
Edie said, ‘I could have rung but I was restless’. ‘Good,’ Russell said again. He perched himself on the edge of his desk. ‘You wouldn’t be here otherwise’. Maeve moved towards her office.
‘Will I shut the door?’
Russell half turned.
‘Don’t bother’. ‘Please,’ Edie said, past him. He turned back. ‘What’s happened?’
Edie waited until Maeve, with elaborate care, had closed the connecting door. Then she said, ‘Something a bit puzzling—’
‘What?’
She put a half-closed hand up near her face, as if she was examining the cuticles. ‘Vivi rang’.
‘And?’
‘She said Rosa was moving in with her’.
‘Well,’ Russell said, a shade too cheerfully, ‘isn’t that a good thing?’
‘Why didn’t I hear it from Rosa?’
‘Well, perhaps Vivi got in first—’
‘Why isn’t Rosa ringing? Why don’t I know what’s happening to Rosa?’
To be honest,’ Russell said, ‘I don’t know what’s happening to her either’.
Edie took her gaze off her cuticles and directed it at Russell.
‘Don’t you think we should know?’ ‘Darling, she’s twenty-six—’
‘I don’t care if she’s a hundred and six. She’s not settled or happy and we are her parents and we should know’.
Russell stopped smiling.
‘Yes’.
Edie leaned forward so that she could look penetratingly up at Russell.
‘There was a hint in something Vivi said, just a hint, that something has been going on, to do with Rosa’.
‘Ah—’
‘And when I’d rung off and was pacing about learning my lines, it came to me that perhaps something had been going on to do with Rosa, to do with Matt too, for that matter, something that I didn’t know about, but which you possibly did’.
Russell looked out of the window and waited.
‘Well, I couldn’t go on pacing up and down, declaiming about dissolution and debauchery, I couldn’t concentrate any more, so I got on the tube, and I came.
Russell?’
‘Damn Vivi,’ Russell said lightly.
Edie put her hand on his sleeve.
‘What,’ Edie said, ‘have you and Rosa been doing?’
Russell looked down at Edie’s hand on his arm. He felt a sudden uncharacteristic and complete loss of temper, and moved his arm so that Edie’s hand fell from it.
‘Nothing,’ he said furiously. ‘Nothing. Nothing to do with you’.
‘But—’
‘Did you hear me?’ Edie stared at him.
She hesitated and then she said uncertainly, ‘If you say so—’
‘I do’.
‘But is she OK?’
Russell turned away and bent over his desk, staring deliberately at the computer screen.
‘When she isn’t,’ he said more calmly, ‘I’ll tell you’.
There were four messages on Rosa’s mobile phone, one from her mother, one from her father, one from her aunt, and one from her older brother. Only the last one did she have any inclination to return. The others – well, how depressing was it, at her age, and stuffed into the sky-blue polyester blazer with yellow plastic sunburst buttons required by the travel company, to have a string of messages on your phone that are all, but all, from your family? It would be all very well, of course, if there were other messages, messages from friends and – well, better not think about that. Better not remember how happy she had been to let Josh make her miserable, better not even start down that train of thought that began by fantasising how it might have been if she had never met him, never fallen in love with him, never been so sure that keeping him mattered more than anything else in the world. She’d hardly taken her eyes off her phone in the Josh days.
The messages were all, except for Matt’s, of a kind that she didn’t much want to hear. It was evident that her aunt had rung her mother to have a small but unmistakable gloat about Rosa’s living arrangements, and, in the course of conversation, had hinted that something had occurred to prevent Rosa’s turning at once to her parents in time of need. Her mother had then, it appeared, gone straight to find her father, who had had to confess what had happened, and they had both subsequently left messages, her father’s apologetic but brisk, her mother’s imploring her to come home. Matthew’s, by contrast, was completely unemotional. He just said he’d like to catch up sometime soon. He was plainly calling from the office because his call took ten seconds.
Rosa dropped her phone back in the bag at her feet. She was not going to deal with any of this just now. Despite the blue polyester blazer, today had been a reasonably good day. She had sold a weekend in Venice to a party of six, booked a stag group to Vilnius and reserved several family-holiday special-offers in Croatia. If they all came good, it was the most commission she had made so far, which might translate into the first tiny repayment of debt, the first small step back to even a vestige of independence. If you coupled that with the prospect of Vivien’s spare bedroom – a bit fussy, a bit overfurnished, but comfortable and convenient and almost free – it was not, Rosa considered, quite as black an outlook as it had been a month before.
She moved the mouse for her computer to access her emails. It was not permitted, in the travel company, to use the email service for personal messages, but who was going to check on her if she bent the rule just once? She typed in Matthew’s work address.
‘Tx for message,’ Rosa wrote, one eye on the office manager eight feet away straightening the rack of brochures. ‘Yes, would be good to meet. When? Where?’ And then she added, pulling a booking form towards her in order to look like work, ‘Need to talk. Parents!!!’
The office manager turned from the brochure rack. She had ironed straight hair and favoured pearlised lip-gloss.
She looked straight at Rosa. ‘Checking your bookings?’ Rosa smiled broadly. ‘Just checking’.
Chapter Eight
‘News on flat???’ Laura’s email said. ‘Need update!’ Then, ‘We are thinking of a Smeg fridge. Would pink be idiotic and would I get tired of it?’
Ruth sighed. The notion of a huge pink fridge even existing, let alone being a preoccupation, was at this moment so irrelevant as to be fantastical. And upsetting. Ruth wasn’t sure she had ever felt this sad. There was, really, no other word for this leaden suffering, this sensation that her heart, as a muscle, actually hurt. Every time she thought about Matthew, which she did constantly, she was invaded by an aching distress, which she could recognise, even while it was happening, as one of the most real emotions she had ever felt.
But, at the same time, she was certain she couldn’t slow her life to accommodate his. When he had uttered the word ‘pitiful’ she had discovered that, even if she energetically listed and acknowledged all his qualities, she would always know – because he would always know – that in a vital area of achievement and contribution he could not at the moment begin to match her. He was afraid of being pitied or made allowance for, and he was right. He knew what he could bear, and what he couldn’t, and – which made her throat constrict with love for him – he had more resolve in that department than she did. And not only resolve, but dignity. He had, in a way, taken quiet charge of their last meeting in the empty flat. He had told her that, even if she withdrew from buying it, the dynamic of their relationship had changed in a way that could not be changed back again. She had clutched at straws and he had not joined in. When she thought of the way he had behaved, she wasn’t at all sure she could stand missing him so much.