The House of New Beginnings Page 8

  Love Em

  She sat back and read the piece aloud to herself, tweaking a few words here and there. Too glib? Too unsympathetic? She wasn’t completely certain that she even liked this Em character, she thought worriedly. Still, tough and no-nonsense was what Viv had asked for, she reminded herself. Maybe this was just how things were in a city – people were that bit brasher with you, less inclined to actually give a shit.

  Perhaps she should add something extra to the piece, though, she thought, reading it yet again. She wanted this to be perfect, after all, and she definitely didn’t want her new boss to regret hiring her. Plus it never hurt to show willing and make a good first impression, did it?

  Thinking back to how the conversation had gone over at the magazine office the day before, she remembered Viv saying she wanted the column to be a talking point, to engage readers. Well, what better way to engage them than by asking for their feedback directly?

  An idea came to her and she began typing again.

  Did Em get it right? What do you think Freckles should do in this situation? Take part in our online poll and have your say!

  Freckles should:

  DUMP HIM? He’s no good! Steer clear!

  HUMP HIM? Sod it, he sounds hot, shag him anyway!

  She smiled to herself, reading it all back. An online poll was dead easy to set up and they could show the result the following week to get people coming back. It could even become a regular aspect of the column. Yes!

  She saved the document – Agony1, the first of many, she hoped – and was just about to email it straight off to Viv when she realized with a little shriek that her rant about Simon was still lurking at the top of the page. Yikes! How unprofessional would that have looked? Quickly deleting it and saving the document again – AgonyOne – she composed an email to Viv. Blah blah blah, hope you like it, blah blah, happy to make any amendments, or . . . Wait a minute. Her fingers froze as it occurred to her that she was missing a trick here. This was a golden opportunity for her to pitch for some more work, now that she had the editor’s attention. Why send off one thing when you could also be angling for a second?

  Abandoning the email momentarily, she opened a brand-new document and pulled out her original list of feature ideas. She would develop the best three, she decided, and condense each idea into two fantastic, tantalizing sentences that Viv would be unable to resist. This wouldn’t be her blathering on desperately about ‘Dogs of Brighton’ or other moronic ideas on the phone either, these would be carefully considered, painstakingly crafted pitches. Hey, with a bit of luck, she’d have a second commission by the end of the day and then even Simon would have to be impressed by her entrepreneurial spirit.

  Muttering out loud as the ideas took shape in her head, her fingers began flying over the keyboard again. I can do this, she told herself. I can do it!

  Chapter Seven

  The rain had now stopped but the pavements around Dukes Square still gleamed wet as the streetlights began coming on, the beaded droplets on car bonnets and windscreens glistening like shiny sequins. The dusky sky was darkening, the sea a navy band on the horizon; lamps were being lit inside houses and curtains pulled across the windows. Inside Rosa’s flat, she and Bea had put away the most comforting dinner she could conjure up – macaroni cheese, all bubbling and golden, with cake for dessert – and although Bea had been largely uncommunicative, hiding behind that sheaf of bushy red hair and contributing little to Rosa’s conversational attempts, she did at least seem less combative than earlier. That was the power of cheesy pasta for you. And actually, thought Rosa, licking icing off her finger, it had been surprisingly nice to cook for another person again. She had forgotten how pleasurable it was, seeing someone else enjoying her food.

  ‘So,’ she said, stacking their empty plates, ‘do you have any homework, or stuff you need to do for school tomorrow?’

  Bea thought for a moment then gave a theatrical groan. ‘Shit, I’m meant to be doing an essay. On the most boring play ever. And it needs to be in tomorrow.’ She sighed with world-weariness. ‘I’d better get some books from our place.’

  ‘Sure.’ Rosa hesitated, her thoughts flashing ahead to sleeping arrangements. Seeing as Bea had failed to provide her with a single other person who could care for her overnight, the responsibility was most definitely Rosa’s, like it or not. ‘Listen, what do you want to do about tonight, by the way?’ she asked. ‘Do you want to stay here at mine, or . . . ?’

  Bea’s eyes slid away and she gave an awkward shrug. ‘You could stay at ours?’ she said gruffly after a moment, tugging her school jumper sleeves low over her hands. ‘You could sleep in Mum’s bed.’

  It seemed the most practical way around things and so, a few minutes later, once Rosa had finished the washing-up, she followed her teenage neighbour across the hallway and into Jo’s flat. ‘Wow,’ she said, blinking as she gazed around. Compared to her own rather plain living quarters, Jo’s place came as an assault on the senses with candyfloss-pink walls in the kitchen, a turquoise living room with Indian-style rosewood furniture, fat vibrantly coloured cushions of mirrored fabric on the golden-sari draped sofa, and a faint smell of incense in the air. There was a collection of flowering orchids along one window ledge, shelves of books piled higgledy-piggledy, travel guides and novels and poetry all randomly heaped in together, and an eye-popping Andy Warhol print on one wall.

  ‘It’s a bit of a mess,’ Bea conceded, looking rather defensive as Rosa stood staring.

  ‘It’s lovely,’ Rosa found herself saying. ‘So homely.’ Her eyes couldn’t register everything quickly enough: framed prints of Bea and Jo on the wall, the two of them tanned and laughing in sombreros, Bea as a toddler in a red mac and wellies, Jo with blonde hair, black hair and pink hair, depending on which picture you looked at. There was a pile of school exercise books on the coffee table, a pair of navy blue woolly slippers, a vase of bright daffodils on the mantelpiece, a nurse’s uniform on the ironing board. The rooms were bursting with colour and personality, exactly the way a home should be. And exactly how her place wasn’t, a voice in her head pointed out.

  ‘Wow, is that you two on an elephant?’ Rosa asked, peering at a framed photo on the bookcase.

  ‘Yep,’ Bea said. ‘And that’s Mum bungee-jumping off a cliff. Live for today! That’s what she always says,’ she added, rolling her eyes. ‘Apart from when she’s, like, semi-conscious in a hospital bed, that is, looking as if she’s about to die.’ Her chin wobbled, betraying her bold words, and she swung her face away abruptly.

  For the sake of Bea’s dignity, Rosa pretended she hadn’t noticed and went on gazing at the photos. Elephant-riding and bungee-jumping and child-rearing . . . it all seemed so vivid and colourful. She felt as if her own life had shrunk to a very small sphere in comparison, consisting only of the hotel kitchen and her drab little flat. Would she ever feel like embarking on exciting new adventures again?

  ‘Mum’s room is through here,’ Bea said, leading her along to a small sea-green-painted bedroom with white linen on the bed. The floorboards were bare with a conker-brown varnish and there was a nubbly cream rug in the centre of the room, plus a big mirror above a chest of drawers, draped with scarves and fairy lights. It was a personal, feminine space with Jo’s antique perfume bottles and a big powder puff on display, her silky sky-blue kimono hanging on the back of the door. Rosa had a flashback to her old bedroom in the Bloomsbury flat, the rose-pink wrap Max had bought her on one of his trips abroad. Take all your clothes off immediately, he had said mock-sternly, putting the robe into her arms. And model this for me. She could still remember how the silk felt on her bare shoulders, how he’d slid his hands inside and then peeled it off as if unwrapping a present.

  She dragged herself back to the moment. ‘Are you sure this is okay?’ she asked doubtfully, feeling like an intruder as she saw a pair of purple knickers sticking out of the top of one of Jo’s drawers. ‘I don’t mind sleeping on the sofa if that’s easiest.’


  Bea didn’t reply. She seemed very subdued, as if being here without Jo had brought the reality of her mum’s absence crashing back in. She went to shut the curtains against the darkening sky and picked up a small wooden elephant on Jo’s bedside table. Standing there, turning it between her fingers, her voice was low when she eventually spoke. ‘Do you think she’s going to be all right?’ she asked.

  ‘Your mum? Absolutely,’ Rosa replied as staunchly as she knew how.

  ‘We got this in India,’ Bea said, still turning the elephant in her hand. Its tusks and eyes were painted a bright gold. ‘We went there two years ago. It’s Mum’s favourite place.’ Her voice wobbled for a moment and she hunched her shoulders as if she was about to cry.

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ Rosa said and, before she could wonder if it was the right thing to do, was over at the girl’s side, one arm around her. Bea felt as rigid as a block of wood but didn’t wrench herself away at least. ‘Try not to worry. I’m sure she’ll be okay.’

  ‘She just looked so . . . ill.’ Bea’s voice was almost a whisper. ‘Didn’t she? Really horribly ill, like she was going to die or something.’ She twisted a ring round and round on her finger, her eyes haunted. ‘I don’t know what I’d do if she died.’

  ‘She’s not going to die,’ Rosa said firmly although she was starting to feel uncertain herself by this point. The day had started in such an ordinary way, too – and now here she was, sucked right into a family drama with two relative strangers. I don’t feel qualified to deal with this, she said to the universe in her head, hoping that some celestial rearranging might take place accordingly if she thought it loud enough. Did you hear that? I can’t do this, I don’t know how. HELP.

  Rosa hadn’t been sure if she would be able to sleep in Jo’s bed at first. She could smell the other woman’s mimosa perfume on the pillows, plus there was a gap at the top of the bedroom curtains which let in a strip of orange streetlight. More pressingly, the events of the afternoon and evening kept replaying in her head, looping over and over, and she couldn’t help worrying about both Jo and Bea. Earlier, she had called the hospital for an update but there hadn’t been much news, other than that Jo was currently in surgery. Despite Rosa’s best attempts at positivity, Bea had sloped off to her room claiming to be doing her homework, but really, Rosa suspected, in order to play thrashy music and have a private cry. When she did finally manage to drop off, Rosa fell into an anxious recurring dream about Max: that she was on a flight to Amsterdam and he had just sat down next to her on the plane, easing his long legs into the seat and putting a hand on her thigh. ‘Hello, darling,’ he said in a low, amused-sounding voice and she woke up in a sweat, the bed sheets tangled around her body, the green numerals of Jo’s bedside clock telling her that it was 3.08: insomniacs’ hour.

  Rolling onto her back, she stared up at the ceiling, where she could make out the shape of the silvery pendant light in the gauzy darkness. Stop bloody thinking about him, for God’s sake, she ordered her subconscious, wishing for the thousandth time that there was a delete function in the brain, some kind of mental shredder to dispose of unwanted memories and people. But when you’d been with someone for eight wildly happy months, when you’d slept beside them, shared your most private thoughts with them, seen each other drunk, naked, hungover, happy, sad, ill . . . there was a lot to untangle; there could be no neat scissoring out of a lover from your head, as from a photograph. The way he smelled so good, even when he’d been out running. Those long eyelashes of his, the cheekbones she liked to trace with a finger, the Nordic-blue of his eyes . . . You were definitely a Danish prince in another lifetime, she had told him once, her imagination furnishing him with a crown and cape, on a Viking ship, on a galloping horse . . . oh, so many fantasies, in fact.

  Scissor, scissor, scissor, she reminded herself, scissor him away. Well, she was doing her best to remove him but he was not a person to be so easily discarded. Especially after what he’d done.

  I thought I saw Max today in the King’s Road! Is he back early from Amsterdam?

  No, actually. Turned out he was a lying bastard. I know! Men, eh?

  She’d met him in a hipster bar in Shoreditch of all places. Her three best friends had forced her to come out and drink sickly cocktails with them, because she’d been, as they put it, ‘moping about with a face like a slapped arse’ since getting dumped by Graham, the sensible pharmacist she’d been trying and failing to convince herself she was in love with. (Secretly it was a relief. Graham, although a catch on paper, had a nervous habit of making gross swallowing noises whenever they began foreplay and all she could think about was saliva in his mouth, gallons of saliva sloshing about in there. Yes, she was a shallow person. No, she probably didn’t deserve any kind of happy-ever-after because of such meanness.)

  Rosa didn’t even like hipster bars, especially not ones with random vintage items whimsically bolted to the walls (a penny-farthing bicycle, a grandfather clock, something that looked like a spinning wheel, for crying out loud). On that particular evening, she didn’t like men full stop, either, even though her friends kept badgering her about getting back in the saddle and getting out there again. Any minute now, they’d be whipping out a pair of bolt-cutters and removing the sodding penny-farthing for her to clamber onto, she thought, rolling her eyes. Her friend Catherine, who became very loud and pointy-fingered after a few cocktails, was already scouring the pub for suitable pharmacist replacements. ‘How about him?’ she’d blared, indicating a bearded guy in a red Fred Perry top and jeans who was holding court on the next table. ‘He looks fun.’

  ‘I hate men with beards,’ Rosa had replied balefully. ‘And I hate fun people.’

  ‘Him, then,’ another friend, Alexa, had suggested, picking out a man with a bleached buzz-cut and piercings. ‘He looks sexy. I bet he’s got tattoos as well. Dare me to ask him?’

  ‘I hate pierced noses,’ came Rosa’s damning reply, even if it wasn’t strictly true. ‘Definitely not.’

  Undeterred, they went on searching. ‘Well, what about him at the bar? He’s gorgeous,’ Catherine said, loud enough for the elegant, square-jawed man to turn his – okay then, admittedly gorgeous – head their way, and eye them in amusement. ‘Yeah, you,’ Catherine confirmed, emboldened after her fifth cocktail of the night. She was a liability when she got started. ‘I was just telling my friend she should go and chat you up.’

  ‘Catherine!’ Rosa exploded, throwing her hands up in mortification, but the man merely laughed and raised an eyebrow.

  ‘What can I say, I agree,’ he said, a smile playing on his lips. ‘You really should.’

  Catherine had cheered, the others had laughed and Rosa had turned bright red. ‘Ha ha,’ she had said witheringly.

  ‘I’m serious,’ he said, picking up his glass of red wine and strolling over to their table. He winked. ‘Go on, what are your best lines? Seduce me. I’m game.’

  Oh, he’d been game, all right. It had been a game to him, more like. And now here she was, wide awake in the middle of the night because she was starting to feel angry with him all over again and even angrier with her own naive self for falling for his shit in the first place. Punching the pillow, she tried to find a comfortable position in Jo’s bed but it seemed impossible now that her head was full of him, Max, bloody Max, and his terrible lies. If only she could go back in time and put up more resistance to Catherine and the others when they had nagged her about coming out with them on that fateful night! Sorry, I’m washing my hair; sorry, I’m sorting out my tights drawer; sorry, I’m single-handedly resolving world peace. There should be some kind of danger sign that came with men like Max, an alarm that was triggered in a woman’s head the moment he approached, eyes glittering. Get lost, she’d have said, if she’d known. Do one.

  I didn’t like to say at the time but I did think he was too good to be true, you know, her mum sighed inside her ear for the millionth time, and Rosa groaned. ‘And you can sod off and all,’ she snarled, pulling the co
vers over her head.

  *

  She must have fallen asleep soon afterwards because the next thing she knew was a blast of grungey music from the bedroom next to hers and it took her a moment to orient herself. Mimosa perfume. The wooden elephant with golden eyes. Jo’s room, she thought, blinking and pulling herself upright. The events of the day before all seemed like a weird dream now but she rubbed her eyes and shambled through to the kitchen to make coffee and phone the hospital again for news.

  When Bea emerged in a grubby pink towelling dressing gown, her hair a bird’s nest of tangles, face pouchy and grey, Rosa took a deep breath and poured her a coffee before gently giving her the update. Unfortunately Jo continued to be quite poorly, according to the nurse Rosa had spoken to. Although the emergency operation had been successful, they would still need to monitor her for at least another twenty-four hours, probably longer, in case of infection, or any other post-operative problems.

  Bea sagged into a chair at the small scrubbed pine table and put her head in her hands. ‘Infection, they mean that MRSA thing, I bet,’ she said. ‘People die of that, don’t they?’

  ‘It’s not necessarily MRSA,’ Rosa tried saying but Bea was on a roll and not listening.

  ‘I googled “burst appendix” last night and there’s this thing, peritonitis, where basically your blood gets poisoned, and you die. What if she’s got that?’

  ‘She’s not going to d—’

  ‘But she might! You can’t say for sure. Fuck! I can’t believe this!’ She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her dressing gown. ‘Do I have to go to school?’ she pleaded, slumping over the table. ‘Please? Can you write me a note to say I’m stressed out and, like, too ill with worrying to go in?’

  ‘I’ve got to go to work,’ Rosa said helplessly. She had been hoping that this morning would mark a neat separation, the return to their individual lives, but Bea’s neediness was impossible to ignore. She sighed. ‘But I finish early today so I’ll be here when you get back from school,’ she added reluctantly, ‘and we could visit your mum again then, I suppose. Decide what’s best.’ Bea was still motionless, her head on the table, a hank of her rust-coloured hair gently draped across the sugar bowl. It was all very dramatic being a teenager, Rosa couldn’t help thinking. ‘Come on, have some breakfast,’ she urged. ‘Do you like porridge? I can make us some, if you want.’