On Saturday afternoon, Aled moved his things from the second-floor flat into Rosie’s ground-floor residence. She offered to help him, but he insisted he could cope on his own – and as she sensed he’d rather not have company while he shifted his few possessions downstairs, she made herself scarce for a few hours and left him to it.
Obviously Rosie had removed all potentially embarrassing items from the property’s communal areas before giving him unfettered access to it. She’d relocated her facial waxing strips from the bathroom cupboard to her bedroom, thrown away an ancient tube of haemorrhoid cream that she assumed must actually have been James’s, and buried several cringeworthy magazines at the bottom of the recycling bin. Aled seemed serious and smart; she didn’t want him to assume she was neither on the basis that she occasionally read speculation about which Hollywood actors were indulging in illicit, off-camera trysts.
Something like nervousness, or maybe excitement, fluttered in Rosie’s belly at the thought of being around this attractive, interesting person. It was irrational, she knew, and she tried to tamp the feeling down. In the end, however, the fact remained: she wanted him to like her.
Sunday morning saw Aled heave his heavy, disassembled bed into Rosie’s starkly blank spare room. It was a warm day – the last gasp of what the BBC weather team had termed the year’s ‘Indian summer’ – and Rosie struggled to stay composed as she watched him lift the heavy dark-wood bedframe onto its side, then set about screwing the headboard into place. His biceps strained with the effort, pulling his t-shirt sleeves taut. It struck Rosie that – for all James’s efforts at the gym – his arms had never looked like that.
While Aled definitely seemed warmer and chattier than he’d ever been previously, he still seemed to want to keep Rosie at arm’s length. She left him surrounded by screws of varying shapes and sizes, his face creased in an expression of confused determination as he tackled reattaching the bed’s legs.
A short bus ride later, Rosie arrived at the brunch spot Niamh had picked out for them. It was a cafe that served decent coffee, bougie breakfasts and boasted a kids’ play corner where – fingers crossed – the twins could amuse themselves for a while.
‘Here’s Auntie Rosie,’ Niamh said, her tone flush with relief. Within seconds of her friend’s arrival, she handed Rosie a child across the table where she’d already set up camp. It was strewn with abandoned bottles of formula milk, a stone-cold, half-drunk cappuccino and a toasted teacake that had barely been touched.
Rosie frowned at the evidence of this aborted attempt at breakfast – Niamh was slimmer than ever just lately, to the point of looking a little drawn – then examined the sweet-smelling bundle she’d just been passed. This was Rory, she realised. Eva was sitting on a soft foam mat to the side of their chairs, chomping on a large plastic building block.
‘Ugh, teething again,’ Niamh said, attempting to switch out the block with an appropriately sterilised chew toy that – rather oddly, to Rosie’s mind – was shaped like a giraffe. At Eva’s enraged cry, however, Niamh threw her hands up, declared that a few random germs would merely boost her daughter’s immune system and abandoned the swap.
Rosie snuggled Rory, revelling in the softness of his pudgy cheek against her own. She stroked the tiny curls on his head and didn’t mind at all as – in determinedly chewing on his own fist – he soaked her shoulder with a tidal wave of drool.
‘Sorry,’ Niamh winced. ‘Let me grab you a muslin.’
Rosie shrugged. ‘It’s fine. If a bit of spit’s the price I pay for a cuddle with this little champ, it’s well worth it.’
‘D’you want a coffee?’ Niamh asked. ‘I definitely need another. Sorry for starting without you but they’ve had me up since half four.’
‘Urgh, that’s awful!’ Rosie said. ‘You could have cancelled, I’d have understood.’
‘No way,’ Niamh said, standing up. ‘Brendan’s been away all weekend – work trip to Berlin – and at least if I’m here with you the ratio of adults to children shifts a little in my favour. Sorry if I look a state, by the way.’
‘You look lovely,’ Rosie said, meaning it. While Niamh was visibly tired and had a flustered, strained sort of aura, she was still effortlessly stylish in dark denim jeans and an oversized lilac sweatshirt.
‘So do you,’ Niamh said. ‘I shall refrain from making any suggestion that you’ve dressed up for the sake of your new roommate. Flat white?’
Rosie made a glaring face that amounted to an admission, then said: ‘That would be great. Would you order me some toast and jam, too?’
‘Sure,’ Niamh nodded. Rory began to whine as he watched his mother walk away in the direction of the cafe’s counter. Rosie saw Niamh flinch at the sound.
‘Now don’t you worry,’ Rosie cooed, reclaiming his attention and making a succession of funny faces at him until he gurgled a laugh. ‘See? She’s back already.’
‘You’re really great with them, you know,’ Niamh said. ‘You’ll make a wonderful mum some day.’ Then, seeming to feel like she’d put her foot in it, she cried: ‘Argh, sorry, I shouldn’t have said that – blame the early morning.’
‘It’s OK,’ Rosie told her. ‘I do want a baby one day – there’s no point denying it. Did I think I’d be closer to having a family than this at thirty-two? Yes. But am I glad James decided to flounce off into the sunset before he knocked me up? Also yes. I’d feel a whole lot worse if he’d dumped me for someone else after we had kids.’
Two coffees arrived, followed by a plate piled high with granary toast, plus two ramekins filled with butter and raspberry jam.
Rosie put Rory down next to his sister in the play corner, then set about buttering some toast.
‘I must say you’re taking it all remarkably well,’ Niamh said. ‘If we ignore the unexpected yet obviously great quitting-your-job thing. And the nutty decision to let your hot, mysterious landlord set up camp in your spare room.’
Rosie threw her a withering glare and handed her some toast. ‘So when you say I’m taking it well …?’
‘I mean the James side of it, I suppose,’ Niamh explained. ‘You seem almost philosophical about him leaving – even about this idea that he’s hooked up with some other woman … If you’d asked me six months ago how you’d cope with something like this, I’d have said you’d be a wreck—’
‘Gee, thanks,’ Rosie put in, rolling her eyes.
‘No,’ Niamh exclaimed, ‘I don’t mean that the way it sounded. Can I please remind you I’m so sleep deprived it’s amazing I can even function? I can barely remember my own name most of the time. What I mean is, you’re OK. And I am so bloody relieved you’re OK. I never thought of you as weak, but you’ve been even stronger than I could have imagined. It’s like, despite James’s gold-standard twattery, you haven’t let this break you.’
‘You’re right,’ Rosie agreed, pausing between mouthfuls of toast. ‘I’m not broken. I’m a bit bashed up, though – I feel kind of like I’ve had a run-in with a life mugger.’
‘A life mugger?’ Niamh laughed.
‘Yeah. Like, I’ve been knocked down and something I cared about’s been taken away. But I’ll survive. And … I dunno. Maybe the thing I lost was heavier and more unwieldy than I thought. Perhaps I’d just got used to carrying it.’
‘And there you go, being all philosophical again,’ Niamh said. ‘You’re amazing.’
‘Thanks. Let’s hope someone on the receiving end of one of my many job applications thinks so, too.’ Rosie had spent much of her free time that week filling in forms and emailing CVs to other insurance firms, as well as several companies advertising for admin staff.
‘They will,’ Niamh said. ‘You’ll have something before the week is out, I’m sure. In the meantime, I guess you’ll be setting up house with Nameless Neighbour – despite my very valid reservations about the idea.’
‘His name is Aled,’ Rosie intoned, ‘as you well know. And we’re not 1950s newlyweds. Honestly, he seems perfectly nice but I suspect I’ll barely see him.’ She tried to suppress her smile, and her pleasure at being able to talk about him. ‘We’re going to be flatmates, not friends. We both know he’s only there because he needs somewhere to stay and I can only afford half the rent.’
‘Right,’ Niamh said sceptically. ‘He’s all moved in, though?’
‘I think so,’ Rosie said. ‘It didn’t take long – he wasn’t kidding when he said he didn’t have much stuff. It was a single suitcase, a few boxes of books and a guitar. Plus some artwork, his bed …’ She trailed off, thinking of the items that had caught her attention. ‘There were a few things that looked like he might have collected them. He had this beautiful sea shell – pearlescent pink, so pretty you could believe it wasn’t even real.’
‘Really?’ Niamh murmured. ‘The plot thickens. D’you think he’s some kind of travelling troubadour? Or a deep-sea diver? He’s got the looks for it – and the wetsuit.’
‘Er – I don’t know what he does,’ Rosie admitted sheepishly.
‘Does that not strike you as a bit bonkers?’ Niamh demanded. ‘I mean, he could have some really weird job. What if he’s an embalmer or something? What if he’s one of those people who puts makeup on dead bodies so they still look sort of alive at their own funerals?’
‘Well then, maybe he could give me some tips on correctly matching my foundation to my skin tone,’ Rosie said. ‘You know I’m crap with cosmetics.’
‘Laugh it off if you want, but you’re kidding yourself if you think you’ll be able to coexist with this person without getting to know him a little,’ Niamh declared. ‘You’re built to befriend people. It’s in your DNA. Hell, it might even be in his DNA to let you, since he’s related to the grumpy old geezer he inherited the building from. The one you used to take home-made dinners and basically bullied into becoming chums with you.’
‘I never bullied anyone!’ Rosie insisted with mock outrage. ‘And Aled and I will be ships that pass politely on our way in and out of the flat. There will be no relationship building, no cosy dinners, no looking after him of any kind because unlike his long-lost grandfather, he’s neither old nor infirm.’
An image of Aled building his bed reminded Rosie just how not infirm Aled was, and she flushed slightly as Niamh checked on the twins. As she finished her toast, however, she privately resolved to at least find out what he did for a living – in the fervent hope that it had nothing to do with cadavers.
Rosie got home to a quiet, empty and beautifully fragrant flat. The scent she traced to a rustic bunch of sweet peas in a dark green ceramic vase on the table by the window. Definitely not supermarket flowers, she decided. Aside from that there were no signs that Aled had unpacked a thing – let alone spent the morning constructing furniture.
The sheer neatness of the place was almost enough to convince her that Aled had changed his mind and hightailed it back to the building’s second floor. However, when she knocked on the door of the spare room, waited a beat and then opened it a crack, she saw it was no longer the vacant room James had used as his dumping ground. The large wooden bed was neatly made with crisp white bedding and what looked like a hand-knitted, chunky oatmeal blanket. There were three or four books neatly stacked on the bedside table.
On top of a narrow chest of drawers sat a framed photo of Aled and two young children. Rosie noted, unsurprised, that he was ridiculously photogenic. It was a black and white shot, and he looked like an actor or a model in it – his cheekbones lit by the bright sun streaming in from a window to his left. Maybe he was a model? That would certainly be a more appealing profession for a flatmate than anything involving formaldehyde.
In the image he had a large, floppy-looking book in his hands. The children – neither of whom could have been more than about five – were staring up at him in awe, transfixed by whatever he was reading.
She felt curiosity alight inside her. Who were the kids? And was the loose-woven blanket that she felt tempted to run her fingers over some faux-authentic purchase from a posh shop, or was there a story behind it?
She caught herself before she stepped inside the room, pulling the door firmly closed so she couldn’t start snooping. She didn’t consider herself especially nosy, but she was fascinated by other people – and right now Aled was the sort of enigma Rosie found irresistible. She’d never admit it out loud – especially not to Niamh – but respecting his obvious desire to keep their relationship cool and professional might prove challenging for her.
‘Rosie …?’
She jumped at the sound of his voice.
‘Oh dear god. You scared me! I think I’ve just aged about five years.’
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’
‘I didn’t hear you come in.’
‘Yeah. I got that.’ He looked at her quizzically. ‘What are you doing, standing outside my new bedroom?’
Shit. What did she say to that?
‘Oh. I, er … I knocked on the door and then I was waiting to see if you were in there. I was going to make dinner and wondered if you’d like some.’
Damn it. That wasn’t even close to true – and it conflicted completely with what she’d said to Niamh little more than an hour ago.
‘Dinner …?’ Aled asked. ‘It’s’ – he looked at his watch – ‘one forty-five in the afternoon.’
He arched an eyebrow at her, and she wished very powerfully that her mouth would stop saying things without putting them through some sort of brain-sanctioned quality control process.
‘I was planning a slow cook!’ Rosie invented wildly. ‘Chilli, perhaps. You in?’
‘O-K,’ he said, drawing out the two syllables in a way that signalled both surprise and a degree of reluctance. ‘Only if you’re sure. I don’t want you to feel like we have to eat together or anything … I’m pretty used to fending for myself.’
Oh, god. Had she coerced him into being sociable with her, just like Niamh had said she would? And how long had it taken? Easily less than half a day.
But she couldn’t renege on the offer now … that would seem even weirder than offering to make a chilli roughly five hours before any sane person would want to eat it. After what felt like an eternity, she said: ‘Duly noted. Consider it a moving-day treat. Oh, and lovely flowers, by the way!’
‘No problem. It was the least I could do. And thanks, that would be nice,’ Aled said, opening his bedroom door and stepping inside. ‘I’ll see you in a while? Just shout if you want help – or if you need anything picked up from the shops.’
‘Absolutely!’ Rosie cried, so brightly that she feared she sounded unhinged.
As Aled’s door shut behind him, she stealth-ran to the kitchen and began a frantic fumble for ingredients.
Given that she’d thrown it together using store cupboard staples and frozen mince, Rosie thought her chilli wasn’t half bad. Aled’s clean plate implied he felt the same way.
As she mopped up a puddle of soured cream and spicy tomato sauce with a tortilla chip, she wondered what happened now. He’d spent the afternoon in his room, only emerging to use the bathroom or to make himself coffee; would he slink back in there so as to avoid making after-dinner conversation with her? The spare room was such a small space that it couldn’t be comfortable to hang out in. Surely it felt claustrophobic, being boxed into an area that could barely accommodate a double bed?
She wondered if Aled whiled away spare hours scrolling on his phone or browsing the internet on a laptop. That was what James had spent most of his ‘downtime’ doing in the past few months, even when he and Rosie were in the same room. But – while she assumed he must have one – she hadn’t yet seen Aled with any kind of mobile device in his hand.
To Rosie’s surprise, Aled broke the silence that had descended when she served up their food. ‘Thanks so much, that was delicious.’
He stood up to clear their plates and cutlery away, diligently scraping and rinsing everything before placing it carefully into the dishwasher.
Rosie followed him to the kitchen and began filling the sink with hot water. The chilli pan was large, crusty and needed to be washed up by hand.
‘Nope,’ Aled said, shaking his head. ‘Step away from the Fairy Liquid. You made dinner – I’ve got this.’
Rosie flopped down on the sofa, struggling to identify the intense, almost uncomfortable feeling that was suddenly expanding in her chest. It was some combination of gratification – pleasure at feeling appreciated – and annoyance with herself for having gone so long without it.
James, she knew, would never have stopped her from cleaning up as well as cooking for them; she’d done it regularly, and mostly without complaint. Aled’s attitude to this wasn’t some show of enlightenment or superiority – he was simply treating her as an equal.
A lump rose in Rosie’s throat at the thought that someone she barely knew had more consideration for her than the man she’d imagined she would marry. She swallowed it away and picked up the paperback she was currently reading from the coffee table.
It wasn’t long before Aled had finished. Although she had tried to focus on her book, she’d found herself intently tuned in to the sound of pots and pans being put away, the spray of antibacterial cleaner on the work surfaces and then the whoosh of water hitting the inside of the kettle. For some reason, she refused to look round while he worked or even as she sensed him approaching. Given that he was a virtual stranger, it wasn’t odd for her to be hyperaware of his movements, she told herself – but she didn’t want him to feel spied on.
‘Sorry to disturb you while you’re reading,’ he said. In truth, she’d got through barely a paragraph in the past fifteen minutes – but he didn’t have to know that. She feigned studious absorption in the novel as she placed it face down in her lap and looked up at him.
‘I just wondered if you wanted a tea, or anything? I’m making one for myself.’ He shrugged awkwardly, and Rosie got the sense that – while he felt ill at ease about offering her a drink in her own home – he’d decided it would be stranger not to.
‘I’d love one,’ she said. ‘Milk, no sugar, please.’
A few moments later, and with a battered-looking book tucked under one arm, he set her mug down on a coaster and turned as if to head back to his bedroom.
‘You are allowed to sit on the couch, you know,’ Rosie said, before she could stop herself. ‘Or in that armchair, if you prefer.’ She pointed at a weathered old leather chesterfield, which – apparently after some internal argument – Aled lowered himself into.
They sipped their tea in silence, and Rosie went back to her novel with determination to make some headway as Aled opened his own. She couldn’t resist a look: Jane Eyre. She bit her bottom lip, her interest piqued almost beyond endurance.
It was one of her all-time favourites, but she knew very few men who liked it. Most of the boys who’d been in her A-level English class had considered reading the extracts they’d studied a form of slow torture.
Unable to concentrate on her cosy-crime paperback, she said: ‘Can I ask a question?’
‘Sure. As long as I get to ask one, too.’ His smile was a fleeting, faint thing, but – in the split second before it faded – Rosie caught it.
She smiled back and nodded her agreement.
‘If it’s about the book, I’m reading it for work,’ Aled said. ‘Well. Revising it, I suppose.’
Strangely, Rosie had been preparing herself to ask about his job. It now seemed she might get two answers for the price of one.
‘Oh, right. Why for work?’ she asked, hoping she wasn’t being too nosy.
‘Because I’m teaching it,’ Aled explained. ‘A-level English. It’s one of the set texts, as well as an old favourite.’
‘Oh!’ Rosie heard herself say, her voice several octaves higher than she’d have liked.
‘Is it that much of a surprise?’ he asked, amusement lighting his eyes and lifting one corner of his mouth. ‘What did you think I did?’
Male model.
Movie star.
Funeral parlour professional.
‘Erm … I don’t know,’ Rosie mumbled. ‘Teaching hadn’t occurred to me.’
Briefly, she wondered how many of his students were harbouring continent-sized crushes on him – and whether he was aware of the passions he inevitably inspired.
Before she could ask how long he’d been a teacher or how he’d got into it, he said: ‘My turn, now. How did you get to know my grandfather? It seems to me London isn’t the sort of place where you regularly chew the fat with your neighbours.’
‘Is that your excuse for never speaking to any of us before last week?’ Rosie quipped, laughing.
‘Maybe,’ he said, with a smirk so brief she could have blinked and missed it altogether.
‘Well, I used to check on him, like I told you that day you opened the door for me. I’d pop up and see if he needed anything, you know?’ Rosie said. ‘After a little while, when he realised I wasn’t going to give up just because he found my “interference” irritating, he started letting me in so we could have a cuppa together. I’m not too proud to admit that this opening up neatly coincided with me starting to take him cake and biscuits.’
‘So you just … knocked on his door? Until he let you in one day? Even though he was’ – Aled looked like he was searching for the right way to put this – ‘not receptive?’
Rosie couldn’t decide if he was horrified or impressed.
‘Pretty much,’ she said, giggling nervously. ‘I could tell he had a heart of gold beneath the prickly packaging. Niamh – that’s my best friend – says I bullied my way into his life, which is a gross exaggeration … but she’s not entirely wrong.’
At this, Aled actually grinned. The smile seemed to light him up from inside, like he was experiencing an upsurge of feeling too quick and bright to suppress. His full lips parted, his white teeth flashed in the dusky sitting room and his dark eyes danced. Rosie felt almost winded by the full force of his handsomeness, which she now realised she – and even Niamh – had vastly underestimated.
‘So now I know,’ Aled said. ‘You plied him with baked goods and relentless positivity until he was powerless to resist. Until he fell a little bit in love with you, I bet.’
Rosie felt her cheeks heat. She still wasn’t fully recovered from the grin.
‘I’m pretty sure he found my visits infuriating right up to the end,’ she said. ‘He used to tell me to stop mithering after him, and that he was perfectly capable of making his own dinner. I don’t know about love, but I like to think the low-level griping was his way of showing me he cared.’
Aled smiled at her again, the expression softer this time but still powerful enough that she felt its impact somewhere around her solar plexus. Crikey. If this was what it felt like to have his full attention, she’d need to avoid attracting it too often in case it caused internal bruising.
‘I’m sure it was,’ he told her, holding her gaze to show that he meant it.
They turned back to their books, then, and said little else for the rest of the evening.