Over the next week or so, Rosie reran the power cut conversation approximately five thousand times.
The more she thought about it, the less sure she felt of what it had all meant. He’d told her about a childhood incident so unpleasant it affected him more than two decades on, and yet she couldn’t be sure how significant this was. He might well have related the story to anyone he happened to be sat next to seconds after the lights went out. He’d been vulnerable and panicked, and while baring his soul seemed out of character for Aled, Rosie understood why he’d done it. In that moment, he’d felt the need to explain what lay behind his sudden nervousness – and for all she knew, he would have offered a total stranger full disclosure.
Then there were the revelations about Ceri – a woman who’d apparently bewitched him, then broken his heart so thoroughly that he’d had to leave the country in hopes of getting over her. Perhaps it wasn’t surprising that, a decade on and with Aled in possession of a valuable London property, the woman seemed to have changed her mind about him. Rosie tried to comfort herself with the thought that, at least so far, Aled had showed no sign of softening towards his ex-girlfriend.
It was what he’d said about feeling at home – feeling better than he had in a long time – that she’d tucked away in her memory for safekeeping. She fetched it from her mental storehouse more frequently than she should, re-examining it like it was a precious artefact or a puzzle she couldn’t quite solve. It meant he liked her, she supposed – that he felt comfortable with her in a way that was unusual for him. Even after her mini-makeover, though, she couldn’t bring herself to believe he had anything more than friendly feelings for her. No doubt he’d bring some tall, skinny, highly intelligent girlfriend home any day now. Through gritted teeth and with a roiling stomach, Rosie would shake her hand and chat pleasantly, all the while secretly wishing for the woman to be struck by lightning.
It was half-term, and she had a day off from the cafe. Aled had spent the morning finishing some school work while Rosie had done a few rounds of YouTube yoga, and there was a vague plan to head out for a walk and a cheeky afternoon pint if the weather held. It was bright but cool, the sun breaking through thin white clouds in a way that made everything look pretty but proffered little warmth.
Rosie emerged from the bathroom after her post-workout shower and detected what sounded like an argument drifting down the corridor from the flat’s front door. Weird. As she tuned in she quickly realised that was James’s voice – and Aled was remonstrating with him.
Forgetting that she had a towel on her head and was wearing nothing but underwear and a knee-length dressing gown, she marched towards the increasingly heated conversation.
‘… not going to let you in here unless she says she wants to see you,’ Aled was saying, his deep voice firm but calm.
‘I’m not being funny, mate, but since when did you become her keeper?’ James snapped sourly, his Cheshire accent strange to Rosie’s ears after so many weeks without it. ‘I think I know better than you what she might want,’ he went on. ‘We were together for almost ten years.’
It was funny, Rosie thought, that he’d invoke the length of their relationship when it suited him. It hadn’t meant all that much when he’d finished with her, leaving her high and dry in a flat he knew she couldn’t afford.
The moment she came into view, James clammed up. He stared at her, round-eyed, taking in her near nakedness and her proximity to Aled, who she’d deliberately stood right next to.
‘James, what are you doing here?’ she asked.
‘You’ve not answered any of my messages or calls. I wanted to see how you were,’ he said sullenly.
‘Why? I told you when you left that we weren’t going to be friends – that once you were gone, we were over for good.’
‘Please, Rosie, there are some things I want to say. I’d really like it if we could talk. Alone,’ James added, with a murderous look at his former neighbour.
‘Do you want to talk to him?’ Aled asked, looking down at Rosie with sincere concern in his deep brown eyes.
‘I am here,’ James put in, sounding like a sulky teenager whose parents were openly discussing his most recent misdemeanour. ‘Don’t talk about me like I can’t hear you, please.’
Aled rolled his eyes and placed a gentle hand on Rosie’s shoulder.
Thrilling at the contact, she took a deep breath and then turned to her ex-boyfriend. ‘You’ve got no reason to be here, James. But you can have five minutes to get whatever it is off your chest,’ she said. ‘And before you even think it, let alone ask: I will not be making tea.’
‘You sure you’re all right?’ Aled asked, his hand sliding down her cotton-covered arm and then brushing her own. He gave her fingers a squeeze, as if to reassure her that he wouldn’t leave her alone with James if she had even a shred of doubt about seeing him.
The gesture was kind, empathetic and not in any way sexual – but the feel of his warm skin touching hers was electrifying. She felt a jolt of wanting more powerful than anything James had managed to elicit in her during the decade they’d spent together.
Rosie glanced up to see that her ex’s eyes, narrowed and lit with resentment, had taken in the sudden flush she could feel lighting up her cheeks.
‘Follow me,’ she said to James. Aled went into his room – which, at this oddest of moments, Rosie realised she no longer thought of as in any way ‘spare’. He shut the door to give them privacy.
They reached the sitting room, and James moved towards the armchair he’d often sat in when he and Rosie lived together.
‘Watch out,’ she warned, pointing as James lowered his backside towards the seat. ‘You’ll squash him.’
‘What the—’ James yelped, as Springsteen uncoiled himself and stood up from the cushion he’d been lounging on. He glared at James with accusing yellow eyes, hissed imperiously and then leapt to the floor. After throwing a final withering glare at his would-be assailant, he trotted in the direction of the recently installed cat flap.
‘Is that the mangy old stray from the alley?’ James demanded. ‘What are you thinking, letting it in?’
‘He is called Springsteen,’ Rosie informed him. ‘He lives here now – and there’s nothing mangy about him.’
James looked around the flat, taking in the cat food dishes on the kitchen floor, the obviously masculine jacket and boots that occupied the rack by the back door and the two empty coffee mugs that sat next to the sink.
‘Seems like Springsteen isn’t the only one who’s got his paws under the table,’ James said with venom. ‘What the hell is the bloke from upstairs doing in our flat? And why the fuck don’t my keys work?’
‘Our flat?’ Rosie scoffed. ‘You moved out, James, remember? You don’t pay rent anymore. Which is also why you no longer have keys for the place.’
‘You changed the locks?’
‘The landlord felt it was the right thing to do,’ she said, trying to stop a smug smile from creeping onto her face. James still had no idea Aled owned the building, and keeping the information back felt like a small but significant victory.
‘And what about Tom Jones? Your lad from the valleys?’ he said, jerking a thumb in the direction of Aled’s bedroom door. ‘What’s he doing here while you’re half-naked? Isn’t there some coal that needs to be dug up in his homeland?’
Rosie was suddenly incensed. Nothing James said or did should have surprised her at this point, but resorting to cheap, insulting stereotypes felt beneath even him.
‘He lives here,’ she said, simply– allowing the statement to reverberate in the tense silence that followed it, then land with maximum impact.
James boggled at her, lost for words.
‘I don’t know why you’re so shocked – or even interested, really,’ Rosie said. ‘You must have known that, unless I was prepared to pack up and live chez Colin and Julie, I’d need to find a flatmate. Or did none of that occur to you when you were working on the lovely letter you wrote me?’
‘You’re living with that guy? The bike fascist? Oh my god, are you sleeping with him?’
Rosie’s temper threatened to erupt, and she took a steadying breath. ‘What business of yours would it be if I was?’ she asked. ‘It’s not as though you’re living like a monk in the aftermath of our break-up, is it?’
James looked down at his feet, flinching away from her gaze. Following his eyes, Rosie saw that he was wearing a pair of unutterably ugly trainers. They were bright white with prominent black branding and looked incredibly uncomfortable: his recent ‘style over substance’ approach to life epitomised by overpriced footwear.
‘What was it you wanted to say, James? Why did you come here today? Because I’d really like to get on.’ She gestured at her state of undress.
‘I wanted to … I don’t know … reach out and try to fashion some sort of friendship with you,’ James said, his voice quavering in a way that Rosie couldn’t help but feel was studied. Deliberate. ‘It just feels wrong not having any contact at all,’ he went on. ‘Surely you can understand that, after all the years we were in one another’s lives? I wouldn’t have turned up on your doorstep like this if you’d returned any of my texts.’
‘I didn’t get your texts,’ Rosie said, not wanting to be cruel but unwilling to take part in what he evidently hoped would become a pity party.
‘You blocked me?’ James asked, his mouth dropping open.
‘I did,’ Rosie admitted. ‘I don’t have to talk to you anymore, James. I don’t have to let you back into my life because you suddenly want to be back in mine. You made the decision to dump me in the least respectful way possible – and to lie about why. After ten years together you let me find out by accident that you were seeing someone else – living with her, I guess.’
James stared down at his hideous trainers again.
‘I’m sorry,’ Rosie said, feeling a prickle of sympathy for him that she immediately stamped on. ‘But you hurt me. I haven’t forgiven you yet, and I can’t be sure I ever will. Right now, I don’t want to be your friend.’
‘Wow,’ James said, his voice hardening. ‘That’s harsh, given that it seems to have taken you only a week or two to start shagging the handsome hermit from the second floor.’
‘It really isn’t harsh, James,’ Rosie pointed out. ‘It’s not like I’ve gone out of my way to contact you and declare I don’t want you in my life. You came to see me,’ she continued, ‘uninvited. And it seems that what you’re really bothered about is the fact I’m not some quivering wreck – which is no doubt what you were expecting. Would you have felt better if you’d found me sobbing, snotty and mainlining Ben & Jerry’s in my joggers?’
‘Of course not!’ he yelped, with practised emphasis. James’s words insisted he didn’t want her to be miserable – but his eyes said he’d have much preferred it to finding her unclothed and cohabiting with someone much better-looking than himself.
‘I think you should go now,’ Rosie said, keen to get rid of him before he could wind her up any more. Thus far, she’d resisted yelling or screaming at him – but her resolve would snap if this conversation went on much longer.
‘Why? So you can get back to business with lover boy? Or should I say boyo?’
‘What I might do, and who I might do it with, is no longer anything to do with you,’ Rosie hissed, her patience wafer-thin. She stood up and pointed towards the flat door, hoping he would take the hint and leave.
She couldn’t bring herself to refute James’s accusations; on principle, it shouldn’t matter to him if she and Aled had struck up a relationship, but there was a bit of her that relished his obvious dislike of the idea. A still deeper part of her – one that was far less sanguine – knew that telling the truth would hurt. There was only friendship between Rosie and her flatmate, and she knew she would put that in jeopardy if she allowed her already sizeable crush to spiral out of control.
‘Fine,’ James said, heaving himself up off Springsteen’s favoured armchair to rock back and forth on the soles of his horrid sneakers. ‘I came here today to extend the hand of friendship – to try and salvage something from the years we spent together. I can see I was wasting my time.’
Rosie saw red. How dare he try and cast himself as the magnanimous ex, only here for the sake of ensuring the lover he’d cast aside hadn’t gone mad with grief?
‘D’you know what?’ Rosie asked as she opened the door to wave him through. ‘I think you came to see me today for your own ego. You wanted to reassure yourself that I was unhappy without you – that I was just waiting to be picked back up like some discarded toy, in case dumping me doesn’t work out so well for you.’
James made an exaggerated frown face – schooled his features so they were the very picture of righteous outrage – but Rosie knew him too well to miss the shock that had passed over them a moment before. She’d hit the nail squarely on the head.
‘Instead,’ she said, ‘you’ve found me getting on with my life. Unfortunately for you, I’m not wallowing in self-pity or composing sad ballads about how much I miss you. I’m actually OK.’
‘I … I’m glad you’re OK,’ James murmured. ‘Truly. I just … I never imagined things would go this way.’
This was the first fully honest thing he’d said since turning up, and Rosie had the grace to agree. Then, in an echo of their first parting, she said simply: ‘Goodbye, James,’ and shut the door behind him.
Regarding herself in her bedroom mirror, Rosie couldn’t help thinking that – as ‘revenge looks’ went – hers left a lot to be desired. If she’d had any inkling that James would appear on her doorstep this morning, she’d have been sure to greet him in her tightest, brightest, lowest-cut t-shirt (recently purchased with an insistent Rhianne right behind her).
She’d also have dried and styled her bob, concealed the hormonal zit that had blossomed on her chin overnight and donned a slick of fire-engine red lipstick. That said, she felt she’d achieved impressive hauteur for a woman in a slightly stained waffle robe from Tu at Sainsbury’s. She’d stood her ground, and it had felt fantastic.
An unfortunate side-effect of agreeing to speak to James was the fact that her hair, still in its towel, had now dried in a Mr Whippy-shaped cone on her head. However, with the aid of some leave-in conditioner and her GHDs, this was a punch Rosie decided she could roll with.
She put on a thin cotton vest and rooted in her drawer for a soft knitted pullover that Niamh had bought her two Christmases ago. It was a vivid bottle green and clung to her curves in a way that had distressed her so much she’d barely worn it until now. Today, emboldened and determined not to hide, she pulled it on.
As she instructed herself not to panic about the way the jumper’s wide V-neck confidently announced her breasts, she couldn’t help noticing how its colour complemented her eyes. Niamh had been right when she said it was exactly the right shade for Rosie – but it had taken her until now to see it.
She fastened the button on a pair of high-waisted ‘mom’ jeans – still with no real understanding of why they were called this – and heard the soft rap of knuckles on her door.
‘One sec!’ she cried, urgently trying to flatten her hair. Once she’d reduced its bushy height by a centimetre or two, she opened up.
God, but Aled was massive. He practically filled the doorway, and the glossy, white-painted architrave around it made Rosie think of a picture frame in an art gallery. He was the portrait of a handsome man come to life.
For just a second, she let herself look at him: the shiny mass of dark hair, the expressive eyes and the sharp, stubbled line of his jaw. He had the sort of looks that translated across time and space, Rosie thought; he’d look right depicted on the wall of some eighteenth-century National Trust stately home, but could be just as comfortable on the cover of GQ magazine. As this occurred to her, she rather wished he wasn’t seeing her with what looked like a haystack on her head.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked. ‘I heard the door go a while ago. Thought I’d best check in.’
‘Thanks,’ Rosie said, smiling. ‘I’m fine. And James, despite being an utter twat, remains unmurdered.’
‘What did he want?’
‘To be friends, if you can believe it,’ Rosie said scathingly. ‘I’m pretty sure he was just here to make sure I was falling apart in his absence. You can imagine how happy he was to discover that, in fact, I’m doing fine.’
‘He was ecstatic, I suppose?’
Rosie laughed, but stopped short of telling Aled that it was his presence in the flat that had fanned the flames of James’s indignation. She didn’t want to reference the assumptions her ex-boyfriend had made, or her refusal to deny them.
‘D’you still fancy a walk somewhere when you’re ready?’ he asked. ‘Blow a few cobwebs away?’
‘Definitely,’ Rosie said. ‘But you know, I think we need to up the ante a bit. Do something more exciting? Or else I’ll always remember this as the day I had a confrontation with the man who left me while wearing a dressing gown with ketchup on the sleeve.’
‘We can’t have that,’ Aled laughed. ‘What did you have in mind?’
‘I dunno. Where have you never been in London that you like the sound of?’
‘God, loads of places,’ he said. ‘I’ve only ever been here and right into the centre – for plays and touristy stuff, when I was a kid. I like the idea of exploring the parks, but never know which one to start with.’
‘OK, so how about Primrose Hill? It’s lovely. The views are gorgeous, there are loads of blue plaques and some excellent pubs.’
‘Sounds great,’ Aled said. ‘But what about you? We should go somewhere you’ve never been, too – or do something you’ve never tried before. Any ideas?’
Rosie thought for a moment, then said: ‘This is stupid, but I’ve always wanted to try roller skating.’
The moment the words were out of her mouth, she wished she could stuff them back in.
‘Roller skating?’ Aled repeated.
‘Yep,’ Rosie nodded, reddening. ‘Told you it was daft, but when I was about twelve, Lucy – the girl next door – had this amazing pair of roller boots. Proper 1980s-style things with four wheels in a square. They were turquoise and pink, with big sparkly stars on the back.’
‘And …?’
‘Well. I was painfully jealous, of course. Desperate for some of my own. Mum was worried I “lacked the physical dexterity” to skate without injuring myself. By which she meant I was too chubby to try it.’
‘That’s shit,’ Aled said. ‘No offence, but your mother sounds like a real piece of work.’
‘You’re not wrong,’ Rosie said. ‘I think she thought she was helping – that I’d lay off the cheese sandwiches and Walkers Smoky Bacon if I believed a pair of roller boots might be on the horizon.’
‘I have no doubt you were a lovely child who absolutely deserved access to glittery, eye-wateringly colourful footwear with wheels,’ Aled insisted. ‘We are going to right this wrong today, Ms Butler.’
Rosie laughed. ‘Thanks, but no – I was just being silly. I can’t go roller skating for the first time at thirty-two.’
‘You can, and you will,’ Aled said, his face alight with determination. ‘This is not going to be the day you had an awkward confrontation with your ex – it’s going to be the day you got the wheels you always wanted.’
‘I don’t know where you can even do roller skating nowadays,’ Rosie protested. ‘It’s kind of old-fashioned, isn’t it? It’s probably not even possible.’
‘If there’s one thing I’ve learned since coming to London, it’s that very little is impossible in this city,’ he said sagely. ‘You finish getting ready and I bet by the time you’re done, I’ll have found us a place to go.’
‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ Rosie asked, taken aback – not to mention slightly swept away by his sudden dedication to the cause.
‘As sure as I am that Josh Holloway won’t hand in his Dr Faustus homework on time,’ Aled said. ‘Leave it to me.’