Half an hour later, Rosie was putting on her trainers and her new winter coat. She’d retired the navy blue number in favour of a checked wool jacket in autumnal shades of orange, red, black and beige. Aled was ready to go and stood waiting in his charcoal-coloured pea coat and leather lace-up boots – both of which looked so good she could easily have believed he’d been paid to model them.
Rosie felt a pang of worry about what she’d got herself into here. The undercurrent of attraction she’d recently been feeling towards Aled felt increasingly like a wave that might swell to twice her height, then pull her below the surface. At this thought, a bolt of excitement went through her: what would it be like to just give in to it, she wondered?
Hideously embarrassing, she chided herself a second later. Epically humiliating. The sort of I only see you as a friend mortifying that there’s no recovering from.
As he locked up, Rosie riffled through the envelopes on the post table for the sake of hiding her pink face. There were several letters for Val and Pat, some sort of catalogue for James (which she immediately chucked into the recycling bin) and several things addressed to ‘A. Thomas’. Rosie shook her head in wonder as she piled them up. It seemed slightly mad that until very recently she’d had no idea what the ‘A’ signified – yet now she was having to talk herself out of trying to jump him in the minutes before they embarked on a joint roller-skating adventure.
She noted that several of the letters for Aled had local estate agents’ logos stamped on them. He’d told her not long ago that he’d been asked to have valuations of the building done for insurance purposes; property in their neighbourhood was so sought-after that every firm was doubtless keen to handle managing the building on his behalf.
‘Crikey, you’re popular,’ she said, stacking his mail into a neat pile he could pick up later.
‘Oh,’ he murmured, frowning. ‘I suppose so. I’ll have a look at them when we get back. Just … leave them.’
‘Sure,’ Rosie said. He looked almost rattled, and seemed on the point of offering an explanation for his sudden stiffness when Rosie decided not to push for one. It must be weird to feel suddenly responsible for the roof over a bunch of strangers’ heads, so instead she asked: ‘Am I allowed to know where we’re going yet?’
‘If you insist,’ Aled said, seeming to recover himself. He gave her his trademark half-smile and opened the building’s front door. ‘Regent’s Park. As luck would have it, there’s some kind of outdoor festival happening there this week – for the school holidays, I guess. There’s a company renting out roller skates by the hour, provided you’re willing to sign seven different disclaimers that mean you can’t sue if you break your leg.’
‘Oh my god, really?’ Rosie cried, not sure whether to feel excited or terrified.
‘Really,’ Aled confirmed. ‘We can skate around for a bit, then walk on to Primrose Hill. It’s all planned.’
Rosie’s heart skipped a beat at his use of the word ‘we’.
‘You’re going to roller skate with me?’ she asked, looking up at him in disbelief.
‘Why not?’ he said, pointing at the bus stop they needed to head for. ‘At no point on my travels have I attached wheels to my feet and tried not to fall over, so I think now’s the time.’
‘Bravo,’ Rosie laughed. ‘I’m impressed.’
‘I’d hold back with the praise if I were you,’ he said grimly. ‘I’ve got a feeling it’s not going to be pretty.’
‘Ha!’ Rosie grumbled. ‘You strike me as one of those effortlessly sporty people – the sort who’s good at athletic things but doesn’t make a song and dance about it. I, on the other hand, am truly graceless – as you well know. I’ll be on my arse within minutes, but sod it. You only live once.’
‘Too true,’ Aled agreed, smiling. ‘“Loveliest of trees, the cherry now”.’
‘More poetry?’ she said, squinting at him and grinning.
‘It is,’ he said, colouring a little. ‘Sorry, bad habit.’
‘I like it,’ Rosie said, realising it was true. The random quotations could have been pretentious and grating, like James’s tendency to rattle off technical computing terms she couldn’t understand – but Aled’s delivery of them was unstudied and spontaneous. She wondered whether other people’s words came more easily to him than his own.
Either way, the sharing felt special; he’d memorised these lines because they meant something to him, and he was letting Rosie in on their secret. At least, he would be if he explained them.
‘What does it mean?’ she asked, eyeing the bus shelter’s electronic display. ‘You’ve got two minutes to enlighten me.’
‘Oh god, don’t make me.’ He made a tortured face. ‘I promise, only prose from now on.’
‘Come on now, Mr Thomas – share with the whole class,’ Rosie quipped.
He bit his bottom lip and said, ‘Fine. It’s from an A. E. Housman poem – the opening line. The TLDR summary is that we should enjoy life in the moment. Drink in all the beauty we can.’
His eyes swept her face, then, and the intensity of his gaze sent a shiver through her. A second later, as the bus pulled in to their stop ahead of schedule, she was almost sure she’d imagined it.
To Rosie’s delight, she was surprisingly graceful on roller skates. After a couple of false starts she got the hang of gliding along, changing direction successfully and coming to a stop when needed.
Aled, on the other hand, was more ungainly than she’d imagined possible. Like a newborn foal, he stumbled and cursed, struggling to remain upright. It was as if his sheer height and heft made the whole thing harder, his large frame requiring superlative balance and total control of his suddenly wheeled size 11 feet.
Rosie hooted at the sight of him clutching the black metal gate they’d entered the park through, which stood wide open and adjacent to the mobile skate rental stand.
‘Come on, you can do it!’ she trilled. ‘I believe in you. Just try and let go!’
He threw her a look that was half furious at her piss-taking, half thrilled that she seemed to be enjoying herself so much.
‘Easy for you to say, Tinkerbell,’ he said, his voice wry and amused. ‘I must have at least a foot further to fall than you do.’
‘Easily,’ Rosie conceded, skating over to him, emboldened by the discovery that she wasn’t half bad at this. ‘However, you said you’d do this with me, so let’s be having you.’
Gingerly, he removed one hand from the railing he was holding. He wobbled and bellowed ‘Shit!’ the word barely audible above Rosie’s burst of laughter.
Without thinking, she extended her arm and offered him her hand. He hesitated. ‘Are you sure about this?’ he asked. ‘If I go down, I’ll take you with me.’
‘It’s a risk I’m prepared to take,’ Rosie said. ‘Besides, you’ve saved me from breaking bones before, remember?’
‘Of course I remember,’ he told her, sliding his large warm hand into her smaller, cooler one. Within seconds, Rosie realised her error.
The contact with him had immediately rendered her knees weak, and it took every shred of her core strength not to collapse onto the dusty path beneath her. There was something strangely paradoxical about Aled’s effect on her. At the same time as feeling completely safe with him – finding the sensation of touching him almost like a relief, or a homecoming – being around him was totally destabilising. Her heart thumped as her lungs struggled with the simple act of breathing.
With some effort, she restored her own balance and pulled Aled away from the fence so they could skate slowly along in tandem.
‘Dear god, this is terrifying,’ he said, a little breathlessly.
‘Oh, come on,’ Rosie scolded, hoping that teasing him would restore her equilibrium. ‘Surely you’ve done scarier things than this on your grand tour? Bungee jumping? Sky diving? Fire eating?’
‘Nah,’ he admitted. ‘I was always more about the landscape and local cuisine than potentially life-threatening leisure pursuits.’
‘Fair enough,’ Rosie laughed. A second later, she couldn’t resist asking: ‘Is there anywhere you still want to go?’
‘Honestly? I don’t know,’ Aled said, straightening his spine slightly as he grew more confident that he wasn’t about to keel over. The motion drew Rosie closer towards him, and her breath caught in her throat. She ached with the need to be nearer still.
‘I dunno if I’m maybe a bit tired of wandering,’ Aled continued. ‘When I first came to London I thought it’d be a short stop on the way to somewhere else. Then I realised the flat needed work, which I decided to stick around for … Plus Rhianne’s here, and now school are asking if I’ll consider staying on.’
‘Really?’ The word came out high and shrill, and Rosie worried it betrayed an unreasonable degree of excitement on her part. Fortunately, Aled was concentrating so hard on not collapsing that he seemed not to have noticed. He was still holding her hand, his grip firm but warm.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘The person whose job I’ve been covering is on maternity leave. Apparently she’s confirmed she’s coming back, but in the meantime someone else has resigned. The head grabbed me last Friday to say the position’s mine if I want it, which is obviously nice.’
‘Wow,’ Rosie said. ‘Definitely flattering. What did you say?’
‘That I’d think about it,’ Aled said, cautious and a little cagey. ‘It would be quite a commitment. And a major change of plan.’
The words were cold water on Rosie’s rapidly burgeoning hope that he might stay.
‘D’you think you can manage now?’ she asked him, not wanting to drop his hand but knowing that – for the sake of her sanity – she had to.
‘Oh. Yeah. Probably,’ Aled said, as if it hadn’t occurred to him to let go.
Seeming to sense Rosie’s desire to put distance between them, Aled soldiered on and skated alone for the rest of their allotted hour. He meandered along behind her, narrowly avoiding several elderly pedestrians and a handful of bolshy teenagers who seemed to find his clunky movements singularly hilarious: ‘Lol – look at Grandad! Are you wearing those things for a bet, mate?’
The same gang of RP-accented ne’er-do-wells, all of whom were sporting Jack Wills hoodies, entirely failed to notice Rosie skate by. This was unsurprising, given the speed and confidence with which she was now whizzing around.
She felt alive, exhilarated – almost as if she was flying. Her heart felt fit to burst with the sheer pleasure of being here, now, with the cool October breeze ruffling her hair and eddies of falling leaves swirling on the wind.
‘We should probably head back,’ Aled called from somewhere behind her. ‘Our time’s almost up.’
‘Race you!’ Rosie shouted back, turning in an easy arc on the pavement and heading in the direction from which they’d originally come.
‘What? No!’ Aled yelled, trying and failing not to laugh. ‘Cheat!’
It took him several moments to stop his forward motion and about-turn – by which time Rosie’s head start was significant.
He gained on her as they neared their destination, finally throwing himself into skating as fast as he could. As he reached for Rosie to try and arrest her progress, she squealed and pirouetted away.
In the end, she won easily. They both collapsed on the grass next to the skate stand, breathless and giggling.
‘That was not fair,’ Aled panted, grinning.
‘Nonsense,’ Rosie declared. ‘Your stride’s much longer than mine when you man up and dare to use it. I had to get the edge somehow.’
‘Daring generally isn’t my thing,’ he said ruefully, and Rosie wondered what he meant. Then, before she could argue that solo backpacking around the world was surely pretty daring, he said: ‘Pub? Loser buys the first round …’
After handing in their skates and putting their own shoes back on, Rosie and Aled began the walk north through the park towards Primrose Hill. It was a comfortable half hour stroll, though the dark clouds gathering overhead made Rosie wonder if they’d make it before it began to rain.
As they ambled past newly naked trees and flower beds that showcased the fading remnants of summer splendour, Rosie frequently felt the eyes of fellow walkers snag and fix on them. No doubt, she thought, these people were wondering what this broodingly handsome romantic hero was doing with the dumpy, girl-next-door character. In the movie of their lives, this would doubtless be the scene where he confessed undying love for some taller, thinner, prettier woman – and it would probably only make the director’s cut.
The heavens finally opened as they crossed Prince Albert Road. A sudden deluge of thick, heavy raindrops splashed from the sky, as though buckets of chilly water were being emptied directly onto their heads.
‘Oh, fuck!’ Rosie yelled, laughing as her immediately sodden hair stuck to her scalp and water dripped from the tip of her nose.
‘I say we run for it!’ Aled said, raising his voice above the sound of the rain pelting the pavement.
‘Agreed!’ Rosie laughed. She jogged around the edge of the park and Aled followed. Soon they were running down a residential street towards a crossroads, at the end of which was a cosy-looking pub. Its double doors were painted some shade of Farrow & Ball grey, and gold letters above it spelled out ‘Princess of Wales’.
They burst inside, laughing and out of breath. Puddles immediately formed where they stood.
‘Nice out there, then?’ the barman said sardonically. ‘Take a seat over there – radiator’s on.’
‘Thanks,’ Rosie sighed, grateful.
She took a moment to gather her wits before looking up at Aled. She’d learned that it paid to be prepared, and the sight of him rain-soaked and flushed from their run was bound to be A Lot.
In fact, it was all she could do to avoid cardiac arrest when she looked up at him. She had to remind herself to keep breathing as she took in the moisture that clung to his long, dark lashes and the wet shine of his hair.
God help her, there was a bead of water on his bottom lip, which – oh yes, of course – he deftly licked away. She was transfixed, motionless, undone …
‘Pint, then?’ he asked, tipping his head to one side and eyeing her quizzically.
‘Yes! Excellent!’ she squeaked, pushing her wet fringe out of her face and wondering how terrible she looked. She swept two fingertips across the skin beneath her eyes, and they came away sooty. So much for her ‘waterproof’ mascara.
She heard Aled laugh softly, presumably at the appalled expression on her face. ‘On a scale of one to “rodent who’s been flushed down the toilet”, how bad is it?’ she asked, before she could stop herself. She waved a hand in the direction of her almost certainly ruined makeup.
He gazed down at her in a way that made her toes curl inside her damp Converse high tops, then tentatively, delicately raised his hand to brush a raindrop from the edge of her jaw. She stifled a noise that might have become a whimper if she’d let it, but before she could lean into the touch, it was over.
Apparently embarrassed, Aled thrust his hands into his pockets and said, ‘I wouldn’t change a thing.’ Without letting his eyes meet hers, he made for the bar.
A little dazed, Rosie peeled off her sodden coat and hung it over the pub’s vast, Victorian-style radiator. What had that been about?
Was it possible he liked her? The idea seemed absurd.
Then again, she couldn’t imagine that Aled of all people would go around touching random women’s faces for no reason. Everything about him was deliberate, thoughtful and intense. For a moment, she let herself imagine not just kissing him, but being kissed by him. She had no doubt the experience would be world-altering: deep and urgent and insistent. It would be the kind of kiss that involved clashing hips, fingers stroking up and underneath t-shirt hems to find bare skin, and lips caught teasingly between teeth. The sort of kiss that happened in books and on film, and maybe in real life – but never to her.
Rosie exhaled heavily, then made herself confront the painful truth she’d been avoiding all afternoon. Just as she’d intended, James’s am-dram performance of penitence felt like it had happened a thousand years ago – not merely this morning. His unexpected appearance had paled into insignificance beside the fulfilment of a long-forgotten childhood wish … but mainly beside the euphoric feeling of Aled’s hand closing around hers.
Niamh had warned Rosie it would be impossible to live with such a gorgeous man and not end up smitten. What she hadn’t foreseen was how much Aled would start to matter to Rosie – that whatever physical attraction he inspired would give way to genuine attachment.
Rosie wasn’t sure how or when this had happened. Perhaps there’d been a tipping point she missed – some key moment that tilted her in a direction it now seemed impossible to change. Either way, it hit her that the feeling she’d been staving off for weeks was now flooding her, filling her from top to toe in the brief minutes it took Aled to buy her a drink. The dam had burst, and she thought of a phrase that had struck her when she’d studied The Sun Also Rises at school. Asked how he went bankrupt, one of Hemingway’s characters replied: gradually, then suddenly.
Aled reappeared, all enigmatic face-touching forgotten. More inscrutable than he’d been in weeks, he set a pint of Aspall cider down in front of her, then produced a packet of Scampi Fries from his coat pocket. ‘The Marmite of pub snacks,’ he said, by way of explanation. ‘Thought I should find out: are you a lover or a hater?’
‘A lover,’ Rosie answered, feigning composure she wasn’t anywhere close to feeling.
‘Damn it – me too,’ he said, with a tight smile. ‘I should have bought two packets.’
As they ate and drank in companionable silence, Rosie took fries from the torn-open bag at rare intervals – an act of self-preservation, lest her skin brush against Aled’s and cause her to spontaneously combust.
After a second drink and a drizzly potter around Primrose Hill, they were both ready to head home. Neither of them fancied a long, cold walk in the dark that was falling, so they ordered an Uber.
It stopped at the end of their street, and their breath misted in the evening cold as they got out of the cab. Rosie felt consumed by the need to say something – do something.
This was the best ‘date’ – and actually one of the best days – she had ever had, but she had no idea what any of it meant. Aled seemed to have shut down, retreating into himself in a way that reminded her of how he’d been when they first met. Yet what she’d felt when his fingertip met her cheek earlier had been real. Electric.
Yes, Rosie was generally short of self-confidence – but she couldn’t quite believe he hadn’t felt it, too. And there was tenderness in the way he treated her. There had been from the start. There was understanding between them: a sense that each recognised the other, could see qualities that most people would miss.
The air between them was dense – thick with things unsaid. Rosie longed to reach for his hand: to lace her fingers through his as they strolled towards home. Somehow, on some elemental level, she felt sure that if she did so, he’d know why.
Just as she resolved to act, he stopped walking abruptly. ‘Rosie,’ he said, turning to her. His voice was low. Urgent. ‘There’s something I need to say. Something I have to tell you.’ He sounded almost nervous.
‘OK …?’ Rosie said, feeling like her heart had just tripped over itself. ‘What is it?’
‘I … um. When I first moved in with you … Argh. No. What I mean to say is—’
‘Aled? Al, is that you?’
The voice that cut through the twilight was female. Accented. The figure that went with it was tall, slender and dark-haired.
The woman wore a black, belted coat, high-heeled boots and indigo skinny jeans. Her hair was threaded with tiny beads of moisture that glimmered in the light from the street lamp above. She was beautiful, as Rosie had guessed she’d be: large blue eyes were set above a slender nose and a pretty, petal-pink mouth. Even from several metres away, Rosie could tell her cheeks were flushed with cold. She guessed this meant their visitor had been outdoors for a while. Waiting.
‘Ceri?’ Aled said, his tone surprised but not displeased. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I wanted to see you,’ she said. ‘I hope it’s OK.’
‘Er … sure,’ Aled replied, running a hand through his damp hair, tugging at it in the way he always did when he felt awkward. He turned to Rosie. ‘I didn’t know she was coming,’ he said helplessly. Confidentially. ‘We’ll go round the corner to the pub and catch up there.’
‘Who’s your friend?’ Ceri said. She’d walked towards them and was close enough to look Rosie up and down in a way that reminded her of her mother. In the split second it took Ceri to conduct this assessment, Rosie authentically hated her.
‘This is Rosie,’ Aled said. ‘She’s my flatmate.’
Not even a friend, then? Rosie thought. Or not enough of one for you to admit it.
Ceri’s perfectly threaded eyebrows briefly pulled together. ‘Ah. I see.’
What do you see? Rosie wondered. What do you want?
Reluctantly, Rosie remembered what Aled had said earlier: that he’d grown tired of travelling, but wasn’t sure about accepting a permanent role at school. ‘Rhianne’s here,’ he’d said – and she’d assumed he meant ‘in London’, but maybe he meant ‘in the UK’. It could be that the homesickness he’d said Rhianne occasionally suffered had hit him, too. He certainly had plenty to miss: a mother who adored him, a supportive stepfather, and two half-siblings he doted on.
What had Ceri interrupted? Had he been about to say he was moving back to Wales? That he and his ex were trying to work things out? The thought made Rosie feel like her stomach had dropped through a trap door.
After a brief handshake with Rosie and a moment’s insincere small talk, Ceri tugged on Aled’s sleeve and led him away.
Back inside the flat, Rosie leaned against the front door and tried to regulate her swift, shallow breathing. She felt irrationally angry – blazing with resentment that, when she looked at it head-on, seemed mostly like it should be directed at herself.
Aled had done nothing wrong. In fact, he’d gone out of his way to help her start rebuilding her life. He’d promised her nothing and – regardless of Ceri’s reappearance – they’d always said their period of mutually convenient cohabitation would finish at the end of the year.
It was only now that Rosie realised this prospect had become more painful to contemplate than the grim reality of James’s departure. Gradually, then suddenly, she thought again. That’s how these things happen.
Slowly, then all at once.