By the time Rosie got back to the flat, she was brimful with emotion. She felt naive. Foolish. Angry and confused.
She couldn’t bring herself to believe Aled had set out to deceive her, nor that whatever was unfolding between them wasn’t real. Yet the fact remained, he hadn’t been honest with her.
Fully aware of how badly James had betrayed her trust, Aled had let her believe that their living together would keep her in her home – that it would save the haven she’d built while everything else around her crashed and burned. Now it seemed his occupancy of the spare room had only ever offered a stay of execution: a temporary reprieve for this comforting corner of the city she’d carved out for herself.
She found him in the sitting room, ready for an onslaught of accusations. Rosie surmised that Rhianne must have messaged him some sort of mea culpa – an apology for letting the cat out of the bag.
This merely incensed her further. She loved this place: she’d poured herself into it, brought it alive with more than colourful paint and thrifted furniture. Why should she be the last to know she was likely to lose it?
‘Is it true?’ she asked, immediately annoyed that her voice was tremulous and scratchy. She wanted to be strong and intimidating, but she was coming off as grief-stricken.
‘Not exactly,’ Aled said, shaking his head. ‘Rosie, I—’
‘Not exactly?’ she repeated scathingly. ‘I know we live in an era of alternative facts, but I’m old-fashioned about these things. Something’s either true or it’s not.’
‘It’s true that I intended to sell this place when I first came here,’ he said, sounding utterly miserable. ‘I was going to stay for a few days, meet with some estate agents and then be on my way. It’s also true that I started prevaricating pretty quickly – partly because the top flat was in such a state. I thought it’d help to fix it up before putting it on the market.’
‘And you didn’t think it might be fair to tell me what you were planning before moving into my spare room? Before befriending me? Before letting me—’
Her voice cracked, and she stamped her foot in frustration. Niamh had been right: she was fully gone for this man. With scant information, she’d opened her heart to him as well as her home, and now she was reaping the bitter reward.
‘I told myself I wouldn’t befriend you,’ Aled said. ‘That nothing would happen between us – but you made it impossible not to—’
‘So this is my fault?’
‘No, that’s not what I mean,’ he groaned, agonised. ‘When I first moved in, I planned to stay distant. And I thought you wanted me here to cover the rent, but also because you knew it would piss off the boyfriend you hoped would come back. I convinced myself that neither of us was being fully honest.’
He had her there. While Rosie had never seriously believed James would come running at the news that she’d moved another man in – and although she’d quickly arrived at the conclusion that she didn’t actually want him to – her motives for choosing Aled as a flatmate had been murkier than she cared to admit.
Shoving this thought aside, she said: ‘We’ve been living together for months. You could have told me at any time. After everything I went through with James, did it not occur to you that I might value honesty?’
‘I kept trying to bring it up, but something always got in the way. And the more time we spent together, the more I liked you. The harder it became to risk ruining everything.’
‘What even is there to ruin?’ Rosie demanded, feeling tears begin to trace their way down her cheeks. ‘You let me think you genuinely cared about me, when all the time you were planning to sell this place out from under me the moment your sums added up.’
‘It wasn’t like that,’ Aled insisted, agitated now.
‘Was sleeping with me just an added bonus?’ Rosie asked, her fury breaking. ‘A last bit of fun before fucking off to some far-flung place for good? I mean, presumably you could live off the profit from selling this place for years. What’s it worth? A million quid? Two? Good for you, I suppose. That’ll buy you a lot of beers on Thai beaches.’
‘You can’t seriously mean that,’ he ground out, his face flushed, pained with outrage. ‘I held myself back from you for weeks – months – from the very first day. I’ve been terrified this whole time that you’d hate me for ever considering selling this flat, and simultaneously frightened that I’d become some stopgap between proper boyfriends – between James and the one you settle down with. It was weak of me not to put it all out there before starting something with you, I admit. I fucked up. But I did it because I was scared, not because I’m cynical.’
‘But you seem to think I’m cynical,’ Rosie retorted. ‘What do you think I’d want a stopgap for? Revenge? Kudos? A confidence boost?’
‘You wouldn’t be the first person to find my “hidden depths” disappointingly dull,’ he said, raking a hand through his hair in dismay.
‘Oh, great,’ Rosie said indignantly. ‘So I’m shallow as well as selfish and manipulative.’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘You don’t say much, to be fair – and I knew that from the beginning,’ she snapped, unable to resist resorting to sarcasm. ‘But there’s a point at which being evasive segues into being dishonest. Into lying by omission.’
‘You’re right, and I’m sorry. Please can we just—’
‘No. I’m really not sure we can,’ Rosie interrupted. ‘I trusted you absolutely. I never doubted a thing you said to me. Now I feel like an idiot – like I should have been thinking about all the things you didn’t say, what the silences might have meant. All those letters from estate agents … The ones that came stamped with your solicitor’s logo. You waved them away as if they meant nothing. What a fool I must be not to have put two and two together.’
‘I’ve never lied to you, and I never will,’ Aled said hotly. ‘You haven’t let me explain properly. There’s still stuff you don’t know.’
‘And whose fault is that?’
As Rosie’s near-shouted words hung between them, the trill of a mobile phone ringtone cut through the air. For a few seconds, she felt sure it couldn’t be hers; this was some unfamiliar tune in a depressingly minor key, not the jaunty melody she was used to. Then, bewildered, she realised it was definitely coming from her handbag.
The penny dropped. This was the dirge-like tone she’d tipsily attached to Michael’s contact details in her phone on a night out with Niamh. She’d been bemoaning his latest put-down and – having imbibed copious amounts of fizzy wine – Niamh had also encouraged her to replace his photo with a picture of a street sign that read ‘Bell End’.
What the hell was Michael ringing her for? They never spoke unless forced to by close physical proximity.
All at once, her mother’s rambling concerns about Colin’s supposedly failing health came back to Rosie; she thought of all the text messages she’d recently ignored, imploring her to come home and encourage him to consciously uncouple from the sofa.
She scrambled to find the phone before it stopped ringing, and breathlessly swiped to answer it.
‘Michael?’ she said into the handset. ‘What’s wrong? What’s going on?’
This wasn’t melodrama – it was cutting to the chase. There was no way he’d call her unless something terrible had happened.
‘It’s Mum,’ Michael said, his voice thick with emotion.
‘Mum?’ Rosie burst out, unable to keep the shock out of her voice.
‘Yes,’ her brother answered, sounding sadder and sorrier than Rosie had ever heard him. ‘She’s in hospital. She’s asking for you. Can you come?’
‘I’m on my way.’
Rosie drove to Chelmsford Hospital on autopilot. Later, she had only a dreamlike recollection of getting into her car, then navigating her way to this unfamiliar destination as swiftly as possible. She was pretty sure she’d left Aled open-mouthed, mid-conversation – but right now, she didn’t have the capacity to deal with their argument as well as panic about her mother’s collapse.
According to Michael, she’d complained of chest pain several times in the past week. Then, during this morning’s mammoth house clean, she’d slumped over the Dyson cordless vacuum cleaner, clutched at her torso and toppled over to land, unconscious, on the sitting room carpet. It wasn’t lost on Rosie that Michael and her father had been sitting on the sofa at the time, reportedly glued to some televised darts tournament.
She struggled to find a parking space, sent up her thanks to the universe when she did, then made her way to the A&E department. ‘I’m here to see Julie Butler,’ Rosie said to the woman behind the plexiglass screen at reception. ‘My dad and brother are here somewhere. She’s my mum.’
Rosie felt her eyes grow glossy at these last three words. She swiped beneath her eyes to catch her tears. What if she never got the chance to make things right with Julie? She’d spent weeks ignoring her for good reason, for the sake of self-preservation – but running away from the issues in their relationship wouldn’t solve them. It just meant they couldn’t repair anything.
The receptionist nodded briskly, seemingly used to sudden displays of emotion from visitors. ‘Take a seat just in there,’ she said, indicating a door that led to an open-plan waiting room. ‘She’s undergoing tests, I believe. You should hear more soon.’
A minute later, Michael and Colin appeared in the waiting room. Her father was holding a paper cup of some hot liquid that doubtless claimed to be tea, while Michael was clutching two packets of Walkers Max Flame Grilled Steak crisps and a Yorkie bar.
Colin appeared sad and overwhelmed, while Michael looked haunted.
It seemed clear that neither was coping, and Rosie didn’t know why she was surprised. It was inevitable that she’d have to be the adult in this situation – though, for once, she didn’t resent it. She wanted to be the one who listened to the doctors, who made sure she and the rest of her family understood what was happening.
‘What do we know so far?’ she asked, addressing her father.
‘Not much,’ Colin replied. ‘It looks like a heart attack. They’re running tests.’
A heart attack? Rosie couldn’t help feeling a little awestruck by the terrible irony of this, which flew in the face of Julie’s certainty that staying thin was the only way to achieve health.
Michael motored through a packet of crisps as Colin sipped his tea, which Rosie now saw was the same unappetising colour as used washing-up water.
‘D’you want a square of chocolate, Rosie?’ Michael asked, to his sister’s amazement.
‘I thought Yorkie bars weren’t for girls?’ she said, referencing an old TV ad he’d quoted at her countless times when they were children.
Michael shrugged. ‘Have some if you want.’
‘I’m OK. Thanks, though.’
A tall, grey-haired doctor in green scrubs appeared before them, and asked, ‘Are you the family of Julie Butler?’
‘We are,’ Rosie told him.
Colin’s hands were shaking, and Michael had chocolate on his chin. Sensibly, the doctor focused his gaze on Rosie for a moment before turning to Colin and saying, ‘Lovely. I’m Dr Copeland. Would you like to follow me?’ Rosie understood that she needed to pay attention on behalf of her distraught father, who – quite understandably – might not remember everything that was said during the next few minutes.
At the doctor’s words, Michael began weeping. He turned to Rosie and moaned: ‘Are we being taken into a private room so he can give us bad news?’
Rosie couldn’t imagine the word ‘lovely’ would precede such a step, so she shook her head soothingly.
‘I’m sorry,’ the doctor said a second later, ‘I didn’t mean to alarm you. Mrs Butler’s in a room just up here – she’s sleeping peacefully.’
Michael howled all the louder at this, and Rosie was reminded of the time Lucas Hale, an older lad from their street, had accidentally run over Michael’s carelessly abandoned mountain bike in his Ford Ka.
They entered the room where her mother slept. Julie’s body was connected to various monitors that appeared to show she was comfortable. She looked tiny in the hospital bed, but even in these dire straits her glamorous shine hadn’t worn off. Her hands rested on top of her pale blue blanket, her long, almond-shaped nails gleamed bright red, and her diamond engagement and wedding rings were sparkling in the room’s harsh fluorescent light.
Rosie turned to Dr Copeland. ‘What do you know so far?’ she asked. ‘Was it a heart attack?’
‘It doesn’t seem so,’ he said. ‘We believe she has angina, which is a condition associated with severe chest pain. We’re awaiting a couple more test results which should confirm the diagnosis. Angina can forewarn that a heart attack or stroke is likely, however – so we tend to encourage patients to treat it as a wake-up call. An opportunity to reset and reconsider their health – explore whether there are ways they could improve it.’
‘I see,’ Rosie said. ‘And … will she be all right? Will she recover fully from this?’
‘I see no reason why she shouldn’t,’ Dr Copeland said. ‘Though I’d like to keep her here for a couple of days, and she’ll need a period of rest and recuperation at home after that.’
‘Understood,’ Rosie said.
‘I’ll leave you to spend some time with her, now,’ the doctor said, backing out of the room. ‘Someone will be by to check how she is shortly.’
Rosie looked at her father and brother, each of whom had taken one of Julie’s carefully manicured hands in theirs. She couldn’t help thinking that her mum’s ‘period of rest and recuperation’ would be a rude awakening for both of them – but she was determined to make sure Julie got it.
‘Did either of you bring anything for her when you came in earlier? Toiletries? Nightwear? No worries if you didn’t think of it, I probably wouldn’t have either.’
‘Oh, no love,’ Colin answered, sounding anxious. ‘D’you think she’ll need much? What will she want? Where does she even keep it all?’
‘If she’s going to be in here for the next few days, she’ll want her night cream, lipstick and best dressing gown at the very least,’ Rosie said with a small smile. ‘But don’t worry, I can sort it. I’ll go back to the house and pack her a bag.’
‘You’re an angel,’ her dad said. ‘Thank you.’
‘Yeah. Thanks, Rose. You’re solid,’ Michael murmured. It was probably the nicest thing he’d ever said to her.