Dearest Rose (46 page)

‘Can I show you something?’ Rose went to a bookshelf in the corner of the room and retrieved something from behind it, an object that Frasier recognised as soon as he saw the familiar blanket wrapping. ‘I was going to put it on the wall for you before you got back, but I couldn’t find a hammer,’ Rose said as she unwrapped the painting. Carefully she set it at the foot of the bed, standing behind it, holding its edges very carefully.

John gazed at the painting, saying nothing as his eyes roamed over it, looking as if he’d just been reunited with a very dear friend that he had no idea how to react to.

‘This painting,’ Rose told him over the brim of the canvas, ‘or at least the sketch for this painting, is the reason why Frasier looked all over the country for you.’ She glanced briefly at Frasier, before returning her attention to John. ‘The reason why I met him, the reason that I came here, the reason that I ever found you. This painting that I
know
you never forgot, because you painted it again.’

Father and daughter held each other’s gaze, saying more in that moment of silence to one another than they could with a thousand words. This was Rose’s proof that she had never
forgotten
John, and his symbol to prove that she had always been in his thoughts, even when he himself had been lost.

‘This isn’t chocolate-box art, Dad,’ Rose said. ‘This wasn’t painted for money, or fame. It was a moment between this little girl and her father. I’ve always kept it. No matter what else was happening, not even when Frasier wanted it, and most of me wanted him to have it. I kept this safe because I looked at it and I felt the love you had for me when you painted it. It was the one thing that I couldn’t ever bear to part with because it was the one little bit of you that I had.’

John stared at the painting for a long time before speaking. ‘You were sitting on the windowsill, looking out of the window with the sunlight in your hair. I did a quick sketch to remember the tilt of your head, the way you crossed your legs and posed your hands, but most of that came from memory and from the emotion, the love I felt for you in that second. You’re right, I never forgot that moment between us, even though sometimes it was unbearable to recall.’

‘And this image is repeated,’ Frasier told Rose, risking John’s wrath, ‘again and again, not just in the work I showed you at the gallery, but in the works in the barn too.’

‘Is that true, Dad?’ Rose asked him softly, carefully lifting the painting off the bed and setting it against the wall.

John nodded, dropping his gaze from her. ‘It’s hardly enough, though, is it? One memory of love to live with in an entire lifetime. I am so ashamed, Rose, so very ashamed of the life that I have led. I don’t want to turn that shame into glory.’

‘But what if you turned it into a story?’ Rose said, returning to his side. ‘A path for me to follow. A path that will lead me to a better understanding of you? And think of all the organising, and
deciding
you’ll have to do. You’ll be able to boss Frasier around mercilessly and be as difficult and as obstinate as you like, and I just think the more you have to occupy your mind, the …’ Rose stumbled to a faltering stop, realising what she was about to say.

‘The longer I will live,’ John finished for her. ‘Is that what this is about?’

‘I’ve only just found you,’ Rose said. ‘Maddie barely knows you. I want every second I can get.’

‘Well, then,’ John said, taking her hand, ‘why didn’t you just say that in the first place?’

It had been a very long day, which Rose was looking forward to seeing the back of by the time she finally said goodbye to Jenny, tucked Maddie up in the boxroom and ushered Tilda, who’d arrived late afternoon, probably in a bid to give Rose time with her father, into John’s room for time alone with her husband.

After everyone had sampled Rose’s lasagne together, and Tilda was in John’s room, Rose came downstairs to the heart-aching sight of Frasier sitting on the sofa, his arm slung along the length of the back, as if he were issuing an invitation for her to nestle in the crook of his arm. He wasn’t doing that, of course, she thought sadly, he wasn’t doing any such thing, so taking a glass of wine that Frasier had poured for her from the sideboard, Rose went and sat opposite him, in her father’s armchair.

‘How was it, talking to the police?’ Frasier asked her. Just after lunch, Rose had been as good as her word and gone down to meet the officer at the B & B, telling Maddie she was popping out for some boring old shopping.

‘It was difficult,’ Rose admitted. ‘The hardest part is seeing the expression on someone else’s face when you try to explain to them what life was like. I can see exactly what they’re thinking. They are thinking, poor stupid cow. Why didn’t she leave him at the first sign of trouble? What they don’t know is there isn’t a first sign of trouble. It’s like that experiment you hear about, when you are a child. That if you put a frog in a pan of cold water, and gently heat it, you can boil it to death without it ever noticing. That’s what it was like. Richard was ever so slowly smothering me, and I got so used to the lack of oxygen, I didn’t notice.’ Rose took a deep gulp of wine. ‘Still, she has my statement now; it’s on record. And Jenny’s too. Thank God they didn’t feel the need to talk to Maddie. And I do feel better. I feel like I have really made a start on taking back control of my life again.’

Rose smiled at him across the small space between them, which represented such a huge gulf. ‘Thank you for being here.’

‘I honestly don’t have anywhere else to be,’ Frasier said. ‘Although I might just have to spend a little money on a new sofa if I’m going to be here for a while. I might even go crazy and make it a sofa bed.’

They were both silent for a moment, Frasier lost in his own thoughts as Rose allowed herself secretly to wonder what it would be like to take Frasier by the hand and lead him upstairs to her bed.

‘You never really said what it was like,’ Frasier said, when Rose finally found the courage to look up at him. ‘I knew your marriage to Richard was a bad one, and that you felt trapped and unhappy, but I didn’t realise quite how awful it was, the things he … put you through.’

Rose shrugged, looking deep into the glass of wine. ‘It’s not something you really want to talk about. I feel so stupid, so weak, so pathetic.’

‘Pathetic is the last thing you are,’ Frasier said. ‘You are strong, impressively so. Resilient, stoic, amazing.’

Rose’s smile was rueful. ‘Oh, stop trying to be kind, Frasier. They are not the qualities you’d normally put on an internet dating profile, are they?’

‘Are you thinking of internet dating?’ Frasier asked her, alarmed.

‘No! Look around you. If Dad has got this mythical laptop you speak of, I’ve yet to find it. And no, no, no to internet dating or indeed dating. If I know anything now, it’s that I’m nowhere near ready to have anything to do with men. Kissing Ted proved that.’

Frasier nodded, his expression unreadable.

‘And kissing him was all that happened,’ Rose said, deciding she might as well grasp the nettle while she had the benefit of most of a glass of wine inside her. ‘And I’m not sorry I did it, even though it … changed things between us. Ted was good to me, and kind. He understood. He gave me back something I’d lost and didn’t need anything in return. I’m sorry his feelings got caught up in it all, and most of all I’m sorry that I messed everything up between you and me. But I’m not sorry I kissed him, Frasier. Ted reminded me that kissing is actually really wonderful.’

‘I’m glad,’ Frasier said, adding ever so slowly, ‘I would have liked to have been the one to give you that gift.’

Rose looked up at him sharply. ‘Don’t do that again,’ she said, suddenly angry.

‘Don’t do what?’ he asked, taken aback.

‘You are impossible to know how to be around,’ Rose told him bitterly. ‘One minute you’re holding my hand, the next talking about how great Cecily is. Or saying you’ve always loved me and then actually sorry, no, that was a terrible mistake. That we can only ever just be friends, and
now
that you wished you’d kissed me instead of Ted. It’s not fair, Frasier!’ Rose got up, walking over to the sideboard where the rest of the wine was. ‘I know where I stand now. You made it very clear. And that’s how I want it to stay. You, there, on the sofa, me upstairs in the bedroom, working together as friends for Dad. If I ever could handle anything more, that’s gone now. You made sure of it. Now I just want to be alone and let my heart rest for a while.’

Frasier sat back in his chair saying nothing. Two bright spots of red were colouring his cheeks.

‘Rose, I didn’t mean to upset you …’

‘Good night,’ Rose said, picking up her glass of wine, and, even though it was barely nine, ‘see you in the morning.’

It took until Rose had reached the bottom stair for Frasier to speak.

‘Rose,’ he said, ‘for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.’

‘For what it’s worth,’ Rose said sadly, the anger draining out of her, ‘I know.’

Chapter Nineteen

‘SO?’ ROSE ASKED
John, who now, two weeks after his operation, was at least able to get out of bed for most of the day, even though he looked thinner, greyer and more gaunt than ever. ‘It’s opening night, are you excited?’

‘I’m a quivering wreck,’ John said drily. ‘Can’t you tell?’

‘I’m excited.’ Maddie hopped from one foot to the other. ‘I’m the most excited of everyone, because Frasier told me that there is a surprise for me. And I am the most excited about that. I don’t know what it is going to be. It might be a television for my bedroom, that would be good. Or an iPad.’

‘It’s not either of those things,’ Frasier said, coming down the stairs, his hair wet, a towel around his neck. Despite the lingering awkwardness between Rose and him, he had been good to his word, and moved into the cottage, running his business as much as he could from his laptop, even going so far as to have a sofa bed delivered and a wireless router fitted, just as he had threatened, and much to John’s disgust.

‘I’ve had that sofa for fifteen years,’ John had said unhappily as it was moved out of the living room and into the barn, for the time being at least. ‘I got it at a house clearance. It had belonged to the woman who died for fifteen years
before
that. She died on it. Never heard her complain about it being bumpy.’

‘Maybe that’s why she died,’ Maddie had said thoughtfully. ‘Maybe the bumpiness killed her.’

‘It’s only temporary,’ Frasier had reassured John. ‘As soon as things are settled, I will put your old sofa of doom back, and take this one with me. I’m going to need to find a new place to live anyway. Cecily seems to have decided that she’s got rights to my flat in our separation, which doesn’t matter so much, it was only a rental, but it does rather leave me homeless, and the office at the gallery isn’t ideal.’

Frasier was obviously stretched to the limit, running his business from the cottage, making regular round trips to the gallery and back, supervising the removal of John’s secret paintings, which Rose still had not seen, determined to honour her word to her father until they were hanging in the gallery. Even though Rose did her best, on scant experience, to help him organise the marketing, guest list, the news and media, at the end of every day he looked tired out and more besides, as if he were carrying some other unknown burden. He probably missed Cecily, Rose thought. It would be only natural. And he probably wondered why and how his life had become so completely intertwined with theirs. Secretly Rose worried that they had become a burden to him, but she said nothing, supposing that as soon as the exhibition was over he’d be able to quietly withdraw, and in many ways she would welcome the peace that would come from not having to see him every day and know she’d lost him.

Frasier had managed to drum up quite a storm of interest in the show. Not that they mentioned that to John, who was
certain
that anyone who came would only be there to mock him, and who was in fact working on the basis that no one would come at all. As that seemed something of a comfort to him, neither Rose nor Frasier had done anything to change his opinion.

What he had clearly enjoyed, though, was spending time with Frasier, talking over his work with another living human being for the first time, explaining what he felt inclined to, remaining silent on what he did not. As it wasn’t practical for him to travel to Edinburgh before the opening, Frasier brought the plans to him, including a scale model of the gallery, with numbered squares of cardboard, each representing one of a list of almost thirty works. Rose would watch as John and Frasier argued constantly about which work should go where, Frasier always acquiescing in the end. It was a trait that made Rose love him all the more, as futile as that was. Frasier was always going to let John have his way, but he knew that John enjoyed the argument and the discussion, the back and forth and the debate. And Rose suspected that John knew he knew it too. This was simply a demonstration of two very good friends, telling each other how much they cared for one another in the best way they knew how, with sustained disagreement.

Tilda had been there too, for much of the time, not every day, although Rose knew she would be if she could. The running of her business, which didn’t turn over enough to employ staff full time, demanded that she could not be absent from it as much as she would like. And although they never spoke of it, Rose was sure that she had taken a conscious step back, to allow Rose the time she needed with her father, uninterrupted by the demands or needs of another. Whenever Tilda was there,
the
love she still felt for John, despite everything he’d put her through, and the equal affection he felt in return was palpable, as clearly written in their expressions and gestures as it would have been in black and white on a page. With supreme politeness Tilda would always ask Rose what she could do to help, and Rose would respond by always having something ready. The laundry mostly, which could not be done at the cottage because John had never acquired a washing machine, entertaining Maddie sometimes while Rose and her father talked, and always Rose would make sure that John and Tilda had time together alone, usually in John’s room.