Runaway Wife (6 page)

As she finished speaking, Rose unconsciously rested the fingers of her right hand over her mouth, unable to remember the last time she’d spoken so many words at all to anyone, even Richard, let alone words of such an intensely personal nature. She felt she’d better stop herself from talking somehow, before she said more than she should to this strange man she felt so compelled by and frightened him away.

Frasier was silent for a moment, his long fingers wrapped around the mug of tea. “Are you saying your mother died of a broken heart?” he asked Rose quietly.

“I suppose I am,” Rose said from between her fingers, her gaze directed inwardly as she remembered that last day with her mother. Marian had been so happy, as if the weight of the world had suddenly been lifted off her shoulders, and she was finally able to be at peace. She had persuaded Rose to skip school, and the two of them had gone for a walk along the seafront, stopping for ice cream and to play the games in the arcade. Rose had gone to sleep that night believing that at last the storm clouds that had plagued Marian for so long were clearing, sleeping truly peacefully for the first time in months. When she’d got up the next morning and found Marian had already gone out, Rose hadn’t given it much thought. And she hadn’t been that concerned when her mum still wasn’t home when she got in from school. It had been just after eleven that night, just as Rose was wondering about whether or not she should tell someone her mother hadn’t been at home all day, when the doorbell sounded, and a very kind policewoman told her that her mother’s body had been washed ashore a few miles down the coast. She was wearing a swimming costume; there had been no note. So they had every reason to believe it was a simple, tragic accident. But Rose knew that her mother had walked into the sea that morning without ever planning to come back, and she realized that the final perfect
day they had spent together was Marian’s goodbye gift to her daughter.

“I’m so sorry, Rose.” Frasier’s voice made her start, as his fingers slid across the table towards hers, stopping millimeters away from making contact.

“Don’t be.” Rose smiled weakly, retrieving her hand from the proximity of Frasier’s and resting it on the crest of her tummy. “The way I look at it, the best thing I can do for this baby is to make sure that I don’t live life like my mum, don’t let my circumstances beat me down. Don’t get me wrong, she was an amazing person and a really great mother—no one could have loved me more than she did—but I never wanted to be caught forever in the things that have happened to me. I don’t want to be the victim. My dad is a prick and my mum is gone, but I don’t have to be ruined by that. Not at all.”

Neither one of them spoke for a moment and, a little flustered by the unexpected passion that had overtaken her as she spoke, Rose looked away from Frasier, feeling the heat in her cheeks. Everything she had told him was true, but she hadn’t known exactly how she felt until just that moment. She certainly had never had the guts to say it out loud. Here she was, trapped in this immaculate kitchen, with Richard’s baby in her womb, and the rest of her life, a successful life, mapped out for her. And yet Rose wanted to scream out loud, she felt so imprisoned.

“You are a remarkable person, Rose,” Frasier said, tentatively reaching out again, this time touching her arm. “I turn up here unannounced, looking for the man that’s hurt you so badly, and you ask me in, give me tea and . . . well, show me how life should be lived.”

“Not really.” Rose twisted her mouth into a wry knot. “I’m sorry I just got a bit carried away, and I haven’t been at all useful about helping you find Dad.”

“You have,” Frasier said, watching her intently, his fingers resting on her bare skin. “You’ve reminded me that art is just that. It’s not real life. Sometimes I’m afraid I do get rather carried away and forget that.”

“But you will keep looking for him?” Rose asked him, hopeful, for some reason that she didn’t really understand, that he would. Perhaps because as long as he was looking for her father, he might still think of her from time to time, and she would like that very much.

“I will,” Frasier said with certainty. “In my experience, being a terrible person rarely stops you from being a brilliant artist. And I care about the work too much to let it go unnoticed. If I do find him, do you want me to let you know where he is or tell him about you?”

Rose shook her head without hesitation, the thought of having to face John again after all these years unbearable.

“No, no. I’m done with him and he’s done with me, and that’s the way I want to keep it,” she said, quietly adamant.

Frasier nodded, looking regretful.

“My father loves to fish, he loves it more than he loves breathing, I think sometimes,” he said, as if casting around for something personal to share with her in exchange. “Fly-fishing is his thing, standing up to his waist in waders in the loch, do you know what I mean?” Rose nodded, smiling. “Every few weeks I go home to see my folks. Mum cooks for five thousand, even though there are only three of us, and Dad and I fish. And I bloody hate fishing. I hate the water, the hooks, the mess, the cold, the boredom, I don’t even like fish. But I still go, because Dad loves fishing and it’s the only thing we do together.” Frasier looked a little perplexed. “And I don’t know why I told you that.”

“I’m glad that you did,” Rose said, smiling, glancing up at
the clock as she always did, habitually checking the minutes she had left until Richard got home.

“Well, I’d better go.” Frasier stood up, taking it as a hint. “It’s been so nice to meet you.” He took her hand on impulse, holding it for a few moments.

“You too,” Rose said, pulling her fingers from his with some effort, walking hurriedly to the door, anxious that he shouldn’t see the bright spots of color that were flaring on her cheeks.

“Good, that’s us officially friends, then,” Frasier beamed at her, diffusing the sadness and tension in an instant.

Rose laughed, not realizing in nearly enough time that he was leaning forward to kiss her on the cheek. It was the briefest of kisses, over in one fraction of a chaste second, the warmth of his lips grazing her skin for the shortest of moments, and yet it made her heart pound.

“Goodbye, dearest Rose,” Frasier said and, seeing Rose’s eyes widen in alarm, added, “The sketch title, I will always think of you as ‘dearest Rose’ now. You may think of me however you choose, or not at all, I wouldn’t blame you.”

“I think that I’ve been very glad to meet you,” Rose said a little formally. “Goodbye, Frasier.”

Her heart had been light with happiness as she had closed the door on him, leaning back against it, forcing herself to take a little time to work out what had just happened. Rose believed she might have flirted just a little, although it had been a long time since, as a teen, she used to bat her lashes at the boys on the promenade and flick her hair over her shoulder to make them look at her. No, it hadn’t been flirting, it had been a . . . connection. A moment of contact with another person who wasn’t Richard, or the people he worked with, one of the very small number of people that Rose came
across in her daily life, and that was what had been so exhilarating. That, and the way he’d held her hand and kissed her on the cheek. Rose had found herself laughing out loud, humming as she danced back to the kitchen, carefully washing and drying the teacups and returning them to the cupboard. Smoothing her hands over her smocked top, she had smiled to herself as she turned round to examine the kitchen, returning the chair Frasier had sat on to its exact position. Which was when it hit her that nothing, actually nothing at all, had changed. So why did it feel like everything had?

“W
e thought you might like to join us for dinner,” Jenny said as soon as Rose let herself in through the front door.

“Dinner?” Rose said. “Are you sure?”

It was a kind offer, but Rose suspected it had more to do with Jenny’s insatiable need to find out everything about John Jacobs’s long-lost daughter than it did with being benevolent.

“Yes,” Maddie said, appearing behind Jenny, wearing an oversized apron. “We are making dumplings, Mummy. I don’t even know what a dumpling is. It looks quite icky.”

“Have you ever heard the like?” Jenny muttered, shaking her head and returning to the kitchen, with Maddie trotting behind.

“So was everything OK?” Rose called after them, pausing by the living room, where the door of the glass cabinet that encompassed the doll’s house was still open, as was the front of the house itself. Tiny lights twinkled, and Maddie had taken great care arranging tiny people around a dining room table laden with pretend food.

“Fine,” Jenny said, as Rose joined them in the busy kitchen. “Speaks as she finds, your Maddie. I like that in a person.”

“Yes, she can be rather candid,” Rose said, thinking of
Maddie’s innate ability to rub people the wrong way in seconds, never shying away from pointing out that they were fat or short, or badly dressed in her opinion. It had been funny when she was two and three and four, but now that she was seven people were a little less forgiving.

“Was it amazing playing with the doll’s house?” Rose asked Maddie, squeezing the little girl’s shoulders as she stood on a stool, crumbling butter and flour together. Maddie shrugged her touch off, just as she usually did.

“It was,” Maddie said. “They are having dinner now, and then later they are going to watch TV, although there isn’t a TV, but Jenny says Brian will make one when he gets in.”

“Oh, well, I’m sure there’s no need to bother him . . .”

“He’ll make one,” Jenny assured her. “Thirty years of marriage, he’s learnt what’s good for him.”

“And you didn’t miss me?” Rose said. “Or get worried?”

“No,” Maddie said, completely blasé. “I don’t worry when things are interesting, and things were very interesting. I like Jenny, she talks a lot and is quite bossy, but she is mainly nice. I told her all about Daddy.”

“Did you?” Rose said uncertainly.

“Speaks as she finds,” Jenny repeated, raising a brow as she browned what Rose assumed were cubes of beef in a pan. Just what had Maddie told her? Had she said anything about those last few minutes at home before she’d been forced to leave? Rose didn’t think so. The things that Maddie found the most distressing were also the things she studiously ignored, determined to act as if they didn’t exist. And if Jenny knew, then there would be no way she’d be able to refrain from letting Rose know.

“So how did you get on with my Ted?” Jenny asked.

“He’s very . . . boisterous,” Rose said, not sure how to describe her first encounter with Ted.

“He’s a waste of space, that’s what he is,” Jenny said fondly, rolling her eyes at Maddie. “How he’s got to his age without getting a proper job and a proper girlfriend, I’ll never know. He’s too good-looking, that’s his trouble. My oldest, he looks like his dad, so there was never going to be a problem there. And Haleigh, well, she’s a right looker, the spit of me, and she’s got a good head on her shoulders, like her mother. The trouble with Ted is he’s a dreamer, a romantic, always waiting for the love of his life to walk through the door. He pretends he’s all bluster and front, but really he’s a sensitive soul, my Ted, even if he does have too much of a nice time, working in that pub, messing around with his so-called band.”

“What’s a right looker?” Maddie asked her.

“Someone who’s pretty, like you,” Jenny said, flicking a smudge of flour onto the end of Maddie’s nose, which the child vigorously wiped off at once.

“I don’t think that you are a right—”

“He really is very handsome,” Rose said, preventing Maddie from speaking in the nick of time, even if sounding somewhat inappropriately overenthused about Jenny’s son.

“Well, you wouldn’t be the first married woman he’s had dealings with.” Jenny pursed her lips, more than a hint of pride mixed in with the disapproval. “My Brian had to stand between Ted and Ian Wilkins and his shotgun for fifteen minutes, talking him down from castrating the lad. It was the talk of the town for months.”

“Oh, I don’t mean that
I’m
attracted to him . . .” Rose said, horrified, realizing a little too late that Jenny clearly expected every woman with a pulse to be exactly that, and that any other response was simply bad manners.

“Well, most are,” Jenny said, clearly a little offended that Rose hadn’t been more overwhelmed. “Anyway, get peeling those apples. I’m thinking of making a crumble.”

“I look forward to meeting this Ted,” Maddie said. “He sounds most interesting.”

•  •  •

As it turned out, Maddie didn’t have long to wait to meet Jenny’s younger son, as he turned up uninvited for dinner, grinning at Rose as he appeared around the dining room door.

“All right, Mum?” he said, just as Jenny was serving up beef stew and dumplings. “Room for a little one?”

“Oh, yes, and to what do we owe this pleasure?” Jenny asked him, tucking her chin in. “You haven’t been round for your dinner in weeks, and then you just stroll in off the street, treating the place like a—”

“B and B? Thought I’d pop in, say hello to my lovely mother, that’s all,” Ted said, putting his arms around Jenny and kissing her on the cheek, making her giggle like a girl.

“Get on with you,” she chided him. “Sit down and don’t be rude to our guests. You’ve met Rose, and this is her daughter, Maddie.”

“Hiya.” Ted smiled at Maddie, who observed him from beneath her fringe, clearly feeling it wasn’t necessary to return the greeting.

Unoffended, Ted grinned across the table at Rose, who couldn’t help returning the smile. He looked like he was always in on some private joke, a smile constantly playing round his eyes and lips. Maybe it was her he was laughing at in her mutton clothes, Rose thought, self-consciously pulling up the off-the-shoulder top again. It had been a long time since she wondered what anyone, let alone men, thought of her, mostly because she was certain that they didn’t think of her at all, not as an individual. She was the doctor’s wife, the odd child’s mother, the nice one behind reception. Now, of course, putting aside the dreadful mess that she had left
behind, pretending it didn’t exist in exactly the same way as Maddie did, Rose realized she had no idea how men—how Frasier—would see her, or what he would think of her, dropping everything and following him on a whim. He’d think she was insane, someone he’d met briefly years ago who was fixated and obsessed, and he’d be right. Acutely aware of her situation, Rose watched Maddie chewing her way diligently through beef stew, scowling at Ted. This wasn’t right, dragging her this far from home on such a spurious whim. This was not Rose, this wasn’t how she did things. Rose always did the right thing, the best thing, the safest thing. This was none of those. She couldn’t go on pretending nothing had happened, because soon there would be consequences. It was more than twenty-four hours now since she’d left Richard. He could be calling the police, reporting her missing. Very soon the real world would be crashing after her, catching up with her and forcing her to face what she had done.