-: — :-
“Come on, Rose. Your teacher is waiting for you.”
I hung my head, clung to her hand.
“Rose,” mummy sighed in exasperation. She knelt down on the dirty bricks and crouched forward so that she could stare into my eyes. “We talked about this, Rose. I know you miss your old school, but this is a nice new school okay? Look at all the happy little boys and girls. Come on, love, it will be great.”
I buried my face against her, shaking my head.
“First day?” I heard another woman ask mummy.
“First day here, yes,” my mummy answered with a sigh.
“What class is she in?”
“Year one with… Mrs Jackson?”
“Oh, my Lea is with her too. Lea? Can you take…”
“Rose,” my mummy said.
“Lea, will you take Rose with you to class? This is her first day and she’s a bit shy.”
“Yes, mummy,” said a lovely little voice.
I snuck a shy, uncertain glance at the thin blonde girl who took my hand. She smiled toothily at me. “Come with me, Rosie,” she announced. “I’m Lea. I’ll show you where the pony drawing book is!”
Tears and shyness forgotten, I followed her, not even saying bye to my mum.
And that was how I met Lea.
Time…
… passed.
Lea’s mum would joke that she might as well set up a room for me at their house. My mum would laugh and say that she might as well do the same. Our mothers became close as sisters, Lea’s mother, or Mummy Sarah as I’d call her, introduced my Mum (or Mummy Jane as Lea called her) to tennis and hiking, while my mum introduced Mummy Sarah to her book club and the finer points of Pimm’s and horticulture. Our dads joined the same cricket club, then same hockey club, and soon enough were going away for boys weekends to watch football with their mates.
And so began the wonderful golden years of my childhood.
Life was idyllic. School was even at its very worst completely wonderful, and I sailed through the eleven plus with the other half of me by my side.
There was never any question of us not going to the same secondary school. I don’t think it even occurred to our parents.
It certainly never entered into our thoughts.
Time…
… passed.
Lea’s dad got promoted; they moved to a different part of town. The trip to see her now needed to be planned in advance and coordinated around Mum’s ability to come and fetch me or Mummy Sarah’s ability to drop me off afterwards. It could no longer be every night, but at least three times a week one of us was with our second family and would sleep over there.
My parents loved Lea. And I worshipped the ground her parents walked on.
We’d joke we were the luckiest girls to ever live, to have not one but two families so devoted to us.
At fourteen I could flick a hockey ball into the corner of the net from fifteen metres out, and had developed a natural athleticism I’d inherited from my mum’s dad. I could carry on going well past the point at which many others would drop in their tracks. When I was playing matches I would always hear her mad high pitched squeals and screams when I was running for the goal, her unfiltered ecstasy when I scored.
Lea played the Clarinet like she’d been born to it, and ran cross-country well enough to regularly place in the top three at school. When I could beg, borrow or steal a lift I’d be at her events, standing on the sidelines, screaming for her. She always had a smile for me, no matter how brutal the course or how hard she had to push to finish it.
And I’d wait for her at the finish line; I’d be the one carrying her windbreaker, the one who’d put an arm around her to support her her as her body gave out from the effort she’d put in.
And I was the one who caught her on that hateful Autumn afternoon when her eyes rolled back into her head and she had her first seizure.
Time…
…passed.
I was fifteen. I was much thinner now; a broken little remnant of a girl, watching as the slow torture of radioisotope therapy ate the other half of us away.
They’d shaved her beautiful hair to spare her some of the horror; the treatment had taken her eyebrows too. She was skeletal, exhausted, quiet as the grave. I’d sit, holding her wasted hand, neglecting schoolwork, hour after hour, day after day. Whatever she needed I would bring. Whatever she wanted, I did. I spent hours reading to her, and when she was at her lowest I would crawl into bed beside her and hold her, my cheeks wet with our bitter tears.
I loved her; loved her with every pathetic atom of my being.
And I wished beyond wishing that I could be the sick one so that she would be spared.
She never once complained. She just took it. Brave and indomitable as ever. But, then, that was Lea.
Her craniotomy took place when the radiation had shrunk the tumour, and the surgery was successful. Slowly she recovered, began to smile again despite her weakness. But in spite of my dogged determination to help her recover, she’d missed too much of the year to finish it with me and her mum and dad decided that she needed a change of environment; somewhere quieter, somewhere where she’d have space and silence to recuperate.
A new life where her lost year would not be brought home to her every time she saw me head to a different class than her.
And where she would have space to heal from losing me.
Lea had not said goodbye; her parents had not permitted me to see her out of fear of the distress it would cause us. Instead, her distraught and broken mother had brought my mum a letter of sorts for me – a thin folded sheet of Lea’s favourite pink foolscap with one of her silly googly-eyed ponies scrawled on the front of it.
In it, the simple words: “I will never forget you, my Rosie.”
It was spotted with her tears, and all too soon wrecked by mine.
I cried myself into black insensibility – ruining my bed with snot, tears and the clear, watery bile from my cramping, empty stomach. It was days before I could be compelled to eat, and my mother never quite lost the haunted expression with which she guarded over me from then onwards.
Futile, really.
There was nothing left of me that was worth guarding.
Time…
…passed.
Thoughts of Lea accompanied me wherever I was, and I grew to treasure them like old friends. I became the soft-spoken girl in the corner, a slightly-more-corporeal ghost. My teachers learned to let me be, to not try to cajole me to participate in ‘fun’ activities.
I broke more than one of them on the rack and pinion of my blank indifference to any bribe or punishment they tried to dole out to me. Nothing they could do could even register when compared to what had already been done to me.
A discrete word was had with one or two of the more persistent cases, and after that nobody else tried to perturb me. My marks were good enough that I was no risk to the school’s Ofsted rating, even if my interaction with anyone else was non-existent.
So they stopped trying to fix me.
And I was quite fine with that.
Time…
… passed.
I obtained the necessary A levels to gain entry into a reasonable University. I quietly studied statistics and biochemistry, managed a 2:1, and walked out with an internship at a Biotech startup one town over from home.
After a few short months they ended my internship and made me a full staff member, mainly off the back of my quiet, single-minded focus and complete lack of any external distractions.
I took up hockey again for fitness, at first avoiding any competition, but swiftly shaking off the rust and reaching the local club’s first team. Soon I was playing regularly for the County.
I earned a reputation as a terrifying and implacable foe on the field – I no longer felt any real pain or caution and would simply go on until match end, merciless as the Morrigan, sometimes with cracked fingers and, once, a brace of cracked ribs. My club loved and respected me, but I mostly kept them at a cordial, careful arms length.
From them and others I slowly formed a small cabal of closer friends, both male and female, but never any attachments. That sex that I allowed myself was a physical release only, and love held no interest for me.
There was no room in my heart for anyone any more.
Gradually I came to realise that I had never recovered from losing Lea. There were entire conversations that I needed to be able to have with her; things I needed to tell her, things I needed to hear from her. Things that we needed… settled.
The first therapist I talked to was hopeless.
The second tried but failed.
The third, a young woman with an old soul – she got me talking, and then, bless her and her gentle manner forever, somehow got me crying once more.
She said four simple words to me.
“Tell me about Lea.”
Four simple words.
And they were what finally broke me down so that I could start to feel again.
.:.
I sat, staring at my mug, summoning the courage to broach the subject.
“Mum, I’ve got a question for you,” I finally managed.
She looked up from the pastry dough, and brushed her hair out of her eyes. “What is it, Rosie?”
“Did you… did you keep in contact with Mummy Sarah? After they… left?”
She stared at me, pastry forgotten. “Oh,” she breathed. “Oh, that’s a name I haven’t heard you say in forever. What… what brought that back to mind?”
“Gemma was asking me about Lea.”
“Who’s Gemma?”
“Oh. She’s my… therapist.”
“You’re seeing… a therapist? Of course. Of course you are. Rosie, you live in this shuttered world of darkness and shadows and never let me see into it. A therapist, for God’s sake. Why didn’t you say anything to me? My God, I’m your mum. You need to tell me these things, Rose.”
“Mainly because I wanted to avoid this reaction,” I said, softly.
Then I waited, patient as a rock, watching her.
“I tried,” she said, eventually. “I tried to keep in touch. But… the whole situation was just so horrible. Lea was like my own daughter too. Sarah’s responses always felt like… like she was being polite. Reading from a prepared script. I felt like I was intruding. I… I couldn’t keep trying. So I… stopped.”
“I’m sorry. You lost your friend too, then,” I sighed.
“Yes,” she whispered. She sniffed. “Oh, these are hard memories, Rose.”
“I guess… I thought maybe you just didn’t want to talk to me about them. Out of fear.”
“Oh, there was plenty of fear, Rosie. More than enough of that to last me the rest of my life. But… Lea was apparently ok. She was back at school and was starting to make friends. I… I didn’t want to tell you because I was scared of what it would do to you. Her grades were improving. She was ok. That was as much as I could hope for for her. So… I stopped checking in and concentrated on you.”
“It’s okay. I understand.”
I heard the hiss of breath that she sighed out.
“I’ve been so scared of telling you that,” she whispered.
“Why, mummy?”
“Because of how close you two were. The two of you were light and shadow. She lit the dark parts of you, and you gave her balance. I thought… I was scared that you’d be furious with me.”
“You were guarding me. I could never hold that against you. Not now that I’m old enough to understand what it must have been like for you.”
She slowly began kneading the pastry dough again. “That whole thing was one long horror show,” she said between thumps. “There was a two week period where I literally didn’t sleep, and Dad would curl up on a sleeping bag outside your door in case you had your nightmares.”
“Where did they move?” I asked, watching her.
She worked quietly for a while, folding and refolding, keeping her hands busy.
“Bath,” she said, eventually. “Sarah got a position there, and they thought it would be a good place for Lea to recuperate. I think Lea went to the University of Bristol. That’s where this is going, isn’t it? You want to find her.”
“Yes.”
She sighed. “Are you sure that’s wise? Perhaps she’s better off not being reminded of that time. Have you thought of that?”
“I have to try. I still carry her in my head. She is always with me. That’s why I’m so…”
“Different.”
“I was going to say broken. But… different is kinder, isn’t it?”
My mum made a small noise and turned her back on me.
I stood and went to her, wrapped my arms around her and just held her.
“Don’t cry, mum,” I said softly. “It’s not your fault.”
“I’m your mum,” she whispered. “Of course it’s my fault.”
.:.
That evening when I got back to my flat, I opened my laptop and began prowling the University of Bristol’s online presence, looking for any sign of her. She’d loved English and she’d been strong at Algebra, and I hoped to find some reference to her related to either of those disciplines.
But it was on the Music department’s past event pages where I finally found the first traces of her. Hints and passing mentions of her under her mother’s maiden name of Fergusson. Once I knew what to search I found old lecture timetables and then, finally, the meat at the heart of it – one glowing review of her solo performance in a recent chamber music recital and a mention that she was an associate of the faculty.
I began to dig for her with an intensity driven by eight years of repressed need.
An hour later I was sitting, staring at photos of her. She was older now, obviously, and carried the haunted gaze of a survivor behind those pretty blue eyes.
But she was still my Lea, with those long blonde locks that cascaded down over her shoulders, with the slight asymmetry of her nose that she’d always hated and I’d always loved.
I missed her almost more than I could bear.
I glutted myself on her until the small hours of the morning.
As I was about to shut down and sleep, I saw a new post on her social media feed – someone had asked her if she was going to be at the party at a pub the following Saturday night. Further digging determined that the pub was called The Magpie, which I discovered was a stone’s throw away from the Music department’s front door.
It was the nudge I needed, the kick to my bum that set me into motion. The odds were that if ever I had a chance to find her it would be there.
And I started laying my plans. I booked a room at the Radisson Blu for Saturday night, having made sure it was within walking distance of the pub. I booked my train tickets, and made an itemised list of the things I might need to pack into my little overnight bag.
I crafted a thousand different reunions in my mind; a thousand different ways in which I begged her forgiveness for not finding her sooner. A thousand scenes where the hurts were magically healed, where she’d wrap her arms around me and hold me like she used to. Where we would just be Rosie and Lea again, two young girls, with no shadow of Death looming black and merciless between us.
I told nobody what I was doing, out of some superstitious fear that it would jinx everything.
And then I counted down the days, and then the hours.
.:.
I’d loitered in the Raddison’s cafe until seven, wanting to give her time to reach the pub. Then I’d slowly traversed the small distance, some half a mile at most, and I’d tried very hard not to think about what was about to happen.
I had, of course, failed miserably at that.
Eight years of regrets. Eight years of time never to be recovered.
I hunched into my jacket, staring at the pub and the crowd of revellers thronging outside its door.
It looked warm, and inviting, and so wonderfully plain. The kind of place I would naturally gravitate to. A welcoming sanctuary.
I was more terrified than I could ever remember being.
I had no business being here.
I was an interloper. I did not belong in this place.
I had no idea if she was even here.
Or if she’d even want me. Or even recognise me.
I’d likely spend the entire night jammed into a corner, waiting in vain for the lightning stroke of luck, only to leave in crushing black disappointment and the familiar despair.
This was stupid. It was insane.
My heart ached, and I swallowed the sudden rush of nausea.
But the chance of seeing her again was too great to let go.
I had to try.
I owed it to her. To myself.
To us.
It was time.
I waited for a taxi to pass, then squared my shoulders and stepped resolutely out onto the crossing. The noise grew louder, the shouts and revelry more present, more oppressive.
I was mad. This was mad.
What was I doing, the sane part of me screamed at myself as I pushed open the door.
The noise doubled and redoubled again.
This was it.
I eased my way through the mass of people, with a soft-spoken “Excuse me, pardon me, sorry, pardon me.” when needed.
Smiles and laughter all around me, good natured men and women making room for me, letting me by, one or two giving me inquisitive or speculative glances.
I let them slide off me. I had only one goal here. Only one thing mattered to me.
Her.
I looked around, standing up on my toes, craning my head in desperation, trying to see a flash of her gold hair, trying to hear a snatch of her liquid laughter.
But it was futile.
It was too dark, too close, too noisy. Too many tall men, too many blonde girls that were not her.
I closed my eyes, took a sobbing gasp, steeled myself against the stabbing dagger of disappointment, made ready to fight my way to a corner so that I could deal with the sadness that I knew would not be long in coming.
I was a stupid child.
What had I expected? For everything that had broken so long ago and fallen into such ruin to somehow magically be made whole?
I should have known better. Magic had died with her departure. The world was mundane now; there was no room left in it for dreams.
“Idiot. Stupid fucking idiot,” I cursed myself. “Stupid, childish, infantile…”
I bit down the sob.
I took a deep, agonised breath.
I took one more slow glance around so that I would remember that I’d tried. A memory to keep for when I was old. The day I realised that she was, finally, gone.
And then, as in one of those stupid clichéd movies that I so loved to hate, the throng of people around me parted just a little bit.
Not much, but… enough.
I saw the way her eyes slid past me, the way the sudden puzzled frown replaced her smile, the way her whole body jerked as she swung to face me. The way her wineglass dropped from her nerveless hand, painting a dark liquid slash in the air as recognition blossomed between us.
“Lea,” I whispered. I staggered.
Her face went from pink to white.
I closed my eyes, unable to bear the hurt in hers. I moaned for a breath, and then another, and then she collided with me, crushed me in her arms, and for a moment all I was aware of was the feeling of her against me once more.
She was already sobbing, and she grabbed my arm and pulled me blindly through the crowd, barging us out of the pub’s double doors and then dragging me around the corner into a narrow alley, away from the noise and the curious eyes that followed us.
“You!” she shouted through her tears. “You! After eight years! You! You can’t just come here like this! You can’t just come back into my life and upend everything like this! It’s not fair! Why! Why are you here! Of all the times you could have picked, why now!”
I stared up at her, unable to form the words, unable to do anything except stand, grunting in agony like a stunned, mortally wounded beast.
“Answer me! Answer me!” she shrieked hysterically, as she violently shook me from side to side. “Where were you? Where were you! I waited and waited and waited for you but you never came! I needed you and you weren’t there! Where were you!”
Then she hunched forward, head resting against my shoulder, panting. Her hands clutched spasmodically at me, and she made small, jagged noises of pain.
But still I couldn’t answer. Still I stood there, shuddering, trying to find the speech that just wouldn’t come.
“Say something, Rosie, for Christ’s sake,” she gasped.
“I’m… sorry,” I managed to rasp the words at last, past a dry tongue that didn’t want to work at all. “For everything. For not being there for you. For not looking for you sooner. I’m sorry. I wanted to see you. I needed to. But. But you’re right. I shouldn’t have come here. It was stupid. And. And selfish. I’m… sorry. For… everything. Sorry. Goodbye. Lea. I’ll… I’ll go away. Don’t worry. I’ll go now. I’m sorry. For everything.”
I pulled myself free from her and turned away, clasping my arms around me against the agony, gasping for breath as the brutal jagged jaws of rejection slammed shut across my heart.
The world blurred and I stumbled away, heedless of where, just needing to be somewhere else, anywhere else, somewhere where I could try to forget the bewildered hurt in her eyes, somewhere where I could slither down into blackness and finally, once and for all, die.
“Rose! Rosie, wait!” she screamed. “No! Please! Come back! I’m sorry!”
The slight weight of her hit me once more. She locked her arms around me, holding me tight, arresting me in my tracks. I could feel the way her wordless sobs wracked her, and her meagre strength was only just sufficient to keep us standing as I broke down.
I turned, pulled myself to her by the lapels of her burgundy wool jacket as I tried to crawl in against her. I buried my face under her chin as I had so often in the past, and I wept like the broken little thing that, in so many ways, I still was.
Somehow we ended up entangled on the filthy steps of the pub’s fire escape, cheek to salty cheek, my arms around her and hers locked like a vise behind my neck.
Feet passed us by; I could hear murmurs of concern from a group of women, gentle questions, offers to walk us home, but neither of us could stop crying long enough to answer them, and I for one could not bear to let go of the other half of me.
Not just yet.
Not when I’d only just found her again.
.:.
We sat across from one another at a corner table in a small cafe, surrounded by a snowdrift of used tissues, half-finished cups of coffee and carrot cake crumbs. The lovely young thing who’d greeted us had taken one look at us and seated us in the most sheltered nook she had; she’d hovered but not intruded, topped up our tissues as and when we needed them, and taken more than one handful for herself to deal with her own helpless reaction to the emotional supernova we so heedlessly subjected her to.
Lea was a mess. I didn’t even want to think what I looked like; my throat was flayed and my stupid fringe kept falling over my burning eyes and casting a dark veil over the world. I gripped her hands in mine, white knuckled, jittery and spaced out, too scared to let go in case she’d disappear on me.
She stared at me, gaze flitting over my features as if she were trying to etch each of them into her memory forever.
“You pierced your ears,” she managed, after some time. Her voice was strangely smokey, and she had to clear her throat twice to finish the brief sentence.
“Just the one,” I whispered.
“It’s… pretty. That stone really suits you. It goes with your hair. Oh God, I’d forgotten how much I love your hair,” she breathed, as she reached up to touch it.
“It’s lapis. It’s the blue I remembered in your eyes. I… I began to wear it for… for you.”
Her face crumpled up and she ducked her head. She took a breath, sniffed hard. “Christ, Rosie. I’m a mess. You’ve wrecked me. What were you thinking? Showing up like this? Without even trying to get in contact first? What if I’d been at a performance, or a lecture? I had somewhere I needed to be. Somewhere important. I should have been there by now.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again, trying to meet her gaze. “I didn’t think. I haven’t been able to think things through properly for eight years now. I just do things. And… sometimes if I’m really lucky… they go right like… this has…”
Her hands clenched hard on mine.
“God I’ve missed you so much,” she said, voice cracking. “I have been to hell and back. And this time I didn’t have you to save me.”
I shuddered, sniffed again. “You were always with me. There’s always been a part of you, standing just behind my shoulder, always watching me. At my darkest I’d imagine you and what you would have done. And then I would do it. It’s what got me through all… this.”
“I wish I could have had that. Why? Why, Rosie? Why did you never come to find me?”
I stared at her hands, at the blue veins showing underneath her pale skin.
“Because I am far too fucked up,” I groaned, at last. “It took me years to work out just how completely broken I am. It took three therapists to make me cry again, Lea. Three. I didn’t feel anything for years. I was too dead inside to feel anything at all after you left. Nothing could make me cry once I no longer had you. So… I was just going through the motions. Just existing. Not really living. Not for years…”
Her eyes were wide and dark in the half light of the cafe’s corner; her lower lip trembling. She collected my hands in hers, raised them to her face, tucked them in against her cheek.
I coughed, then swallowed the hot bitter acid in my throat.
“Rosie?”
“I’m ok. I’m ok,” I panted. “Oh God. It’s just too much to deal with all at once. You. Me. This.”
I hung my head as I struggled for a breath. “I’m so sorry, Lea. I never meant to abandon you. You were my life.”
She picked up a tissue, wiped her eyes for the three millionth time.
“I tried to cope. Managed to make it through school without you. I still don’t know how. Anger. Rage, maybe. I got a degree. And a job, despite all this,” I said, waving a dismissive hand at myself.
“So did I. Such as it is.”
“I know. I found you on your department’s facebook page. You guys suck at keeping things private,” I said, sniffing.
She gave a choking laugh and wiped her eyes again. “Fucking social media. It’s the devil’s playground. Still. It sounds like it brought you back to me. What else. Tell me what else.”
“I started playing hockey again,” I whispered. “I play for the County again, sometimes.”
“That’s good. Really good. I’m glad. You were always brilliant at it. I’m glad you still have it in you.”
“Did you ever start running again?”
“No. I tried at first. But… not any more,” she said. She looked away. “Chemo destroyed my muscles.”
“Chemo…therapy? Oh… oh Jesus, no, no, no no no” I whispered, shaking my head violently, trying to deny what she was saying.
“Yes. I got another lovely present.”
I made some sort of horrible sound; she shuddered and squeezed my hands again.
“Rose. It’s fine. It’s fine. They caught it early, Rosie. I’ve been clear for four years. I’m ok now. You don’t need to look at me like that. Please… Rose, stop that,” she begged. “Please, don’t look at me like that. It’s too much. You’re wrecking me. Please.”
She swallowed, looked down again.
“I should have written to you,” she whispered. “But… I was too hurt. Too bitter. Bitter that you’d had a normal childhood and I’d had… this. Then I grew up, and it became about… protecting you from this. I couldn’t do anything else, but I could at least do that. Bit by bit… I guess I… began to believe that you were better off without me. That you’d heal and move on.”
“I was never ok without you. Never.”
“I… I can see that now. And… oh, it sounds so foolish. But… a part of me always hoped that some day I’d turn around and… you’d be there. And we’d hug, and you’d smile at me like you are now, and everything would be ok. I just didn’t imagine it would be today,” she finished with a weird little hiccoughing sob.
I blew my nose. She wiped her eyes again.
“I can’t believe you’re really here,” she said. “After all this time.”
“I wish I’d got it together sooner. I should have come sooner.”
“You came. That’s what matters. How…” She cleared her throat. “How long are you going to be here?”
“Just… tonight. I have to leave tomorrow. Work. I didn’t plan anything beyond getting here. I have to leave in the morning.”
“Oh for fuck sakes,” she sighed, disgusted. “Where are you staying?”
“A hotel near the station. The Radisson Blu.”
“No. Absolutely fuck that. I’ve got a spare room. And… and I… I really, desperately need you to come stay with me. We need to talk, Rosie. There’s so much I need to say to you before you leave again.”
“Ok.”
“Just like that? That was easy.” she said, with a small smile. “It’s like… like old times.”
I shrugged, helplessly. “How can I put anything into words right now? This is who I am. I never cared about anything else but being near you.”
She blushed and looked away.
I paid our bill and quietly slipped the lovely girl who’d guarded us fifty pounds as we left. It was every last bit of the emergency Oh-my-God-I’ve-lost-my-wallet stash from my jacket’s inner pocket, but I didn’t care. She stared in flabbergasted disbelief at the crumpled notes, and then squeaked and flushed hot and pink as Lea grabbed her, hugged her hard, and kissed her on the cheek.
“You’re an angel,” I declared to her, as I gently closed her hand over the gift. “Never, ever lose sight of the lovely person you are.”
Lea slipped her arm through mine in her age-old way, and dragged me off into the night.
.:.
“Where were you supposed to be?” I said, raising my voice over the roar of the engine behind us.
“After the pub? A colloquium on Ancient music. My… boss… booked tickets. He’s going to be furious. So furious. Oh, I can’t wait.”
“Won’t you be in trouble?”
“So much trouble. I don’t think words exist to adequately describe the amount of trouble. But I don’t give a fiddler’s fig,” she whispered. She shifted closer to me, leaned in against my shoulder, and I fought down the lump in my throat as the scent of her conjured half-remembered memories of our youth.
“You look so nice,” I breathed, when I could. “So posh in that coat. Despite everything that’s happened to you. I’m so glad to see you looking so well.”
“And you look like you’re not taking any care of yourself,” she whispered back. “You need to fix that. Rose… I’m sorry. I’m sorry for being so angry, for going to pieces. I… it was just such a shock to see you standing there. It uncorked everything at once. I wasn’t ready. I would never have been ready. And I wasn’t really sure that you were real. God, what a pair we make,” she sighed.
“I’m still not sure I’m real.”
“You’re real enough for me,” she said, as she gently placed her hand on my knee and squeezed it.
“I’m so sorry for not reaching out. If I’d…”
“You had your own devils to deal with.”
The bus negotiated a traffic circle, and she jostled against me. I shifted, tried to find a more comfortable spot on the seat without disturbing her.
“How’s… your dad and mum?”
“Mum’s sad, Dad’s moved on.”
“What? No! When!” I gasped.
“They got divorced shortly after we moved,” she said, soft and matter of fact.
“Divorced. Oh. Oh thank God, I thought you meant…”
“What? Oh. No. Not yet. There’s still some miles left in the old silverback.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You weren’t to know,” she said softly. “How could you have known? Mum’s never kept in contact. She’s too broken. Are… are your dad and mum ok?”
“Yeah. Older, slower, still the same in most ways. Mum misses Mummy Sarah like nothing I can really put into words.”
“Like mothers, like daughters,” she sighed. “I’ll tell my mum to get over herself and reach out. It will be good for her. Maybe it will bring her out of her shell.”
She shook her head and gave me a tired grin.
“We really are the mirrors of ourselves now. You got touched by light, I got dipped in shadow.”
She squeezed my hand again. “At least you filled out nicely,” she said, matter of fact. “You always were going to be a stunning woman. I’m glad that happened for you.”
I flushed, stared down at my lap.
“Are you… seeing anyone?” I asked.
“Not… exactly. You?”
“No. Not romantically. I’ve had my fill of heartbreak.”
“Oh, Rosie,” she sighed. “You have to live too, honey.”
“Said the ghost to the vampire,” I quietly retorted.
“I’ve kicked cancer’s arse twice. I’m no ghost and you’re no vampire. And you’re far too wonderful to spend your life alone.”
I turned my face away, tried to find some control.
She wormed in closer to me. “I’d forgotten how you smelled,” she said. “Like home. Like safety. I cannot believe how much I’d missed this. How much I’d missed us. You.”
“Going through every day like the best half of you is missing,” I whispered.
“Catching glimpses of it in passing out of the corner of your eye,” she agreed. “You know what kept me going? Remembering how you’d crawl into my bed and hold me and read to me when the pain was at its worst.”
“You were so frail, and looked so tiny without your hair. It broke me.”
“I wanted to tell you not to cry. But I was never strong enough. And I was always far too selfish to tell you not to come and to look after yourself.”
“You might as well have told me to cut off my own leg,” I said. “It would have been easier for me to do that than not come to you.”
“I know.”
.:.
Her phone began to ring as she opened her peeling front door.
She ignored it.
“Shouldn’t you answer that?”
“I know who it is. It’s no longer important.”
“Lea, it might be your boss.”
“It is my boss. That’s his ringtone.”
“You should answer it.”
“No,” she said, with a set to her jaw that I remembered so well.
She shut the door behind us, turned on a light. “It’s not much,” she said softly, “but it’s home.”
Her phone rang again.
“Answer that,” I told her.
“No.”
“He could be worried.”
“He’s not worried. He’s angry.”
“What?”
“He wants to shout at me for not being at the lecture. For making him look bad, for embarrassing him in front of his colleagues again. Sadly, I’m destined to always be an embarrassment to him. Frail little Lea, the fetchingly fragile fiancée he can trot out to show how kind and caring and normal he is. Look at Lea, everyone, the cancer victim I’m marrying because I’m such a great person. Behold and admire and bask in my generosity!”
She posed dramatically, then slumped in on herself.
“Tonight was going to be when he announced our engagement. I wonder whether he did. Somehow I think not, the fucking narcissist.”
Her voice was soft but no less bitter for it.
“You’re… engaged,” I said, focussing on filtering down to what seemed to me to be the key fact. My voice sounded strange and vague even by the already fucked-up standards of my day. “To your boss,” I added.
“Yes.”
I leaned back against the wall, wondering how many more hits I would have to take. Wondering how many more I could take.
“You don’t sound… thrilled about it.”
“I’m not. It’s a business transaction. My smile and musical ability and some photogenic fawning at events – a smoke screen he’s bartered for security and breathing room for me.”
“Oh Lea,” I whispered.
“Don’t. Don’t you dare,” she said, voice breaking. She stamped her foot and spun away from me, scrubbing furiously at the tears. “I can’t do this sober. I can’t do this at all. Jesus. Jesus, of all the days to have to deal with this. Get a grip, Lea, get a grip,” she finished with a whisper.
I slunk closer and hesitantly touched her shoulder.
She wouldn’t turn to face me.
“I had to,” she whispered. “I need the safety net. There is nobody who will help me. Mum’s barely hanging on, Dad’s drunk half of the time and angry the rest of it. I have next to nothing of my own. I exist hand to mouth. This was the only way out for me. And, anyway, it’s not like he wants me for my body. He’s got his own… tastes.”
My heart broke. “Oh my God, Lea…”
“Please don’t judge me,” she whispered. “I can take it from anyone else. But not from you.”
She took a shuddering breath, sighed it out. She kicked off her heels, hung her coat up on a hook. “Right. At the very top of the short list of things I can actually do something about is my sobriety. I’m opening some wine,” she said. “I am going to drink myself into a stupor. I can’t deal with anything else tonight. Not now. It can all burn to ashes, for all I care.”
She stalked off.
I slowly unbuttoned my jacket and hung it beside hers, then stared around at the empty walls and the peeling wallpaper with mounting horror.
This wasn’t a home.
It was a prison.
My Lea was in a prison.
“Rose, are you coming or what?” she called.
I wiped my eyes and glued on a brave face for her.
.:.
She poured her second glass and topped up my first. I watched her as she took a sip, as she put her hand to the bridge of her nose in the old gesture of unease that I remembered so well.
“What is it?” I said, softly.
She snorted. “I forget how well you know me.”
“You haven’t changed much. I can still read you like a book.”
“You always could. I missed that.”
She sat back, stared around the cramped and dingy kitchen. “He is going to be so pissed with me. Oh my god. I’m in for it now.”
“Why…”
I coughed, cleared my throat, continued. “Why did you put yourself in this position with him, Lea?”
“I didn’t have a choice. It’s this or flat-share. I can’t, Rose. I can’t live with random other people in my space. This… this act of prostitution I’m going to put myself through for him. I… it’s the only way I can hang on to what little I have. I get somewhere to live, access to events and society, the space to breathe and play my music. Time that I won’t get, otherwise. He’ll give me a stipend; more than enough to make sure I keep up appearances. He’ll use me as a showpiece. A drawcard for the department and the University – a cornerstone of the little empire he’s building. It’s better than the alternative.”
“But surely…”
“Surely… what? You think that there’s some benefactor out there who will help me out of the goodness of their heart? Someone who can magically conjure me a better life where I’m not working as an indentured servant to a power-mad man? This isn’t a fairy tale, Rose. This is real life. My life. It’s brutish, and painful, and… odds are it will be short. If you find a person who can change that, please do send them my way.”
I closed my eyes, hunching in on myself as the sharp edge of her rage raked me. She saw, reached out, clasped my wrist tightly.
“I’m sorry. Oh God. I’m sorry, Rosie. I’m sorry. Please. I’m bitter. I didn’t mean that. I didn’t mean to hurt you of all people…”
“It’s… it’s ok. It’s just… this is so unfair.”
“I know. But this is my life. I have a roof over my head, enough to eat, money to put to my mum to make sure she’s ok. It’s better than lots of people get.”
She sighed.
“My dreams were just dreams after all. They started to fade when I was fifteen. I’ve… accepted that. This is what I have now.”
“You deserve a palace,” I whispered. I bit back the sob, forced it down and away into the black shadowy place where I hid all the Terrible Things.
“You are the only person who has ever thought that,” she said, smiling sadly at me. “Everyone else just sees… well, me.”
I shook my head, vehemently denying her words but unable to speak past the numbing blackness.
“Don’t be sad, Rose. Sometimes things just don’t end up how you thought they would. At least I had you in my life. I had something good.”
“I wish you’d never left,” I managed.
“Life happens. We can either let it break us or… step aside until we can stand again.”
I drained my wine glass, and coughed as the cheap wine burned my raw throat. She refilled it for me.
“So tell me about yourself,” she said, gently. “Tell me something nice. Let me hear that you’re at least doing better than this,” she added, glancing around at the spartan kitchen.
