Runaway Wife (13 page)

“Rosie?” Shona giggled. “Are you going to a gig,
Rosie
?”

“Course I will,” Jenny said, smiling at Maddie, who was watching the whole thing unfold with minimal interest. “We get on, don’t we, love? You can tell me all about the Egyptians again.”

“OK, and I’ll do you a test, say twenty questions, and then I’ll grade you,” Maddie offered, oblivious of the look of muted horror on Jenny’s face.

“Or we could stay up late and watch a movie,” Jenny offered.

“Or do a test,” Maddie said. “Although I must say, I’d quite like to go to the gig if you are going to play that song.”

“Which song, sweetheart?” Ted asked her.

“The one that’s going to change the world. I’d like to see the world changing.”

“I tell you what, I’ll drop you off a CD,” Ted said. He looked at Rose. “So you will come?”

“Course we will!” Shona said, taking the ticket out of Ted’s hand and holding her hand out for another. Reluctantly, he handed one over. “Oh, and for the record, I like drummers.”

•  •  •

As soon as Maddie’s breathing became steady, signaling that she was finally asleep, Rose crept next door to Shona’s room, where she found her pouring a glass of red wine into a tooth mug.

“Here,” she said, holding it out to Rose. “You take this, I’ll take the bottle. Don’t worry, I’ll fill you up!”

“Jenny doesn’t allow drinking in bedrooms,” Rose said nervously as she took the mug anyway and sipped the sour-tasting brew. “She barely allows sleeping.”

“Fuck Jenny,” Shona said cheerfully and without malice. “It was two for one at the service station on the way here and I thought you and me would need a couple of drinks while we catch up.”

“Which means you’re planning to interrogate me,” Rose said.

“Yeah,” Shona said. “So drink up.”

Remembering the pleasant tingly feeling she had after her two whiskeys, Rose obliged, downing the mugful of cheap wine in one or two gulps and then holding it out for more.

“Fuck, where’s Goody Two-shoes gone?” Shona asked her, amused.

“She ran away, didn’t you hear?” Rose giggled. “So go on, ask me. Who the fuck is Ted, right?”

“That question is first on my list. Who the fuck is Ted, because he is fucking lush!” Shona’s eyes sparkled as she spoke. “Although far too young for you.”

“He’s Jenny’s son. He’s been sort of flirting with me, but not in a serious way. More in a friendly, sweet sort of way, really. I think he’s pretending to fancy me to cheer me up.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” Shona said, smiling to see that her friend was evidently cheered up by Ted’s attentions. “But it was obvious that he really wanted you to go to his gig, bless him. Like a keen little puppy, all wet nose and waggy tail. Or waggy something, anyway!”

“Shona!” Rose’s eyes widened, unable to suppress a chuckle at her friend’s boldness. “Yeah, but he couldn’t take his eyes off your boobs the second he walked in the room, and I don’t exactly have much in the way of competition. So I expect his interest to wane now that you’re here.”

“He’s a bloke, darling, they’re all programmed to look at tits. If Jesus had walked in right then, he’d have been looking at my tits, because they are amazing. It wouldn’t mean he wasn’t the Son of God anymore.”

“Oh my God.” Rose clapped her hand over her mouth and giggled, the wine already beginning to take effect, which with Shona doing her utmost to take Rose’s mind off things made quite a heady combination. “We’ll get struck down by lightning.”

“No, we won’t. God loves my tits,” Shona said, refilling Rose’s glass.

“Anyway!” Rose said, glancing upward as if she were still expecting retribution. “Ted is just a lad who’s been nice to me. And from what you’ve told me, I sort of feel like I’m on borrowed time here, so why not have a laugh while I can? After all, it will be the first time in my entire life. I never went to gigs when I was a teenager, or kissed a load of boys, or got drunk and had crazy hairstyles!”

“I agree.” Shona nodded emphatically. “I think you should
go to the gig, I think you should have a laugh, let your hair down a bit, recapture your lost youth. And then I think you should fuck him.”

“I couldn’t do
that
!” Rose spluttered. “I don’t want to do that. This isn’t what this is about!”

“I’m just saying, if you’re going to prison or the loony bin anyway . . .”

“I’m not, I’m not doing that,” Rose said uneasily. Even though she knew Shona was joking, the idea that Richard could somehow manipulate her into either one of those situations wasn’t entirely out of the question. He was very good at getting what he wanted, and if he no longer wanted her around, then Rose was very sure he’d find a way to make it happen.

“Anyway, I didn’t come here to pick up a younger man for casual sex.” Rose shuddered at the thought of it. “I don’t even like sex.”

“You freak,” Shona muttered, before taking a swig from the bottle. “You don’t like sex with Dickhead, and why would you? He’s vile. Sex with a normal person, a warm-blooded one that doesn’t bite the heads off bats in his spare time, that would be different.”

Rose turned her face away from Shona, waiting for the moment of nausea to pass. How could she ever explain to Shona that the thought of anyone touching her that way, even Frasier, made her want to run to the hills and never come back?

“I came here for Frasier,” Rose reminded Shona. “Not my father, and certainly not Ted. It’s Frasier I’m waiting for.”

“What if he never comes?” Shona asked, tipping her head to one side. “I mean, he’ll come—it’s only a matter of time until you see him again—but what if he’s not at all how you remember him? What if he’s fat and bald and mean?”

“He won’t be,” Rose said, smiling, her image of Frasier so firmly imprinted in her memory that she couldn’t countenance him being any other way. “I’ll find out soon enough, anyway. Albie said he’s up here every week, checking up on my father. And if he doesn’t come, I’ll go to Edinburgh.”

“What if he’s blissfully happily married, got five kids and a dog? Or what if he’s gay, blissfully happily married, got five dogs and an S and M dungeon? Both of those scenarios are much more likely than the one you are hoping for, you know.”

“I know,” Rose said, although she didn’t know it at all. She was really very much more in denial about reality than she would ever let on. Because if she was wrong about Frasier, then she had no idea what to do next.

Rose combed her fingers through her long brown hair, looking at her sharp pale face peering back at her from the mirror. Always the same, timid, cowardly face. She was thirty-one years old and she still had the face of a little girl.

“I do know that, I do. It’s just . . . oh, I don’t know. I realize how stupid it sounds that ten minutes of talking with a man seven years ago were the most . . . exciting of my life. But then again, have you seen my life?”

“I have seen your life and it’s because of your life, and your fucking shit dad and shit husband, that you think those ten minutes meant more than they did. That’s all I’m saying. I just don’t want you to get more hurt than you already are, darling. And the odds are that is exactly what will happen.”

“So what about Ryan?” Rose asked, lying back on Shona’s bed a little too quickly so that her curtain of hair covered her face.

“I told you,” Shona said stubbornly. “He wants me back, I’m thinking about it.”

“He wants you back and you’re thinking about it? How is that any less crazy than me chasing Frasier across the country
for a pipe dream?” Rose propelled herself upwards in her frustation and fury. “Shona, Ryan cheats on you! He can’t stop himself. God knows what the other women see in him but then he’s not that fussy.”

“What are you saying?” Shona’s hackles rose.

Rose struggled to find the right way to express herself, the exact words that meant that finally Shona would listen to her. “You’re so bright, so clever and strong. Why can’t you see this one blindingly obvious thing? If you take him back you will get hurt again and again. Ryan will never grow up.”

Shona said nothing for a while as she cradled the bottle, her hair covering her face. Rose watched her, desperate for some sign that her friend was registering what she was saying.

“But this time he says he’s changed . . .”

“Oh, give me strength.” Rose flung her hands above her head, letting their weight carry her back onto the bed with a thud. “Shona, listen to yourself!”

“I am,” Shona insisted, her eyes flashing in defiance. “I know him, I know him better than anyone. I’m not a fool, Rose. I know what I’d be taking on if I went back with him, I do. He has changed, and who else will give him a second chance if I don’t?”

“Why does he deserve one?” Rose said angrily.

“Because Ryan’s not like Dickhead,” Shona flashed back. “
He’s
not evil. He’s just stupid.”

“But you love him anyway!”

Rose could see that getting angry was just making Shona more determined. With some effort, she softened her voice, reaching out to touch her friend.

“Shona,” she said gently, “my beautiful, brave, fierce, mad Shona, you aren’t afraid of anything except being alone. But you don’t have to be alone. There are a million better men out there!”

“Not for me,” Shona said quietly, a single tear tracking down her cheek. “Yes, I know how it sounds, I know how impossible it must be to understand, but I miss him. I miss his shelter, the way he used to protect me from the whole world. If . . . if I could just have that feeling, one more time, of being with Ryan, you know, when everything’s good between us and he’s trying extra hard to be sweet. And we’ll go to bed and it will be so special, the care and love he’ll show me, and then after, he’ll wrap his arms around me—his big strong arms—and hold on to me like I’m the most precious, loved thing in the world and that feeling . . . it’s . . . it’s . . .” Shona couldn’t find the words she wanted. “I don’t know if I can ever feel that again unless it’s with him.”

“You
can
,” Rose said carefully. “You will, with someone who doesn’t come and go out of your life, and the kids’ lives, like there’s a revolving door. Look, I’ve broken away from Richard, and I know it’s not really real yet, and that I’ve still got to face him and all the things I’m sure he’s planned for me, but . . . if I can,
you
can. You already have. You just need to stay strong.”

“I did think about dyeing my hair,” Shona said, swiftly turning the conversation to lighter things with a flippancy that Rose knew was more about self-defense than a blasé attitude. “This was on special at the garage too, but now I’m not so sure. What do you reckon?” Shona reached into her bag and pulled out a home dyeing kit, featuring a golden-haired blonde on the cover. “Is it me?”

Rose took the box from her and gazed at the photo of the woman glancing coquettishly back at her from over her naked shoulder, her luscious locks fanned out around her like she didn’t have a care in the world. Never once, Rose thought again, not since she was a little girl, had she had her hair different from the way she was wearing it now: long, perfectly
straight chestnut hair, reaching down to the middle of her back.

“Do mine instead,” she whispered, mostly to herself, half daring, half hiding from the impulsive thought.

“What?” Shona asked her, leaning dangerously forward on the dressing table stool to try to catch what she thought Rose had said.

“Do mine! Why not?” Rose said, feeling a little bolder, as both the idea and the wine took hold of her. “You did that hairdressing course, didn’t you? Cut my hair! Cut it off and then dye it this color. I want to be Sun-Kissed Sizzle. I want to be blond.”

“Fuck, you’ve gone all Britney Spears on my arse,” Shona said. “I can’t just hack off all that hair. That hair is you.”

“Exactly.” A little giddy, Rose stood up and dived for the dressing table, where Shona’s hairdressing scissors, a remnant of two weeks’ work experience in a salon, were poking out of her voluminous make-up bag. Before Shona could wrest them from her, she leapt up onto the bed, brandishing them like she’d just pulled Excalibur out of the rock, bouncing up and down on the creaky mattress. While Shona gazed on, half in horror, half in hilarity, Rose chopped off a length of hair right at the front of her head, stopping only a couple of inches short of her scalp.

“Go on,” she all but shouted, waving the chunk of her hair at Shona. “Now you
have
to cut it!”

“Christ, Rose!” Shona gasped. “What have you done? Well, sit down, then. I’m certainly not cutting your hair whilst you’re bouncing off the walls.”

Taking the scissors from Rose’s hand, Shona stared at her hatchet job.

“Well, you’ve sort of blown it for a nice bob or a feather cut, neither of which I know how to do anyway. I could have a
go at making it really short and spiky, and I think that’s pretty much it.”

“Go on, then!” Rose urged her. “Do that, and then dye it!”

“Rose, are you sure? It might look shit.”

“Yes, it might look shit, but it won’t look like me, will it?” Rose said emphatically, reaching for the bottle of wine and draining the last of it. “Boring, meek, loser, pathetic old me. And I can’t tell you how much I don’t want to look like me anymore. I’m not her, I’m not that mousy trapped girl. I’m dangerous and cool and—”

“Clinically insane, Dickhead’s right after all,” Shona laughed. “Oh, go on, then, as it’s you. I can always pick some more dye up at the service station on the way home.”

Sitting Rose down on her dressing table stool and handing her the second bottle of wine to unscrew, Shona wielded her scissors. “Now, hold on to your knickers and pray for a miracle.”

T
he first thing that Rose realized when she became conscious the following morning was that her head hurt. A lot. Her mouth was bone dry, her tongue felt like it had swollen up to triple its normal size and had developed scales to boot. And she felt sure that if she opened her eyes certain doom would follow. Belatedly, after wondering if she’d caught the flu, the plague, or worse, Rose realized that she had a hangover, her first ever proper one, a genuine bona fide hangover that meant even the slightest movement or noise made her want to throw herself off the edge of the universe, never to return. It was a sensation she felt curiously proud of.