Runaway Wife (28 page)

“John,” Rose said tentatively, “can I ask you something? You may not like it, but when I look at Maddie I see Mum, and . . . I don’t have anyone else to talk to about her except for you.”

John nodded, visibly steeling himself for what he knew was coming.

“Do you ever think about Mum?” Rose asked him.

“Yes,” John said simply, heavily, as if merely uttering the word was almost too burdened with regret. “I think of her often. The older I get the more I think of her. The way she used to be, the first time I saw her. So smart, so sensible, so . . . full of light, like a beacon. I tried to stay away from her—she wasn’t really my type at all, a good girl, a girl next door—but I couldn’t, like a moth to a flame.”

“Except you were the flame,” Rose said sadly, without recrimination. “It was Mum who got burnt.”

“Can I go outside and sit on the fence and draw the mountain?”
Maddie asked. “I won’t move from the fence, I promise. I just want to remember what it looks like
exactly
, for my next work.”

“OK,” Rose said, mustering a smile. “But don’t move from the fence. I mean it.”

“I won’t,” Maddie called over her shoulder as she headed outside.

“She looked like fine bone china.” John remembered Marian, smiling just a little. “Delicate and slim, like you, but she had this passion in her, this strength of appetite for living that made everyone around her want to live harder, better, faster.” He glanced sideways at Rose as he sorted through assorted crumpled tubes of paint. “I’ve been thinking about her more recently. You remind me a lot of your mother.”

“I’m not sure if that’s a good thing,” Rose said, unable to keep the bitterness out of her voice, which was still there, which would probably always be there when she thought of the life that her mother had wasted, through no fault of her own, on grief. Rose had known the woman that John described for only a few short years, and even then she was already beginning to fray at the edges, battling daily to make the man she’d given up so much for continue to show an interest in her. How hard she must have tried to be fascinating, beautiful enough for him. How painful it must have been when she realized that even if she was always all of those things, it would still never be enough to stop him from looking elsewhere.

“I did that to her,” John admitted. “I ruined her, and I regret that, deeply. I wish I could have cared when it counted. I wish so many things.”

“But you left with Tilda instead,” Rose stated.

“I stopped feeling anything real long before Tilda, and long after,” John admitted. “Tilda was not the first and not the last
of the women I used. The only thing that set her apart was that she somehow pierced the fog of the alcohol to make me take notice of her for a little while. Tilda is a strong, ferocious woman. I think she thought she could change me.”

Rose turned away from him, finding it difficult to control the ferocious feelings that surged through her: anger, hurt, and somehow relief that he was finally saying what she’d always believed to be true, that he was to blame. And yet Rose almost didn’t want to know. She liked this quiet-mannered man who had a way with Maddie and a sort of strength that she felt secure around. More revelations would sweep that man away for good, and she would be left to face whatever harsh truth was left. But she couldn’t make the mistake of letting herself pretend that John was not the kind of man he was; she’d done that for too long with Richard.

“The day before she died . . . it was the happiest day of my life,” Rose said. “She was so happy, so light and loving. That’s why none of it made sense.”

“When I heard how she . . . passed,” John said, uncharacteristically squeamish about the facts, “I was drunk. I thought perhaps it might have been a dream. I think for a long time I preferred to think that it was a dream.”

The two of them searched each other’s faces for a moment, each one full of sadness.

“And you didn’t come for me,” Rose said softly.

“No,” John said. “I didn’t come. I didn’t care, Rose. I didn’t feel anything. I’m so sorry, but I didn’t.”

Rose nodded, finding it difficult to hold back the threat of tears that constricted her throat.

“After Mum died,” she said, in a tone so low it was almost a whisper, knowing that she had to tell John everything she could, unburden herself of all her secrets, if they were to have any chance of moving on together, and now was the first and
perhaps the last moment to do it, “soon after, that’s when I met my husband. When I met Richard. I think he saw me, and he saw exactly what he wanted. Someone young, inexperienced, someone completely on her own, without anyone to tell her what to do or advise her. Without anyone to protect her. He wanted a wife who would love him unreservedly, a wife he could own. That’s what he saw in me. It must have been written all over my face: abandoned girl seeks refuge. I don’t suppose he meant for things to end the way they did when we got married; I don’t suppose for one minute he foresaw how he would become.” Rose made herself look John in the eye so that he would see everything she saw, feel everything she felt. “Controlling, restricting every aspect of my life, slowly, slowly over years and years, until I was afraid to breathe if he was in the room, or to chew too loudly, or accidentally wear the wrong expression. I don’t suppose it was his plan to take a girl, already weak and vulnerable, and wear her down, centimeter by centimeter, until she had just the tiniest scrap left of her own identity. I don’t suppose he planned any of that, but that is what happened to me, after Mum died. And if you’d been there, or just been in my life, another person to turn to, perhaps it would have helped me see things clearly and perhaps . . . I wouldn’t be hiding from Richard now.”

John nodded, swallowing with difficulty. “This is hard for me to bear too,” he said. “I let you down, and I can never make up for that.”

“No,” Rose said. “And whether you believe it or not, I really wish you could.”

“You still had that tiny scrap, though,” John said, looking her square in the eyes, placing his hands lightly on her shoulders. “That small part of you that you hung on to, that was from your mother. It was her strength that stopped you from
disappearing completely and made you start to fight back. Your mother saved you.”

“Did she?” Rose asked him. “I’d like to believe that, but Mum was the one that gave in. That gave up. You beat your addiction—doesn’t that make you the strong one?”

John shook his head. “No,” he said. “It makes me the coward, too afraid to die, even though . . . even though I get closer to it day by day. But not your mother, she was not afraid.”

“Hello?” Frasier’s voice sounded outside, as Rose and John kept looking at each other, trying to search out some answers in those last few seconds they had before Frasier came into the barn.

“I think it’s the courageous who want to stay alive,” Rose said finally. “And I think that it’s a little bit of that, of you, that has to be in me. Mum’s there too, of course, but you are my father, you are part of me too.” She wrinkled her brow as a thought occurred to her. “It never crossed my mind before to be grateful for that.”

Before John could respond, Frasier walked into the barn, with a curious Maddie at his side. He was wearing a sea-green shirt that matched the color of his eyes, open slightly at the neck, his blond hair looking ruffled as if he’d been driving with the window down.

“Hello, all!” he said cheerfully, stopping and smiling at Rose in her white cotton dress. “You look very refreshing,” he said. “And Maddie, I see you are quite the protégée. Your work is coming on apace!”

Maddie stared at her drawing as if she very much doubted him. It was clear that she did not like this planning stage nearly as much as she liked throwing paint about or sketching, but she had persevered, which was unusual for her.

“John, Greg tells me I have to wait three more days for the third work,” Frasier said, trying his best to look stern.

“This is an artist’s studio,” John said, “not a McDonald’s drive-through.”

Frasier laughed. “Nothing you can say will put me in a bad mood today,” he said happily. “I’ve sold almost all of the awful woman’s work. And the world’s finest sticky toffee pudding awaits Rose and me!”

Neither Rose nor Frasier were prepared for John’s disapproving expression.

“Make sure you take care of her,” he said gruffly, obviously a little embarrassed himself by his belated paternal concern.

“This is Dearest Rose,” Frasier said. “Of course I will take care of her.”

•  •  •

Sharrow Bay House Hotel turned out to be set right on the shores of Ullswater, an elegant white-painted Victorian house that Rose felt altogether underdressed for after all, although she was not at all sure that any of Haleigh’s going-out clothes would have served her any better. The warmth of the sun was thankfully still strong, and Rose was enchanted when they were seated at a table on the terrace, overlooking the lake, the mountains glowing golden in the evening light.

“Wow,” Rose said as she looked out at the view.

“Stunning, isn’t it?” Frasier said. “It’s at times like this I wish I had the skill to create art, rather than just appreciate it, and sell it, and make quite a lot of money from it.”

“But it’s not all about the money for you, is it?” Rose asked him, curiously, grateful to have something to say. The drive over had been mostly silent, punctuated with stilted small talk that soon petered out. “If it was, you wouldn’t have come to my house in Broadstairs, would you? You wouldn’t have tracked my father down, you wouldn’t have put so much effort, time, and probably money into getting him sober. You basically saved his life.” And mine, she thought as she dared
to look at him. His strong nose and sensitive mouth and jaw made her want to reach out and touch his face, despite herself. It seemed dreamlike that she was here with him, in this beautiful setting. All the darkness and dread that Richard brought with him seemed like another lifetime, another universe away. Rose realized that she was going to have to work very hard to keep her feet on the ground, to remember that Frasier saw her as pleasant company at best, the daughter of a valuable client, not his long-lost soul mate.

“I tracked your father down because of his work. His true work is remarkable. I wanted to be the one to discover him; I wanted the credit, if I’m honest,” Frasier said, smiling. “But when I found him, he was a wreck. He had no one, he didn’t care what happened next. I only had to look at him to see he didn’t have much time left if he carried on the way he was. I took a risk, a gamble. I paid for him to get medical help and the support he needed to become clean, hoping that if he survived I’d get my chance at discovering him after all. So I’m not quite as noble as you might imagine.”

“He respects you, though,” Rose said. “I can see that, despite how he grumbles and moans around you. What you say and think mean a lot to him, although he’d never admit it.”

“And I respect him too,” Frasier answered. “I do finally think, under all the bluster, that we are friends now, after all these years. I care about the man. If it was up to me I wouldn’t have him painting like there’s no tomorrow for big business and greeting card companies. As much as he likes to imply that it’s me who makes him do it, I never have. The truth is it’s easier for him to pretend I’m the heartless commercial dealer cracking the whip. In reality he insists on doing the big-money work and refuses to let me see his ‘real’ work.”

“But why?” Rose asked him, intrigued, forgetting for a moment
whom she was talking to. “That doesn’t sound like the man I knew at all. Although to be fair I barely know him at all now.”

Although she knew him a good deal better today than ever before, Rose supposed, thinking of the way that John had quietly squeezed her shoulder as she had left with Frasier, a sign of what they both hoped would become a new bond between them, a connection that, despite everything, they could both now admit that they wanted.

“I . . .” Frasier hesitated as he considered Rose’s question, and whatever he was thinking remained unsaid. “He has his reasons. Perhaps he’s lost confidence in his private work; perhaps it’s just too painful to show. I do hope that one day he will change his mind, because he really is an amazing man, not just an artist. Which I know must sound a little trite, considering what you’ve been through largely because of him.”

“Not trite,” Rose said. “I suppose it’s not impossible to be amazing in some parts of your life and terrible in others. I hope he
is
an amazing man, I hope he
is
redeemable, because if he is then I will be able to forgive him.” Rose looked out across the lake, her brow knitted briefly in concern. “I told him that I would never be able to forgive him—to hurt him, I think—and yet he accepted it as if that was the way it should be. And yet now I find I would like nothing more. Nothing more than to be free of all those years of anger.”

A waitress arrived with their starters and refreshed their wine, as the sun began to sink slowly behind the crest of the mountain, setting fire to ripples in the almost still lake.

“So tell me about you, your life, your husband, Maddie, everything,” Frasier said warmly, leaning forward a little, eager to hear all about her.

Rose sat back a little in her chair, unprepared for that
question and reluctant to answer it, to bring even the mention of Richard into this idyllic setting. And yet she couldn’t pretend he didn’t exist.

“Well . . . I’ve actually recently separated from my husband,” Rose said a little awkwardly. “I’ve left him, I mean. For good.”

It occurred to her that Frasier might well think that taking a married woman out to dinner was one thing, but to take out a recently separated, newly single woman was quite another. And besides, Rose was very afraid that at some point he would guess the real reason she came to Millthwaite was to find him. That was something he could never know.

“Oh, no.” Frasier looked genuinely sorry. “That’s awful.”

“Actually,” Rose said, lifting her chin in unconscious defiance, “it’s a good thing.” She struggled to sum up her marriage in a way that wouldn’t frighten or shock Frasier. “We weren’t . . . compatible anymore. He didn’t cheat or anything, and neither did I. Just . . . he wasn’t a person I could be with anymore.”