I couldn’t speak, and it was so like her to do what she did next. She didn’t say another word and as though it were the most natural thing in the world she walked over to me and hugged me. Such an instinctively kind thing to do, I’ve never forgotten it. I cried and cried until the shoulder of her white coat was sodden and bit by bit she got it all out of me.
‘Beth, I’m so very sorry,’ she said, and I could tell that she was. Someone tried to come in but she put her foot against the door and said in a grand sort of voice, ‘This one’s taken, thank you very much. Try the next one!’ and then she winked at me and I laughed. She talked so much sense that morning, she was so gentle and comforting. ‘Listen, my love,’ she said, ‘I know things feel very, very bleak right now, but you will be a lovely mum one day, I know you will. You’re still so very young. In a year, or two years, things will look different, you’ll see.’ The words would have sounded like platitudes on anyone else’s lips, and I suppose they were, but nevertheless they did help because I could tell she meant them, and having someone like her saying them did make me feel less hopeless about it all.
After that day, whenever I passed her in the wards, or saw her in the canteen or the tea room or whatever, she would make a point of stopping me, to ask how I was and put a hand on my arm. It was nice, supportive – I didn’t feel any better about my situation, but I did feel less alone.
And then something entirely unexpected happened that solidified our friendship – or our connection, I suppose you’d call it – even further. Because I had grown used to looking out for her, taking special notice when she was on shift at the same time as me, a few months later when I was back on the paediatric ward I noticed a change in her. She’d always taken such good care of her appearance – beautifully cut and coloured hair, lovely make-up, nice clothes – but suddenly she seemed to let herself go entirely. She’d turn up to work looking haggard and ill, her clothes crumpled, her face lined with tiredness, as though she hadn’t slept in days. There was clearly something very wrong, but I felt too shy to ask – it would have seemed too forward, I think.
A few weeks later, however, I came across her in the Ladies. I was washing my hands at the sink when she came out of one of the cubicles, her eyes red and raw as though she’d been crying. ‘Oh,’ I said before I could stop myself, ‘Rose, are you all right?’
She went to a sink as though she hadn’t heard me, and then stared down at the running water without moving. I didn’t know what to do. After a while I put a hand on her arm. ‘Rose? Is there anything the matter? Can I help?’
She looked up, as though she hadn’t known I was there. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘oh, Beth. I’m – no – I’m fine,’ but then she started to cry.
‘Rose, what’s happened?’ I said.
She waved me away. ‘No, no, please, don’t be kind. Please, I couldn’t bear it.’ She pulled a hand towel from the dispenser and put it to her face, then gave a half laugh through her tears. ‘Ridiculous. I can’t seem to stop crying. Oh please ignore me, Beth, you’re very kind. It’s just I have no one to talk to, no one at all.’
‘But I’m sure you have lots of friends,’ I said, surprised.
‘Oh yes,’ she agreed dispiritedly. ‘I’m very lucky.’ And then she whispered, ‘I just feel so ashamed.’
‘Well you could tell me,’ I coaxed, ‘I wouldn’t tell anyone.’
It was then that she broke down and began to cry as though her heart was broken. ‘Oh, Beth, it’s such an awful mess.’
On impulse I put my arms around her, just as she had done to me all those weeks before. ‘What am I going to do?’ she said. ‘What on earth am I going to do?’
And then she told me what was wrong, how Oliver had confessed to having an affair with one of his students at the university. ‘She’s nineteen,’ Rose said. ‘Nineteen! He said it just happened, that it got out of control, that he’d tried to end it but she became obsessed with him. He says she’s unstable, that he hadn’t realized how fragile she is and that … that he’s sorry, and …’ she broke down again, too distraught to go on.
‘Oh,’ I whispered. ‘Oh Rose, I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s all so sordid,’ she cried, ‘so humiliating. How could he do it to us, Beth? To me and Emily? How could he?’
I don’t think she meant to tell me so much. I think it was like a dam breaking, that it was a relief to confide in someone. She said she couldn’t face anyone finding out, her family, her friends, I think she only talked to me because I was so removed from her personal life. And people have always said I’m a good listener, perhaps she felt safe unloading it all on me. Eventually she stopped crying. ‘I have to go,’ she said. ‘I’m due to see a patient any minute.’ She took a gulp of breath and dried her eyes, but she looked so hopeless still, so crushed.
‘Do you want to meet for coffee tomorrow?’ I asked her. ‘We could go somewhere in town, if you like, away from the hospital, I mean.’
I wanted her to see that she could trust me, that I’d keep her secret, that nobody from work would find out. I thought she was going to turn me down but to my surprise she looked at me gratefully, ‘Are you sure?’
After that, we fell into the habit of meeting up once a week or so. We’d go for coffee in an out-of-the-way place in town, or sometimes I’d go to her lovely house, The Willows, when Oliver wasn’t in. We were unlikely friends, but friends we became. I honestly think I was the only person in the world she could talk to. And I thought how strange and sad life is, that someone like Rose with all the grand and important friends she must have, had only me, a near stranger, to confide in. How different people are, aren’t they, from how they first appear? I tried my best to comfort her because I felt so sorry for her. She told me that she wanted to forgive Oliver, that he knew he’d made a horrible mistake, that he regretted everything.
‘Can you forgive him, though?’ I asked, surprised. I tried to think how I would feel if it were Doug cheating on me. I didn’t think I would be able to get past it, to be honest, not if we had a baby.
A strange expression came over her face and suddenly she didn’t look quite so vulnerable any more. In fact, she looked quite fierce. ‘I will not let that bitch destroy my family,’ she said, and she sort of spat the words at me and I remember being shocked. ‘I will not let that happen,’ she said.
A week or so later she came looking for me on the ward. She looked dreadful, I could tell something was very wrong. She pulled me into an empty office, her face deathly white. ‘She’s pregnant, Beth,’ she said. ‘Nadia. The girl my husband has been fucking.’
I’ll never forget her saying that word. I’d never heard her swear before, she just wasn’t the type. But she said it with such bitterness, such venom. My hand flew to my mouth. ‘Oh no!’
‘She’s due in two months!’ she cried. ‘Two months! Oliver said he’s only known a month, that he couldn’t face telling me before, but he’s lying, of course. And now she’s started calling the house. She won’t leave us alone. She said that unless he leaves me for her, she’ll tell everyone about their affair.’ She shook her head in dismay. ‘His career will be over, Beth, we’ll have to leave, everyone will find out at the hospital – everyone will know. All our friends and colleagues and family … oh, Beth, what shall I do? Everything, our lovely life, our lovely family, it will all be ruined! It will be so humiliating, so utterly humiliating.’