‘Then, well …’ Her voice trails off and I can only hear soft breathing. ‘Then I guess I got busy and she grew up. She moved out. I invited her to come and stay with me but Rose was not much into travel. She was very much a homebody. Even as a teenager.’
I think about her neat little place. Felix was right: it could have belonged to a grandmother.
‘Why did you feel guilty about leaving her? She was always going to stay with her father, I assume?’ I emphasise the word ‘father’ to see if it sparks any response.
‘Oh well, I don’t know. A young girl alone with just boys. Especially those boys. I suppose Marcus was okay. The others could be a bit predatory—just the age they were at, I think, but I still worried for her. Her father was useless.’ There’s a flash of malice in Lila’s words, a bitterness.
‘Useless in what way?’
Lila sighs. ‘Look, nothing that bad, nothing that is really notable. In fact, it’s so textbook it’s embarrassing.’
‘Textbook?’ I venture.
‘Oh, you know, pretty young childless woman falls for handsome, rich widower with lots of children. I was basically Maria in The Sound of Music. Or at least George wanted me to be.’
‘But that didn’t suit you?’
‘No! And I told him before we were married that I was very serious about my career. I think he just hoped my maternal instincts would kick in.’
‘But they didn’t.’ There’s a fierceness about Lila. I imagine her and a younger George Ryan fighting. I’m sure it would have been something to witness.
‘Not really. Perhaps a little with Rose. Like I said, she did win me over, but I’m not made for motherhood.’ Lila pauses and her prim voice cracks slightly. ‘She did get under my skin though. She was quite a magnetic child, quite unusual. I found myself wanting to look after her. I worried about her but I don’t quite know why. I think it really bothered George, actually.’
‘When did you last speak to Rose?’
She clears her throat delicately and there’s a tissue involved; I can hear it rustling. ‘That’s really why I called you back. We spoke last week. We used to speak every few months or so. She seemed uncharacteristically chatty. Happy. We talked about her play—she called me just before the final rehearsal. From the school, I think. She was incredibly excited about it.’
‘Was that all?’
‘No, no. She also told me that she’d met someone.’
‘Like a boyfriend?’
‘Yes, yes, a boyfriend. Someone who she said she was very serious about. But she seemed nervous. She wouldn’t actually tell me anything about him.’
‘You asked?’
‘Of course I asked! She and I are close when we do talk, but she doesn’t usually share things like that with me. I was happy for her. She sounded very keen on him, but when I asked her his name, what he did—you know, the normal things—she was very cagey.’ Lila lets out a little sob. ‘The poor man must be beside himself, whoever he is. I suppose you have spoken to him?’
I tap my fingers on my desk. Someone has put the cricket on and there is a rumble from the crowd as a wicket is taken. I still can’t see Felix anywhere. ‘We’ve been in contact with all of her friends and family,’ I tell Lila neutrally. ‘Did Rose say anything else?’
‘Just that they were going to move in together in the new year. She said they had it all worked out.’
Chapter Thirty
then
Letters shook across the page. I tried to reread the words, tried to take them in, but it was as if they had turned into numbers. It was my last exam. The summer stretched out in front of me, bleak and empty. Someone had forgotten to wake the sun. Jacob had called me just like he said he would and we’d spoken like we always had, about school, his job, my dad and The X-Files, but there was a fault line now, a dangerous shaft that we tiptoed around, in case it gave way and we found ourselves falling. Something was wrong with him but I didn’t know what and I didn’t know how to ask. I was too busy with my own grief.
Dad wanted to take me out for dinner later that night, to celebrate his little girl finally finishing school. ‘You did it,’ he’d said earlier that morning, but I knew he’d really meant, You made it, because once you have met grief so bluntly you expect it to appear at random, snatching away the things that you have carefully rebuilt, the things that keep you alive. Dad’s fear of my dying had loomed over us ever since Mum had gone, hidden in every innocent ‘Be careful’ or ‘Call me if you need to’.
Dad knew that something wasn’t quite right between Jacob and me but I’d brushed it away, blaming the exams and our shift into adulthood. He left it alone, glad not to have to navigate the choppy waters of emotion.
I only had twenty minutes left. I looked at the lines of writing—so many words. I couldn’t remember what I’d written but I had to trust that my brain knew the answers, that my hands had directed the pen to write down the right words. The questions pulsed at me from the exam paper. How real do you think Romeo and Juliet’s love is? Explain your answer in the context of the era in which they lived.
Tears welled in my eyes and I tipped my head backwards slightly to stop them brimming over. I looked around the room. Everyone else was bent over their desks, writing furiously. Kevin Whitby dropped his pen and it rattled noisily onto the floor. One of the adjudicators curled her lip, annoyed, before marching over to pick it up. Rosalind’s long hair spilled past her shoulder a few rows in front of me. A small shaft of sunlight from a ceiling window hit her hair and it gleamed more golden than usual. Just finish this, I thought, just finish.
Ignoring the endless, tedious summer in front of me, I started to write again, making the case that the love between Shakespeare’s two young characters was indeed real, so real that it transcended the reality that had previously seemed so solid to them both, right up to the day before they met. It’s real, I wrote, because it quickly becomes everything, and the thought of it being taken away makes them feel like they would be left with nothing at all.
Chapter Thirty-one
Friday, 18 December, 3.46 pm
At check-in I’m recounting my conversation with Lila Wilcox when Jonesy appears. The air in the station is hot and musky, the twin fans gallantly pushing it back and forth above our heads. My shirt feels damp across my back. Felix still isn’t here; he texted me to say that he is following up something to do with Rosalind’s finances and will fill me in later.
‘So who is this mystery man, Woodstock?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’
Jonesy snorts. ‘You must have some ideas, surely?’