‘You don’t have to justify it to me, I get it. Those earlier moments with him keep you clinging onto hope. So every time he does or says anything cruel, you remember this is the man you fell in love with. And you just wait for him to return.’
‘Exactly. It keeps you going back.’
Two women in their mid-forties burst into the bathroom.
‘Vodka martinis just flood through me!’ yelled one in a shrill voice, rushing into a cubicle.
‘God, yes, me too,’ barked the other, turning to look at Rose and Clara. ‘Oh, hang on a minute, aren’t you that Instagram woman?’
Clara smiled and stretched her hand out. ‘Hello. My name is Clara.’
‘That’s right! Cara’s Cosmic!’ the woman replied, ignoring Clara’s lingering hand. ‘Oh, my daughter adores you. Can I please take a selfie for her?’
Clara quickly looked at herself in the mirror and then at Rose; she hadn’t finished applying her make-up and, frankly, her eyes still looked like they’d just been weeping.
‘Actually …’
‘She’s not doing photos right now. Sorry,’ said Rose, sticking her hand out to her. ‘Hi, I’m Rose Martin, Clara’s publicist.’
‘Oh, right,’ the woman snorted, limply shaking Rose’s hand. ‘You lot have publicists now, do you? What a shame.’
‘You didn’t have to do that,’ Clara whispered when the two women finally walked out.
‘It’s okay. She didn’t even know your name. Hardly a fan,’ she replied.
‘Thank you, Rose.’
‘You’re welcome.’
An hour after they said their goodbyes, Rose received an email from Fraser.
All in for £3,000. Deal?
Sent from my iPhone. Please excuse typos.
Minnie managed to get the extra budget from Commercial. When she asked Rose how she managed to negotiate the fee down, she explained they had a lot in common, which made her realise it was true. Rose started following @cosmoclara when she got home.
Later that evening, Rose sat on the sofa with a bowl of buttery pasta and opened the dating app. She smiled when she saw Jake had replied to her last message with several long ones. They had moved on from favourite films and meals to which family members they liked the most and which they liked the least. Jake had sent her a paragraph about his great uncle Geoffrey’s penchant for full fat cream and how he secretly put it in his cornflakes every morning when his wife wasn’t looking.
It was a distraction. But it wasn’t enough to stop Rose from regularly checking up on Milo’s Instagram through her new account, which had clearly sent some kind of alert to Silicon Valley because the entire Explore page was filled with photos and videos of him from fan pages, which posted daily updates based on sightings. Occasionally they shared old red carpet photos, fawning over his boyish grin and poorly judged outfits. Mostly, though, they were blurry photos that people had presumably taken surreptitiously, in which he was usually either exercising, eating, or walking with a friend. They could not be less interesting. Rose was aware of this – and still, she had become addicted to checking them several times a day, inhaling every detail she could.
Of course, when Milo wasn’t on her phone, he was singing a song on the radio in the corner shop, fronting a billboard as she crossed the road on her way to work, or being furiously discussed by a group of teenage girls on the bus. Milo was everywhere and nowhere all at the same time. And the more of him Rose absorbed, the further away her memory of that night felt. Had it not been for the fact that her bed still had no sheets on it, she’d wonder if it even happened at all.
There was a big difference, Rose had learned, between voluntarily looking for information about Milo, and stumbling across it unsolicited. When she was looking at fan accounts, the content fed something in her, regardless of how banal it was. And when she discovered something new, she could feel it spike her adrenaline. Her appetite for all of it was insatiable. When she came across Milo without expecting to, though, it elicited something else entirely. Rose had got better at controlling her breath and stopping herself from hyperventilating, mostly because she didn’t want to have another panic attack in public. But it required conscious effort. Like she was having to rewire something in her brain to prevent it from going down a certain neural pathway. One that made her want to run into an empty field and scream into the wind until every organ split open.
When Jake suggested they meet for a drink, Rose sighed with relief. She proposed the World’s End pub in Camden. It was on the Northern Line – easy for both her and Jake, who would be coming from East Finchley. A pub was always a safe bet on a first date. Sometimes there were even candles in wine bottles on the tables, which Rose always thought was romantic in a kitsch Richard Curtis kind of way.
After confirming a time with Jake – 7.30 p.m. – Rose put her phone on Airplane mode and tried to nap. She plaited her hair so that it wouldn’t frizz, applied some lip balm, wriggled herself underneath the duvet and closed her eyes. It would have been a great time to meditate if this was something Rose knew how to do. Instead, she lay there and allowed her mind to slowly drift herself into a deep, but efficient, sleep. It worked for around ninety seconds. She tried to stay still a little longer but she kept returning to the empty beach. It was the same as always, except this time she was walking towards the water. She stepped into it, feeling the damp sand squelching in between her toes as she moved deeper until every part of her was underneath the waves. There was a lightness to her new underwater form that, defying gravity, was still standing upright. She found peace, succumbing to the stillness of it all, the way that her body was no longer something in her control. It wasn’t hers or anyone else’s. At that moment, it belonged to the sea. After a few seconds, she tried to swim back up to the surface. But suddenly a weight was holding her down. She kicked harder and faster, reaching with her arms as the little air she had escaped. Everything in her body tightened with panic as she moved more frantically, the water filling her body until it wasn’t a body at all but a dark solid mass, indistinguishable from everything else. Then the scene turned into something different. She was with Milo. The memories of their night together playing out scene by scene. His body pressed against hers, the water of the ocean now compressed onto a single tongue, wet and slippery as it slithered up and down her neck. Slowly at first, then so quickly it felt as if her entire body was drowning in his.
When Rose woke up, she was hyperventilating, her body soaked with sweat. She clutched the mattress and closed her eyes until she could take a full breath without gasping.
It was 6 p.m. by the time Rose had calmed down enough to start getting ready for the date. She didn’t want to wear anything that would remind her of Milo, which meant no flares and no slogan T-shirts. So she opted for a T-shirt dress she’d bought in a Free People sale that skimmed her thighs, her favourite pair of chunky loafers, and the polka-dot black tights that Lola bought her last year for her birthday. Then, to balance out the proportions, an oversized black leather jacket on top.
Make-up took the longest, mostly because Rose hardly ever wore it and, as a result, didn’t really know how to apply it. But it felt like something she should try tonight. Jake would appreciate it; it was also an opportunity to try out that four-part eyeshadow palette she’d brought home from the beauty cupboard.
With no brush, Rose used the pad of her ring finger to smudge some of the burnt orange shade across one eyelid. She stared at her reflection, looking back at the type of woman she could be. A woman who wore such ostentatious eyeshadow sent a clear message to the world about who she was. A woman louder, bolder and braver than Rose. Someone who wore matching underwear and had sex so loudly she regularly received complaints from neighbours through her letterbox. She wiped it off with a make-up wipe and tried another shade: a deep purple that looked like a blend between a glass of Merlot and a moonlit sky in the summer. This colour reminded her of Lola. On the surface, it was pure, unadulterated drama. But if you look at anything for long enough you’ll often find something entirely different hiding beneath the surface. In this case, it was subtle shades of brown and black flecks of delicate glitter. A woman wearing this eyeshadow kept secrets, not just from others but also from herself. Another make-up wipe.
Blue next. This one reminded Rose of her childhood, when she and Luce would cover themselves in neon pots of eyeshadow they’d picked up in Claire’s Accessories. She still hadn’t replied to Luce’s voice note from last week, though surely nine minutes was more of a podcast. She made a mental note to reply tomorrow morning after the date.
This blue wasn’t quite as bright as the shade they would smear across their faces as teenagers. It was softer, as though the person wearing it didn’t have to try too hard. This woman was cool and therefore probably also European. Make-up wipe.
The fourth shade on the palette was gold. She had intentionally saved it until last, anticipating some sort of poetry to this being her final choice. Rose cleaned her finger with the wipe this time so as not to mix it with any of the previous shades. It was richer than the others, more velvety to the touch when she rubbed it onto her finger. She dabbled it across her eyelid slowly, noticing how bits of glitter fluttered down past her eye, settling onto her cheek with every pat. It looked even better on the second eye. Like her green eyes now appeared greener, her expression instantly enlivened. Whoever this woman was, she possessed an effortless confidence that Rose did not. But it was one she felt fit to try on for tonight. It was always good to try new things.
On the Tube, Rose tried to calm her nerves by opening a news app on her phone. This was, as it turned out, a very bad idea. The first four stories were all about the Grenfell Tower fire; the death toll had now reached fifty-two. The next stories were either follow-ups about the London Bridge terror attacks, or the Manchester Arena bombing that happened last month during an Ariana Grande concert – the terror threat had been ‘critical’ ever since. And the rest were about Brexit. The country was, quite literally, bursting into flames.
After clicking on the ‘Fashion and Lifestyle’ section, Rose found an article about ‘20 Feminist Slogan T-shirts to Buy Now’. The majority were variations of that famous Dior one (‘We Should All Be Feminists’) that, by now, had been praised just as much as it had been criticised. But a few political ones stood out, like the one that read: ‘THIS PUSSY GRABS BACK’. Rose saw it cost £150 and put her phone down. When the Tube reached Euston, she turned to see a woman step on board holding Milo’s face. It was taking up the entire back page of the Evening Standard. Tour promo.
The pub was busier than Rose had imagined whenever she’d thought about how the evening might play out. It would be hard to find any table, let alone one in the corner that looked romcom worthy. The lighting was also a little harsher than she’d have liked, meaning the spot she’d furiously covered up with three-year-old concealer would probably be visible under the glare of fluorescent lighting.
There was one seat free at the bar. Rose wriggled out of her leather jacket and hung it on the back of the high-top, mustard-yellow chair. She ordered herself a gin and tonic and told the barman she was just going to the bathroom. By some miracle, her make-up hadn’t faded at all during the journey. But even so, Rose decided to dampen a piece of toilet paper and dab underneath her eyes to make sure there were no mascara smudges. She blinked back at herself in the mirror a couple of times, pleased with the look she’d created. The gold eyeshadow really did bring out the green of her eyes.
It was now 7.27 p.m. Rose’s drink was waiting for her when she returned to her seat. She decided to wait another five minutes before messaging Jake. Perusing the pub, she saw that most people were in large groups. There were the indie-looking twentysomethings in black jeans and band T-shirts, talking enthusiastically about whichever act they were about to see that evening. There were the beer-belly dad types sneaking in a few pints before they went home. And there were a few corporate blokes in suits that looked wildly out of place. Rose was struck by the fact that the pub was almost entirely filled by men. Nothing anyone said was distinguishable, their booms overlapping one another as everyone talked over each other, forming one sound.
Hey, just arrived, Rose typed in a WhatsApp message to Jake. No seats annoyingly but have found a small spot at the bar. See you soon.
According to Jake’s WhatsApp status, he’d last been online at 7.24 p.m. This was a good sign. He was probably still on the Tube, she assumed, watching his name to see if he was about to come online. After a few seconds, she decided this was a bit weird and locked her phone, taking her first sip of the gin and tonic.
Rose continued to look around the pub, trying to work out if anyone else was waiting for a dating app date. When the thought of Jake standing her up entered her mind, she pushed it to one side. That was not happening tonight, she assured herself.
