When are you home? Rose asked.
Depends how long work lets me off for compassionate leave.
They gave you that because of the break-up?
No, I told them someone died.
I think you should probably stop doing that.
Rose was hoping for a laughter-face emoji. But nothing came. The ticks turned blue and Luce went offline.
They had only ever had one argument. It was when she’d just been dumped by Ed, and Luce was spending every night in the flat with George. Rose had politely mentioned a couple of times that she found it hard being around the two of them all the time but, as Luce eventually pointed out mid-argument, this was her flat and she could bring anyone she wanted to it. Things between them blew up one night when Rose came home crying because she had found out that Ed had a new girlfriend, and Luce asked her to spend the evening in her room because George was coming round to celebrate their anniversary. It turned into a vicious argument, with Rose accusing Luce of prioritising her relationship over their friendship and Luce accusing Rose of being self-absorbed.
Rose tried to point out that she paid rent to live there and it was her space, too, but after a while she couldn’t even bother arguing. It was ultimately Luce’s flat. And she was lucky she only charged her £500 a month (around half of what the room was worth). The fact they hadn’t argued since was less about neither of them doing anything to piss the other off, it was more that the power dynamic between them had silenced Rose into submission whenever an issue arose. If Luce did or said something that annoyed her, it was easier to let it slide. And when roles were reversed, Rose would just apologise first and all would be resolved. This time felt like an exception.
Rose took a deep breath and un-archived the ‘Give her a shot, she’s tying the knot’ group, scrolling for what felt like ten minutes until she reached the first message.
HEY GALS, thought I’d get this started finally. As you know, our darling Pips is getting married in September, and as Maid of Honour/Chief Bridesmaid, I’ve been tasked with arranging her HEN! THAT’S RIGHT, OUR FIRST HEN IS UPON US!
Save 15th July in your diaries immediately. Location is Pippy’s mum’s place aka ‘the chat-veux’. Will be overnight. Personalised PJs.
Please let me know ASAP if you can’t come so I can fill your spot. And transfer £250 to me by Monday so I can start organising food etc.
LOTS OF LOVE,
JD xxxxxx
The first bolt of anxiety came when Rose realised she hadn’t paid. The second came when she saw Jessie had named and shamed her for this. The third came when she saw Jessie had done so again. Rose quickly started tapping out a message.
So sorry guys, have missed a lot. Yes, I’ll be there. Paying you now, Jessie. Let me know what else I can bring.
Jessie started typing and a link to a Google spreadsheet appeared. Rose opened it on her phone, there were multiple tabs: FRIDAY, SATURDAY, SUNDAY, MISCELLANEOUS, PACKING LIST, GROUP RULES. Rose looked at as much of it as she could without accidentally typing something erroneous into one of the cells. The level of detail was impressive. Jessie had planned every moment, even down to appetite maintenance (SATURDAY: 12.45–13.45/MAX 14.00: A LIGHT LUNCH BUT DON’T EAT TOO MUCH BECAUSE WE HAVE TEA! SUGGESTED TO EAT AT 60% CAPACITY).
Thanks guys, she replied. Can’t wait.
Rose flicked her thumb up and right to close WhatsApp. She tapped on Instagram. The app opened on a new post from Milo: a photograph of a plant in black and white that she recognised from the apartment last night. She must have unblocked and followed him when she got home last night, either to send an angry message or passive aggressively like all his posts.
Thankfully, she’d done neither of those things.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ she whispered to herself.
Her finger hovered over the ‘Message’ button. She knew contacting Milo now would only make her feel worse. She knew that he would almost certainly not read it, let alone reply. And then Rose would turn her phone off, dig out the pasta that had been in the fridge for the better part of a week, and eat it while googling ways to work off the calories in pasta in thirty minutes.
But still she found herself writing the message, unable to stop her fingers as she typed. Hey, nice/weird to see you last night. Sorry, I was a bit drunk. How are you?
Sent. Rose deleted the conversation from her inbox so that she could not un-send the message. She put her phone on Airplane mode and walked over to the fridge.
Rose only ever thought about her father when she was tired. Mostly, it happened on days like this, when she’d been out late the night before and had too much to drink. In this case, there was the added bonus of the large quantity of cocaine working its way through her system, which was slowly attacking every last blip of serotonin she possessed. Now she’d finished work and distraction was harder to come by, it wasn’t Milo she was thinking about, it was the handful of memories she’d retained about Richard. Scenes projected themselves in her head, with different faces taking the role of her father each time. Sometimes he was a scruffy short man in need of a shave, his eyes dilated and elsewhere. Other times, he was a tall, suited business executive who talked with his hands. He’d left them at an odd time. No six-year-old knows who they’ll become as an adult. But their development will be starting, personalities and traits taking form despite still being, quite objectively, a very small and helpless human, an innocent flimsy thing that needs and depends upon both of its parents. Lola had destroyed every last piece of evidence of Richard’s existence after he’d left, leaving Rose to fill in the blanks with her imagination. She didn’t even know his last name.
Lola had once invited a group of friends around to vandalise the clothes he’d left behind. Rose could remember sucking on a strawberry Frube on the toilet seat while her mother and three other women poured red wine onto white shirts they’d piled up in the bath. There was one suit she could remember Lola saying Richard loved. Something about it being from Armani and belonging to his father. Rose recalled seeing one of her mother’s friends hacking at it with a pair of gardening scissors, gleefully distributing pieces among the other women who swiftly threw them out of the bedroom window. And so they disposed of her father, blithely waving goodbye to all of his parts, leaving each piece of fabric to flutter aimlessly around London until it found somewhere to settle.
Rose was well-versed in all the clichés – women whose fathers had abandoned them were forever plagued by feelings of low self-worth and replicated that abandonment in their romantic relationships yada yada yada – and she hated that it all applied to her. She also hated that she couldn’t watch Mrs. Doubtfire without hysterically sobbing. And that The Parent Trap was out of the question. Even Taken was a bit much.
All Lola had ever told Rose about Richard, besides how they met, was that he’d left the country. And that he’d probably moved somewhere with turtles because of his ‘stupid childish obsession with fucking turtles’. To this day, if Lola saw anything turtle-related on TV or otherwise, she’d immediately launch into some sort of nonsensical diatribe against them: ‘Cowards of the animal kingdom!’ was one phrase she often returned to.
Whenever Rose tried to push for more information about Richard, Lola would change the subject or find an excuse to leave the room. She had become an expert in the practice of avoiding all things Richard in the way one probably has to when someone shatters your entire world. It was for these reasons that Rose had never told Lola about the time she thought she’d seen him. It couldn’t have been him, of course, because not only are there no turtles in London, or presumably rather few, but Rose could barely remember what Richard even looked like – any photos had been lost to Lola’s coven. There was just something about the man’s face. It must have been 2014. She was waiting outside a Pret near Luce’s office to meet her for lunch when she noticed a man across the road with his arm wrapped around a much younger woman. His head was rolling back as he laughed and puffed on a cigarette with his free hand. It wasn’t that his face looked familiar, although there was a slight ridge on his nose exactly where Rose had hers. It was the moment he turned to kiss the woman and then just as quickly turned away, his expression changing from one of elation to exasperation. It was as though the joy Rose had just seen left him all at once, if only for a moment. It was only a flash. Because seconds later, the woman said something that made him laugh again. But Rose recognised it immediately. It was a routine she had performed many times.
The most fully formed memory she had of her father didn’t really involve him at all; his absence was integral to what happened. It was just before he left for good. Lola had gone to Ibiza on a yoga retreat for the week, so it had been Rose and Richard at home. He would try to tie her hair into a high ponytail for school. But it would be so messy, with bits poking out everywhere, that Rose would untie it when she got out of the car and do it again herself. She never had the heart to tell him he had done it wrong.
That week, Rose remembered feeling like more of a thing on Richard’s to-do list than his daughter. They’d walk the supermarket aisles for ready meals that she could microwave herself for dinner while he went out. There was macaroni cheese and hamburger and chips. But Rose’s favourite was the tuna bake. It was the easiest one not to burn in the microwave.
Richard had gone out for the evening, leaving Rose and her tuna bake alone for a few hours. It was 9 p.m. and Richard was supposed to be home at 8.30 p.m. Rose tried to call him on the house phone but couldn’t work out how to use it. She sat on the sofa and waited. Her mind started to race, wondering where her dad had gone. She worried that he might have been run over. How would Mum cope? How would she cope? Would this mean she would have to leave school? How would she tell people that her father had died? And then it became difficult to breathe. The air around her felt more dense, too thick to inhale. She felt desperate. The more she tried, the harder it became to catch her breath. She started to make sounds. Not shouting, because that didn’t quite work. What came out was a sort of quiet yelp. Rose had dug her fingernails into the sofa either side of her legs, closed her eyes and prepared to die. Then she had felt someone grab her by the shoulders and she was in her father’s arms, his heart beating against her cheek. Her breath returned and Rose opened her eyes.
‘What happened?’ she asked Richard.
‘I don’t know. I just came home and found you like this. Are you okay?’
‘I think so,’ she replied. ‘It felt like I was dying.’
‘You’re not dying,’ Richard said, his breath a mix of spirits and cigarettes. ‘It will be all right. I’m here.’
And he was. For another week.
The comedown lasted for days. Rose would force herself out of bed, sit at her desk in silence for eight hours, pausing only to use the toilet or heat up some soup, and then come home, stare at her phone for a few hours on the sofa, and then do the same from bed. She tried ordering new bedsheets online but whenever she got to the payment part she always managed to talk herself out of spending the money. She’d tried calling Luce a few times but there was no answer. The only thing she achieved in those few days was racking up a dangerous number of hours of screen time, many of which were spent staring at her Instagram inbox. No, he hadn’t messaged her.
By Friday evening, she was in urgent need of company. So she rang Lola.
‘Hello, darling!’
