‘Oh my God!’ said Will. ‘The outdoor activities week in Year Eleven!’
Oh yes. Will and Caz were in school together. They even had a bit of a fling at one time. About the time that picture was taken, long before I knew either of them.
Actually it was quite a funny photo. They must have been sixteen years old and on an outdoor week in the Yorkshire Dales – all climbing, canoeing and gorge walking. Caz was wearing one of those enormous geek-like cagoules. But she had the full make-up on – three different shades of eye shadow, blusher and lip gloss. Never a girl to let her standards slip is Caz.
In the picture she was gazing adoringly up at Will. Jamie snatched the photo from him. ‘I bet you were hell for the teachers,’ he said – and he should know, he teaches in the local comp – ‘sneaking off to the canoe store for a quick snog. They all do.’
Caz and Will looked at each other very quickly and almost blushed.
Caz grinned. ‘Thank goodness you don’t choose your life partners at sixteen,’ she said. ‘Bad enough working with you, Will, let alone having to live with you. Don’t know how Rosie manages it.’
‘With difficulty sometimes,’ I said, laughing. But I felt a small pang. I had fallen for Will the moment I’d arrived at The News, where he was already a senior reporter. He had to show me around on the first day and I knew, just knew, that he was the one for me. We were both slightly involved with other people at the time and as soon as we untangled ourselves, that was it. We were an item. It was as if we had always been together.
But we hadn’t. And Caz had known him since they were eleven years old. They had a past, experiences, memories, daft jokes I couldn’t share. And sometimes, just sometimes, I felt a twinge … of jealousy, I suppose. Silly. He was with me now.
Jamie and Will started playing on the PlayStation.
‘What about Leo and Jake then?’ asked Caz, passing me some wine. ‘I bet that will be a brilliant day.’
I laughed and started to say something to Will, but he was still gazing at that bloody television.
‘Look, Will, you’ve only just got your new car,’ I said. ‘That’s a nice new toy for now.’
‘Well, you’re the one who wanted to go to New York.’
‘And you’re the one who spent a fortune in Nieman Marcus,’ I snapped back. ‘How many cashmere sweaters does one man need?’ A bit of a cheek coming from me, I know, being no slouch in the cashmere sweater department myself.
Things were getting snippy.
‘Children, children,’ said Jamie. You can just hear him with Year Seven, though at school he probably wouldn’t have the lager can in his hand.
‘Have you not thought,’ Jamie went on, ‘that perhaps if you didn’t buy new cars and fly halfway across the world for a long weekend and a shopping habit, you might just be able to buy a bigger flat, or even a nice little house? Unless, of course, you don’t really want to. And your subconscious is telling you to spend your money on fun and toys instead of being grown-up and sensible and salting it away for your future.
‘Strange, isn’t it,’ he went on, ‘that the only people in our group who are getting married are Leo and Jake? Takes a pair of gays to set the rest of us loose-living reprobates a good example.’
‘Me, I don’t see the point of being married,’ said Caz. ‘We’re fine as we are, aren’t we sweetie?’ she said, patting Jamie’s knee. ‘We don’t need a posh frock and a piece of paper. It might be different if we wanted kids, I suppose. But Jamie sees enough of kids in work. He doesn’t want to come home to them as well.’
‘But what about you?’ I asked.
‘Not a maternal bone in my body,’ she laughed. ‘Anyway I’d be an absolute disaster as a mum. I’d probably leave the poor little bugger’s pram outside the pub. No, my unborn baby should be very grateful to me for keeping it that way.’
Jamie looked baffled. ‘I always thought girls wanted to get married. You know, waiting for their knight in shining armour to come along and sweep them off their feet, rescue them from dragons.’
‘We can fight our own dragons, thank you,’ I said.
‘See?’ said Jamie laughing to Will. ‘This lot have made us redundant. Out of work dragon-slayers, park your charger and hang up your plumed helmet.’
‘Yeah, well,’ said Will, now quite drunk and getting stroppy, ‘maybe Leo and Jake have got something to prove. They want to settle down and play houses.’
Then, just like that, as if it wasn’t really that important at all, he dropped the bombshell that nearly destroyed my world.
‘As for me,’ said Will, ‘there’s not much point in tying myself to a house if I’m not going to be around long.’
I was so shocked I gasped, as if he’d hit me. ‘What do you mean? Where are you going?’
‘Well, nowhere at the moment. But I might do,’ he said, looking sideways at me. ‘I might go out to work in Dubai, or somewhere. Mate of mine out there says they always want English journos. Plenty of money, easy lifestyle.’
Dubai? This was the first I’d heard of it. ‘And is that what you want? Plenty of money and an easy lifestyle?’ I snapped.
‘Well, it’s what we all want really, isn’t it?’ he said, taking a gulp from his can and sprawling back into the armchair.
I was furious. I was also drunk, which didn’t help. And stunned. I had thought Will and I were pretty solid. Maybe even permanent. Wrong!
‘Look, Rosie,’ he put down his can, ‘I just mean …’
He was probably trying to be conciliatory. I wasn’t.
‘Forget it,’ I snapped.
‘Coffee?’ said Caz, very brightly. Just like the perfect hostess, only she staggered a bit and fell onto Jamie’s lap, which spoiled the effect.
‘No, no, I don’t want coffee,’ I said, angry and flustered and utterly wrong-bloody-footed, ‘I think I want to go home.’ I marched out into the hall, wriggled my feet into my boots and left.
Will came after me, and I didn’t know if I was pleased or not. I could hear his footsteps but he said nothing. His long legs meant he soon caught me up. He walked alongside me, matching his steps to mine, looking straight ahead. And we walked like that, side by side in silence all the way to the flat. My flat.
As soon as we got in, I turned to him. ‘Are you really going to Dubai?’
‘Who knows?’ he shrugged. ‘It’s just a thought, an option, a possibility.’
‘But what about me?’
‘Well you can come too, if you like.’ He hunched his hands into his pockets.
‘If I like? If I like? You make me sound like an optional extra! I thought we had a future together.’
‘Did you? Did you really?’ Those big brown eyes flashed and I didn’t like it.
‘And if you think we have a future together,’ he said, ‘why is it that all I ever hear is what you want? You want to work in London. You want the bigger flat. You bought the bigger sofa, without even mentioning it to me. You pay the bills and just tell me how much to cough up. Fine, fine it’s your flat after all, as you keep reminding me.’
I was stunned. ‘I don’t feel like that. I thought …’
‘What did you think? Come on, tell me, I really want to know.’
‘I was frightened,’ I said. ‘I didn’t want to be dependent on you.’
‘Why