‘No.’
‘No?’ Some of her old fire returned and Nick felt quietly satisfied, although he still knew that he was going to stay with her. At least until she was back to her full vitriolic self, trying to shoot him down in flames. He was fast discovering a masochistic streak in him he had never known existed.
‘Go sit…’ He waved in the direction of the lounge. ‘I’ll be five minutes.’
Less, in actual fact, as he decided to dispense with the tea-making and pour her a stiff drink instead. Much better for the nerves, he told himself.
‘It was just the shock of what you said,’ Rose greeted him defensively, half standing as he handed her the drink. ‘What’s this?’
‘An old family remedy for stressed nerves.’
She sniffed the glass. ‘Called?’
‘Vodka and a touch of whatever juice I happened to find in the fridge.’ He sat on the sofa by her and watched as she took a tentative mouthful. ‘Lily is actually contemplating turning down Damien’s offer if you find it too upsetting having her leave,’ Nick said quietly.
‘That would be mad.’ Rose looked at him and sipped a little more. ‘I can’t believe that you’ve been on the scene less than a month and our lives are being turned upside down.’
‘I wondered when you would get around to blaming me,’ Nick said coolly.
Rose, remembering how she had felt holding onto him and sobbing, cast him a baleful look. ‘I wasn’t blaming you. I was just making a passing remark.’ She had felt weak and helpless and protected and vulnerable, all things she had thought she had left behind when their parents had died and Tony and Flora had taken them in. For that alone, she felt resentful.
‘Ever thought that sometimes life is richer when you step out of your comfort zone?’
‘No,’ Rose said bluntly. ‘There was quite a bit of stepping out of comfort zones when I was young and I don’t remember any of it making my life feel any richer.’
‘Your aunt and uncle…’
‘Wandering the highways and byways. You try facing changes every six months and then tell me how great it is stepping out of comfort zones.’
‘But Lily may have something of the adventurer in her…’
Rose heard the affection in his voice and, yes, she could see why he felt protective towards her sister. Most people did. She had gentle, girlish, winning ways. For the first time in her life she felt a stab of pure, uncharitable jealousy, which made her draw her breath in sharply.
‘Yes, you’re right, she does,’ Rose said coolly. ‘And I don’t.’ Which made her a bore in his eyes because the women who peopled his life, the women he was drawn to, weren’t boring worker bees like her, they were the bright, sparkly, adventurous fireflies that flitted from light to light. ‘Now—’ she stood up ‘—I really would rather you weren’t here when Lily gets home. I want to have a talk with her in private and you needn’t worry that I’m going to do anything that might make her change her mind. I’m happy for her.’
Nick reluctantly rose to his feet. He had glimpsed through a little window of vulnerability and, strangely for him, because vulnerability wasn’t a character trait he found attractive in a woman, he wanted to see a bit more, but Rose was already walking towards the door, just the pinkness round her eyes to account for her crying jag.
‘I don’t expect I’ll be seeing much of you again,’ she told him politely as he slipped on his coat and felt in the pockets, out of habit, for the keys to his apartment.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because I imagine Lily will leave sooner rather than later. You didn’t specify a time, but I guess cutting edge movie producers don’t sit around tapping their feet waiting for their plots to go cold.’
‘No, I guess they don’t.’
‘So I may not get a chance to tell you that I’d rather you don’t breathe a word to Lily about my…my…’
‘Crying? Breaking down?’
‘My little loss of self-control.’ Rose stuck her chin up and met his eyes without blinking.
She was positively shuffling him towards the front door and she pulled it wide open before he could do the sensible thing and lean against it. Because suddenly and inexplicably, he didn’t want to go. Not just yet. But there was no choice.
‘I won’t tell her. You have my word.’
Rose nodded and, without saying a word, she quietly closed the door in his face.
COMPOSING emails to Lily was becoming a combination of subtlety and creative fiction.
After Lily had been abroad for three weeks, it had become clear to Rose that life in the fast lane was suiting her sister. She waxed lyrical about the movie she was making, devoted pages to telling her all about the fabulously talented Damien Hicks and the groovy, exciting people she was working with. The flat she was sharing with four other girls, all newcomers like herself, was cheap but apparently called a condo and had a swimming pool. The adjective amazing had become a staple word in her vocabulary. Everything was amazing from the movie to the people to life in general, and Rose was relieved and pleased that it was all working out for her sister.
Which, unfortunately, didn’t solve the financial problems that seemed to have been saving themselves for the minute Lily waved her fond goodbye to British soil.
The bathroom had sprung a leak, which, as the plumber had ominously told Rose, revealed all the makings of a dated system that could be patched up but would really need to be replaced at some point. Rose had opted for the patching-up job. Then the washing machine had collapsed, which had meant a new one. And now, sitting in the kitchen, she could see a damp patch on the ceiling, which didn’t augur well for the dated plumbing system or, for that matter, her rapidly depleting savings account.
Rose groaned. She wondered how she could phrase the words ‘need money’ so that her sister didn’t go into spasms of guilt and worry. Lily had already apologised for not being able to send any over, but she would just as soon as she could. At the moment, she was being paid enough to cover her rent and build a lifestyle that befitted an up-and-coming Hollywood actress, which left precious little for the crumbling house she had left behind.
Rose didn’t begrudge her a minute of the enjoyment she was having. Lily deserved it. But her single income was being tested to its limits and it was getting harder to keep writing her all ‘fine here’ emails when the roof was falling down.
Literally.
One week later, with the damp patch still making small inroads even though the bath was out of commission, she sat at her kitchen table to the sounds of plumbers banging upstairs and the horrible prospect of going to check on them so that she could find her floorboards up and her cool magnolia walls covered with dust. They had been at it for the past two days, putting in a new, updated system. She had not dared enquire as to the cost but the sight of the shiny new copper pipes had made her blood run cold.
Lily was, according to her email yesterday, heading off for two weeks to Arizona where some of the movie was being filmed. Rose knew that she had tried to de-glamorise the whole thing, but it wasn’t hard to read between the lines that she was bubbling over with excitement.
While I sit here, she thought glumly, like Chicken Little waiting for the sky to fall down. Everything else seemed to be.
The sound of the doorbell managed, just, to penetrate the sounds of the banging and Rose vaguely wondered what life had in store for her next. A kindly neighbour coming to tell her that her car