“I remember Becky saying food was a big thing in your house. She told me you ate breakfast and dinner together, sitting at the table, although your dad wasn’t always there if he was working.”
Occasionally he’d say things like that and she’d be reminded that his friendship with Becky predated their relationship by several years. She’d wonder how he could possibly know something so personal when she hadn’t shared it, and then it would occur to her that he must have talked about it with Becky. In some ways Becky probably knew him better than she did.
It was an unsettling thought.
“We ate together when we could. Dad was rarely there for breakfast but tried to make dinner. That was when we talked.”
“Talked? About what?”
“About everything. About our day. It was our family time. You didn’t do that?”
He stared straight ahead. “No. We lived pretty independent lives. We mostly did our own thing.”
She glanced at him briefly although she couldn’t see his expression in the darkness. “Your stepmother isn’t a keen cook?”
“No. In our house it’s more casual. Everyone fends for themselves.”
She couldn’t imagine it, and now she was worried that he’d find her close family dynamics uncomfortable. Would he feel stifled?
Apart from the wedding, he’d never spent time at her family home. Her parents had visited them in London a few times since the wedding, and there had been a week in the summer when they’d planned to go to Northumberland, but then Declanhad been given an urgent work project to deal with so Rosie had gone home alone.
“I’m sure it was nice to have that freedom.” She didn’t think it sounded that nice, but it felt rude to say so and she didn’t want to do anything to shake this new truce between them. She was relieved that they were speaking again and that the atmosphere in the car had warmed a little over the journey.
Still, she would be glad to get home. They’d been lucky to be able to leave the motorway just before the traffic started backing up. Not long now and she’d be hugging her parents and Percy and warming herself in the big cosy kitchen of the Mill House. And with luck Jamie would already be there, which would give her a chance to have a quiet word with him before the party.
“Thank you for coming with me. And I’m sorry about your party.” It felt like the right time to say it. “I didn’t understand how much it meant to you but now I do.”
He shifted in the seat, as if he’d forgotten she was there. “What?”
“Your Christmas party. I thought it was work for you. Duty. Why didn’t you tell me how much it meant to you? If I’d known, I would have gone.”
“But you made it clear you would have hated it.”
“That was when I thought it was just a work obligation.”
He kept his eyes on the road. “It is work, but they’re also my friends. Good friends. It doesn’t matter. Let’s forget it, Rosie. Move on.”
How could he say it didn’t matter when it obviously did?
“It’s unusual, the bond you all have. Normally colleagues come and go. It’s rare to be working with the same people for five years.” The people she worked with changed regularly, and many of them were freelancers.
“It’s a great company, we work well together and we all like it there. And people do leave sometimes.” He paused as they approached a tight bend. “Like Becky. She left.”
Becky.
Becky had been part of his close group of friends. Becky would have gone happily with him to his Christmas party and they wouldn’t have ignored her. She would have joined in the conversation because she spoke their language.
Long-suppressed emotions bubbled up inside her, and Rosie kept her eyes fixed on the road ahead, trying to control her thoughts. Growing up, she had often felt inferior to her sister. No matter how hard she tried, maths and spreadsheets just didn’t make sense to her. It was all very well for her parents to reassure her that everyone had different talents but it was a fact of life that some talents seemed to be more highly valued than others. What had she excelled at? Making clothes for her dolls.
Because she and Becky were twins, there had been the inevitable comparisons, particularly at school.
They look identical, but she’s nothing like her sister.
To be fair, her parents had never made that comment and had always encouraged her creative side. But every time she’d heard a teacher say those words, she’d shrunk a little because they were true. And no matter how hard she worked, she was never going to be her sister.
She’d scraped through the exams she’d been forced to take and then dropped those subjects in favour of the arts, which suited her better.
She’d been thrilled when she’d graduated and immediately landed a job with the ballet company, and hadn’t cared that she was probably paid a fraction of what her sister earned.
