Theo surprises her by leaning close and whispering in her ear: ‘I am not actually being kind at all, Ms Talisman.’
Rose looks him in the eye.
He’s being serious. Despite all she knows about dating in this city, she allows herself to smile at him.
They’re on their first date – lunch in a nearby vineyard – when a different, more senior producer from the breakfast television show phones offering Rose a weekly slot.
Discussions will have to happen with her agent, the producer says, but they’re really keen.
‘I can’t believe this is happening,’ Rose says to Theo.
‘Why not? I’d want to watch you on TV,’ he says.
‘Really?’ she says.
‘Really, truly,’ Theo replies.
It’s like all her dreams have come true at once: her career is in the ascendent and this handsome man who ticks every box on the ‘decent men to date’ list seems to be crazy about her.
But the TV people want her potted biography and Rose, who has tried so very hard to disguise her past, spins them the story she always tells people.
Theo hears it too.
She can’t risk telling him that her truth is wildly different. It’s hard to explain her real life story: it’s messy and complex, nothing like the lovely CV she gives people.
They’re only just dating, after all. What if she tells him and he leaves with all her secrets?
No, it’s better this way, she thinks.
But Rose finds out that the longer a lie exists, the harder it is to come clean.
Rose doesn’t think she’s ever seen such beauty as Massachusetts in what Theo calls ‘the Fall’.
‘Ochre, honey, gold, burned sienna, acid green …?’ she wonders as she spots a tree with stunning greens still on its leaves in the midst of the great russet explosion of autumn.
They’ve been dating six months and Theo is driving her to meet his parents.
‘They’ll love you,’ says Theo.
Theo has driven from Logan airport because Rose has never been a fan of driving on the vast US roads.
It’s lovely to be driven – she tries to relax and stop worrying about how she’ll fit into Theo’s parents’ world.
Instead, she concentrates on the colours of the trees as they drive towards the small town of Falmouth on the coast.
Theo had grown up in Philadelphia and, in their retirement, his parents had moved to what Theo called ‘possibly the prettiest colonial house on the eastern seaboard that you can imagine’.
His parents are a retired surgeon, his mother, and a retired psychiatrist, his father. Contrary to what Theo says, Rose has absolutely no belief that his parents will love her.
They are old-school intellectuals, he’s said, and sound like charming people who represent the sort of background that is nothing like Rose’s.
She doesn’t say this to Theo.
She’s forty-three and has never fallen in love like this before.
Theo, with his horn-rimmed glasses, his runner’s body, his wise smile – she’s never known anyone smile the way Theo does! – has entirely stolen her heart.
Rose feels as if nobody has ever taken care of her the way Theo does. They’re on the verge of moving in together: she’ll move in to his small house outside Carmel, an expensive house that overlooks the ocean.
