‘That’s part of it. Except not sea swimming.’ Bertie shivered. ‘It’s far too cold.’
‘We went down earlier… it was lovely.’
‘So do more of it. But that’s not what I am saying. You don’t want pastimes, things to make life and time go past more quickly. One needs passions and preoccupations to be happy, you need your brain to be alive, you need it to fizz and to dance. You need something to think about – me with my orchids, Maureen with the grandchild, Lucinda and Pedro… something… to love, to think about, to care about… My grandmother used to say, Albert, dear, never stop thinking because then you stop feeling and then you stop living. She taught me about being alive to life.’
Rosie nodded. Passions and preoccupations. She used to have them once. And now she had whittled her life down to just one preoccupation – the hotel – and she wasn’t sure if she was passionate about it any longer. It had been her mother’s passion, never hers.
Bertie delicately sipped from his cup, his little finger pointing up. ‘Would thiscrise de nerfshave anything to do with a certain Patrick Power? Could he be a passion that is preoccupying you?’
‘No…’ She shook her head, and then changed her mind, a nod and a shake. ‘I don’t know.’
‘What would your mother say to you? Would she want you feeling trapped?’ He paused. ‘Where is Patrick now?’
‘He’s gone. It’s like… nothing’s changed but nothing’s right. All I know is that I’m all wrong.’
Bertie calmly put down his cup again. ‘My dear Rosie. What on earth are you waiting for? Go and put it all right.’
Rosie nodded. Yes! That was exactly what she was going to do. But before she could focus on her own passions and preoccupations, she needed to talk to Nessa.
46
ROSIE
At Nessa’s house, the twins were inconsolable, sitting on the stairs, crying their hearts out. Killian had his old bunny, which he still always slept with, against his eyes to soak up his tears, Isabelle had her face in her hands, crying big-droplet tears which splashed to the ground.
Rosie looked at Nessa, who was standing in the hall looking helpless. Nessa mouthed something. ‘I can’t say it out loud,’ she said in a strange back-of-the-throat voice that she assumed Rosie would be able to understand.
‘What?’ Rosie mouthed back.
Nessa remained incomprehensible.
‘Divorce?’ Rosie mouthed. ‘You and Laurence?’ She mimed a pencil being broken in two. And then pointed at Nessa and Laurence’s wedding photograph which was on the wall, and then mimed a throat being slit.
‘What?’ said Nessa.
‘DIVORCE?’ said Rosie. ‘Are you actually getting divorced?’
The children stopped crying for a moment to look at their mother, suddenly anxious.
‘What the hell?’ said Nessa, loudly. ‘Of course not! Mummy and Daddy are deliriously happy and everything is FINE!’ She glared at Rosie. ‘It’s just that we received an email from the school this morning to say that Mrs Juniper, the twins’ teacher, won’t be returning in September.’
Isabelle and Killian resumed their wailing.
Nessa clapped her hands, like an overenthusiastic children’s entertainer. ‘Kids, listen up. I have an announcement. I wasn’t going to tell you so soon because we have a couple of weeks to wait until he’s ready to come home with us…’
The twins had stopped crying and were now looking at their mother with the kind of interested intensity normally reserved for climaxes of long-running soap operas.
‘We’re going to buy a dachshund puppy! Like a new baby brother, which is far better than a human version because I am not going through childbirth ever again.’ She turned to Rosie and said in that strange voice again, ‘My poor vagina,’ and pointed downwards. ‘Anyway! I wasn’t going to tell you until he arrived, but I thought perhaps now was the moment. We’re buying a sausage dog. He’s called Sossy.’
The children had brightened considerably.
‘Are you sure? A sausage dog? But you hate dogs,’ said Killian, cautiously.
‘We want Sossy and Mrs Juniper,’ said Isabelle.
‘You’re trying to buy us,’ said Killian, suspiciously.
‘Yes, I am,’ admitted Nessa. ‘But it’s a good deal, isn’t it? I mean, if you’re going to buy people, at least do it with a dog, yes?’
