Rose followed her, shutting the door behind her. She looked around, smiling at the familiarity of Jessica’s home. It had been a long time since she’d visited, but she saw it in the background of all their many calls, and she strangely felt as if she’d arrived home, in the way she guessed other people felt when they came back to a family home after a long absence. It was warm and inviting, with white walls and furniture that looked beautiful butnot precious, as if the girls could build a pillow fort in the middle of the room and it wouldn’t matter. The only hint that Jessica and Ryan had spent a small fortune in furnishing their interior came from the exquisite artworks displayed on some of the walls—they’d collected art since before they were married.
‘I’m sorry for just turning up like this.’
‘I invited you, remember? The girls are going to be in heaven when they wake up and find you in the guest room. You’ve just made their weekend, and mine, too.’
Rose sat down at the kitchen table, running her hands across the rough edge of the wood and realising how much it reminded her of the big kitchen table at the house in Argentina. She distracted herself by reaching for a child’s painting, smiling at the colourful splodges and wondering what they were supposed to be, imagining what it would be like to have her own children and be surrounded by the kind of colourful mess that was such an integral part of her best friend’s life now.
‘A dinosaur, in case you weren’t sure,’ Jess said with a grin. ‘Now, hot chocolate or wine?’
‘Hot chocolate,’ Rose replied, letting go of the paper and watching as Jessica took two large white mugs down from the cupboard and started to scoop hot chocolate mix into them.
‘Thank goodness. I was hoping you weren’t going to say wine.’
When Jessica brought the steaming mugs to the table, she gratefully wrapped her fingers around the warm ceramic and inhaled the sweet smell of chocolate.
‘Rose, what happened?’ Jessica asked, holding up her own mug and blowing on it.
Rose took a sip, closing her eyes and seeing Benjamin standing outside the stables, the way he watched her as she loaded her bags into the taxi. He’d just blinked back at her, not even holding up a hand in a wave, their eyes meeting silentlywith so much left unsaid between them. Walking away from him and the property in Argentina had been one of the hardest things she’d ever done.
‘It sounded like you were having such a great time there, and Benjamin sounded, well, he sounded like just what you needed right now.’
‘We just, I don’t know.’ Rose sighed. ‘In the end, I felt like I was playing make-believe, like I was living someone else’s life.’ She glanced at the dinosaur picture again, feeling a tug in her heart that she couldn’t explain. ‘None of it was real, it was a fantasy or a holiday romance or whatever you want to call it, but it was never meant to be.’
‘You’ve been through more than most people could even imagine this past year, let alone cope with, but don’t tell yourself that what you had with Benjamin wasn’t real, because it was.’
She looked up at Jessica. ‘Then why do I feel like I just made a fool of myself? I never belonged in Argentina, but there was this little part of me that wanted to believe it was my new home, that it was the place I was supposed to end up. That after so much tragedy, that was supposed to be my happy ever after.’
‘Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t,’ Jessica said, sitting back in her chair and nursing her hot chocolate. ‘But don’t tell yourself that it was make-believe, because it wasn’t. Whatever you had with Benjamin was real for the time you were there. How did you leave things?’
Rose took a moment to gather her thoughts. She knew that Jessica was right, but it didn’t stop the way she was feeling. It was as if her life was one tragedy after another.
‘I left him the key to the house and told him that I wouldn’t sell the property for as long as he or his family had a connection to it,’ she said. ‘We went from living in a little bubble to everything just ending before I even knew what was happening.’
Jessica’s eyes softened. ‘You didn’t say goodbye?’
‘We had a big argument the night before. I told him I was leaving before he walked out the door, and then I got in a taxi and jumped on a plane the next day.’
Jessica was silent.
‘I was never going to live there, Jess. That’s what I mean about playing make-believe. I mean, was I supposed to uproot my entire life for another country just because I inherited a property and met a man? He was probably just being nice to me because he didn’t want me to sell it from under him.’
‘Don’t do that,’ Jessica said. ‘Don’t start pretending like he didn’t like you or that it wasn’t real. No matter whether you see him again or not, don’t taint the memories you have. And it sounds to me like you left without even giving him a chance.’ She frowned. ‘Would you have stayed if he wanted you to? If he’d asked you not to get on the plane?’
‘Maybe. No. Yes. I don’t know!’ Rose wiped at her eyes as fresh tears formed. ‘I don’t know what I want. I’m even more confused about what to do with my life than when…’ Her voice trailed away.
‘Than when your mum passed away?’ Jessica asked, gently.
Rose nodded, not trusting her voice. ‘Everything seems so hard,’ she whispered. ‘I was just starting to feel like myself again, and now…’ She didn’t even know what she was trying to say. ‘Everything is a mess. I don’t know what I want or what to do.’
‘So, tell me about Benjamin. Was he just a fling to you, or did you fall in love with him? How did things fall apart so spectacularly when you’d been having so much fun together?’
‘At the time he felt like the best thing that had ever happened to me,’ she admitted. ‘But when it came to it, he didn’t even ask me not to go, he just left.’
Jessica’s eyes never left hers. ‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning that I wanted him to stop me from walking away and say something that made it impossible to leave, to makeme believe that we were more than just a holiday romance,’ she said. ‘I wanted him to tell me that home was wherever he was, or something, to stop me from leaving. I just wanted him to want me.’
Jessica sighed, and when Rose looked at her she could see that her friend was biting down hard on her bottom lip to stop from laughing.
