Would this have happened if she’d been prettier, sexier or skinnier? Would James have done this if she’d agreed to join him at weight training or willingly committed to the keto diet? Rosie didn’t think so, and a part of her took vicious aim at what this revealed: a failure to value someone who loved him for what lay beneath the less-than-perfect surface – a laser focus on the superficial that she’d never seen in him before. At the same time, however, the truthhurt. It kicked her in the too-fleshy stomach she’d spent half her life desperately trying not to hate.
‘Rose …’ Niamh said softly, bringing her back to the present. ‘Rosie, love, let me at you.’ She’d stood up, and now covered Rosie’s shuddering, hunched-over body with her taller, leaner frame. She soothed and stroked her friend’s light-blonde hair, shushing her until Rosie’s flash flood of tears had abated.
Once they were both seated again, Rosie steeled herself and read the worst passage aloud. It pertained to the division of her and James’s things, as well as the small matter of their joint tenancy agreement.
I know you’re very attached to the flat. Sorry if me leaving means you have to move but I can’t carry on spending on the place now I’m no longer living there. As we’ve just paid rent for next month, you should have three weeks to work out what you want to do. Guess that’s find a flatmate to take the spare room or move on? I’ll come by at some stage to collect the rest of my things, but I won’t take furniture, etc. Goes without saying, that’s your stuff …
‘What the hell?’ Niamh shouted. ‘Selfishbastard. Is it even legalfor him to just piss off like this?’
‘I have a horrible feeling it is,’ Rosie sighed.
‘It can’t be, surely?’
Rosie massaged her temples. She could feel a headache forming there, either from the wine – she and Niamh were now well into the second bottle – or the sheer stress of her situation.
‘If I remember right, we’re jointly and severally liable for the rent.’
‘And what on earth does that mean?’
Rosie snorted, almost amused. ‘Aren’t you married to a lawyer?’
‘Yeah, but I’m a marketing-slash-events innovator, remember? I don’t read legal documents – there’s a guy at head office who does that for me.’
‘It means,’ Rosie explained, ‘that the landlord – whoever they may be – can pursuemefor both halves of the rent if James doesn’t pay. So I either stump up the cash, find someone to take the spare room or move out.’
Her valiant effort to sound matter-of-fact and in control backfired as her voice cracked on the final two words. Out loud and uttered to another person, they sounded far worse than they had in her head.
Rage and despair fought for supremacy inside her.Threeweeks. That was all the time she had to piece together a plan for keeping the home he knew she loved.
And he was planning to take next to nothing with him – to pick himself up and relocate to god knew where, as if he were some sleek, modernist sofa that made no sense in the shabby chic life they’d shared. If she’d been in any doubt about James’s lack of affection for the flat, she wasn’t now.
‘Does he seriously expect you to believe he can’t afford to stump up another month’s rent?’ Niamh demanded.
‘So it seems,’ Rosie said, her voice flat.
They both knew how much he earned, and it was roughly three times Rosie’s salary.
Three weeks. It was nowhere near enough time to find and vet a potential flatmate, and James surely knew there was no way she could afford to keep the place on by herself. What was more, he hadn’t considered that, even if she contacted their faceless new landlord and explained her intention to leave the property today, she’d need to give a full calendar month’s notice.
‘What does he expect you to do?’ Niamh ranted, standing up from her stool and pacing angrily around the kitchen.
‘Ask my parents for money, probably,’ Rosie said. That was certainly what he’d do in her shoes. Mr and Mrs Gardiner were solidly middle-class retirees who lived in a detached period cottage in Cheshire. Though James had never admitted it, Rosie was sure they regularly injected his old childhood savings account with spare cash. Her parents, while by no means poor, were far less able to throw money at her problems – and nor were they inclined to.
Colin and Julie Butler had never understood why their daughter wanted to live in London in the first place. Neither Mum nor Dad had managed to make sense of the sudden ‘independent streak’ that had seen Rosie depart the family home after her grandfather’s death and move in with Niamh.
Rosie could perfectly predict what would happen if she asked them for assistance. They’d consider it throwing good money after bad and encourage her to move back home instead – only to end up reminding her on a daily basis how sad it was to be single and still living with your parents at thirty-two.
She shuddered at the thought. Going back to Braintree to live with them – as well as thirty-year-old Michael, whose continued presence in their suburban semi somehow never attracted the same opprobrium hers would – was not an option.
Sighing, Rosie heaved herself up and – in the absence of any better ideas – decided it might be time for bed. Perhaps some bright, shiny solution to her problems would appear overnight, revealing itself in a dream just as the melody of ‘Yesterday’ supposedly came to a comatose Paul McCartney.
‘You should head home,’ she said to Niamh, glancing at the oven clock and realising with horror that it was almost one a.m. ‘You have that spa break tomorrow – you’ll want to get on the road early so you can make the most of it.’ Niamh and Brendan had organised an overnight getaway – a chance to fully relax after her first month back at work – and Rosie knew how precious ‘couple time’ was to them now they had the twins to take care of.
‘Are yousureyou’re OK?’
‘I will be,’ Rosie promised. ‘Dinner this week? I could do with something to look forward to.’
‘Definitely,’ Niamh said. She stood up, then tapped at her phone to order an Uber. ‘How about Thursday again? And Rose, call me any time you want to talk. I don’t care if it’s the middle of the night. Let’s face it, I’m probably going to be awake anyway. You’re not alone in this – I’m with you every step of the way.’
