‘Well, I used to check on him, like I told you that day you opened the door for me. I’d pop up and see if he needed anything, you know?’ Rosie said. ‘After a little while, when he realised I wasn’t going to give up just because he found my “interference” irritating, he started letting me in so we could have a cuppa together. I’m not too proud to admit that this opening up neatly coincided with me starting to take him cake and biscuits.’
‘So you just … knocked on his door? Until he let you in one day? Even though he was’ – Aled looked like he was searching for the right way to put this – ‘not receptive?’
Rosie couldn’t decide if he was horrified or impressed.
‘Pretty much,’ she said, giggling nervously. ‘I could tell he had a heart of gold beneath the prickly packaging. Niamh – that’s my best friend – says I bullied my way into his life, which is a gross exaggeration … but she’s notentirelywrong.’
At this, Aled actually grinned. The smile seemed to light him up from inside, like he was experiencing an upsurge of feeling too quick and bright to suppress. His full lips parted, his white teeth flashed in the dusky sitting room and his dark eyes danced. Rosie felt almost winded by the full force of his handsomeness, which she now realised she – and even Niamh – had vastly underestimated.
‘So now I know,’ Aled said. ‘You plied him with baked goods and relentless positivity until he was powerless to resist. Until he fell a little bit in love with you, I bet.’
Rosie felt her cheeks heat. She still wasn’t fully recovered from the grin.
‘I’m pretty sure he found my visits infuriating right up to the end,’ she said. ‘He used to tell me to stop mithering after him, and that he was perfectly capable of making his own dinner. I don’t know aboutlove, but I like to think the low-level griping was his way of showing me he cared.’
Aled smiled at her again, the expression softer this time but still powerful enough that she felt its impact somewhere around her solar plexus.Crikey. If this was what it felt like to have his full attention, she’d need to avoid attracting it too often in case it caused internal bruising.
‘I’m sure it was,’ he told her, holding her gaze to show that he meant it.
They turned back to their books, then, and said little else for the rest of the evening.
Chapter 12
On Friday of the following week, Rosie was home alone with a cheese and pickle sandwich and Jane Austen’sEmmaon TV.
It was only half past five, but she’d already settled down for the night. After a long bath with her favourite oils, she had her book print PJs on, and – given the weekend was afoot – she felt fairly confident Aled wouldn’t be home any time soon to catch her in them. She was in desperate need of comfort after a week of bruising job interviews for roles that – if she was honest with herself – she didn’t even want.
In between the leering older men who seemed more interested in what lay beneath her blouse than her professional experience, there’d been women ten years younger and significantly better qualified than Rosie, some of whom couldn’t mask their pity for the thirty-something still looking for an entry-level position.
At one interview, she’d mistakenly mentioned that she started a university course, but gave it up after a single semester for ‘personal reasons’. This, she realised, had been interpreted as code for ‘I developed a substance abuse problem during freshers’ week’ – or perhaps ‘I’m thick as mince and couldn’t keep up with the work’.
When Rosie looked back on it, she didn’t regret staying at home to take care of Grandpa George. She’d been within him during his final, increasingly infirm, eighteen months of life – quality time she’d have sacrificed if he’d gone into care and she’d continued her studies.
What Rosie hadn’t banked on when she walked away from Queen Mary University, however, was the effect of grief – not to mention her family’s repeated assurances that higher education was a waste of time and money – on her plan to return. By the time she felt equal to starting again, she’d met James. Things between them had quickly become serious, and they’d started to discuss living together when his degree course ended the following summer.
Although she’d talked to him about her psychology degree, and going back, James had made it clear to her from the start that he was done with student life. He’d landed an impressive-sounding graduate job, and as soon as he could manage it, he wanted to live as he imagined his fellow graduates would: a flash apartment, foreign holidays and the kind of nights out that Rosie’s paltry student loan could never afford.
Though it was painful to admit, their relationship had taken precedence in Rosie’s thoughts about the future. He’d left her to flat-hunt for them, and she’d fallen in love with the little garden flat in Walthamstow. Working full-time so she could afford to rent a place with James had felt grown up, and less daunting than striking out alone as a ‘mature student’.
As Anya Taylor-Joy’s Emma fumed at Mr Elton’s untimely, on-screen proposal, Rosie heard the flat door open. She put down her sandwich and paused the TV.
‘Hey,’ Aled said, entering the sitting room and setting his satchel down with a dull thwack that implied it was heavy. His charcoal-grey pea coat was already hanging from a hook in the hallway.
‘Hi,’ Rosie said, a little flustered. ‘You’re home early. I didn’t think I’d see you for ages.’
‘School chucks out at three forty-five,’ he said, frowning slightly in evident confusion. ‘And after-school detentions end at five.’
‘But it’sFriday,’ Rosie argued. ‘I thought teachers – especially young ones – went to the pub on Friday nights to ring in the weekend and compare battle scars. You know, like, you’ll never believe what that little oik Jimmy Brown did in my lesson this week …’
‘Jimmy Brown? Little oik?’ Aled said, arching a single dark eyebrow. ‘You are aware that William Morris Academy is a school in present-day east London, not the Home Counties circa 1932?’
This shocked a laugh out of Rosie. She’d barely seen or heard anything of him all week – yet now the man who could probably win an award for reticence was makingjokes?
‘The point stands,’ she told him. ‘Teachers typically go out for a few jars at the end of the week. Yet here you are.’
‘Maybe some do, I suppose,’ Aled conceded. ‘I’m a temp, though – I might only be there a term or two. Supply staff don’t tend to get invited to much social stuff.’
‘Hmmm,’ Rosie said, squinting at him doubtfully. ‘You’re telling menobodyasked if you wanted a quick pint to celebrate getting through the first week of term?’
