Private Lives полностью

Everything is changing too quickly for Rosie. She feels like she’s just woken up on stage in the middle of a play and has no clue what all the other actors are talking about, how she should join in, if she should join in or if she should just watch. She follows Abi dumbly to the bottom of the stairs as Abi calls up for Lily. Abi hardly seems to hear Rosie as she tells her the girls can stay here until she’s finished whatever she needs to do at the restaurant, that they can heat up the takeaway, save it for later, maybe?

But Abi keeps moving, gathering coats and school bags and telling a grumbly Margot to please hurry up before ushering the girls outside and turning to Rosie on the doorstep. ‘Thanks, but I don’t know how long this thing at the restaurant will take to sort out, so better if the girls are home.’ Rosie hears Seb walk down the corridor behind her, feels him stop close, too close; she can feel the breath of him in and out even through their layers of clothes. She feels herself suspended, sandwiched between the two of them, like an intruder. Abi’s eyes are hard as fists as she looks at Rosie’s husband, and whatever has just happened, the mammalian part of Rosie’s brain recognizes it as no good, so she doesn’t say another word as Abi looks back to Rosie and says, ‘Bye, Rosie.’ Then Abi and her children disappear into the inky twilight.

As soon as she closes the door behind them, Rosie turns around to face Seb. ‘I thought you guys hadn’t met before?’

Seb blinks but keeps his eyes fixed on her. ‘No! No.’ He shakes his head, a little too firmly. ‘I told you: she cancelled a meeting a couple of weeks ago, but we have been exchanging emails. Stupidly, I hadn’t realized Ms Matthews – the woman I’ve been emailing – was your new friend. It’s a … it’s a school thing, an issue with her daughter. She expressly asked to keep it confidential, so …’

Seb shrugs his shoulders, tries to smile at Rosie, an unconvincing flicker of a thing, before he says, ‘We should eat before it gets cold.’

Rosie is still confused. ‘Why didn’t she mention that to me?’

Seb turns around to walk back to the kitchen and either he doesn’t hear her or he pretends not to, as Rosie’s words fall into the empty space between them.

Standing there, Abi walking away from her outside, Seb walking away from her inside, Rosie is left with the creeping, shuddery feeling that something significant has just happened but that both Abi and Seb want to keep her far away from it.

Chapter 3

Abi blamed herself. If she’d met him, as originally planned, at the new-parent meeting, things would have been different. She’d have known how to handle herself. But having Lily and Margot in the same house, so close to the truth, had been horrifying. Abi was in too much shock to talk after they left Rosie’s, but listening to Margot and Lily chatting about Frozen kept her feet on the ground, kept them shuffling towards home. Without knowing they were doing it, her girls saved her. They always saved her. Margot took Abi’s and Lily’s hands so they could swing her along the pavement, Margot kicking her little feet into the air and calling, ‘Higher, higher!’ The weight of her, feeling Lily on the other side, knowing they needed her to be strong, to keep going with her plan, kept Abi from falling to her knees.

What the hell was she doing?

It wasn’t until the girls were in bed that she paced, swore and tried to work through all the different scenarios of what could be going on. None of them were good for Abi or the girls.

She woke early, still furious and still afraid. But really, what was new?

Margot had crept into her bed at some point during the night, bringing her little body close. Her presence helped Abi ignore the question that had been circling in her mind all night: What will he tell Rosie? She had no idea. So she did what she had done for years. She pushed her rage away and, weak with fear and exhaustion, she did what she had to do to feed her children.

She knew he’d come; she just didn’t know when.

She’d held Margot close, kissed her cheek. Smiled and waved to Lily at the school gates. She hid her fear behind her smile, because pretending was Abi’s thing. She kept her face impassive as she walked away from school, imagining what he could have told the other parents, told Rosie.

The thought of Rosie made Abi wilt. She was surprised by how much she wanted to be friends with Rosie. She hadn’t made a new friend in so long, but Rosie intrigued Abi; she’d never actually known anyone like her. Someone who seemed to be gliding along on an escalator through life while the rest of them trudged up mucky steps that smelt like piss. Rosie had the kids, the husband, the sighing complaints about the kitchen extension. To Abi, Rosie’s life seemed so calm, so exotic in its ordinariness. But Abi knew now there was sadness too, a weariness that wore at the edges of Rosie’s dreamy set-up and made her face fall into worry when she thought no one was looking.