Private Lives

Chapter 27

Six weeks later

Abi’s already arrived, sitting on a bench on Brighton beach in front of a cafe blaring out Christmas carols and blowing on a cup of something hot between her hands. They haven’t seen each other properly since Rosie went over to Abi’s after the radio show, although Rosie had messaged her after the glorious parents’ forum. She’d felt worried for Abi and then a strange light had seemed to fill her chest – forgiveness, perhaps.

Rosie stops walking just to watch her for a moment. She looks the same as she did when they first met – messy on the outside, but still, there it is, that rooted strength in her eyes.

She’s wearing the same denim jacket but this time with a thick scarf and jumper. She watches the rolling sea and the people around her calmly, like she doesn’t expect anything from anyone. She isn’t trying to change anything. And looking at her now, Rosie realizes it was never Abi herself she found so dizzying. It was Abi’s self-reliance and clarity that drew her in, because it was what she most yearned for herself. Abi knows how to be a good friend to herself and now, slowly, day by day, Rosie is learning too.

She is even gradually starting to feel gentler towards her own body. Greeting it like an old friend when she sees herself undressed in the mirror – hello, stretch marks; hello, wobble. She’ll hold her hand over her tummy to feel the warmth of herself. Her own skin to skin. Last night, for the first time in years, Rosie and Seb had a bath together.

Rosie watches a family walk past Abi. Abi smiles at one of their kids and then she looks up, straight at Rosie, and they stay there, just looking at each other for a moment, before Abi lifts her drink to Rosie and Rosie smiles, raises her hand and walks towards her.

As she gets closer, Abi looks at the bag Rosie’s carrying, the towel poking out of the top. ‘Don’t tell me you’re actually going to go in.’

Rosie shrugs and rotates her shoulders. ‘Haven’t decided yet.’

Abi doesn’t stand to greet her, she just shakes her head, takes another sip from her cup, but she’s smiling as she mutters, ‘Maniac.’

She shuffles up the bench so Rosie can sit next to her.

Rosie isn’t sure how to start this. ‘So, how’s it going?’ feels like the language of yesterday. Instead she trusts the silence and listens to the sea sighing its lovely sigh as it rolls back and forth.

‘I come down here most days now,’ Abi says, nodding to the sea like she’s visiting an old friend. ‘It’s one of the best things about living here.’

Rosie turns to look at Abi briefly, smiles. She remembers their walk up to the viewing spot in Waverly. She’d been so full of expectation of their friendship then, fantasized about the two of them going on weekends away together, their kids having sleepovers, how they’d become so close they wouldn’t be able to imagine life without the other. It was like she’d known even then that Abi was going to have an important role in her life, and she hadn’t, of course, been wrong. Abi had been bigger, more explosive than she could ever have imagined, just not in the way she’d planned.

‘I saw Lily collecting Margot the other day. She said she comes down here to sketch.’

Abi laughs. ‘Yep. Early Sunday mornings are her favourite. All those confused, dehydrated Saturday night ravers, their wide, crazy eyes immortalized in charcoal.’

They laugh together and it feels like they’ve been laughing together their whole lives.

Lily decided to stay at school in Waverly. Rosie heard people mutter words like ‘extraordinary’ and ‘so impressive’, but Lily loved her mum. That was all. She knew how to be sad and angry at the years of lying but she didn’t know how to be ashamed of Abi and she liked her school. For Lily, it was that simple. Margot, still too young to know the truth, was happy to stay too. Besides, Rosie figured, even if they went somewhere new, there was every chance that someone in the new school would have read about them online or in the papers. It reminds Rosie of the article written for a left-leaning Sunday supplement that Seb emailed her a copy of a couple of weeks ago. It was the only interview Abi had agreed to because, unlike all the other media, the focus wasn’t on Abi or Seb – it was on the adult industries and made the case calmly and clearly for the decriminalization of sex work. Regulating the whole industry to keep everyone a little safer. The journalist had sent Seb, on Abi’s request, a copy of the article before it went to press.

‘I enjoyed the article, by the way.’

Abi nods. ‘Yeah, well, they did a good job. I wasn’t sure for ages whether it was the right thing but, I don’t know, there was so much rubbish being written about me it felt like a wasted opportunity not to try and make some good come from all the attention.’

In the article Abi had called herself ‘Emma’ and Rosie wonders again, as she did when she read the article, whether Abi has resurrected Emma, whether she’s started working again from Brighton. But where once Rosie would have felt fluttery, almost anxious with not knowing, now she just feels mildly curious before the question fades, like that particular query never really belonged to her in the first place.

Abi turns to face Rosie again and asks, ‘Seb’s last week at school. How are you all feeling?’

Rosie breathes in deeply, the cold sea air sharp and bright in her lungs. The governors’ verdict – that there was no evidence that Seb had used school property to look for sex workers and that he hadn’t broken any rules of conduct – had taken them both by surprise. They’d nodded and smiled weakly at each other; this was good news! But Rosie’s stomach had twisted, and her chest felt heavy, bricks piled on the delicate scaffold of her ribcage. One evening, Seb had turned to Rosie, his face white, his brow rippled, as he said, ‘I don’t think I want to be head teacher any more.’

And she’d cried with relief.

Seb agreed to stay in post until Christmas, help ensure a smooth handover to the current deputy head, Mr Clegg. They haven’t packed a single bag, but their flights are booked for Boxing Day and they’ve found a small house to rent in what Maggie says is an up-and-coming Sydney suburb. It is happening.

It had been Seb’s idea. He’d suggested it in one of their weekly couple’s therapy sessions and so Rosie had messaged Maggie that evening to find out if her offer of work was still on the table. Maggie had immediately arranged a Zoom with Rosie and by the end of the call they’d already started talking about Rosie’s salary. It was like a kind wind was propelling them along, blowing them all the way gently to the other side of the world.

Next to her, Abi is still waiting patiently for an answer and Rosie widens her eyes and smiles without trying. ‘Excited. I mean, we all wobble sometimes, of course – the kids will miss their friends – but, yeah, I think we need an adventure together. It feels right.’

Abi nods; she’s smiling too. She gets it.

To be new they need to go somewhere new. In Australia, they’ll only have each other to rely on and Rosie is strangely looking forward to that. To a simpler, less peopled life. Maybe they are running away from Waverly, but she doesn’t care because it also feels like they are running towards each other.

‘How about you – are you going to miss your friends?’ Abi asks.

It’s a bold question and Rosie doesn’t know how to say, ‘What friends?’ without sounding self-pitying or dramatic. She shrugs and keeps quiet. But it’s the truth: Rosie no longer has friends here; not the kind of friendships she really yearns for, anyway.

She’s only seen Anna twice since she got back from staying with her sister in the Lake District. They talked briefly, their conversations clipped but weighted by everything they were not saying. Perhaps they’ll talk properly before Rosie and Seb leave, but maybe not. Rosie feels too interested in the future to linger for long in the past. When she thinks of Anna and those other friendships with Lotte and Vita, she feels that old messiness, the old internal pacing creeping back. She told Seb and he said he felt the same about Eddy. It wasn’t over forever, he’d talk properly to him at some point, he was sure, but when that would be he didn’t yet know and that was OK. Their phones ring rarely now and neither Seb nor Rosie misses the sound.

The plan is for Rosie to work full-time with Maggie and for Seb to homeschool the kids for the first six months, by which time they hope to have a better idea of where they want to be longer term. Eva is going to rent their house with some of the insurance money while her own is being rebuilt. She’s booked a flight to Sydney too and will be staying out there with them for the whole of February.

‘You know the weird thing,’ Rosie says, looking at Abi again. ‘I feel like thanking you for fucking up our lives.’

Abi breathes out and rolls her eyes before her face softens again and she says, with a smile, ‘Same here.’

Rosie, ignoring the sounds of other people around them, tunes back instead into the rolling sighs from the sea again for a moment before picking up her bag. She stands and says, ‘Come on, then. I’d better get this over with.’

And it feels good to move towards the sea across the shingle, not touching each other, but still, the two of them, walking side by side again.