Private Lives

Chapter 2

‘Taadaa!’ Rosie says, turning her palm skywards, revealing Waverly to Abi like a flamboyant waiter. It’s hot, one of those syrupy summer days of autumn, and they’re puffed and sticky from walking up the steep footpath to the best viewing spot in town. Abi makes her way to a bench, reading the little inscription, says, ‘Thanks, Barry,’ before she sits down.

‘It’s gorgeous.’ Abi extends her legs, crossing them at the ankles. She lifts her arms to get the breeze in the hollow of her unshaved armpits, dropping her denim jacket on to Barry’s bench. She’s wearing Birkenstock sandals, her feet tattooed in a beautiful lattice-like design, her skin still tanned, carrying the memory of summer. The letters ‘L’ and ‘M’ are tattooed on her inner arm. There’s something wonderfully unstudied about Abi that makes Rosie want to stare. She has a tousled look to her but whenever Rosie looks into Abi’s eyes she knows the other woman is as solid as a rock.

Rosie sits next to her feeling pimply and pale but glad to be here, away from the kids, away from work, away from Seb. Just here with her new intriguing friend.

They met a few weeks ago – as so many parents do – through their kids. Margot and Greer are in Reception together and have become firm friends. Rosie noticed the way Abi shrank back at the school gates from the noisier, shrill women Rosie calls ‘friends’. The ones who talk in high-pitched whispers about other people’s kids and marriages. It was a quiet thrill for Rosie to leave those women and stand with Abi instead; she hasn’t made a new friend, independently of Seb, for so long. Rosie offered Abi help in navigating the town, recommending the best kids’ swimming lessons, after-school clubs and the places to avoid. They had a couple of play dates in the park and while the girls dangled from monkey bars Rosie found herself telling Abi things she hasn’t even told Anna. How disconnected she feels sometimes from her own life, how her days feel like an endless ‘to-do’ list. Abi sates a part of Rosie she hadn’t even known was starving. Some little forgotten wisp of her that had been banging a tiny internal cymbal, a lone protestor demanding attention. Rosie hasn’t talked to anyone like this for so long. Abi must have been an amazing therapist, her job for years in London before moving to Waverly.

Today, for the first time, Abi and her kids are coming back to Rosie’s after school. Seb is picking up a takeaway from the local Thai on his way home as a treat for the three adults.

‘Everything looks so simple from up here, doesn’t it?’ Rosie says, noticing the perfect neatness of the doll’s house town, a place where nothing bad could ever happen. She automatically places the Old School House, where all three of her kids will be, and, just across the road, Waverly Secondary, where Seb is at work. Strange to think of everyone she loves muddling their way through another day down there. Abi doesn’t reply because she’s rummaging around in her rucksack for something, before offering Rosie a bright-pink mini macaroon out of a small Tupperware.

‘I was going to save these for pudding when we’re back at yours, but sod it. Fancy one?’

‘Ha!’ Rosie laughs. ‘Wow! Hell yes, I do!’

She bites into the fluorescent sugary flakiness before the sting of the bright raspberry cream fills her mouth. ‘Jesus – they’re insanely good.’ She immediately wants another.

‘Well, they were my first attempt – I don’t know. I think maybe next time I—’

‘Wait. Are you telling me you actually made them?’

Abi shrugs. ‘Food’s my thing. I love making new stuff.’

‘Yes, but come on – you’re a single parent with two kids, you’ve just moved town, changed career and you’re making home-made bloody macaroons? Honestly, you’re showing the rest of us up.’

‘Well,’ Abi says, inspecting a macaroon before popping it into her mouth, ‘at least it explains why I don’t have time for dating.’

Rosie takes another macaroon. ‘Ever thought about going pro? Being a chef?’

Abi’s face twists as she tongues her back teeth, freeing them of stuck sugar before she says, ‘Oh, when I was, like, twelve, I thought about nothing else.’

‘Twelve!’

Abi laughs before she pops another macaroon into her mouth, chewing slowly, considering how much to tell Rosie. She swallows, runs her fingers through her cropped fair hair and says, ‘We were living on an estate in Hackney and a fancy chef set up a pop-up restaurant in an old service station – remember disused spaces were all the rage in the noughties? Anyway, I was twelve and they paid me a fiver an hour to wash up – totally illegal, of course, but I loved it. Some of the chefs would sneak me this insane food – beef cheeks cooked for twenty-four hours and baked oysters, stuff I never knew existed. The place became my way of escaping. I guess for some kids it’s books or video games. For me it was always food.’

‘What were you trying to escape?’ Rosie asks, emboldened by Abi’s honesty. Rosie has shared much more in this new friendship so far.

‘Oh, I don’t want to go all Angela’s Ashes on you,’ Abi laughs, ‘but we didn’t have much. My mum drank, my dad left. Same old, same old.’

‘Do you still see them?’ Rosie asks, quietly, like she doesn’t want to talk loudly and disturb these precious things Abi is sharing with her.

‘My dad not at all. Couldn’t even tell you where he lives. My mum – well, it’s complicated. We haven’t spoken in a long time.’

Rosie wants to ask more about her parents, but Abi looks back at the view before closing her eyes, feeling the sun on her face. Rosie won’t push it so instead she asks, ‘How did you go from being a kid washing pans to a therapist?’

Abi opens her eyes, looks briefly to the sky, turns back to Rosie and, smiling, says, ‘I went through a few wild years. Got really into boys – too into boys, my mum would say – partying, all that stuff, and then when I was eighteen found out I was five months pregnant. So, yeah, Lily was the wake-up call.’

Rosie can’t help it. She wants to know. ‘Did your parents help?’

Rosie notices for the first time the strain behind Abi’s equanimity.

‘God, no. Mum was often drunk and, like I said, things are complicated between us and Dad wasn’t around, so … no. No, they didn’t. I mean, there was this charity that helped quite a bit so, yeah, I had that …’

Abi’s silver bangles chime as she brushes bright-pink crumbs off her T-shirt, waves her arm in front of them and says, ‘And now, incredibly, we live here in this beautiful place.’

They both look again at the view. Talking about Abi’s difficult childhood in Hackney, Waverly seems claustrophobic and almost offensively twee, crammed as it is between the vast expanse of hills and sky. Rosie knew early into their relationship that if she was going to love Seb, she was going to have to love this ancient, eccentric little town with its narrow streets and malty air from the brewery. Seb was a bit like one of those people who marry the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty – but his lifelong love was a whole town. And Rosie had come to love it too, in her own way. ‘How did you become a therapist?’

Abi smiles again, but the corner of her mouth shakes and she keeps staring at the view. ‘Oh, I did the training online, like a night-school thing. Turns out I had a kind of natural ability for it so, yeah, I set up my own practice, working when Lily was sleeping or in nursery, and it just grew and grew. Covid was obviously a boom for therapists.’

‘I bet you were brilliant. You must have helped so many people.’

Abi smiles in acceptance of the compliment before she asks, ‘How about you? How’s architecture?’

Rosie groans. ‘It’s not architecture. It’s a glorified admin role. I went back part-time when Greer was two and my salary covers the mortgage so it’s worth it financially, but the job is definitely not the reason I spent seven years training to be an architect.’

The only good thing about Rosie’s job is its flexibility: she can always be available for sick days and dentist’s appointments. Rosie is constantly on call. Her nervous system braced like a vigilant guard, always ready for the next minor family emergency. The job itself is just the bullshit no one else wants to do.

‘What would you be doing if you could do anything?’ Abi asks, and Rosie’s mind snaps straight to the Instagram message she received this morning from Maggie. She tells Abi how she and Maggie studied architecture together in London and while Rosie got married, had kids and moved to Waverly, Maggie emigrated to Sydney and set up her own architecture practice. She tells her about the photo Maggie sent her this morning of a huge partly demolished warehouse next to a sparkling slip of coastline – the plot her company is developing into a new eco art gallery and hotel. And as she talks, she knows she’s smiling, feels her heart flood with possibility. She looks back at Waverly, back to the school playground where her healthy, happy children play, and feels her shoulders drop, her heart wither again. Jesus, she’s selfish, dreaming of a different life when she has so much. Is envied by so many. What is wrong with her?

Abi, her arm still tucked over the back of the bench, looks right at Rosie but doesn’t say anything. Rosie can feel Abi listening and she feels exposed, flashing the most secret parts of herself.

‘Sorry, I’m really going off on one. Of course it makes sense, the focus being on Seb’s career, you know, while the kids are small. I think something had to give, right?’

‘Hmm,’ Abi says, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

They sit in silence, and for a moment Rosie feels the eternal pacing inside herself rest. But it doesn’t last long, the disquiet from the night before Eddy’s birthday seeping into Rosie’s stillness.

They’d been on the sofa. Seb was finishing off some work admin before putting his glasses and his school laptop – the one he uses for everything – on to the floor and opening his arms to Rosie. She leant into him, putting her head on his chest so she could feel, hear and see his heart beating, steady and true.

He started stroking her hair, the way he knew she liked. She wished more than anything that that could be enough, but it never was for Seb. Sure enough, his hand moved, quickly slipping under her shirt and into her bra, searching for her. And as his body grew, she felt her own shrinking, curling away, searching for somewhere to hide.

‘Seb.’ Her voice was a warning. ‘Seb, I think Sylvie’s still awake.’

‘Well, let’s go up to bed, then,’ he said, his mouth in her hair.

She sat up suddenly, clumsily pulling herself away from him.

‘No, I – I should just go up and check on her.’

Seb’s head drooped. ‘Ro, we need to talk about this …’ But Rosie was already at the door as he tried again. ‘Rosie, it’s been a year.’

‘What?’

‘It’s a year, sweetheart, since we last … made love.’

Rosie’s always disliked the phrase ‘making love’ – it sounds weedy to her, the sex equivalent of a limp handshake. She’d rather ‘have sex’ or even ‘fuck’.

‘No, it isn’t,’ she replied, unsure, trying to remember. They’d argued about their sex life so much recently. She couldn’t bear to go over it again, what Seb wanted versus what she felt she could give. She’d told him so many times to watch porn, to satisfy himself however he wanted, just not to put any pressure on her.

Gently, he started, ‘It was just before Eddy’s birthday last year; the kids were staying at Mum’s.’ She remembered the night. Greer had only recently – at long, long last – started sleeping through the night. Rosie’s body felt like it was finally coming back to her after so many years of the kids needing it. For years, she’d been an incubator, a feeding machine, a comfort blanket, a punch bag and a carrier. Her body jangled with their fears, their joys, their anxieties along with her own and now, at last, she’d thought that night, she could return to herself. She wanted to get reacquainted with her body when she was ready, privately, on her own. But Seb had stroked her, just like he’d stroked her the other night and as he’d become more alive in his body she’d felt a deadening, a closing down. She’d been wrong. Her body was not her own. It never would be.

A year ago, she couldn’t face letting him know that she didn’t want sex. She couldn’t deal with his disappointment, didn’t want to have to reassure him again and again that it wasn’t him, that it really was her. She couldn’t face how sweet she knew he’d be about it. So instead, she’d let him have sex with her. She’d ignored the deadening feeling and forced herself to put on a show for him, sighing like she couldn’t hold her pleasure in, rubbing her weary breasts, telling him she was about to orgasm when really she felt hollow. She told herself it was just a little white lie, a necessary one, because that was what they both wanted, wasn’t it? He’d had his orgasm believing she’d had hers, and they’d cuddled and then her body was her own again. At least for a few hours until the kids woke up.

The next time, a couple of weeks later, when Seb had started stroking her again, something had happened. The deadening feeling wouldn’t be buried. Her body refused. Her body felt like a great iron door, locks fully engaged. She simply could not comply any more. She could not satisfy Seb’s needs to the detriment of her own, no matter how much she loved him. She tried, she really did, to lie there, but it felt like she was abusing herself. There was no way. She leapt away from Seb’s touch. He’d known that something wasn’t right.

‘It’s OK,’ he said after listening to her, ‘let’s just hold each other.’

They did just that, the first and second time, and then what could she do? She started lying. She’d heard Greer call out, she’d tell him, she had her period, a headache, the prolapse from the three births had returned, she simply didn’t want to. That’s when the rowing started. Quiet, bitter words, knifing each other from both sides of the bed. Continuing until one would leave to curl up on the spare mattress in Sylvie’s room. The next morning Rosie would always regret the things she’d said, but at the time there was a kind of heady joy, a release, in telling Seb he was a self-centred narcissist, a pathetic, fucking typical man. It almost felt good to hear Seb shout back that she was messed up and needed help. It made them more real somehow. Seb would always apologize first thing the next morning with a coffee, a quick kiss, and they’d promise to talk about it properly, to get help, counselling if necessary. But sex never felt so important in the daylight hours and Rosie never liked the look of the counsellors Seb contacted, so the issue slipped again and again.

It wasn’t, Rosie told herself, such a big deal, was it? Lots of couples were the same, weren’t they? She couldn’t imagine buttoned-up Vita and Patrick having sex. Anna had made Rosie think she and Eddy were always doing it but maybe that was just what Anna wanted people to think.

And besides, didn’t Rosie show Seb intimacy in other ways? She liked a cuddle on the sofa, enjoyed feeling his feet curl against hers under the duvet, but the problem was that the cuddle would always lead to his hand down her top, his foot would start stroking her leg. What she offered, what she felt she could give physically was never enough. She’d never been abused or suffered any childhood trauma but felt like her whole life her body had existed for other people, never for herself. She’d begged Seb for the time to figure out her new relationship with her body. She’d told him she was in some kind of transition that she herself didn’t fully understand yet. It was true, but it was also true that Rosie had no energy or time to try to figure out what kind of metamorphosis her body was going through and what to do about it. And all the while there was Seb pushing and whining.

Last week Seb had said, ‘I don’t want to be in a sexless marriage, Ro.’

She looked at him then, imagined his disappointed dick creeping back into itself, and she had an overwhelming urge to kick him hard between the legs because after everything her body had done for him, for their family, how fucking dare he keep whining for more?

So, she said the thing she knew would upset him more than any kick, the thing she’d said to him many times already.

‘Do what you like, Seb. I really don’t care.’

Rosie has never said anything about the problems between her and Seb to anyone. Even thinking all this next to Abi, sitting on Barry’s bench, feels like a betrayal. Abi’s eyes are closed and Rosie wonders where she’s gone. Whether Abi, like Rosie, tries to swim away from the dark water within herself. Feeling Rosie looking, Abi opens her eyes, smiles sleepily before she glances at her watch and says with a groan, ‘Urgh. It’s quarter to three. We should get going.’

It’s slow progress walking home with all the kids. Anna and Albie join them for a short while, Anna telling Abi about all the other restaurants in Waverly before PLATE and why, in Anna’s opinion, they failed. Heath and Sylvie bicker and Greer cries for an ice cream, Abi placating them all with a macaroon as Rosie trudges behind, a donkey beneath the kids’ coats and bags, any lightness from her walk with Abi already evaporated. Things settle as soon as they’re home. The kids all thump up the stairs as Abi follows Rosie into the kitchen extension.

The extension had been completed before they bought the house five years ago. It wasn’t done well, in Rosie’s professional opinion – the kitchen is now divided in half by two supporting pillars which the previous owners presumably hadn’t been able to afford to replace with steels. The extension has a sofa and armchair at one end and the big oven at the other, with French doors leading to the garden in the middle. The older half houses the large family table, sink, fridge and the rest of the kitchen units. It creates a feeling of two distinct spaces, the pillars obstructing the view of the rest of the kitchen from the sofa and vice versa. When they bought the place, Rosie had started saving to remove the pillars and to put a skylight in the extension roof, but the increase in the cost of living and Greer’s nursery fees have emptied the pot.

Upstairs, the girls are clattering about; Abi glances up, smiles at the sound of them laughing. Heath’s up there too, playing with his Lego, while Sylvie can be heard occasionally bossing the younger girls about.

Abi looks around at the framed baby photos of the kids, the drawings and calendars on the fridge. ‘Anna seems interesting. Her energy’s … lively.’

Rosie is opposite Abi, standing by the oven, pouring pasta into a pan of boiling water. ‘Yeah. I mean, I love her, but she can be exhausting …’

‘Hmmm,’ Abi says, like she wants to say more but chooses not to. Rosie glances round as Abi picks up a framed photo from the bookshelf behind her. It’s from Seb and Rosie’s wedding day almost twelve years ago. It’s a close-up of Rosie in flattering black and white, Seb out of focus, slightly behind her. Seb likes the photo because you can’t see the silver scar that runs from his nostril to his upper lip. He was born with a cleft palate and had corrective surgery as a baby. In the photo Rosie looks like she’s about to explode with laughter, but she can no longer remember what was so funny; maybe the photographer had asked her to laugh.

‘What a gorgeous pic,’ Abi says, peering closer. ‘You look so happy.’

‘Yeah,’ Rosie says, turning back to the pan, ‘it was a long time ago.’ She shakes her head. ‘That came out wrong’ – thinking she should explain – ‘we’ve just been together for a long time.’

It’s over fifteen years since they met at a friend’s party in London. They didn’t have the ripping-clothes-off, breathless, can’t-live-without-you kind of falling in love that Anna describes having when she met Eddy, but rather a slow, gentle tumble. A dignified dawning that they wanted complementary lives; a strong, dedicated relationship, children, security. Seb, who had grown up with all those things, wanted to replicate what he’d had. Coddled in the rolling hills of Waverly with strong, dynamic Eva at the helm and his kind, steady older dad, Benjamin, as second mate. Rosie, in contrast, had grown up in Stoke Newington with her two present but distant academic parents and older brother, Jim, who moved to Hong Kong ten years ago and whom they still haven’t visited.

There’s an explosion of giggles as the girls burst into the room in a puff of taffeta, calling out, ‘Get ready for the fairy show!’

They watch three chaotic shows, all of which involve at least one of the girls pouring ‘fairy flying dust’ over their heads and leaping from chairs, arms flapping to show off their flying. Abi opens wine while the girls swap fairy costumes and Rosie dishes up the spaghetti bolognese and calls for Heath. She notices how she barely needs to bend down to kiss his head any more – he’s growing so fast.

Lily arrives after walking herself back from school where she stayed late. Sylvie pats the bench next to her and says shyly, ‘You can sit here, Lily,’ and Lily, kind girl, does.

‘How was your life drawing class, Lily?’ Rosie asks, delivering water to the table.

‘Great, thanks. We had a new model, she was lovely.’

Sylvie giggles into her hand and assuming his sister is laughing at him, Heath remarks, ‘What?’

Sylvie looks to Lily, checking in with the older girl that her stupid little brother can handle the truth. Lily just smiles at her, shrugs, and Sylvie turns back to Heath and says with authority, ‘Life drawing means drawing naked people.’

‘What?’ Heath repeats, spaghetti falling from his mouth. ‘You’re lying.’

Sylvie widens her eyes and nods her head, replying with worldly authority, ‘They draw everything.’

‘No, they don’t,’ Heath insists.

‘Sylv …’ Rosie interjects, but Abi approaches the table and she’s nodding at Heath.

‘It’s true,’ Abi says. ‘Penises, bottoms, vulvas and breasts.’ Rosie’s kids shriek, cover their eyes and mouths and dissolve with horror and delight. Abi laughs along. ‘Yeah, it’s pretty funny,’ she says before adding, ‘but those bits aren’t the hard bits, it’s the proportions that’s tricky with the body – isn’t that right, Lily?’

‘The position they’re sitting or lying in totally changes the shape of their body and, like, the shadows and everything …’ Lily says, but Heath interrupts her, his face wrinkled with distaste as he says, ‘Not the balls, though. You don’t do balls, do you?’

After the kids have eaten, Heath, Lily and Sylvie go up to draw and Rosie puts Frozen on for the little ones.

Abi’s telling Rosie about Diego’s current boyfriend – an adorable-sounding man called Stephen who likes to dress like it’s the 1950s and keeps a house rabbit – when the front door opens and Seb calls out his usual self-deprecating announcement, ‘Only me!’

‘Hi, love,’ Rosie calls back, adding, pointlessly, because she’s always in the kitchen, ‘we’re in the kitchen!’

She hears Greer calling, ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ and Rosie listens to the creak of the floorboards as he moves towards the kitchen, Rosie and Abi sitting up a little on the sofa, and she can tell Seb’s in a great mood.

‘Hi, guys!’ he calls to them. ‘They had to double-bag the takeaway, so I hope you’re both feeling hungry!’

She hears the rustle of paper bags as he puts the takeaway on the kitchen table before he turns into the extension, and Rosie sees him in the way she thinks Abi will see him. His tall, solid Danish frame made stronger by hours of tennis, his smile still warm even after a long day. But there’s a scream followed by a great thud from upstairs and both Heath and Sylvie start shouting. Shit. Bad timing. Rosie looks to Seb; usually he’d be halfway up the stairs by now to sort out the latest drama but he’s just standing in the extension. He looks confused, panicked, like he’s forgotten Abi’s name, so Rosie decides to help him out. ‘Seb, this is Abi. Abi, this is Seb.’

Heath shouts something indistinguishable and Rosie rolls her eyes at Seb before turning to smile apologetically at Abi who doesn’t notice, because she’s frowning, staring at Seb.

Sylvie howls, ‘MUM!’

‘Coming!’ She rushes past Seb towards the stairs, calling behind her, ‘Sorry, guys, back in a minute.’

The problem is that Sylvie had taken Heath’s special sketching paper, which he got for his birthday last year, without asking, so Heath had jumped from the bed, tearing up Sylvie’s drawing. Lily steps in to save the day, ripping out some pages from her own sketchpad, giving them each a few sheets and challenging them to draw their feet. Rosie thanks Lily and leaves the three of them miraculously quiet and sketching side by side again after just a couple of minutes.

Downstairs, Seb is still standing in the extension, but he’s turned to the side, his hands on his hips, and Abi is in front of him, her hands raised, fingers flexed, whispering urgently. Seb hears Rosie first and he turns quickly towards her, takes a step back, away from Abi. His face is pale, his eyes wide, like she, Rosie, frightens him. Rosie would usually laugh at him, but she doesn’t because Abi immediately turns to Rosie. She looks strange, too. Her eyes are bright, her face flushed, but she doesn’t seem frightened like Seb. No, she looks fucking furious.

As she glances from her new friend to her husband and back again, Rosie makes herself smile. ‘You guys OK?’

Seb spins around towards the table and immediately starts pulling chopsticks and small cardboard boxes out of the takeaway bags behind him, saying too brightly, ‘Yeah, good!’

Abi and Rosie are left blinking at each other before Abi says, ‘Ro, I’m so sorry. I was just telling Seb I got a message from Lotte – there’s an urgent issue, at the restaurant; I’m going to have to go.’

And before Rosie can say anything, Abi turns away, gathering her denim jacket and rucksack, passing Rosie and squeezing her arm briefly as she walks past. ‘I’ll message you, yeah?’

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.