James himself was nowhere to be seen. Rosie checked her watch: 9.47 p.m. She’d been hoping they could catch up and chat about their days over a cuppa, or at the very least take in an episode of something funny on TV before turning in for the night.
She pushed open the bedroom door softly, in case he was asleep. In fact, James was sitting up in bed, two pillows nestled between his back and the antique wooden headboard Rosie had rescued from a street market five years ago. She grinned as she remembered how she’d had to hire a six-seater taxi to bring home the slab of intricately carved dark wood James was leaning against.
James’s legs were bent triangular under the bedclothes, a thick book resting on his knees. Rosie’s eyes swept its cover, and she made out the wordsPaleo Perfect: A lifestyle bible for the modern caveman. She felt her eyebrows shoot up and tried not to laugh.
‘All right?’ James said, looking up and running a hand through his dark-blond hair as she bent down to kiss him hello. He was boyishly handsome, Rosie thought – if a little more aware of it than he used to be. There were moments when she missed the somewhat scruffy student she’d first fallen in love with, even though this version of James was more polished, more financially solvent and better acquainted with shampoo.
‘Whoa, are you trying to ward off the local vampires or something?’ James exclaimed, wincing theatrically as Rosie stood up again.
She smiled and rolled her eyes. ‘Imighthave eaten some garlic bread this evening,’ she said, more sheepishly than she’d intended to. ‘And some pasta, which probably also contained industrial quantities of garlic. Although there definitely wasn’t any in the tiramisu …’
She had no idea why she was confessing this evening’s food choices, but the urge to do so was irresistible. It was as though she were a penitent and James some sort of diet shaman, armed with the unique power to forgive her food sins. It hadn’t always been this way, but his recent conversion to ‘pursuing wellness’ had come with side-effects Rosie could never have foreseen.
‘Yikes – so much starch,’ James went on, in a contradictory echo of Niamh’s comment about double carbs. ‘And sugar. The twin enemies of all body goals.’ He arched a brow and smiled at her, but the expression didn’t quite reach his eyes. After a few seconds, his gaze drifted away and settled on the page he’d been reading before Rosie came in.
For a moment she felt hurt – as if he’d poked an angry bruise. James knew as well as she did that she’d tried every imaginable weight loss regime in the time they’d been together – and that she’d spent long years wishing away the curves that had suddenly appeared around her thirteenth birthday. He also knew that, even before then, she’d been dubbed ‘Roly Poly Rosie’ by her stick-thin younger brother, Michael.
On her best days, Rosie felt zen about not being thin. She was satisfied she’d reached her body’s natural set point. Increasingly, she was convinced that the things she really wanted in life had little to do with the waist size of her jeans – even if comments like this one made her worry James was no longer so sure.
Her thoughts drifted to the spare bedroom – the only space in the flat that Rosie hadn’t painted, furnished or decorated. She cherished the unspoken hope that, at some point in the not-too-distant future, she might be able to fit it out as a nursery.
A sudden rush of tenderness doused the spark of irritation James had ignited – smothering it before it could burn its way up Rosie’s throat and take form in words that would inevitably cause a row. He just wanted the best for her, she told herself. And he’d certainly left her in no doubt when they first met that he considered her attractive. She liked to think she hadn’t changed too much; she’d feltchosenthat night – thrilled and amazed that she was preferred above every other woman in the room. He’d laughingly told her she had the face of an angel and a rack to die for – which, while teasing and crude, was unquestionably flattering. If the changes James was making felt like a comment on her lifestyle and appearance, maybe that was her issue?
‘Cup of tea?’ she asked him, keen to chat but hoping to avoid any further discussion of macronutrients or the ‘body goals’ James apparently thought she should have.
‘No, thanks,’ he said, frowning slightly at her offer. ‘Caffeine at this time of night’s probably not the best idea.’
This, Rosie supposed, was true – though she reasoned it would take more than a mug of PG Tips to stop her from nodding off when her head hit the pillow this evening.
‘OK,’ she said, refusing to be cowed or to sound in any way resentful. ‘Well, I’m going to have one – watch the news, maybe. I’ll see you in the morning? Love you.’
‘’Night then,’ James nodded, burying his nose in his tome again. ‘Don’t stay up too late.’
Chapter 4
When Rosie awoke the following morning, James had already left for the gym. Pale sunlight was streaming in through a crack in the bedroom curtains, illuminating a sock and a pair of boxer briefs that for some reason hadn’t made it all the way to the laundry hamper.
She didn’t have to be at work until ten, so she scooped them up, threw them into a basket she’d begun filling the previous night and took it to the kitchen. On the way, she noted a crate of protein supplements and energy bars that had been unceremoniously dumped in the spare room. Rosie needed to speak to him about this habit, or she knew the whole space would soon be given over to storage of James’s gym stuff – but she didn’t relish the prospect of bringing it up.
As the kettle boiled, she put two slices of wholemeal bread into the toaster, loaded the washing machine and flipped the switch on the radio. Rosie hadn’t intended to tidy up after James, but nevertheless found herself binning his rubbish, putting his console controller away and running hot water into the sink so she could wash up the dishes he’d forgotten all about. They were emitting an odour that Rosie knew would permeate the whole flat if she ignored it much longer.
The kettle clicked off and she threw a teabag into a mug, opened the fridge and pulled out an empty carton of semi-skimmed.
Rosie had a momentary vision of James gulping ice-cold milk like an overgrown teenager. She sighed. Not for the first time, she asked herself what sort of person puts a containerwith nothing in itback in the fridge. Then she put a stop to her internal rant and made a snap decision. Her toast would have to wait.
She stuck her feet into the sliders next to the back door, grabbed her handbag from the countertop and threw her coat on over her pyjamas. Rosiehadthought she’d have plenty of time for getting ready and doing a few chores this morning – but that advantage would be lost if she faffed around and tried to make herself presentable before popping to the corner shop.
Besides, it was only a couple of minutes’ walk away. The sole person likely to see her was the thick-spectacled, monosyllabic man behind the counter, and he never seemed to recognise his customers from one day to the next. She could probably go in there naked and he’d just say, ‘Six pounds ninety-eight, please,’ as he handed over her groceries. Shuddering at the idea of being nude in public, Rosie shook this thought away and headed for the door.
Just over ten minutes later, she was on her way home from the minimart with four pints of milk, six apples, a packet of bagels and a bunch of bananas. At this point she found herself wishing she wasn’t wearing her book print PJs. Not only were they loud – jade green, with bright, multicoloured texts adorning them in a splatter pattern – they werethin. Summer still clung to the start of September, as it often did in England – but the chill in the air reminded Rosie that autumn was on its way.
She picked up her pace, also regretting the bright pink, plasticky footwear she only usually wore in the flat’s little scrap of garden. She felt tension building in the stretched handles of the flimsy bag she was carrying and slowed again, in spite of her cold feet. It struck her that the contents weighed rather too much for a single carrier to cope with.
Sure enough – mere seconds before she reached the front door of her building – the bag split. It did so in deadpan fashion, unceremoniously dumping everything Rosie had just bought onto the garden path.
The heavy milk carton hit the ground first, its top dislodged by an aged concrete slab that was rapidly turning white.
‘Bollocks,’ Rosie shouted, righting the container in a bid to stop the leak and then realising that her apples were rolling away, back towards the road.
