In her sweet little cottage on the edge of Petworth Park, Ros was happy. How could she not be? She had her dogs, her girls, a home, a social life. Molly and Issy had settled into their new school, Molly had made friends and Issy didn’t seem to need any. Maybe she’d grow out of her father’s features, maybe with distance her youngest daughter would stop with the looks that made Ros feel guilty about everything.
Harold had been a mistake. If she could change anything, she’d have her girls with a different father, one who wouldn’t cause her such pain. She’d still be divorced, but divorced from someone pliant, or dead, that would be better. It was her who’d been too pliant, doing anything to keep the peace. She was the one who’d had to grow up, grow a pair, stand up for herself for a change. If he’d stop being such a cunt for just one minute, she wouldn’t have to keep fighting so hard.
But it was only now and then; a smoulder in the background that occasionally caught fire. At forty-six, a new house, a new life, a new set of friends she could be her new self; go where she wanted, see who she wanted, be free of judgement. She still saw her analyst in West London, but she’d come to enjoy her old haunts. Sometimes she had lunch in Daylesford Cafe. Last time she’d bumped into her dealer. He’d followed her to Wild At Heart and made a joke about the killing dullness of the countryside while she chose between peonies and azaleas, so she’d sat in his car and bought a gram of coke. The countryside wasn’t lonely. It was fun, especially if you were single.
She pulled on her boots, took the leads from the hook, Crosby and Nash bounced beside her. Through the gate in the wall and Petworth Park rolled out in green and misty damp, the rise of parkland trees caught like ghosts lingering in the growing light. What a glorious place to live, how lucky she was, she hardly missed London at all. Her cottage was a bit tumbledown, but Peter had said he’d do it up in time, and she was welcome to get out a paintbrush. He’d have bought it anyway, places like that didn’t come up very often and at the time she’d have lived anywhere. She’d had to get out. Everything had fallen down around her.
At drama school they’d said she was going to be a star. She would have been if she hadn’t met Harold. He was at law school, she was playing Miss Prism at The Gate. In his funny glasses and bright blue suit, she’d thought he looked like Austin Powers. I’m on my way to the bar, he’d shouted in the uproar of the afterparty. I’ll have a gin and tonic, she’d shouted back. It had been the first and last joke between them.
They’d bought a house in West London. Her brother had helped with her side. She’d meant to get back to her career after Molly but then she got pregnant with Issy. Once in while she met with her drama school friends in bistros in Covent Garden where they reminded her how brilliant she was, while she replied that she really loved being a mother. She couldn’t talk to her friends about Harold, they all thought she had The Life. She’d tried talking to Peter, she’d even tried talking to her own mother, but they’d both said she was lucky to have him. With both girls settled at primary school, she’d finally got the parts that meant something to her; a year on Casualty and a run at The Old Vic playing Masha in Three Sisters turned out to be her peak. Award shows in Leicester Square, excitable mothers at pick up, she’d had it for a while and then she’d given it all away. She told herself she was over it. Autographs in the playground could only go so far. The thought made her happy half the time.
The grass sprang, the dogs bounced, and the sun shone, lifting the white glaze of morning. She walked home, thoughts of putting her feet up on her mind. She hadn’t heard from Tessa or Clare for a couple of days. Usually, one or the other called her. They were all right, the Midhurst lot. Nothing special but nothing awful either. Clare was sweet. Ros couldn’t get over how little she cared about her appearance, but if you ran the stables and didn’t have any money, she supposed there wasn’t time. Still, a little blusher, and a brush of that scarecrow hair, heels once in a while, something other than shapeless tops, surely that wasn’t too much of a stretch. She couldn’t want to be alone forever. And Tessa was a bit, she avoided using the word fat even in the privacy of her own mind. She wasn’t that person. Instead, she daydreamed about getting her on a fitness regime that involved aloe vera.
At six o’clock that evening, after a day of doing not much, her phone buzzed.
At pub. Come? x
Molly and Issy, home from school, were both shut in their rooms apparently doing homework. Ros shouted up the stairs that she’d only be an hour and drove to the White Horse where she found Clare in the beer garden with Scott.
“You two look happy.” They were hunched and smoking, their expressions tight. “What’s happened? Someone called off the play?”
“Tessa’s in hospital,” said Scott.
Ros sat down. “What’s happened?” She meant it this time.
“She’s had an episode,” said Clare.
“She’s been sectioned,” said Scott.
“For what?” Ros lit a Marlborough.
“For being fucking mental.”
“That’s not fair,” said Clare.
“It’s not really fair that she smashed up the kitchen either.” Scott scratched the back of his neck.
“You’re going to have to catch me up here,” said Ros. “What do you mean, she’s been sectioned?”
“It means,” said Scott, “she’s gone properly off her fucking nut, trashed the house and thrown herself in the pond. She’ll blame me. You know she’s going to blame me.”
“There was nothing you could do,” said Clare.
“I know that, but it won’t make any fucking difference will it. It was me that called the police.”
“The police?” said Ros.
“You had no choice,” said Clare.
“Unless she takes her pills and checks herself in voluntarily, which she never does, they arrest her, section her and she gets a bed. I got Stomper over.”
“Who’s Stomper?” said Ros.
“Dr Stemping. Her psychiatrist. You have to. I did it by the book. I always do it by the fucking book, and I always get blamed for it.”
“I’ll back you up, you know, when she comes out.” Clare sipped her drink.
“Stemping always freaks her out anyway. It never works. I don’t know why I bother.”
“Jesus,” said Ros. “But what made her freak out? I mean, what happened? A person doesn’t just go off their nut -.”
“She’s bipolar,” said Clare.
“Hides it well, doesn’t she?” said Scott.
“She doesn’t hide it that well,” said Clare.
“She does if you don’t know her.”
“I’d no idea,” said Ros.
“She doesn’t like anyone to talk about it,” said Scott.
“She’s protecting Freddy,” said Clare.
“I should have brought him round to yours. I had his bag packed.” Scott rubbed his eyes.
“You could have called me,” said Ros.
“That’s sweet of you, but me and Clare have been through this before. This is what,” he looked at Clare. He had sawdust in his hair and lines around his mouth. “Fourth? since Freddy?”
Clare counted on her fingers. “I think this is her seventh since you got together.” She opened her tobacco, tore a square from the flip top of the Rizlas and rolled it into a filter. “She doesn’t like taking the medication.”
Ros passed her the lighter. “Doesn’t she have to?”
“She doesn’t have to do anything until they section her,” said Scott. He drained the last of his beer.
“She doesn’t like the weight gain,” said Clare.
“It’s not the pills that make her put on weight, it’s the not doing any fucking exercise and not doing a fucking thing to help herself and sitting around eating cake.”
“She doesn’t sit around eating cake.” Clare put the lighter back on the table between them. A corner of the sticker on its side was wrinkled. Ros picked at it with her fingernail.
“She doesn’t do fuck all else,” said Scott.
“You’re just angry. You know it’s not her fault.”
“I do not know that.” Scott pushed his empty glass away from him. “I know she’s got an illness but there’s more to it than falling over when it hits her. There’s the telling us, there’s the telling Stomper, there’s waving that white flag we all agreed on. There’s the taking her fucking medication. But does she do it? Does she fuck. And whose fault is that?”
“Do you think she’s been throwing them away?”
“Why would she do that?” said Ros. “I mean, surely she can find some that don’t make her put on weight. If she’s got an illness, then doesn’t she -”
“She doesn’t like the label.”
“On the box?” said Ros.
Scott laughed. “You’re funny.”
“Of being bipolar,” said Clare.
“Oh, oh sorry, of course. Sorry.” Ros ripped off the sticker and crushed it between her fingers. “It was just that I thought that everyone was talking about mental health these days. You know, that it was out in the open? She needs to know that she’s not alone.” She dropped the crumpled sticker on the grass.
“Yeah, well, that’s all well and good for Twitter and Facebook and Radio fucking Four but for those of us actually living with it, it’s not something you want batted around the supermarket, or at least it isn’t for Tessa. This isn’t some cute little panic attack at the deli counter, this is psychosis. Her problem isn’t that she’s bipolar, it’s that she thinks she’s not.” Scott stood up. “Another?” he pointed at Clare’s glass.
“Me too, please.” Ros swirled the ice in the last of her gin and tonic.
“Let me tell you,” Scott straddled the bench, one leg in, one leg out. “She’s going to have to deal with that fucking label now. This is the last time, Clare. I swear to it. I’m not going through this again.” He marched off across the grass.
Clare raised her eyebrows and pressed her lips together.
“Wow,” said Ros.
“He’ll be okay. He’s just frustrated, you know? It’s hard loving someone with…” Clare shook her head. “They’ve been through it so many times, and now with Freddy -.” It was a beautiful evening, as the morning had been, warm as if summer was making a last stab at being remembered. The pub garden filled up, smoke drifted into the air. Plates of White Horse burgers, and fish and chips were eaten at wonky tables, cutlery and condiments picked up from the green dresser by the door. “Have you eaten?” Clare rubbed her hands back and forth through her hair and combed it down with her fingers.
“I’ll eat later with the girls.” She’d left a shepherd’s pie defrosting on the Aga. “What white flag is he talking about?”
“We agreed last time, that if any of us thought she was getting ill, or if she felt it was coming, that she’d let us know so we could head it off at the pass. Up her meds, take the pressure off, whatever was pressing in on her. She could go out to her mum and dad’s for a bit.”
“Did you know she was ill?” Ros touched the lighter where the sticker had been, a trace of a label that would gather dust and become annoying.
“I had a feeling. She rang me after that lunch we had here. She was on her way to Freddy’s match. She said there was a police car following her. Always with the police or the CIA, or she’s pregnant, or there’s a flood, they’re the signs. Sometimes I think she likes it. She’ll have known for ages.”
Scott returned with a pint of bitters, a half of Guinness, a gin and tonic and three packets of crisps. He opened one and spilled it onto the table. “Will you do it then?” He looked at Ros with those deep green eyes of his.
“Do what?”
“The play. Did you not ask her, Clare? Clare was worried about the play.”
“I was not.”
“Clare wants you to do it.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“In Tessa’s place?”
“Of course in fucking Tessa’s place.”
“Scott,” said Clare.
“Sorry. Just tired. Yes. In Tessa’s place. It’d solve that problem anyway.”
“We could say you’re standing in,” said Clare, “and then carry on, and -.”
“Hope no one notices?” said Scott.
“If we say she’s not doing it, they’ll want to know why. They’ll want to go and see her, in hospital. I mean if we say she’s in hospital. We could say she’s suffering from exhaustion and gone to stay with her parents.”
“Or her parents are suffering from exhaustion, and she’s gone to make it worse.”
“You’re a funny man, Scott,” said Clare not laughing. She picked up her Guinness.
“It doesn’t matter. We’ll think of something. Will you do it, Ros?”
“It’d be a big help,” said Clare.
“Well, I guess, I mean, Issy’s in it.”
“There you go then,” said Scott.
“But she might not -.”
“She’d love to have her mam along, wouldn’t she? Show us all how it’s done?”
“I was going to say that Tessa might not like it.”
“Tessa doesn’t know shit right now and the last thing she’s going care about is the play.”
She wasn’t making herself understood. She’d been here before, that was the thing, they always said no-one minded, but they did. It was never just a play.
“It’s just a play, Ros,” said Clare. “It really would help.”
“You’ll be grand,” said Scott.
“Okay, okay!” she held up her hands in mock surrender. “I’ll do it. Anyway,” she touched Clare’s wrist lightly, “that’s the least of our worries. Poor you two. What a nightmare. I wish you’d called me.”
“There wouldn’t have been anything you could have done.” Clare moved her arm away and scratched where Ros had touched it.
“And we’re used to it,” added Scott.
But they’d had all week.
They finished their drinks, Scott and Clare got up to leave, Ros followed, kissing them both goodbye in the car park. Before she set off, the engine running, she dialled Brian’s number but changed her mind and cut the call before it started to ring.
Noticed Ros's confusion about the label while she was picking at a table. Nice touch.
Great dialogue!