Welcome to Rosie Hopkins' Sweet Shop of Dreams
Page 68

She felt such an idiot. Eight years of her life, eight years. Eight years when everyone else had been settling down and building a home and starting a life together. She didn’t even know how much Gerard earned. The only reason they’d got a mortgage together was that apart they wouldn’t have been allowed one. Oh God, there was so much to untangle. There was going to be such a fuss. And she would have to sit and listen, over and over again, to everyone – including her bloody great-aunt, it looked like, who’d met him for all of five poxy minutes – telling her how they’d known all along, and how was she going to find someone else now and wasn’t she getting on a bit and …
Oh God, what a mess. Rosie let the tears stream down her face and stared out of the window, where even now clouds were gathering in a far corner over by the purple hills. What a stupid mess. She’d come up here to stop Lilian getting into trouble, and all that had happened was that she’d got herself, irrevocably, into trouble. Her heart beat worringly fast. It wasn’t too late, she told herself. He didn’t know anything about how she felt. Maybe she could issue him with an ultimatum or suggest they took some time out or …
But she felt, deep inside, that it was over, as surely as the tolling of the village bell. It was over. Suddenly, painfully, she had a memory of glimpsing him from a ward window, coming into work early one morning years ago, eating a chocolate bar and carrying his briefcase, and she’d felt a sudden burst of happiness and love, watching him unobserved. How could it have deteriorated from that to this? To every weekend being spent with him in bed till lunchtime then sitting in front of the telly till supper then complaining he was too tired to go out? To her shrewishly banging on about washing up because he wasn’t capable of emptying a dishwasher. It was so … so banal.
Suddenly the bathroom door banged open, and Rosie jerked up, guiltily. Gerard was still half asleep.
‘Need a wazz,’ he mumbled, his hand ferreting inside his boxer shorts, his paunch protruding. Then, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he finally cottoned on to her tear-stained face. ‘Hey, what’s the matter?’ he asked.
Of course that made it worse. Sweet to the end. Rosie found she was no longer capable of crying silently, and instead let the whole lot come out in unsightly choking sobs. It was lucky there was plenty of toilet roll. Gerard sat down on the side of the bath, concern written large all over his face.
‘What’s wrong? Do you really hate it here?’
‘No! No, it’s not that. Gerard. I don’t … I don’t …’ She sighed. ‘I should probably have done this ages ago. Gerard, you have to tell me. Are we going anywhere?’
Gerard furrowed his brow. ‘I thought you were working.’
‘You and me, Ger. You and me.’
There was a long pause. A long pause where, for the final time, Rosie thought he might have suddenly revealed himself; gone down on one knee, whipped out a ring, declared undying love. Instead there was just a very long pause. Rosie worried. Had she not been clear? Assertive enough? Had she just fumbled her way through this relationship for so long they were no longer capable of understanding one another? She felt cross with herself.
‘I mean, I don’t expect fireworks and flowers, but …’
Gerard’s face had taken on a rather frosty look.
‘Well, it sounds like you do.’
‘We only get one life, Gerard. Is this it?’
‘What do you mean? Why do girls always want to know what we’re doing and what’s coming next? We’re boyfriend and girlfriend, aren’t we?’
‘Yes, but …’
‘But what? You’re up here surrounded by all these blokes and you’ve decided I’m a bit boring for you? Not good enough? Maybe I can’t chop up a sheep? Which I can do, by the way. I’ve done dissection and everything.’
‘No, Gerard, it’s not that.’
‘So, what is it? The second we’re not living under the same roof you want to go out and do your own thing? Screw half the local pub?’
‘Of course not! Stop being childish!’
Rosie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She didn’t expect him to be delighted but she hadn’t thought he’d be spiteful.
‘Ooh, ooh, let me go see that man! With that other man! I’ll just leave my silly old boyfriend in the pub, will I? He won’t care. All he does is look after me and hang out with me and put up with me all the time.’
Rosie’s eyes were wide. ‘I didn’t think that … I never did. I promise.’
‘You changed the second you got here,’ said Gerard.
‘No,’ said Rosie. ‘No.’ But she knew she owed him the truth. ‘I think I started changing a long time ago.’
‘They always do,’ muttered Gerard.
Rosie blinked in sadness.
‘Oh well,’ said Gerard. ‘Mum’ll be pleased.’
‘Really? Didn’t she like me?’ said Rosie, genuinely surprised. ‘Oh gosh. Wow. I didn’t know that.’
‘She liked you fine, but she always said you wouldn’t hang about. And she was right.’
‘I wish you’d listened to her five years ago!’
‘Plus she didn’t even know you were a tart.’
‘That is out of order, Gerard, and you know it.’
Gerard shrugged. ‘Yeah, whatever.’
There was a long awkward pause, while they both stared in different directions. Finally Gerard looked up from the floor.
‘Uhm, I still really need a wazz,’ he said.
And oddly, as though they hadn’t peed in front of each other a thousand times, Rosie left the room to give him some privacy.
Gerard was in the bathroom for a long time. Rosie sat on the bed, shaking, her stomach a tight knot of anxiety. What had she done? Was she mad? You heard about this all the time, people breaking up with perfectly decent guys in their early thirties, only to find there was absolutely no one else out there, and then in eight years or so she’d be forty and that would be it, it would all be over. She’d be too late … She tried to breathe, tried not to work herself into a real state. It was hard. Her throat hurt.
Gerard emerged from the bathroom standing a little straighter. He’d obviously given himself a talking-to in the mirror. Now he looked at her, the picture of wounded male pride.