Rescuing Rose. Isabel Wolff
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have happened. I’ll always blame myself!’ Gratified by this confession, I now saw everyone at my grave, Ed still blubbing like a baby as he threw in the final clod.
‘– God look at him – he’s gone to pieces!’
‘– He’ll never get over it.’
‘– He didn’t deserve her.’
‘– He didn’t appreciate her.’
‘– C’mon on Ed, it’s time to go.’
Now I imagined everyone leaving, and the south London cemetery lonely and dark; and I realised that the only reason I was there was because I’d let that weirdo, Theo Sheen, into my house. I was feeling pretty appalled by now and thinking that yes, I’d taken a huge and very stupid risk and for what – a bit of cash? – when suddenly my mobile rang. ‘Rose?’ I heard as I slipped in my earpiece. ‘Yes?’ ‘It’s Theo here.’ Aaarrrggh! ‘I just wondered if you’ll be coming back tonight?’
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘I wasn’t sure what to do about the front door, that’s all.’
‘What about it?’
‘Should I put the chain on?’ Oh. ‘I know that Camberwell can be a bit dodgy on the burglary front. So I just wanted to know whether I should put the chain on when I go to bed, that’s all.’
‘No,’ I said, exhaling with relief. ‘Don’t bother. I’ll be back by twelve.’
‘Right then,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Anyway, have a nice evening. Bye.’
I heaved a sigh of relief as I rang off, but then Suspicion raised its ugly head again. And I thought maybe, reading between the lines here, he’s just trying to find out whether or not I have a bloke. Yes…the enquiry about the security chain is just a front. A red herring. Maybe he is a homicidal weirdo after all…
PARP! PARP!! PARP!!!
‘All right!’ I yelled into my mirror as I moved off the green light. I pulled myself together and banished Theo from my mind as I negotiated the fume-filled roads. I skirted Brixton then drove towards Clapham, passing my old flat in Meteor Street. As I spotted a sign for Putney I felt my pulse begin to race. It was ten to seven – over an hour until I had to meet Henry, so I still had plenty of time. To calm my nerves I turned on the radio and found myself listening to a phone-in on LBC. I recognised the voice: it was Lana McCord, the new agony aunt on Moi! magazine.
‘We’re discussing relationship breakdown,’ she said. ‘And now we have Betsey on line five. Betsey, you’re a divorcée I understand.’
‘Yes, but I’d rather be a widow!’ she spat. ‘Bereavement would be preferable to betrayal.’ I know how she feels. ‘I’m so angry,’ she went on tearfully. She’d clearly been drinking. ‘I gave him the best years of my life.’
‘Betsey,’ said Lana gently. ‘How old are you?’
‘Forty-one.’
‘Then you’ve still got a lot of life left. So why spend it being bitter?’ she went on. Exactly! ‘Do you enjoy your negative thoughts?’ Quite. ‘Do they contribute to your happiness?’ Of course not. ‘Do they move you forward in any way?’ Good point!
‘I just can’t deal with this blow to my self-esteem,’ croaked Betsey.
‘What positive steps have you taken?’ asked Lana McCord.
‘Well, I went out with someone, on the rebound, but that didn’t work.’ Surprise surprise! ‘I’ve seen one or two old boyfriends.’ Hopeless! What a twit! ‘But I loved my husband and I just can’t get him out of my mind. What really gets me is the thought of him with her,’ she went on, in a drink-sodden drawl. ‘The thought of them having – uh-uh – you know, just makes me feel ill.’
‘So why torment yourself with that unpleasant thought?’ Bullseye!
‘Because I can’t stop myself from doing it – that’s why. I do these awful things,’ she confided with a wet sniff as I drove down Putney High Street.
‘What sort of things?’ said Lana.
‘I ring him then I hang up.’ Sad! ‘I drive past his flat as well.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Lana with a sigh. And now, my heart beating like a tom-tom, I drove slowly down Chelverton Road.
‘In fact I’ve driven past it so often I’ve worn a groove in the tarmac – but I just can’t help it,’ she wailed.
You are one very sad bunny, Betsey, I thought to myself as I turned left into Blenheim Road. Seventeen, twenty-five, thirty-one – mustn’t let him spot me: then there it was. number thirty-seven. Ed’s navy company Beemer was parked outside. Blackness filled my chest as I pulled into a space opposite and a little to the right, away from the tangerine glare of the lamp. Then I switched off my lights, turned up my collar, and sunk down into my seat. The downstairs curtains were drawn but a wedge of light shone through a chink at the top. Ed was at home. My husband. He was on the other side of that wall. And now I wondered with a crashing sensation in the pit of my stomach, if she was there as well. Perhaps she was standing at the Aga, cooking supper. I imagined sneaking up behind her and bashing her over the head, then chopping her into tiny pieces, mixing her with Kitty-Bics and feeding her to next door’s cat. I was interrupted from this pleasant reverie by a light going on in Ed’s room.
‘Your behaviour is very destructive,’ I heard Lana say. Yes it is, I thought. ‘Not only are you not trying to recover from this, you seem determined to pour acid in the wound.’ True. ‘I mean, why do you want to torture yourself? Why?’
‘Why?’ I whispered as Ed’s face suddenly loomed up at the window.
‘Yes. Tell me. Why?’
‘I don’t know,’ I wept, as he threw wide his arms and shut the curtains. ‘Oh God, oh God, I don’t know.’
Actually, I do know. You see, what I was doing was quite different from what that sad woman on the phone-in was doing. She was obsessing about her husband – poor thing – whereas I was actively trying to get over mine by laying a ghost. Because I thought that if I could just sit outside his house, and feel absolutely nothing, then that would help me move on. So I did. Okay, I cried at first, but then I dried my eyes and I sat there for – ooh, not that long, maybe half an hour or so – just watching as though I were a twitcher and the house some exotic bird.
‘I can do this,’ I told myself. ‘Yes, Ed’s there, and I’m still married to him, and yes, I was besotted with him, but the fact is I’m in control.’ Remembering some tips from the Breathe Away Your Stress book I shut my eyes and inhaled through my nose. As I exhaled, counting slowly to ten, I could feel my heart rate slow, and my eyes were still closed when I heard the throaty chug of an approaching cab. And I expected to hear it go past me, but instead I heard the squeal of its brakes. I opened my eyes. It had stopped right outside Ed’s house, and now the door was clicking open like the wing of a shiny black beetle, and Mary-Claire Grey stepped out. She paid the driver, then tottered up to Ed’s front door, her stilettos clacking up the path like sniper fire. And I was waiting, stomach churning, for her to lift her hand to the brass bell and ring it, when instead she opened her bag, took out a bunch of keys then proceeded to unlock the door. The bitch! She was letting herself into Ed’s house – my marital home – for all the world as though she lived there! Which she quite clearly did.
‘She’s moved in,’ I breathed, outraged, as the door closed behind her. ‘She’s known him three months and she’s already moved in.’ Ignoring the small voice telling me that I had moved in with Ed after only one month, I started the car and pulled out of the space, hands trembling like winter leaves. I was so distressed