“Auntie Lauren’s right,” added Amelie. “My mummy’s the best mummy in the world and I will love her no matter what. Unless I’m dead or asleep or an anglerfish because I don’t think anglerfish have human emotions.”
Rosaline, however, was not an anglerfish.
And once Colin Thrimp had confirmed they had all they needed, she went and hugged them both, and definitely wasn’t crying.
Wednesday
IT WAS ONE of those humid summer nights where stifling heat was giving way to torrential rain. Which meant Rosaline had to dash through the house trying to close all the windows that she’d previously had to dash through the house opening, and do it quietly enough that Amelie—who had insisted it was so hot that she would never fall asleep ever in a million years—wouldn’t wake up. Returning to the kitchen, she found a combination of the weather and the various distractions, many of them Amelie-shaped, that had punctuated the evening and turned her practice mousses into a series of brightly coloured puddles.
She was just starting on the washing-up when the doorbell rang. And someday she was going to receive an unexpected communication without immediately assuming it was the police come to tell her that her daughter was either dead, in prison, or possibly both. But today was not that day. Although, given that it was already quite late, Amelie was already in her room, and the police thing was clearly paranoia, Rosaline had no idea who it could possibly be.
Opening the door, she found Cordelia Palmer outside, her suit rapidly soaking through and her hair plastered to her head like—well—like somebody who’d been caught in a sudden rainstorm and hadn’t thought to go back for the umbrella that Rosaline knew for a fact she always kept in the boot of her Tesla.
“Mum?” It was an unoriginal opening but the best Rosaline could manage in the circumstances.
“I don’t suppose I could come in? It’s a little wet out.” Honestly, Rosaline had been hoping for a bit more breathing space between her last conversation with her parents and one of them showing up on her doorstep to guilt-trip her about it. “I mean, I guess so. But Amelie’s in bed.”
Standing aside, Rosaline let her mum into the hallway and—not really knowing what else to do, because Cordelia Palmer wasn’t a guest on account of being a parent and uninvited—went back to the kitchen. A few moments later Cordelia joined her. She’d taken off her shoes and her jacket, which, even as a concession to the rain, was as informal as she ever got. It slightly weirded Rosaline out.
“I wasn’t actually here for Amelie,” said Cordelia Palmer eventually.
Rosaline scrubbed vigorously at a mixing bowl. “Then—don’t take this the wrong way—why are you here?”
There was a long silence. It was the sort of silence you normally filled by offering someone a cup of tea. But Rosaline had made a lot of cups of tea for her parents down the years and wasn’t entirely inclined to make another.
Cordelia didn’t seem to know where to look or what to do. “Your father and I got a call yesterday from the BBC.”
“Oh yes?”
“They told us we wouldn’t be needed for the . . . the finalist thing.”
This was going to be the cleanest bowl ever to have had things mixed in it. “I asked them not to bother you.”
“Darling, you know it wouldn’t have bothered us.”
It would have. But for once, that wasn’t the point. “Fine. I told them I didn’t want them speaking to you. I told them I didn’t want you to be part of my story.”
There was another long silence. Rosaline put the mixing bowl on the drying rack and braced herself for a bollocking.
“That’s what I thought,” said Cordelia quietly. “Do you . . . do you really hate us that much?”
Fuck. Come back, bollocking; all is forgiven. “How do you expect me to answer that, Mum? Seriously? If I say yes, I’m basically the worst daughter in the world. And if I say no, then . . . then . . . it’s like everything’s okay. And it isn’t. It hasn’t been for a long time.”
“It’s my fault, isn’t it? I should have been there for you.”
“For fuck’s sake.” Rosaline stared into the washing bowl like she was looking for answers . . . or patience . . . or that one teaspoon because she could have sworn they used to have six. “It’s not about you. And can you please not make it about you?”
“I’m not meaning to, but . . . you have all this anger, darling. And I know that I wasn’t like your friends’ mothers or like you are with Amelie. That I made different choices. But I really thought I was setting a good example.”
Shaking her hands dry, Rosaline went to put the kettle on. It felt like a mercy for both of them at this point. “I didn’t want you to be like other people’s mums. I just wanted you—you and Dad—to listen to me sometimes. Instead of assuming that the best thing for me was to be you but shorter.”
“We listened, darling.”
“Do you not think”—Rosaline put a mug down very carefully—“the fact I this second told you that I never felt like you listened to me and you responded by flatly contradicting me indicates that maybe you don’t listen as much as you think you do?”
Cordelia Palmer opened her mouth, then closed it again. Then said, “We’ve always supported you. You wanted to be a doctor so we did everything we could to make that happen for you. You wanted to keep Amelie and raise her yourself and so we stood by you in that as well and gave you money whenever you needed it. And even now, when you’re doing this television thing, we’ve looked after your daughter every weekend.”
“Mum . . .” Rosaline was tired from the competition, from the filming, from the job she still had to do, and was nowhere near close enough to figuring this out for herself to be able to explain it to somebody else. “If the plan is for us to have the same argument every two weeks for the rest of my life, I don’t know if I can hack it.”
“It feels like you’ve decided all these terrible things about us. About me. And we’re not allowed to defend ourselves.”
“You’re not back at the Oxford Union. This isn’t a debate. You can’t use logic and evidence to prove to me that you didn’t make me feel sad and worthless.”
“Darling, that’s unf—” All at once, Cordelia’s face crumpled. “I made you feel worthless?”
“Yes, like I let you down. Like everything I did I let you down. Because I was supposed to have this amazing life that looked exactly like yours. And instead I wanted a home and a child and a kitchen that always smelled of something wonderful.” Admittedly, Rosaline’s kitchen currently smelled of Fairy Liquid and angst, but . . . details.
A glance confirmed that Cordelia was on the verge of tears. And not in her usual I want you to feel bad so you’ll put up with my bullshit way. “Because I never gave you any of that when you were growing up?”
“No. I mean . . . no. These are the things I like. And I’m allowed to like them. Even if they’re small or seem stupid to other people.”
“But”—Cordelia blinked rapidly—“you could have so much more. You could have anything. I made sure that you could have anything.”