Page 14 of The Fallback

While Rosie wasn’t exactly enjoying this topic of conversation, especially when she could be laid out on the sofa watchingLego Star Warsinstead, she was grateful to Jasmine for her discretion. It was not just the last few years that Rosie hadn’t shown much interest in dating, the truth be told Rosie had been half-hearted about dating ever since she moved to London.

‘We can’t all have met the man of our dreams during the first term of university and married him straight after graduation,’ she quipped.

‘It wasn’t straight after graduation, it was after we had both qualified and could afford a party!’ Jasmine shot back. Of course that was Jasmine’s style, to have it all worked out and coordinated. Don’t let true love and passion get in the way of your career ladder and student loan repayments. It was a trait Rosie truly admired.

But Rosie didn’t really believe that. She knew how much Jasmine loved her brother, Chris. And after all these years Chris was still just as besotted with Jasmine. Rosie could relate; in all honesty she sometimes felt that if Chris had messed this relationship up, Rosie would have chosen Jasmine over him in the post-break-up-division-of-friends, and not just because of her wardrobe. Rosie was fond of Chris, and obviously they had a shared history in common, but she did wonder how much of her fondness for him was down to his marriage to Jasmine. And Rosie also adored her two nephews, Rory and Joe, despite what Jasmine thought. They had been dutifully supplied at well planned intervals by Jasmine and Chris, and were enough of a distraction that her mum never bothered Rosie too much on the subject of having her own. Until recently.

It wasn’t as if Rosie had lived the life of a nun. And it certainly wasn’t due to a lack of offers. Although she often felt a little on the stumpy side when she was next to Jasmine, she knew she was attractive. Just perhaps not to the men that she found attractive. Which was an irritation.

Rosie had had a teenage boyfriend who was completely hung up on her for a time. In fact, Matthew had been absolutely dead set on a long-distance relationship when he and Rosie had gone off to separate universities, right up until the point that he slept with his next-door neighbour during freshers’ week. The last Rosie had heard, Matthew and said neighbour were married and living in suburbia. And although Rosie had gone through the whole crying-into-her-pillow for a few days, she now felt she had had a very lucky escape. If marriage in suburbia was Matthew’s lifetime ambition then Rosie was pleased not to have been a part of it.

University boyfriends came and went. They normally lasted just as long as it took for the boyfriend to suggest meeting the parents. Perhaps she wasn’t so different from Mitch in that regard. And it wasn’t because she didn’t impress parents; in fact, they normally loved her. But it had given Rosie a glimpse of the future expected of her, which often left her cold.

There was one exception: Connor, who she had started dating during her finals. Connor Ryan was an English student, the yin to her yang in many ways. He was smart, funny and opinionated; a poet at heart. Rosie had adored him. They had spent one glorious and happy summer together. He was her first introduction to the real London, having grown up there. They walked the London parks, went to the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, careened around Soho late at night after too many drinks. Although she had never admitted this to anyone but Jasmine,hewas the reason she had applied to do her PhD in London. It was just meant to be.

Except it wasn’t. Three weeks before she was due to move to London, Connor accepted his dream job as a trainee journalist and had been immediately posted to Washington to cover the upcoming presidential elections there. Nothing could come close to this for him and she would never have stood in his way. They had had several tearful conversations about the logistics of making it work, but they both knew that it was fated to fail.

THEN

Hyde Park was packed full of picnickers. It was a warm evening and Connor had told Rosie to meet him near the Serpentine Gallery; he said he had something to discuss. It was an in-between time, they had both graduated earlier on that summer and Rosie had the promise of her PhD starting in the autumn. She’d spent the summer waitressing at a pub near her mother’s house and any spare time she had up in London, where Connor lived with his parents in a mews house in Belsize Park.

Connor didn’t have a job yet. He had the luxury of parents who were keen for him to get therightjob, not just something to pay the bills, so he had been busy applying for internships at newspapers in London. Nothing had come up yet but Rosie had a feeling that he might have some news and that was why he wanted to meet.

It was hard to see an inch of grass between the rugs thrown out for elaborately planned post-work picnics, and jackets thrown down for impromptu ones. Rosie craned her head looking for the familiar sight of Connor. Eventually she spotted him, standing out amongst the suits and ties. He was waving and laughing at her inability to see him.

‘Didn’t you see me?’ he asked as he pulled her down to the blanket he had laid out on the grass for them and kissed her full on the lips, making her grin with happiness.

‘I brought wine,’ he said and opened a screw-cap bottle, pouring Rosie a large glass into a plastic cup. Connor was much more of a drinker than she was and could happily spend the evening drinking and talking, having an opinion on everything and never thinking once about food. Rosie would have two glasses and either be all over the place or ravenous.

She accepted the glass and he held his up for a toast. ‘What are we drinking to?’ she asked, eager to hear what he had to tell her.

‘I got the job!’ he said, his face splitting into a wide grin.

‘Connor that’s amazing!’ she squealed and launched herself at him, kissing him again. ‘I knew you would. What did they say? When does it start? What department will you begin in?’ she bombarded him with questions.

‘The political desk,’ he said, his face beaming with pleasure.

Connor was a poetanda political animal, ferociously intelligent and opinionated on everything. Politics was his life blood, he lived and breathed it, and it was the promise of a stint on the political desk atThe Guardianthat he had been hankering for. Rosie had tried to temper his excitement, trying to point out that during his traineeship he would be expected to move around between departments but he never seemed to listen to her. And now she wondered that if they started him off in that department how they would ever manage to move him on to the next. But that wasn’t her problem, she was just so pleased that he had got the job. They could start looking for a flat together as they had planned.

‘I’m so happy for you.’ She squeezed his arm and enjoyed once again the feeling of being here, in London, with her twenties ahead of her and her brilliant boyfriend at her side.

‘There’s just one thing, though.’ Connor’s face twisted as he said the words. Rosie felt her stomach lurch, this didn’t sound good.

‘What?’ she asked, both wanting to know and not wanting to know what he was about to say.

‘They want me to go to Washington.’

‘Washington?’ she asked. ‘As in, Washington DC? In America?

Connor couldn’t help laughing at her confusion. ‘Yes, as in DC,’ he confirmed.

‘Wow, OK, that’s great,’ she said and then saw the look on his face. ‘For how long?’ she tentatively asked.

‘That’s the thing, Rosie.’ He grabbed her hand and she looked down as he did so, intuitively aware that her life was about to change but not quite understanding what was about to happen. ‘It’s not the job I applied for,’ Connor said, squeezing her fingers to try and persuade her to look at him.

‘Right,’ she said, not feeling right at all.

‘It’s a permanent position in Washington.’

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