Page 65 of The Fallback

Jasmine twisted and squeezed his arm. ‘It’s OK,’ she reassured him, ‘Rosie came to see how I was. I’m pleased she did,’ she said and smiled across at Rosie.

Rosie smiled back. ‘But I should get going and leave you to rest.’

Rosie walked round the kitchen and hugged Chris. ‘I’m really sorry Chris,’ she said and then pulled away so she could see Jasmine, too, ‘Both of you.’

‘Thanks Rosie,’ Jasmine looked tearful again. ‘We appreciate it, don’t we Chris? And we’ll be fine, we’ll get through this.’ Chris looked from his sister down to Jasmine and pulled his wife close to him.

‘I’m glad you two have sorted things out,’ he said.

‘Call me if you need anything,’ Rosie said as she picked up her bag from near the kitchen door. ‘I’m sure Jasmine will fill you in on everything,’ she said as she walked to the front door. ‘Or maybe notallof it, Jas,’ she called back over her shoulder. If she had looked back she would have seen Jasmine smiling to herself as Chris enveloped her in a hug.

ChapterEighteen

Rosie was having a toxic love-hate tussle with her phone, and the phone was winning. She knew she’d been lucky to salvage things with Jasmine and Chris, and she was determined to be as responsive and supportive as possible. But at the same time this meant she was constantly checking her phone, which was beginning to drive her completely crazy.

She couldn’t even escape to the lab as Rachel had put a pause on all her experiments after sending Rosie an extremely terse email late at night telling her, in no uncertain terms, to do nothing further on the BioChem project until Rachel told her that she could.

Rosie’s head was so awash with thoughts about Jasmine and Chris, Mitch and Jenny,herand Mitch, that she didn’t have the headspace to think too much about Rachel’s email. Rachel could be a control freak at times and given the magnitude of the BioChem deal it was hardly a surprise that Rachel had intervened. Whatever was going on with the project, Rosie just hoped it would be fine, because honestly, she had other things to worry about at the moment.

Currently top of her list of things to sort out was the unpleasant sensation she experienced in the pit of her stomach every time her phone made a noise, and whether there was a way of ensuring she never had to experience it again. The hope – and ensuing disappointment – that Mitch might be replying to one of her many messages was making her feel sick. Since their argument she had texted him, WhatsApped him, and overcome her aversion to speaking on the phone and left him voice notes. She had even gone completely old-school and written him a letter, which she had hand delivered to his apartment one evening after work. Rosie had hovered by the entrance to his apartment block and considered ringing the doorbell, before deciding that it was bad enough for him to ignore her messages, but to be rejected face to face would be unbearable. She didn’t think she could handle that. She had stood for a long time wondering what to do, but in the end she had posted her letter through his letterbox and walked back to the tube station with yet another ache inside her, and although she wasn't an expert in anatomy, she was pretty sure this one was close to her heart. That letter, too, had gone unanswered, and now Rosie really didn’t know what to do next. Every time she thought about Mitch, she felt tears forming in her eyes and a lump in her throat. Life without him in it felt flat and miserable.

It was in just such a bleak mood that she left her office one evening. Everything was beginning to feel like it was stacking up against her. Rachel still hadn’t come back on BioChem and Rosie was starting to feel uneasy about her silence. Without the lab to escape into things had been slow at work. Rosie hated not being in the lab at the best of times, and this was very far from the best of times.

Paperwork was all very well when you could intersperse it with fun stuff like messing around with new lab supplies, but Rosie thought she might scream if she spent any longer reviewing undergraduate papers or end up causing some serious trauma to the students on the receiving end of her red pen. She’d become so desperate for some diversion, that she had started preparing a lecture that she gave once a year for a Women in STEM event. She had six months before she needed to deliver it, it should have been easy; she had her notes from the previous years, yet every time she sat down to work on it, the words wouldn’t come and everything ended up sounding clunky and boring. She was going for inspirational and interesting but it was just not happening.

Nadia had been no help; Rosie had barely seen her all week. Her office door had been shut, and the only time Rosie had seen it open was when Nadia flew out of it as Rosie was passing, speaking quickly and fiercely into her mobile and waving distractedly at Rosie as she passed. Rosie wasn’t sure if she was pleased to miss Nadia or not; she was worried about her and Nico, but she was also worried that Nadia might ask her how things were going with Mitch, and that wouldn’t be good. Falling out with Mitch had not been on the plan that Nadia had formulated for her.

The one bright spot in the week had been Jasmine and Chris. Their shared grief seemed to have brought them together and Rosie was trying to feel some comfort that they were working together to face their future. Rosie had had several tearful conversations with Jasmine, whose grief was still very raw but each time they spoke, Jasmine had sounded stronger and more positive than she had seemed when Rosie had seen her the previous weekend. Physically, she was mending, but mentally it would take a lot longer. Rosie was grateful that she had Chris with her to support her through this. She was also grateful that currently Jasmine was rightly concentrating on getting well again, not on having an opinion on Rosie’s life.

Rosie was thinking about her conversation with Jasmine about Mitch as she made her way out of the building. It was not improving her mood. Neither were the Christmas lights that had started to go up across the square from her lab; Christmas still felt a long way off but the shops had put out their festive displays and all the cafes were promoting their seasonal coffees for a hugely inflated price, considering it was exactly the same coffee but with a small amount of ginger and spice. Twilight had fallen across London, although it was hard to tell with the bright lights of the streetlights and cars. It had been drizzling on and off all day, a fine mist settling on clothes and hair whenever one ventured outside, but it had cleared up now that dusk was here. Rosie had decided to walk home since she had no plans that evening and so it didn’t matter what time she got home. It also put off the inevitability of yet another evening at home on her own.

She realised how much her life revolved around Mitch and that without him it suddenly seemed very empty. Even her flat, which had always been a bolthole of calm, was too quiet and still for her and her jumble of confused thoughts. Glumly, Rosie pulled her coat around her and set off. She was stood waiting to cross Oxford Street when her phone rang. Pulling it from her pocket, her heart skipped a beat when she saw Mitch’s name flash up on the screen. For a split second she thought about hitting decline; she wasn’t sure she could concentrate on fighting for their friendship when she was trying to dodge traffic. But had he got her messages? Was he ready to forgive her? And if he wasn’t, was she even brave enough to hear what he had to say? But curiosity and a desperation to hear Mitch’s voice again overcame her misgivings and as the pedestrian light flashed to green, she answered his call.

‘Mitch?’ she said warily, pressing the phone to one ear and putting her finger in the other, desperate not to miss anything he said because of the noise of the street around her.

‘Hi.’ Rosie couldn’t fail to miss the note of weariness in Mitch’s voice. ‘Can we talk?’ he asked.

‘Yes, yes of course,’ she quickly replied. ‘I’m on Oxford Street, though, so there’s a lot of background noise. Should I call you back when I’m somewhere quieter?’

‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘This won’t take long.’

That didn’t sound good. Rosie’s stomach sank, she allowed herself to be carried across the road by the swell of commuters as she waited for Mitch to continue.

‘I got your messages,’ he said in a flat voice.

‘Mitch,’ she said, ‘I meant everything, I’m an idiot and I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to mess things up with Jenny.’

‘Well, you did,’ he replied, sounding more resigned than furious.

‘Is she, are you guys…’ Rosie didn’t know how to frame her question. Of course she wanted to know what had happened, and part of her hoped that they were no longer together, but she also knew that if they weren’t it was because of what she had done and that the chance of Mitch forgiving her would reduce to a big fat zero.

‘I don’t know.’

‘I’m so sorry, Mitch,’ she whispered into her phone. ‘Can I do anything? Maybe if I spoke to her?’ she said hopefully.

‘I really don’t think that’s going to help, Rosie. I think you’ve said enough.’ There was a pause. ‘In fact, I was calling to say that I’d rather you stop contacting me.’

‘What?’ Rosie wailed. ‘Mitch no, don’t say that. I said I’m sorry. What can I do to make it better?’

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