Page 66 of The Fallback

‘You can’t do anything, Rosie,’ Mitch said in an irritated tone. ‘I’m so angry and confused at the moment and you’re not making things easier.’

Rosie’s eyes filled with tears as she stood on the street corner and listened to Mitch vent his anger. ‘Mitch, please,’ she begged as the tears began to roll down her cheeks.

‘No, Rosie, I’m sorry. I just don’t understand you at the moment,’ he continued.

‘But I can explain!’ she said in anguish.

‘Can you? OK, try me,’ he said confrontationally. ‘I’m listening.’

There was a long silence while Rosie contemplated this. Could she explain? How would she even begin to go about telling himwhyshe had sabotaged his relationship with Jenny? What would he think, knowing that she had entered into their agreement under false pretences? He might think she had been trying to trap him into a relationship with her by getting pregnant, which was unthinkable. But he would also think their entire friendship had been a sham. That all the time she had been working out how to make a move on him, that she was never interested in his friendship and had only been trying to work out how to get him into bed. And nothing was further from the truth, she thought with anguish.

If it was a choice between a friendship with Mitch and nothing more, or a failed romance, which ended up destroying everything, she knew which one she would choose every time. And hadn’t she shown that by the way she had behaved during the long years of their friendship? But would he ever accept and believe that if she told the truth? A car horn beeped nearby and a commuter bumped into her.

‘So I guess that’s a no, then? You can’t explain,’ she heard Mitch say down the phone. ‘Yeah,’ he laughed bitterly to himself. ‘It is pretty hard to explain why you would want to break your best friend’s relationship up. Unless you secretly hate me, of course.’

‘No, Mitch!’ Rosie exclaimed, aghast that he would jump to this conclusion.

‘Really, Rosie? Because it seems that way to me. Which is funny, because I thought we were really good friends, the kind of friends that had even discussed having children together.’

Rosie’s heart gave a lurch. ‘Mitch, it’s not like that,’ she said weakly.

‘Well, I don’t see what way it is like,’ he replied.

Rosie could hear the distress in his tone. She knew he was pressing her for an explanation. But she didn’t feel strong enough to offer him the truth.

‘So you see, Rosie, this is why I would rather you just leave me alone for the moment? I think we both need space and time to think.’

Rosie opened her mouth to say something, but as she did, she realised he had put the phone down.

‘Mitch? Mitch?’ she said frantically into her phone.

She tried to call him back but it went straight to voicemail. Rosie swallowed down a howl of grief and frustration, and bent to catch her breath in a shop doorway. Just at that moment she felt a hand on her back. Looking up, she saw a woman, older than she was, asking her if she was OK. Incapable of saying anything, Rosie just shook her head, not even caring whether she was saying yes or no to the woman.

‘Can I do anything?’ the woman asked. Rosie continued to shake her head. For a moment the woman kept her hand on Rosie’s back and then she reached into her bag and brought out a packet of tissues.

‘Here,’ she said, ‘at least take these.’

Overwhelmed by the small act of kindness, Rosie took the tissues with a shaking hand and straightened up.

‘Thank you,’ she said in a tiny voice.

The woman smiled at her. ‘No need,’ she said. ‘I hope whoever he is, that he’s worth it.’

Weakly, Rosie tried to smile back, thinking to herself that her friendship with Mitch was worth everything she had to offer, all the emotions that she could endure. But that she might just have ruined it all forever.

ChapterNineteen

‘Rosie? Rosie? Are you even listening to me?’

‘Of course I’m listening to you’ Rosie snapped back in irritation at Nadia.

Rosie hadn’t been listening, if you had asked her whether she’d noticed Nadia was even in her office, she wouldn’t have been able to give you an answer. But she wasn’t a million miles away either, she was about three streets away, in the direction of Oxford Circus, reliving the conversation she’d had with Mitch and wondering, not for the first time, where it had all gone wrong and whether she should just have kissed him again all those years ago. At least if it hadn’t worked out between them, she wouldn’t be in this nightmare scenario now. She had ended up losing him, anyway. Maybe it would have been better never to have really had him.

‘OK, so what have I been saying?’

Rosie’s attention snapped back into the room. Nadia was staring at her with the kind of look that Rosie could imagine her using on one of her children when they had been caught doing something they shouldn’t have been and were trying to finagle their way out of it. Momentarily, Rosie quailed before remembering that Nadia was not her mother.

‘Alright,’ she confessed holding her hands up. ‘I have absolutely no idea what you have been talking to me about. Was it about funding?’ she asked hopefully, although she had no real desire to revisit that thorny issue right now.

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