Page 8 of The Fallback

‘So funding looks like it might be fucked for next year,’ Nadia announced dramatically. ‘If these politicians carry on in this manner, this country will have a major brain drain on its hands.’

Rosie nodded sagely. She wrote the funding applications and took credit when they were fulfilled but she never followed the ins and outs of whether they were or not, that’s what Rachel was for. But Rosie knew how seriously Nadia took the political aspect of their work, and frankly, Rosie was too scared to admit that she didn’t really understand how it all worked – where the money came from and how the government allocated the funds it had. So far, she had got the money she needed when she needed it and had been happy to accept Rachel’s praise for doing so.

‘But anyway,’ Nadia said, her face brightening, ‘let’s not discuss that shitshow. Tell me about your weekend? I’m sure it was far more entertaining than mine. Unless you went to a school fete and ferried your kids across town to their piano lessons, which they hate and never practise for but that Nico feels they ought to have because he had a terribly deprived childhood and was never allowed to play an instrument.’

Nadia pretended to play a tiny violin which made Rosie laugh.

Nadia grinned, ‘Did you see Mitch?’ she asked.

Mitch loved Nadia, he loved the way she handled life and work in a completely haphazard yet ultimately successful way. He often suggested Rosie could relax and be a little more Nadia which irritated Rosie no end. Despite his rejection of the world of academia he still knew what made for a brilliant scientist and he held Nadia in the highest esteem.

Nadia in turn seemed to find Mitch an amusing distraction at parties and tolerated him when she came across him in everyday life because of the special place he held in Rosie’s heart.

‘Yep,’ confirmed Rosie, ‘he’s reeling from his latest break-up and convinced that he needs to do something fast before he is left on the shelf forever.’

Nadia laughed loudly. ‘Remind me how old he is?’

‘He’s the same age as me,’ Rosie replied tartly. ‘Thirty-four. Which is hardly being left on the shelf age.’ Rosie straightened her top and sat up a little taller.

Nadia grinned at Rosie’s uptight reaction and took another sip of her coffee. ‘What sort of thing do you think he has in mind?’ she asked.

‘He hasn’t told me yet,’ Rosie replied. She thought back to their conversation on the walk to the tube and felt a shudder of intrigue flit through her.

‘He said he’s working on a plan and will tell me at the end of the week.’ Rosie looked at Nadia and shrugged her shoulders. ‘To be honest I’m a little nervous,’ she admitted. ‘Whatever he’s thinking about he’s implied he wants me to be a part of it.’

Nadia looked at her, quizzically raising her eyebrow. Rosie sighed, wondering just how much of their conversation she should relay to Nadia.

‘Mitch is convinced I’ve given up on dating and that I need some kind of incentive to get back out there and meet “The One”.’ Rosie leaned back in her chair and stretched her arms above her head. It seemed to Rosie that Nadia was in no hurry to get going this morning so if she could get one of her students to check on those results she may as well tell her all about Mitch. She fired off a quick message and saw a notification that her most dedicated post doc had read it. She immediately relaxed.

Nadia stopped picking at the holes in her cardigan and looked levelly at Rosie across the desk ‘And do you?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Rosie admitted, ‘I love my life as it is.’ Nadia made no reply. ‘I enjoy my work,’ Rosie said defensively and gestured to their surroundings, ‘I have really good friends, like you and Mitch, it’s not like I’m lonely,’ she continued. ‘Why do I get the feeling you don’t agree with me?’ she demanded into the ensuing silence. Nadia shrugged and laughed.

‘No reason. If you say you’re happy, I believe you,’ Nadia replied. ‘But it does sound a little bit like you’re trying to persuade yourself as well as me.’

Rosie poked her tongue out at Nadia. ‘And,’ she continued, ‘at least I get on well enough with my family not to dread seeing them every holiday.’

Nadia pulled a face in response to Rosie’s dig. ‘They’re notmyfamily,’ she said grumpily.

Now it was Rosie’s turn to laugh. ‘Well they’re as close as!’

Nadia’s relationship with Nico’s family was strained to say the least. As an only child of unassuming (now retired) academics, Nadia had never understood large and loud families. Or the complex and fraught sibling dynamics between Nico and his many brothers and sisters. Her brain didn’t have room for the messy complexities of extended families.

Rosie sympathised, she wasn’t sure she could deal with Nico’s family if half of Nadia’s stories were true. Rosie’s family was small and contained just like Nadia’s although that was partly because her parents had divorced when Rosie was back in primary school. It was so long ago now that Rosie barely remembered her father living in the same house as them.

Occasionally, on a slow day and if she had nothing better to do than indulge in some introspection, Rosie might poke at this issue, wondering exactly how much her parents’ divorce bothered her, and if it really ought to bother her more than it did. On reflection, Rosie concluded that the only lasting impact was a rather ambivalent attitude towards the institution of marriage, and it wasn’t as if this made her especially unique.

Rosie suspected that her brother Chris might have dwelt on it more – he had been a few years older than Rosie when their dad had left – and he might have thought about it more since becoming a dad himself, but he and Rosie had never really discussed it, which was their sibling relationship in a nutshell. Their dad, though he remembered birthdays and Christmases was sporadic in his correspondence the rest of the year. Hand on her heart, Rosie couldn’t say she really missed him.

But Rosie’s mother more than made up for his absence. Susan, an impressive woman, some might say intimidating, had been headteacher of a school with ‘distinct challenges.’ But Susan turned it around so that by the time she retired it was a school that the middle-class families in the neighbourhood would perform postcode contortions that verged on immoral, if not illegal, to get accepted at. It was even rumoured that several celebrities had tried to bribe Susan to gain access for their offspring. But Susan remained tight-lipped on that matter; she was not someone to care much for the fleeting nature of celebrity.

Susan, now retired, was busier than ever with demands on her time from various committees and projects. This kept her from paying too much close attention to Rosie’s love life and Susan had always encouraged Rosie’s academic and professional success; though lately, Rosie had been starting to get the feeling that her mother worried that Rosie’s drive and ambition might result in her complete lack of interest in providing grandchildren anytime soon. Recently, her mother seemed much more interested in Rosie’s life than she had ever been before.

Rosie toyed with her mouse, the computer screen flickering into life, she wanted to double check that her experiment was being attended to. She saw a brief message from her post doc informing her that all was well and she turned back to the conversation.

‘Half the issue, Nadia, is that I just can’t be bothered,’ Rosie confessed. ‘I hate online dating,’ she grumbled. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever had a successful date off the back of it.’

Nadia put her coffee down and threw her hands up in protest. ‘What about that guy who really loved the fact you were a scientist?’

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