Page 88 of The Fallback

‘So, you’ll give my congratulations to Mitch, won’t you?’ Susan said. ‘Tell him I’m looking forward to meeting his new girlfriend.

Rosie gritted her teeth and nodded grimly as she hit send on her email. She kissed her mother goodbye, grateful to have got her off the topic of Mitch and passion, and to have sent that stupid press release out. Now she just had to hope it would disappear into the overflowing inbox of the press department atThe Postand never be seen again.

ChapterTwenty-Two

It was good to be in the lab. Rosie's happy place. The place where she didn’t need to think about press releases, kisses, exes or ex best friends. All she had to do was to get this micro plate onto the reader without any mistakes. Why was it so hard? Who had designed these things anyway? She took a deep breath and steadied her hand. She couldn’t afford to spill anything.

Very,verycarefully she placed the film cover over the top and eased it safely into the machine, exhaling deeply as she did so. There was something powerful about the quiet and the calm of the lab, the methodical nature of what she did and all the tiny meticulous steps she took in each experiment that could add up to something massively life changing for so many people.

But she was now exhausted and a little sweaty and concerned that her hands had started shaking from adrenaline which was a less than optimal state to be in when she needed to measure things so carefully. She pushed her safety goggles up to her forehead and sat down on the stool by her lab bench.

Weary from concentrating, she rubbed her eyes, it was a good job she hadn’t put any mascara on that morning; fears about crying over Mitch had the happy benefit that she could now rub her tired eyes and not worry about looking like a panda. Her stomach growled and she felt a pang of regret at not having bought an extra box of those macaroons when she was buying one for her mother. She was starving and could do with the sugar rush. Rosie smiled to herself thinking how crazy her nephews would be after they had consumed the box. It would be just her mother’s style to drop a macaroon bomb and then make an exit, leaving Jasmine and Chris with a sugar-fuelled battle at bedtime.

The lab phone rang, startling her from her moment of reflection. No one ever called the lab phone, it was there for emergencies, when a colleague needed to reach one of them or a family member urgently needed to contact whoever was working in there that day. Rosie reached for it quickly, hoping there might be some good news at the end of the line. Perhaps Rachel was ringing to thank Rosie for sending the press release, or to tell her that BioChem had decided that actually their last results weren’t all that bad. Or––

‘Rosie, it’s Nadia,’ came the voice from the other end.

‘Er, hi? Everything OK?’ asked Rosie.

‘Yes, it’s fine, but do you never look up? I’ve been trying to catch your attention.’

Rosie swivelled round on her lab stool and looked over at the glass screen which separated the lab from the corridor of the main building. Nadia was stood looking irritated, holding her phone with one hand and waving at Rosie with the other. Rosie couldn’t help but giggle.

‘How long have you been stood there?’ she asked.

‘Long enough to wonder if you were going to fall asleep on that stool,’ Nadia replied shortly.

‘Sorry, I’m exhausted,’ Rosie said.

‘Yes, well you’ll need to find a bit of extra energy.’

‘What? Why?’

‘Just come back to my office and you can see for yourself.’

Rosie groaned in protest. ‘Can’t you just tell me?’

‘No,’ came the reply and Rosie watched as Nadia firmly ended the call and stalked off back down the corridor.

Without bothering to take her lab coat and goggles off, Rosie made her way out of the lab and down the corridor to Nadia’s office, hoping that Rachel hadn’t sent any more emails by mistake. The door was closed and Rosie pushed it open wondering what situation she was going to have to discuss with Nadia now. She loved her friend and she knew she was having a tough time but, honestly, Rosie just didn’t have the energy to deal with another rant over the idiocy of the government’s science-funding programme. Or a discussion over whether it was acceptable to tell the PTA to ‘sod off’ and stop making completely unreasonable demands of parents such as, ‘Can you please shamelessly ask anyone and everyone you have ever met to sponsor your child for the annual bounce-a-thon?’ On reflection, Rosie had advised that there might be more constructive ways for Nadia to get her point across to the PTA. All Rosie really wanted to do now was finish up in the lab, go home, find whatever was easiest to eat and have a hot bath. And try to find something that would take her mind off constantly running replays of her kiss with Mitch and the look on his face afterwards.

‘Mitch!’ Rosie exclaimed in surprise. Mitch stood and smiled shyly at her. His tall frame dwarfed Nadia who was hovering near her desk looking both nervous and excited, hopping from one foot to the other and grinning at Rosie.

‘What are you doing here?’ Rosie asked in confusion.

‘I had some things I needed to talk to Nadia about,’ he said. Rosie looked between him and Nadia, her confusion only deepening. She was very aware that the last time she had seen Mitch was up close, lips touching. And now he was stood in her friend’s office and she had no idea why.

‘Yes, well erm, I should get going,’ said Nadia as if she would much rather grab some popcorn, pull up a chair and see for herself what kind of showdown was about to happen. Instead, she picked up her bag from the floor near her desk and, shoving some piles of paper into it haphazardly, she made for the door. Rosie shuddered to imagine what kind of important raw data was being desecrated in such a manner but she held her tongue and stood to one side to let her friend pass. She was too confused to ask exactly what was going on, why Mitch was in Nadia’s office and what he and Nadia had been discussing together.

‘I’ll leave you two to it,’ Nadia said cheerfully, gave them a thumbs-up and slammed the door a little too hard behind her as she left.

Mitch now looked nervous. He was fiddling with the cuffs on the sleeve of the jumper he was wearing. Rosie realised with a pang that she didn’t recognise it. There would have been a time when she knew every single item of clothing in his wardrobe, down to the embarrassing T-shirts he had had as a teenager and now couldn’t bear to part with. Mitch still maintained that if he kept his Babyshambles T-shirt long enough it might be worth some money. Given his suspect taste in music Rosie wasn’t even sure he really knew who Babyshambles actually were. But this jumper was one that he had obviously bought without her and just made her realise how far they had drifted from each other. He looked good in it, though, she thought. It showed off his shoulders and the blue brought out the colour in his eyes. He fixed them on her now.

‘I thought we should talk,’ he said simply.

Rosie felt her stomach sour. Actually, the last thing she wanted to be doing was ‘talking’ to Mitch. Talking would involve meeting his eye, talking might involve him telling her about Jenny. It might also involve Mitch telling her to leave him and Jenny alone and to stop chasing after him in the street and kissing him or he would be forced to take out a restraining order against his crazy ex-best friend. But Rosie took the path of least resistance and nodded in agreement. He was right. They should talk. She should listen to what he had to say, take it on board and then finally move on. And then she stopped and reframed her inner monologue, she started shaking her head instead.

‘Here?’ she asked looking up at him incredulously. ‘You thought we should talk here? At my work? In my colleague’s office?’ Mitch couldn’t help but laugh at the expression on her face but Rosie didn’t smile back. In fact, her frown intensified. Mitch was right, they should talk, but why now and on his terms? Why did he not want to talk all those times thatshetried to talk to him? The unfairness of it all washed over her. Here he was, stood inherworkplace, talking toherfriends, interruptingherexperiments.

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