Page 96 of Cuts Like An Angel: Part 3

“You think you know Rosie, but you don’t. I have known her for a long time. I have seen men like you come and go. You’re just a project in her life. Something she can fix and then set free.”

“You’re lying. Rosie--”

“Am I? Did Rosie tell you she is married, William? Did she tell you about her and me?”

William’s chest went tight, and he let go of the buzzer. He might as well have been punched with the words that Peter spoke. “Now, I know you’re lying.”

“Believe it or not. It doesn’t matter to me. We’ve been married for five years.”

“If you’re married then what is she doing here? In England?”

“She came with her friend. I worked a lot; you know how it is. We hardly saw each other. How do you say it? Ships passing in the night. I saw Rosie needed something so I thought it would be a good idea for her to visit her friend, go and help with the new baby and things like that. Give her a break. And when she’d had that, she would come home.”

“But Rosie doesn’t want to go home.”

Peter strode around the room, his hands behind his back, his shoulders back. He went and opened cupboards, glanced around the place as if he owned it and was checking the cleanliness of it all. Then he reached inside his inside pocket and pulled out a picture and handed it to William.

Rosie stared out of the image at William. She wore a white gown, slim, delicate, like her, and the man she was pressed against was very clearly the same man who stood beside his hospital bed now.

“As you can see, I am not lying. Rosie and I are married.”

William stared at the picture. He stared at it because there was nowhere else, he could look. Maybe if he stared at it long enough, he could make the images change and that not be Rosie in the photograph. “Perhaps you’re divorced,” William said, sounding weak, even to himself.

“Not divorced,” Peter said, “We have a house near to her parents. It’s already for her to come back to. It isn’t big. Just a starter home. But now she’s expecting our first child, we’re about to start a family, we’ll be looking for somewhere a little bigger.”

William swallowed but said nothing. What could he say? He couldn’t even really hear anything over the sound of his own pulse raging inside him.

“We had those three weeks together when she came home. She was supposed to come right back after that. She was supposed to come here, tell you it was over and gather her things. If you care anything for Rosie, you’ll tell her you’re okay for her to go home.”

Peter didn’t take the photograph away from William. Instead, he reached over, pressed the buzzer on again, and left.

William screwed the photograph up in his hand. The pain in his body was a welcome relief. He turned the buzzer off and stared at the wall.

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