Of course I remember. ‘To keep you safe,’ I suddenly say, and their eyes widen in surprise. My voice is croaky. I sound like an old woman. The hands folded over my sheets are wrinkled and veiny. I am an old woman. Of course I am. Why do I keep forgetting that?
Lolly comes around the other side of the bed and places her hands over mine. ‘I want to forgive you, so much,’ she says. Her hands feel warm on top of my cold ones. ‘Especially now. We’ll never really know what happened that night,’ she says to me. I stare back at her. I’m not completely sure which night she’s referring to. I close my eyes. It hurts to keep them open. My chest aches and so do my lungs. I can hear their voices although they sound very far away but they’re talking about Skelton Place. And Rose.
My Rose.
I realize they’re talking about an upcoming court case. And Victor Carmichael. They’re talking about the night Rose died.
And despite the pain in my chest and the ache in my lungs I begin to talk.
I could feel Rose slipping away from me. It was the same feeling I had when I was a kid. When I was Jean. Susan pulled away from me too, and I knew the same thing was happening with Rose. It began after she killed Neil, looking back. She wasn’t a murderer. She didn’t put the bad things she had done in a box in the deep basement of her mind, not to be looked over, dwelt on, again. Not like I did. It was a gift. It helped me move on. But Rose couldn’t do that. Rose needed to believe she was a good person, that she was kind, that she’d go to Heaven one day. I loved that about her. That innocence. It was refreshing after what I’d come from. But sometimes it could also be unbelievably annoying. She expected too much from people. Nobody was all good or all bad but Rose was very black and white. And I could tell, after she found out who I really was, she began to re-examine her feelings for me. She got past it because she had killed too – but she could console herself that she’d done it out of loyalty and love. Out of protection and self-defence. Mine had been out of anger, and fear, and that deep-rooted sense of abandonment.
I don’t know what I thought I was trying to achieve by flirting with Sean. I never fancied him for a second, but I wanted to make Rose jealous, I suppose, to make her realize she loved me. She needed me. And then, at the fireworks display, I noticed the way she looked at me. It was cold, detached. As though she’d had enough of me. I was so hurt by it that I couldn’t stand to be near her. So I walked away, got lost in the crowd. When she noticed I was gone she didn’t even seem that concerned. She just took Lolly’s hand and moved through the crowds towards home.
I walked around the village for a bit, trying to gather my thoughts, hoping that Rose would miss me, would realize that we were right for each other. I hoped by the time I’d got back she’d be so scared about Victor she’d agree we needed to leave together. A new life away from there.
When I eventually returned, Rose was pacing the little kitchen, her face white. She had a knife in her hand. She looked like a beautiful but unpredictable horse that was about to rear or bolt.
‘There you are!’ she hissed, as soon as I walked in. ‘How could you just leave me like that? You know I was scared with Victor on the prowl.’
‘Rose,’ I said, gently, walking over to her, my hand out to calm her.
‘I saw him!’ she cried. ‘He was in the garden.’ She waved the knife around.
I walked over to the kitchen window. The garden was empty. As I’d known it would be.
‘Rose. Darling. Put the knife down. There’s nobody in the garden.’
‘You … you …’ Her jaw was clenched and she was shaking with fear. Or was it rage. I couldn’t tell. ‘Where did he go? What did you tell him?’
‘We need to leave, Rose,’ I said instead. ‘Now Victor knows where you are …’
‘You know that’s not true,’ she hissed, her eyes flashing.