The Trouble with Rose

‘You will take me for your partner?’ Rose says. ‘Even though I am a woman?’

‘No one is perfect,’ I say.

We laugh. Laugh at this script that we know better than anything we’ve ever said. Because we’ve rehearsed it a thousand times, performed it a hundred. When I was seven, and Rose was nine.

‘Rose,’ I whisper. ‘Rose.’

We sit together, neither saying a word. I am scared to break the silence, scared that this moment will disappear.

‘I don’t think I know how,’ I finally say. The words well up. ‘Don’t you see? I don’t know how to make it work. I don’t know how to be with someone. I have never known.’ I look desperately in front of me, searching for something that isn’t there. Rose doesn’t say anything.

‘That is where I have to go back, isn’t it?’ I say it softly. ‘I have to go back to that. To Princess Multan and Rup Singh. To those living rooms in Tooting and Wembley and Harrow and Hampstead. That’s where I have to go.’

Rose doesn’t answer. She doesn’t need to. She knows as well as I that to make love work, you have to go back to where you learnt how to love.

2
Spot the Difference

Hold up two illustrations and spot the differences between them.

So I told you a story, the story of my wedding day. As I told you, it was almost the story of my wedding day. Actually, in all important details, it was the story.

But if you hold up the two pictures, one real, one almost-real, you’ll spot ten differences. Let’s go through the list.

One. I told you that the back room in which I was waiting, the one with the yoga mats and chairs, the back room of the main building of Bloomington House, an estate in Cambridgeshire, was white-washed. In actual fact, I think it was eggshell blue.

Two. I said that the name of the estate was Bloomington House, but in fact it is Bloomington Manor.

Three. Auntie PK, the feminist, was not wearing unrelieved beige. Thinking back, I can see in my mind’s eye that she had actually taken the trouble to wear an oxblood scarf. Auntie PK was either trying to make an effort – a bit of colour for a wedding – or making a statement.

‘You are Indian,’ I can imagine her saying, ‘yet getting married in a silver dress. Shouldn’t you be wearing red? What are you, white?’

Or, who knows, she could have been wearing it under threat from whichever auntie had knitted it for her.

Four. My mother’s hanky was not tucked into her sleeve today. She had pinned it to the green train or pallu of her sari for the occasion. She had made an effort, even if she had been certain the wedding would come to nothing, she would tell me later.

Five. There wasn’t a slump in my shoulders when I was facing Simon and my family. If I look carefully at the actual picture, the real one, not the almost-real one, my shoulders are riding up. It’s my defensive look, the one my mother is always quick to point out. ‘It isn’t attractive, Rilla, and no one will want to marry you.’

Six. I told you that Auntie Dharma said that Mercury was in my fifth house. But for all I know about this, she could have said that the Savannah Bird Girl was making sweet love to a humpback whale in the garden. I have no idea what she said, but it was definitely something about a planet in our solar system messing up whichever one of my houses deals with marriage.

Seven. When Simon’s father said we should get a lawyer and Simon reminded him that he is a lawyer, Simon’s father stage-whispered, ‘I’m not going to be dragged into one of your messes. If you had any sense, you wouldn’t be either.’ Simon’s father doesn’t hate me. But for him, someone who has been arrested doesn’t belong in the Langton family; they besmirch the family name. Well no, I don’t think he cares about the family name. It’s more that carelessness – the kind that gets you arrested, the kind that shows a disregard for morality or at least decorum – makes him feel physically ill. It’s the way mortgage brokers feel about people with poor Experian scores. That is how Simon’s father feels about my record. Simon shouldn’t have told him that I had been arrested in the past, you say? Well, he didn’t. I did. The first time I met him, which was two months ago. Which was four months after I met Simon. Your eyebrows are rising now. A bit hasty to be calling the banns, you say? Well, you could just be right, and we will come back to this, I promise.

Eight. Simon is too nice to remind me that my MA committee has warned that if I don’t make any progress in my thesis, then I am out. Out, out, out. Forever. He is too nice, and also I haven’t told him about that yet. I would have gotten round to it, but I hadn’t yet. So he couldn’t have reminded me even if he had wanted to.

Nine. You’ve probably already noticed this one, it’s quite glaring. I’m sure you spotted it right away. I’m the small brown nut. My sister Rose is the princess, tall, beautiful, fair, her skin bathing in permanent blossoms. So, in that little sketch we re-enacted on the park bench, of course Rose is Princess Multan, who weighs as much as a flower, whose every word pours out of her like birdsong, whose beauty is shielded by groves so dense that no one but the most daring prince could get through. Beautiful and kind, soulful and lyrical, that’s my sister. I am Rup Singh, her suitor, a walnut, hoping that my skill in making garlands will help her overlook the fact that I am ugly and that I am a girl. In the play we enacted as children, Rose was the princess, I was the suitor. I changed this around in that scene on the park bench.

Ten. Rose of course wasn’t at the wedding at all or on the park bench. The last time I saw her was seventeen years ago. Still, that doesn’t mean that she isn’t the one person in the world who knows me best. And that she wouldn’t have said and done exactly those things if she had been there.

3
The Morning After

The next morning, I wake up from a dream that I can’t remember. I panic because I don’t know where I am. I stare all around me blindly, then things in my room slowly start to come into focus. The thick wooden beams that divide the attic room into bedroom and bathroom solidify, and the fairy lights, strung up on the wall above my bed, draw into focus. A blue Massive Attack poster that reads ‘Unfinished Symphony’ stares down at the bed, and next to it a dog finds a ladder to the moon in a Miro print. Through the large window on the opposite wall, I see the park lined with trees, two children playing hopscotch in the playground, a man blowing leaves around and a Joker sitting on a bench, beer bottle in hand, his exaggerated red lips smudged and his purple coat a little the worse for wear. He is leering into the distance, seemingly straight at me.

I spring out of bed and pull the blackout curtains shut, not letting a single file of light into the room. My head pressed hard on my fisted hands, I keep a firm hold on the curtains, just in case they spring open again. I turn around, keeping my eyes half closed.

What else is waiting to attack me? On the slouchy sofa-chair with red stripes that I dragged home from a car boot some weeks ago and that Simon and I pushed and pulled up three flights of stairs lies my discarded wedding dress. It looks like it’s never been worn, like it has quickly got rid of any memory of me. Not a billow or a crease, not a broken button to remind me of how it might have been if Simon had slipped it off me last night.

I shove it under the bed, but now the sofa-chair is staring at me accusingly. It seems to murmur, Why did you do it, Rilla, why did you do it? I run to my bed, drag my duvet off it and fling it on the sofa-chair, but I can still see its shape. I fling myself face down on the bed. I am safer now, now that I can’t see the things in my room, but the dream starts to come back in threads and there’s that choking feeling in my throat again. There is Simon in my dream wearing an orange t-shirt that says ‘Go Bahamas’. I’m wearing pretty much what I’m wearing now, a tank top and floral pyjama bottoms. I don’t know what I have said to the dream-Simon, or what I have done, but he looks stubborn. He has that look on his face that he gets when we argue, the jaw clenched, the ocean-blue eyes remote and unreachable. He will never forgive me. He should never forgive me. My mother is standing behind him, her arms crossed over her chest. You always do this, she says, you always push people away. I told you. I told you! And then it comes back to me. There had been someone else in my dream, standing behind my mother, looking at me with sad eyes. A dog. Mine and Rose’s dog, Gus-Gus. I gasp for breath as the memory of the dream hits me. Gus-Gus, when was the last time I dreamed of Gus-Gus?

The dream-memory threatens to choke me so I jump off the bed, push my hair to the top of my head, stick a hairclip into it and start cleaning. I have to clean. I have to do something with my hands or I’ll go mad. There is stuff everywhere. There should be boxes, ready to go to the flat Simon and I are – were – moving into, in Crystal Palace. But there aren’t because I hadn’t got that far yet. I had only got to the point of pulling things out of closets and drawers and staring at them. I start folding. Picking up, folding, placing in drawers. This is a good task to do, I can do it for hours. I can do it for the rest of my life.

I’m halfway through the first drawer when my phone rings. It is my mother. I close my eyes, willing her to go away. My parents are possibly the last people I want to talk to right now, but she keeps ringing. After the seventh missed call, I tap the green button.

‘Rilla,’ my mother says without so much as a hello, ‘what are you doing?’ She doesn’t mean right now, in my room at this particular moment, but generally, with my life. ‘Why do you have to ruin everything?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ I mutter. I stab viciously at strands of my hair that are trying to escape the hairclip.

‘What are you trying to do, show Simon that you’re thoughtless, selfish? Rilla, he’ll find out what you’re really like, don’t you see, and then what will happen?’ Her voice has a panicky note in it, a twang of desperation. ‘You’re twenty-five. When are you going to grow up? Are you there? Are you listening? You can’t treat people like they’re nothing, you just can’t!’

‘Really?’ I grind my teeth. ‘You’ve always said I’m really good at it.’ I whack at a t-shirt to get it into shape and fling it into a drawer, holding the phone between my ear and shoulder.

‘Do you think Simon will take you back after what you did? How will we face him again?’

We?

‘Did I say I want him to take me back?’ I mime thwacking the phone on the floor a few times. ‘Did I say that?’

‘We just want you to be happy. What is wrong with that? Tell me, what is wrong with that?’

‘You want me to be happy?’ I say slowly. ‘Now that’s too much, Mum. I would have said that’s the one thing you’ve never wanted me to be.’

My mother is breathing hard now, I can hear her. I squeeze my eyes tightly shut but the familiar guilt is starting to creep up. My father takes the phone, and in the background I hear my mother say, ‘I don’t know what he sees in her, Manoj, I really don’t!’

‘Rilla, why have you upset your mother? Can you have one conversation that doesn’t end like that?’ Dad says. He doesn’t sound annoyed, he just sounds like my dad – tired and resigned. I picture him sticking a finger and thumb in his eyes and rubbing wearily.

‘Well, Dad, why don’t you tell me?’

‘Rilla, beta—’

‘Sorry,’ I mutter. ‘I’m going now. Sorry, okay? Just – don’t call me, please, okay?’ When I put down the phone, I notice missed calls from Simon, some from last night, others from this morning when my phone was on silent. There is also a text message: Please call me. Just let me know you’re okay.

Tears threaten to rise but I push them down. Not now, Rilla. This is not the time. I stab at my face with the back of my hand and carry on tidying.

I clean obsessively. I can’t think about Simon. I can’t think about Simon and I can’t think about my mother. And I definitely can’t think about Gus-Gus.

After an hour, I give up trying to sort my room out and walk slowly downstairs to the living room. My flatmate Federico is sitting in the middle of the floor in child’s pose, looking in through the window of a miniature Victorian house.

The flat Federico and I share is part of a three-flat house in Lewisham. When I started my MA three years ago, I came across a pamphlet on a notice board at university, advertising for a flatmate. It gave details of the flat, and then ended with the words, ‘Even if you hate everyone else, you’ll love me!’ We met on campus and had a long chat about American politics, Simon Cowell and Lucozade (and how much we couldn’t stand any of those things). I told him about my favourite Mexican restaurant – La Choza in Brighton – and he told me he would make me nachos (all made from scratch) once a fortnight if I lived with him. I moved in the following week.

As I step into the living room, a floorboard creaks under my weight, and the four walls of Federico’s model house collapse. Down comes the sloping roof.

‘Oof,’ Federico says, sitting up. His springy curls are standing up all around his head, his hands are now on his small-boy hips. He is wearing his red tracky bottoms that say ‘Ho Ho Hoe’. A joint sits next to him in an ashtray and there’s some Tibetan chanting emerging in wafts out of his phone. ‘Do you have to come crashing in here like a water buffalo?’

Federico has discovered a passion for model villages and he is trying to build the San Francisco of the 1900s. So far he has built two Victorian houses, one pink, one lilac, a few lamp posts, a post box, and a road – at the moment they look like a post-apocalyptic San Francisco, craggy angles, buildings falling everywhere, everything grey and smudged, all rather steampunk.

‘If you can figure out how to build them so they actually look like something real, that would make a difference,’ I say irritably.

‘Regretting it now?’ he asks, bending down again, trying to get the structure back up, one wall at a time, holding his pinky fingers out for balance. His stare is so dark and intense that his eyes look like they are lined with eyeliner.

I flop down on the window sill. ‘No,’ I say. ‘No, I am not.’

‘Okay, then,’ Federico says. ‘I’m glad you’re happy with your decision. It must be a good feeling.’

Federico is from Mexico. He is short and wiry, and has a mass of curly hair that comes out of his head like an explosion. He is on a post-graduate scholarship to study music at Trinity. He had been accepted by Columbia, but he decided to move to London instead as a protest against the divisionary politics of the American government. (Also he didn’t get a visa.) When he is being sarcastic he talks in exactly the same tone as when he’s not, so sometimes it’s difficult to know if he’s being serious. At the moment, though, his meaning is crystal clear. I glare at him. After a few minutes, I finally think of a good comeback.

‘And anyway, you think you’re better at relationships?’ Ha, take that, Federico.

He rolls his eyes. ‘Is that the best you can do? I never said I am good at relationships. But chucking someone at the altar, that would be a first, even for me. Still, as long as you are happy …’ He peers at one of the walls of the model house. He holds it straight up, then upside down, then sideways. He abstractedly scratches the C and D tattoo on his right shoulder, then grunts and rummages in his petite toolbox.

‘Happiness is overrated.’ I examine my hands, my customary clipped nails buffed and polished with transparent nail polish by an auntie for the wedding. ‘Can you think of times in your life when you’ve been truly happy?’

‘Are you saying you can’t?’ Federico says, shovelling through the toolbox, picking up and discarding tools. ‘That is truly tragic, chica.’

A vision arises in my mind. A vision of being chased up and down the house by my sister Rose. Giggling helplessly, hiding in cupboards, behind curtains, under chairs and tables, getting tickled till I was upside down and inside out. The helpless giggles, the cries of ‘Rose, stop! Rose, stop!’ ringing in my ears. Rose’s face, leaning in, checking to see if I was okay, if I really wanted her to stop. I never did, not really. And she would go at it again, and I would run shrieking through the house. Yes, I want to say, yes, I can remember a time in my life when I was truly happy. I can still feel it in my body so it must have been real. It’s just that it was a long time ago and I was a different person then. I pick up a cushion and try to push it into my eyes. These are unnecessary memories. I don’t need them and I don’t want them. I can’t have them.

‘Everyone has the capacity for happiness,’ Federico says. ‘Now take what you did to Simon—’

‘Can we talk about something else?’ I say through the cushion.

Why can’t people talk about something, anything, else? I close my eyes but Simon’s face seems to be imprinted on the insides of my eyelids because I can see him even when I shut them tight. And he doesn’t look stubborn like he did in my dream. He looks something else, something I’d never seen until yesterday, until the afternoon of our wedding when I told him I couldn’t be with him any more. He had looked like he couldn’t understand what I was saying. He had looked lost.

‘Bad karma to leave someone at the altar. And if you’ve done it, at least tell him why.’

‘Seriously, Federico, drop it.’

‘Avoidance helps no one, chica.’

I emerge from my cushion and snap. ‘I know you like playing the therapist. But how come we never talk about you? Why don’t you look at why your relationships don’t work? What are you afraid of?’

Federico has gone through four boyfriends in the last year. He is with someone he cares about now, but they always seem to be at odds. If I can change the subject, throw it back in his face, maybe he’ll leave me alone. Maybe I’ll feel like I’m not the only broken one.

He shrugs, picks a buff he likes and starts shaving the wall to even it out. ‘I don’t push people away. I’m not intentionally cruel.’

I grind my teeth. ‘I am not – maybe your boyfriends don’t like that you act like you’re straight,’ I snap.

There is silence. Not much changes in Federico’s face. There’s a slight shift, a clicking of his jaw, but not much else.

I want to claw my tongue out. I want to sit up and slap my face a few times. What is the matter with me? It’s like words spring out of my mouth and I have no control over them.

‘Sorry. Okay? Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’ I have the stupid impulse to ask, Do you still like me? Please say you still like me. But I never say things like that, and I don’t say it now. Even though I could do with some people liking me right about now.

Finally, after many suspended moments, Federico moves, he reaches out a hand. The four walls of Federico’s model house are standing up together. He takes one down and starts cutting out a square shape to make a window. He can’t quite get the four sides to be the same length, so the window is getting bigger and bigger. I watch him at this task for a while. He is no longer talking to me. In fact, he’s acting like I’m not here. I sigh and leave him to it.

Outside our house there is a lonely patio on which people rarely sit. Sitting there bears the risk of being sociable, so everyone avoids it, and this works perfectly for me. Sometimes I leave a pair of smelly socks there to drive the point home. I go down to it now and sit down heavily on the swing, hugging my knees to myself. I can’t tell if I never want to see Simon’s face again or if all I want is for him to come walking up to the house right now. A tinny twang-twang-twang is coming from the ground-floor flat. Our downstairs neighbour Phil (who is a teacher in training) wants to join a mariachi band and Federico is teaching him the vihuela. I clamp my hands over my ears. There are workmen digging outside the park across the road. They’ve been there for weeks, and the local residents are complaining to the council about how the noise is bad for their children. This has to be the noisiest street in the world. I stare into the distance.

My neighbour Earl rides past on his mobility scooter. Earl’s mobility scooter is the Cecil Turtle of vehicles. It is so slow that I can say hello, pop inside, put the kettle on, make my vanilla Rooibos chai, pop back out, drink the entire mugful and say goodbye to him as he rides out of sight. When he sees me this morning he does a double-take. Yup, I’m still here. I’m not on my way to my blissful new life with Simon.

‘To get somewhere, you have to leave the house, Rilla!’ Earl calls as he slo-mos past.

I curl my mouth. ‘I’ve always been better at staying put, Earl. That’s the problem.’

His snowy shock of hair blows gently in the breeze as he glides past.

That’s when I notice that I have a text message. 20 mins, it says.

For a moment, I’m paralysed. I stare at it like I can’t understand the words.

It is from my cousin Jharna. It was sent eighteen minutes ago. This means I have two minutes before the GIF arrives. I run inside and fling myself up the stairs and all the way up to my room in the attic. I barricade myself, I wedge the dresser inside the closed door, I place a dozen or so books on top of the dresser. I sit down on the stripy sofa-chair, cover myself with the duvet and squeeze my eyes shut. The GIF is on its way.