She wished she could stop comparing her meetings with her father to Internet dating (it was so inappropriate), but she couldn’t help being reminded of a certain type of needy man, one who was overly eager to impress and tried too hard to think of “different, interesting” dates.
It broke her heart a little to think of her father looking up “events” on the Internet, searching for something that would appeal to his thirty-five-year-old daughter, in the same way that he probably would have taken her off to an amusement park and bought her a stuffed toy if they’d met thirty years earlier. “We don’t need to do anything, we can just talk,” she wanted to say to him, but actually, she wasn’t sure what they would talk about. Damn her mother to hell.
She opened the door with a fond, daughterly smile on her face, to be greeted by a woman wearing oversized sunglasses and a baseball cap pulled low over her eyes.
“Quick,” said the woman. “Let me in.”
“Sorry?”
The woman tipped her glasses down to reveal familiar round blue eyes. “Sorry to be so dramatic. It’s me, Rosie. I’ve had photographers chasing me all day.”
Ellen opened the screen door. She hadn’t heard anything from Ian Roman since his visit two weeks earlier or from the journalist, and she’d given up leaving messages for Rosie.
“Why are there photographers chasing you?” asked Ellen.
“You haven’t seen today’s paper?” Rosie pulled off her cap and sunglasses. She looked tanned and pretty, happier than Ellen had ever seen her.
“No,” said Ellen. Her heart rate picked up. Mary-Kate had said the newspaper story had been dropped, but Ellen still felt sick each time she turned the pages of a newspaper, imagining how it would feel to be confronted by her own face and name under some horrible headline. She had a newfound empathy for anyone who had ever borne the brunt of bad press. It was funny how she’d always thought she had ample supplies of empathy; it turned out that to be truly empathetic she had to experience it.
Rosie pulled out a tabloid paper from her bag, folded in half. She held it up and tapped a finger on the front page.
It was a black-and-white photo of Ian Roman with a tall, leggy woman leaving what looked like a hotel lobby. The implication was obvious even without the headline, which read: “Roman Is Roaming!”
Ellen read the first paragraph:
High-profile media magnate Ian Roman was married only three months ago, but the honeymoon appears to be well and truly over.
“Ian is having an affair with some supermodel,” said Rosie. “They need a photo of me looking heartbroken and dowdy.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Ellen.
“It’s fine,” said Rosie dismissively. “He’s just saving face. He thought I was about to break up with him, so he wanted to get in first. He would have tipped off the photographers. But listen. Ian told me he visited you.”
“I did have the pleasure of his company,” said Ellen in her mother’s dry, cool voice. It came in useful sometimes. She led Rosie into the living room. “Tea? Coffee? Cold drink?”
“No, no, I’m not staying. I’m sorry for turning up out of the blue.” Rosie sat down in front of Ellen on her grandfather’s leather chair. Her legs were so short the tips of her ballet shoes only just reached the floor. She leaned forward, her hands clasped together as if begging for forgiveness. “I just wanted to talk to you face-to-face and apologize for what I’ve put you through. I’ve been away, you see, and I didn’t take my mobile with me. I only just got your messages this morning and I drove straight here.”
Ellen winced as she remembered that awful day. “I probably sounded hysterical—”
“Oh, God, you had reason! I can just imagine the things he said. He acts like, I don’t know, Rambo, or Tony Soprano.”
“He was quite … intimidating. He said he was going to ‘bring me down.’”
“What a jerk.” Rosie took some gum out of her bag, unwrapped it and began chewing rapidly. She pointed at her mouth. “Nicotine gum. I’m finally off the cigarettes.”
“Well, as your husband made clear, I wasn’t much help there.”
“Are you kidding? I would recommend you to anyone!” Rosie chewed vigorously and looked off into the distance, presumably trying to think of a good reason as to why she’d recommend Ellen.
“So Ian overheard you talking to your sister about me,” prompted Ellen.
“I had no idea.” Rosie leaned back; now her feet didn’t reach the floor. “I would have thought eavesdropping on my trivial conversations was beneath him. And he got it wrong, of course. I was just telling my sister how I’d asked you to hypnotize me into falling in love with him, and she was telling me I was an idiot.
“Anyway, then she convinced me to go and join her on a family holiday in Queensland. It was wonderful. Just your average beach holiday, building sandcastles with my nieces. Prawn sandwiches. Ian would have hated it. It just sort of confirmed everything that is different between us. I’m just so … average.”
“Nobody is average,” said Ellen automatically.
“I am,” said Rosie. “I’m extremely average. I don’t know why he even showed an interest in a hobbit like me. I’m not his type. That supermodel in the paper. That’s his type. She’ll look good on his yacht.”
“I don’t know, Rosie,” said Ellen. “I think he really loved you. That’s why he was so angry.”
“No,” said Rosie. “It was just his pride. Anyway, it’s over. It was a big mistake on both our parts. I never really loved him. You know that. You helped me work that out.”
“I think,” said Ellen, “that you never even let yourself love him, or like him, or even know him at all because you were so busy wondering why he chose you. I think you were blinded by the Ian Roman image. The money. The power. His big tycoon act. He might love an average beach holiday.”
Rosie blinked. Chewed some more.
“He chose you,” said Ellen. “A man in his position could have any sort of trophy wife. He didn’t choose a supermodel, he chose you.”
She was trying to say: The fact that he chose someone ordinary-looking like you means that he saw something extraordinary in you, and that means maybe there is more to him than you think.