Page 88 of In This Together

She paused on the landing to consider her mother’s portrait – one of her younger modelling pictures – blown up to six by four feet in a brass frame. In the picture, her mother looked fresh and young. Her now lifeless features had not been ‘enhanced’ and her natural beauty and flawless skin, decorated with strong dark features, were striking and mesmerising. The iconic portrait was one that displayed the very reasons her mother’s services had been in such high demand back then.

Rosalie scoffed. Perhaps her mother would have been better accepting that lifelong invitation to Hefner’s Playboy Mansion after all. At least then she would have expected that she’d be cheated on.

‘Rosalie? Darling? Is that you?’

‘Yes, Mom. I’m just admiring your picture. Have you had it reframed?’ she asked, buying time to compose herself.

‘No, darling.’ Her mother appeared from the lounge, stepping onto the landing and coming to stand next to Rosalie to admire her own picture. ‘Though we had the wall paint touched up this week. Can you smell it? Perhaps it has made the brass look brighter.’

Rosalie nodded. ‘That must be it.’

Steeling herself, she turned to her mom, who said, ‘Hello, my darling, you look wonderful. A little dull perhaps but very pretty.’

Rosalie had teamed her new Gucci bag with a simple silk wrap dress, which was the same colour as her mood – grey.

‘Thank you.’ She took in her mother’s Bardot claret dress and statement bauble necklace. ‘You, too.’

Then Rosalie threw her arms around her mother and hugged her tightly, all the while feeling a huge wave of sympathy for her poor, unsuspecting mom, who hadn’t done anything to deserve her husband cheating. And thinking, simultaneously, what a farce her life was. The dress-up, the play of happy families and righteousness.

‘Now, now, be careful with my hair, darling,’ Loretta said, gently touching her French roll. ‘Giovanni spent two hours pinning me this afternoon. Come now, Luisa has made us a round of dirty martinis.’

Rosalie followed her mother into the even more opulent lounge, where burgundy leather sofas formed a square around a marble coffee table and above them hung another crystal chandelier. The walls were covered in Versace’s neo-classical style paper, and Greek-style sculptures stood in the corners of the room. A replica of William-Adolphe Bouguereau’sThe Birth of Venushung prominently above a mahogany side-mantel.

On a gold-rimmed bar table stood a decanter filled with what she knew would be her father’s preferred port and two cocktail glasses that harboured cocktail sticks, each holding three olives.

She’d chosen to drive to her parents’ house on the basis she might want to make a sharp exit, but one dirty martini might prove more of a help than a hindrance, she thought, accepting a cocktail from her mother and coming to sit on a sofa.

‘Where’s Daddy?’ she asked, crossing one leg over her other.

Loretta swallowed a sip of martini before saying, ‘Do I ever know? Likely still at the office. He’s always so hardworking.’

Rosalie scoffed. ‘Yes, good old Daddy. Ever the upstanding man.’

In her parents’ home now, she understood it was this that had shattered her heart more than the affair with Andrea itself. It was the thought that Rosalie’s father had fallen from the pedestal he was on and the realisation that the only person who had put him there was Rosalie herself.

She had always thought that her parents were better than those of Clarissa, Kaitlin, Madeleine and the people she knew in those circles. She had thought, every time they enquired about whyshewas single and whyshehadn’t married, that she was holding out for the real thing, like her parents had. That every time someone broke up with her, it would be fine in the end because she may be alone for a time but then she would find her true Prince Charming. Smart, attractive, hardworking, challenging in the best of ways. Someone to fill her empty days with love, purpose, conversation.

That was what made her better than those women.

But it had all been premised on falsity.

An hour and two dirty martinis passed, with Loretta gossiping about ‘friends’ and affairs and the drug-related death of a man she was once ‘familiar’ with. The entire time, Loretta’s facial expressions did not, or could not, change, Rosalie observed.

‘Loretta,’ Luisa said tentatively, entering the lounge. ‘Dinner is ready. Would you like me to keep it warm or serve?’

Loretta set down her empty glass and rose to stand in her strappy sandals. ‘Oh, let’s eat. Who knows what time Hunter will make it home.’

Had it always been this way?Rosalie thought back to the number of family meals they had scheduled when Hunter had turned up late. She had always put her father’s absence down to being busy with work. Had every time been a lie? Had there been other women before Andrea?

No. She couldn’t believe it.

Rosalie took a seat in the dining room, at the large, intricately carved walnut dining table. She sat opposite her mother and they left a space at the head of the table for Hunter. It had never bothered her before that her father was the head of the house and the head of the table, even the head of hers and Loretta’s lives. But tonight, her skin prickled with irritation.

A real role model,she thought.

As Luisa set down light cheese soufflés in front of the women, Hunter appeared.

‘I’m here,’ he announced, floating in, kissing Rosalie on the head and Loretta on the cheek, then taking a seat, setting his two cell phones upside-down on the table next to him.

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