Page 102 of From Notting Hill with Love…Actually
“No, I’ll just take a coffee too.” I still couldn’t quite shift the aftertaste of the brandy.
“So?” I asked when the coffee was made and we were sitting down in the lounge together on one of the brown leather settees. “Let’s hear it.”
Rose took a sip of her drink, then put it down carefully on a glass coaster on the coffee table.
She sat back in the seat and looked at me before speaking.
“Scarlett, your father and I, we were always just a bittoodifferent, I suppose. He was the calm, sensible one in the relationship—whereas I was livelier and much more…impulsive, I guess you’d call it.” She thought for a moment. “It was fine while we were courting; our differences were what kept our relationship fresh and exciting. And your father—he was a bit of a looker in those days, Scarlett. I always thought he had a touch of Harrison Ford about him.”
Try as I might, I couldn’t help but smile at that image.
“In the early eighties Harrison Ford was considered to be a bit of a catch,” Rose explained. “It was the height of theStarWarscraze.”
I nodded. “Yes, I know.” But I still couldn’t see my father as anything but Dad, let alone Indiana Jones.
“Anyway, eventually we got married. Everything was fine at first. Things weren’t a lot different than they were before. Except we now had the added worry of bills and mortgage payments every month—something your dad took a lot more seriously than me. And to be fair to him, it’s a good job someone did. Tom always wanted us to save our money, put it away fora rainy day, that kind of thing. And I wanted us to go out and continue living our lives as we had done before we’d got married. I wanted to enjoy life while I was still young. So as you can imagine, that caused many an argument.”
I nodded; this all matched up to what little Dad had told me.
“But whatever arguments we had over money, the bottom line was we still loved each other deeply, Scarlett, you have to remember that.”
She paused and thought again.
“About a year after we got married I fell pregnant with you. This put Tom into super-saver overdrive, I’m afraid. We had to save money for the baby, for when I had to give up work, for when we needed to buy nappies, cots, and prams. I wasn’t allowed to buy anything without your father wanting to know why I’d bought this or spent money on that—every penny had to be accounted for. And it drove me mad, Scarlett.”
I couldn’t blame her for that—it would have driven me mad too. David was bad enough, but at least I still had my own source of income.
“But then you came along, and for a while everything changed. I was besotted with you—I think that’s the only way to describe it—really I was. You were the most important thing in my life—you have to believe that.”
“So, what changed?” I had to ask. I’d been silent up until now.
Rose shook her head. “I really don’t know for certain. I think now I may have had a form of postnatal depression. You have to remember back then it wasn’t as widely recognized in all its various forms as it is today. Yes, we knew about the ‘baby blues’ and no doubt if I’d sat at home all day sobbing I might havebeen diagnosed. I’ve done quite a lot of reading on the subject since the Internet came along. I can’t excuse what I did, Scarlett, but I can’t take all the blame either.”
“Why? What happened to you? What made you so different from all the other mums who chose to stay with their babies?” My questions were all asked in the same detached voice. It was as if I was a journalist interviewing Rose for a story that had nothing to do with me. It was the only way I could deal with all of this—by keeping myself as far removed from the subject matter as I possibly could.
Rose stared down at her hands which she had clasped together on her lap. “My emotions went in the opposite direction. There was no crying or endless sobbing; quite the opposite, in fact. I was so happy at becoming a mum that I wanted to go out and celebrate. The problem was Ikeptwanting to go out all the time. I think part of me wanted to cling to the fact I was stillme—and not just someone’s mother.” She looked up at me. “You wait until it happens to you, Scarlett. You’ll know what I mean then. First you’re always Mrs. O’Brien when you go to the clinic, then Baby O’Brien’s mum, then suddenly everyone only knows you as Scarlett’s mother. You start to lose your own identity; no one calls you by your own name anymore.”
“And this is the reason you left us?” I hadn’t been very impressed so far by her weak excuses. I was sure that everything she was telling me was the truth, but it just didn’t add up. Something was missing.
“Partly, but I’m afraid there’s more to tell you yet.”
Rose looked at me as if she was considering something.
“You said you’d tell me everything,” I urged.
“Yes, I did, you’re right.” She took a deep breath. “Well, these feelings grew worse, until I felt completely trapped within my own life. I can’t explain to you how awful that feels unless you’ve been there yourself, Scarlett. I almost felt I couldn’t breathe sometimes, as if my life was being suffocated out of me. I was just desperate to get away from it all for a while.”
Icouldappreciatethatfeeling.
“My only escape back then was going to the cinema. The funny thing is your dad and I actually met in a cinema; we used to love going to the pictures together. But when all this happened your dad changed—he wouldn’t go with me anymore, even when wecouldget a babysitter. He said it was filling my head with all sorts of nonsense, and it was the films that were making me unhappy, not anything else. He said they were giving me unrealistic expectations of how life should be.”
Thissoundedafamiliartaletoo.
“One day it all came to a head. I’d snuck off to the cinema to see an afternoon matinee while your father was at work. Unfortunately, he came home early that day and found you with one of our neighbors. He went mad when I came in. He said I was neglecting you and I wasn’t fit to be your mother.”
Rose paused as she took another deep breath. This obviously wasn’t an easy story for her to tell. “He told me that if I thought life was so much better in the films I wanted to go and watch so badly, then perhaps I should go out and try to live my life in some of them.”
I sucked in my own breath now. No…Dad would never say that, would he?
