All That I Leave Behind

by Alison Walsh

Genres: Marriage & Divorce; Siblings; Women's Fiction; Romance

Synopsis

It hadn't been Rosie's idea - a 'quaint' wedding at her childhood home in the Irish countryside. Nevertheless she finds herself back in Monasterard after a decade away, with her American fiancé on her arm and a smile fixed to her face. As expected, the welcome from her siblings isn't exactly warm. Mary-Pat, the one who practically raised Rosie, is avoiding her. June is preoccupied with maintaining the illusion of her perfect family. And Pius, who still counts the years since their mother left, is hiding from the world. Each of them is struggling with the weight of things unsaid. In the end, it's their father who, on the day of Rosie's wedding, exposes what has remained hidden for so long. And as the O'Connor siblings piece together the secrets at the heart of their family, they begin to forgive the woman who abandoned them all those years ago.

Release date: June 4, 2015

Publisher: Hachette Ireland

Print pages: 400

Sample

There’s no bougainvillea where I come from. There are no snakes or lizards, no sun that sits high in the sky, a hot orange ball; there’s none of the dry red earth that coats my toes, that gets into every crevice, the fine lines around my eyes. Sometimes, I’ve found it in my underwear when I’ve taken my bra or knickers off to wash. After thirty years in this place, I think it must be inside me, lining my insides, a thin layer around my heart.

Where I come from, the earth is a thick, rich brown, the grass a vivid green and the barley a silver grey, swaying in the fields, and everywhere there is water, rushing over pebbles in a stream, pushing slowly between the reeds in the long bluey-brown of the canal that stretches on into the horizon. There are no mud huts, but two-storey farmhouses which have seen better days or modern bungalows with PVC windows, neat baskets of flowers hanging up outside the porch.

There’s a house by the canal that I always wanted, from the moment I saw it, when I first came to Monasterard. I’d point it out to John-Joe when we went on one of our long walks, the way we always did at the beginning, when we had nothing else to distract us, when the life we’d chosen hadn’t begun to pull us apart, the dog sniffing around ahead of us, rooting in the grass at the edge of a field for the sniff of a pheasant.

‘That’s the one I want,’ I said to him as we both stood on the bank and peered over the hedge at its collapsing roof, the grey whitewash almost worn away from the pebble-dashed front, a raggy lace curtain hanging in one of the windows.

‘You must be cracked.’ He laughed, scratching his head, his eyes scanning the rusting tractor sinking down into the mud in the front yard. He had that country suspicion of ‘home’ as an affectation – of doing places up, extending them, rummaging through bric-a-brac stalls in markets in search of treasure. Homes were where you slept and ate and watched television, as far as John-Joe was concerned. But he indulged my daydream, placing a heavy arm on my shoulder as we both gazed at the house, his handsome face alert, amused. ‘Anything for you, my love.’ He smiled and, shaking his head, urged the dog on with a whistle.

Anything for me. How funny it seemed later – ‘funny odd, not funny ha-ha’, as Mary-Pat used to say – that there was a point when John-Joe would have done anything for me, for the girl he loved. Before what happened happened.

How often I think of it these days, that house, that place. When I first came here, months passed when I hardly thought of it at all. I pushed it out of my mind because I had other things to think about, things that made me feel as if my heart was being pulled out through my ribs. But then that was my punishment: to have left them – Mary-Pat, June, Pius and my little Rosie – and yet brought them with me in my heart, where I could never let them go.

Now, after I use the small amount of water that remains at the bottom of the tin bowl to splash that blessed dust off my face, grumbling to myself because I can still feel the dry grit of it on my skin, after I lie down on the hard, narrow bed like an old nun, I can see it in my mind’s eye: the way the roof sags, the faded green paint on the front door. Why does the house call me back? Why does it haunt my dreams? I rail against it, knowing all the time why. Because it’s everything I once wanted for my husband and family, the life I had planned for myself. The life that I never really had.

And then, because I can do nothing else, I pull the tattered paperback copy of Gone with the Wind out from under my pillow, the one that I bought in a flea market in Bray because it had a still from the film on it, Vivien Leigh’s feline, pixie face staring out at me, unknowable; it fascinates me, that face, the idea that it can be a mask, can betray nothing of what’s inside. If only I could have been more like Vivien Leigh. I turn to page 547, to where Scarlett comes back after the battle of Atlanta, and I think about Junie and wonder if she’s reading my mother’s copy, the huge, heavy hardback that I used to love to read. I wonder if she’s found it in the place where I left it for her, and where I left the other things: my plan for the French garden for Pius, because I know how much he loves the garden – he belongs there, just as I do. For Mary-Pat, I left a shell – a perfect whorl of silver and black. We found it on the beach that day we went to Carnsore, that day when my whole life just fell away from me. She made me promise that we’d go back, but we never did. I wonder if she has? For Rosie, I left my ring with the purple stone, the one that John-Joe’s friend had made for me, a thick band of silver with a lump of amethyst set into it, rough, but beautiful, a symbol of everything I thought we meant to each other. I hope it brings her better luck than it did me.

I tucked them into a battered trunk that I’d found in the attic, a huge black thing with big bands of wood set into it that, when I opened it, released a scent of mothballs and foreign travel. The kids used to like rummaging around in the attic, amongst all the debris that John-Joe’s brother had left behind: the stuffed trout mounted on a mahogany frame, the box of racing programmes from Cheltenham, the collection of men’s hats stored in a battered suitcase, which the girls used to make Pius try on, marching him around the attic, giving each other orders, their footsteps hammering on the ceiling above me as I lay on the bed, my head propped up on a pillow so that I could see the silver ribbon of the canal from my window, could feel that I was part of it, not inside in the prison I’d made for myself. I left them there, because I hoped that, sooner or later, the children would come across them, and because it’s the one place where John-Joe never strayed.

I didn’t leave a note, because no note would explain to them why I’d left them. No words could ever cover it. Maybe I was fooling myself a little, too, telling myself that, sure, I’d be seeing them again before they’d even have time to miss me. They’d all climb onto the train in Mullingar, piling the old suitcases and bags around them, and when they got off in Heuston Station, they’d stand on the platform for a minute, lost, until they’d catch sight of me, arms open, and they’d run towards me.

How many times have I replayed that scene in my head over the years. Even though, deep down, I probably knew that it would never happen. It just took time for me to understand, and when I did, the pain was so terrible I thought it would kill me. But even though what I did that day cost me everything, I knew that I had no other choice.

I pick up the paperback and open it and that’s when the photo falls out. And every time I see it, it’s as if it is for the first time. The feeling is physical, like a punch to the stomach, making me wheezy, short of breath. I clutch my hand to my throat and feel the tears hot beneath my eyelids.

They are sitting in line on an old ladder, which Pius has transformed into a boat, paddling with a sweeping brush and a mop at either end. Mary-Pat first, her hair in ringlets, her thighs dimpling under her tartan dress: my happy, plump little girl, with her tea sets and her dolls. Then June, in Mary-Pat’s hand-me-down jeans, that watchful look on her face, the one that made me feel that she knew more than she should. Pius is at the end, a half-mad grin on his face, a gap where his two front teeth should be. He’d either done, or was about to do, something naughty. It used to drive John-Joe mad, and the madder he got, the more poor Pius misbehaved. My poor, bold Pius.

Rosie is tucked in front of him, the way she always was, a little doll in a crochet dress, her thumb in her mouth, her hair a vivid flame of red. How I loved my Rosie. It just shows you, family is family, no matter what. I shouldn’t have loved her as much as I did. I should have nursed that chip of ice in my heart: the rage against her father should, by rights, have been hers to carry. But instead I loved her more – in truth, more than the others. That’s a mother’s secret, isn’t it? We say we love them all equally, but there’s always one, isn’t there? To me, it was Rosie, because I needed her. Because she, of all people, could save me from John-Joe and what we were doing to each other.

I run my hand over their faces, their hair, and I kiss them, one by one, kiss them goodnight, as if I’m tucking them up in bed again, that tattered Ladybird copy of Rapunzel in my hand, their noses peeking above the blankets of Mammy and Daddy’s bed, where they always had their night-time story. I don’t kiss the adults they will have since become, because to me they are forever children. I kiss them and I pray for them in my own way, and then I go to sleep and they are in my dreams.

Rosie stood at the door for a few moments, the summer breeze coming in through the open window lifting her hair around her face, tendrils of bright red wafting across her eyes. The breeze was warm and on it she could hear the constant caw-caw of the rooks in the trees near the Protestant church. She’d forgotten how loud they were, the rooks. She used to pass them every day on her way to school, ducking underneath the oak tree and running so that one of them wouldn’t crap on her, hands over her ears so that the sudden crack of the bird-scarer wouldn’t make her jump out of her skin, terrified that one of the birds would fix her with a beady eye and swoop, like in The Birds.

She closed her eyes for a second, clutching her handbag to her, feeling the red leather slick from her sweaty hand. She looked down at her feet and wondered if the espadrilles were a bit disrespectful in a place like this, as if she were dressed for the beach? But then she shook her head. For God’s sake, it wasn’t Mass, and Daddy wouldn’t give a shit about what she wore. He’d consider it highly entertaining that she was fretting about dress codes, she who had hardly worn a stitch of clothing for the first five years of her life. Mary-Pat had had to threaten to take away her collection of stag beetles before she agreed to wear the scratchy jumper and skirt that was her school uniform. ‘But I’m a free spirit,’ she’d protested, as her sister had shoved her arms into the horrible blue nylon-wool mix. ‘Daddy said so.’

‘Daddy doesn’t have to go to school,’ Mary-Pat had barked. ‘Daddy doesn’t have to do anything he doesn’t want to, for that matter. It’s easy for some of us to be free spirits. Now, shut up and get dressed, will you, and give me a break?’

A free spirit. That’s who I used to be, Rosie thought as she tiptoed into the room, inhaling the smell of disinfectant and something else sickly sweet. Her stomach churned and she remembered that she hadn’t eaten since they’d landed six hours ago, a greasy fry under the hot lights of the airport café. She felt her chest tighten again. She reached into her handbag and pulled out her inhaler, taking two deep puffs, clutching it in her hand as she walked over to the bed.

‘Daddy?’ The man in the bed didn’t respond because he was fast asleep, his mouth open, revealing an expanse of pink gum. Oh, she thought, it’s not him. It’s not Daddy. This man looked like a mummy, shrunken and wizened, his cheeks hollow because they’d taken his teeth out: they were floating in a glass by the side of the bed. Daddy didn’t have false teeth, she was sure of it.

‘Daddy?’ she said again. She went to the end of the bed and saw the medical chart clipped to the frame. She lifted the chart up and examined the name on the top line, a scrawl in blue biro. John-Joe O’Connor. Daddy’s date of birth. She swallowed hard then looked at the man in the bed again. His cheeks had collapsed, making his nose even more prominent. She knew that nose, the bump on the bridge of it from when he’d broken it playing football. And she knew the mole on his right cheek. His hair was fully white now, but it still curled around his ears, one of which had a hole in it for a piercing but no silver earring. He wouldn’t like that, she thought, being without his lucky earring.

He gave a little snore, a short one, followed by a long silence, and for a second Rosie thought he’d stopped breathing, but then he exhaled loudly. She suppressed the scream which had risen to her throat and instead lifted the inhaler to her mouth and took another long breath in, holding it for a few seconds and then breathing out. She turned around, as if checking to see if there was anyone nearby, and then she tried, ‘Daddy, it’s me, Rosie.’ Silence. ‘Ehm, I’m sorry I haven’t been to see you in a while. I was away, but you know that, of course.’ She blushed as she heard her silly words in the silence. ‘Away.’ As if that could sum up all those years and all those miles she’d put between herself and this place, her home. If Pius hadn’t written to her about Daddy, she knew that she would probably never have returned. It was a mistake – she’d been here five minutes, and she already knew that. But she’d had to come home, because if she never saw Daddy again before - well, she’d never forgive herself.

She pulled up a big red chair and sat right on the edge of it, feeling the plastic stick to the back of her thighs. She pushed her legs underneath, wincing as her calf bashed against the hard commode below the seat. ‘How are you, Daddy?’ she tried, feeling even more foolish. Then she reached out and took one of his hands in hers and gave it a little squeeze. ‘It’s good to see you.’ She turned his hand over in hers, those long, slender hands with the lovely fingers that he’d used to say were made to play piano at the Wigmore Hall, not dig big bushels of spuds in the arse end of nowhere. When she saw his nails, she swore out loud. ‘For God’s sake, Daddy.’ They were filthy, the cuticles ragged. ‘It’s a good job you’re asleep,’ she said, ‘that way you can’t see the state of your hands.’ He’d always been so careful about his appearance. He’d been delighted to discover V05 hair gel, which he’d nicked from Pius, smoothing down his silvery-black curls in the bathroom mirror, smacking his lips and baring his beautiful white teeth, which no amount of smoking and drinking seemed to have dulled. Then he’d take his brown-leather manicure case out of the drawer in the medicine cabinet and begin his work of filing and shaping. That must be where June got it, that love of making herself look nice. June would have exactly the same expression on her face when she looked into the mirror, one of total absorption, mixed with a fair bit of self-admiration. Rosie wondered what June would look like now. She’d be forty-one and Rosie couldn’t imagine her growing older. Maybe she’d have Botox or fillers. June was made for that kind of stuff. The thought made her giggle, before she covered her mouth with her hand.

Still holding Daddy’s hand in one of hers, with the other, trembling, Rosie opened the cabinet beside the bed, hoping that she’d spot it now. Sure enough, it was in a blue washbag, sure to have been packed by Mary-Pat, along with a bottle of Blue Stratos, a bar of soap, a toothbrush and a packet of cigarettes, a cheap plastic lighter shoved into a corner of the packet. ‘I thought you’d given up the fags,’ Rosie said out loud as she opened the manicure set. ‘God, I’d kill for a fag, do you know that? But I gave them up, Daddy, would you believe? Yep. Two years and six months ago, but who’s counting?’ And anyway, she thought now as she looked longingly at the cigarettes, Craig would smell it off her breath. He was like a bloodhound when it came to that kind of thing, could sniff out cigarette smoke and alcohol at a hundred yards. He wouldn’t say a word, she knew, but a look would be enough. She’d seen that look once, and she never wanted to see it again.

She extracted a tiny silver nail file from the case and, turning his left hand gently in hers, began to clean under the nails, paring away all the dirt, which she wiped onto a tissue which she’d spread on the bed. She filed away for a bit and then she said, ‘Do you remember what you used to say to me at the gate, Daddy?’ rubbing a little of the hand cream she’d found at the bottom of his washbag into his hands, smoothing the cream along his fingers, once slender, now distorted by arthritis, which had made his joints swell. ‘“Don’t let the bastards grind you down.” Handy.’ She smiled as she turned his hand and rubbed cream over the palm, which was cracked. ‘You knew what they could be like. Small town,’ she continued. ‘Small minds.’ She could see him then as she stood at the school gate, tipping his invisible hat and announcing, ‘Time to head to the office, Doodlebug. See you after school,’ and then he’d be gone, a little saunter up over the bridge, Colleen the dog trying to keep up, before the two of them would make a quick right turn, as if Daddy had only just thought of it and not planned it carefully, into Prendergast’s. There, Daddy would drink one pint of Guinness and smoke one cigarette and read the Irish Independent. He never drank more than one pint in the morning and one in the afternoon: the benders, he kept for Friday and Saturday nights. He regarded it as a sign that he was a man of discipline. Could control himself. Just like any other man, he’d use routine to structure his day, except instead of car and office and home for dinner, his was pub and bookies and only then home to do a few jobs around the house.

Of course, she hadn’t seen it then, that this routine wasn’t quite like other fathers’, wasn’t something to be proud of, she supposed. She’d heard it more than once, the slightly-too-loud comment from one of the teachers or one of the girls in the minimarket about ‘that fellow, dossing around the town. Sure he’s a good for nothing, so he is.’ Rosie’s cheeks would burn, but with indignation, not shame. How dare they say things like that about her daddy. She knew her daddy. And he was always there for her. Always. How she’d missed him, even though he’d never once written. ‘Ah, sure, I’m no good at that kind of thing,’ he’d said when she’d pushed him once. ‘I’m hopeless with words, you know that, Rosie-boo.’ Instead, he’d made a ‘trunk call’ as he still called it, every second Sunday, never forgetting to reverse the charges, the roar of the punters at Prendergast’s in the background, the clink of pint glasses as he brought her up to date with the going at Kempton Park, the favourite for the 3.45 at Leopardstown racecourse – never anything personal, just ‘ráiméis’, as he called it. He probably felt safe with that, with nonsense, and she did too – the two of them carefully skirting any difficult subjects.

Rosie had made sure to hide the phone bills from Craig, paying them every month from her credit card. He was very careful about expenditure. And then, just after Christmas this year, the calls had stopped, and when she’d rung Pi, he’d told her that Daddy was ‘tired’, and then he was ‘in for a few tests’. Why had she not guessed? Maybe all the wedding stuff had distracted her, made her forget what was really important. ‘You’re here now,’ Pi had said to her earlier, but that didn’t make her feel any less guilty.

‘I didn’t know Prendergast’s had closed,’ she said now. ‘Although I suppose you haven’t had cause to go there for a while anyway. Pi tells me that Blazers on the Dublin Road is the place now. Might try it some time.’ She grinned. ‘Sounds like my kind of place. Not.’ She paused. ‘Not now that I’m a reformed character anyway. You’ll be glad to know that I don’t drink any more, can you believe it? I’m very well behaved, Daddy. I know I led you all a merry dance, didn’t I? Mary-Pat used to say I had her heart broken. That’s why she pushed me onto that bus to Dublin. I suppose I can’t really blame her.’

She could see herself still, looking out the window of the bus, in that big hairy coat she’d found at the back of Daddy’s wardrobe, the one that smelled godawful but that she wore to annoy Mary-Pat because her sister had taken one look at her the first time she’d appeared in it and had screamed, ‘Take that bloody thing off, or I will personally rip it off your back, do you hear me?’ It had been an invitation: Rosie had made a point of wearing it to breakfast, dinner and tea, ignoring her sister’s look of disgust, because she was so pleased to have rubbed her up the wrong way. That was her mission in life then: to cause Mary-Pat as much hassle as she possibly could, because she knew she could get away with it. Because she thought her sister would love her anyway, no matter what she did. She’d been wrong about that.

Which was why she’d said not one word to her about coming home. The only person she’d told was Pius, because she knew he’d keep his mouth shut. To his credit, he’d said he wouldn’t breathe a word, even though he’d written that her two sisters would be ‘surprised’. That was one word for it. ‘They’ll be thrilled to see you,’ he’d added at the bottom of the postcard he’d sent her of St Munchin’s Cistercian Abbey. He sent a postcard every week, often with nothing more than a scribbled line in his spidery handwriting, or some silly quote from the local newspaper that had caught his eye, but now, he’d written a full paragraph, ending with: ‘They miss you, Rosie.’ Rosie knew that her brother was just being kind. If they missed her that much, why had neither of them visited, even once? Pi, she could understand, what with his … illness, but Mary-Pat and June? Apart from the polite letters at Christmas and on her birthday, she’d heard hardly a word from either of them. But then, she hadn’t left them on the best of terms, had she?

She could still remember that June had pulled her aside during one of her sister’s visits home. Rosie had been wearing the coat for a few weeks, and Mary-Pat had more or less stopped speaking to her. She’d said gently, ‘Rosie, love, will you take the coat off? It’s upsetting everyone.’

‘Why?’ Rosie’s chin had jutted out stubbornly, her hand on her hips. Truthfully, she was only dying to get rid of the awful coat – it made her itch like mad – but she wasn’t about to give in to Mary-Pat.

‘It was Mammy’s,’ June explained patiently. ‘It makes people remember her, you see, every time they see you in it. It’s … awkward,’ she finished.

Rosie had wanted to pull the coat off then and hurl it as far away from her as she possibly could, but because she was young and stubborn, she continued to wear it, shuffling in and out of the sitting room, making sure that she walked in front of the TV when Mary-Pat was trying to watch Coronation Street, making a point of brushing her teeth in the bathroom at night in her T-shirt and shorts and that coat, even though it made her feel sick to wear it. Sick and sorry and embarrassed. But she wouldn’t give in, she’d decided, no matter how much it cost.

Rosie blushed as she remembered what she’d been like, the rage that had propelled her forward, out of Monasterard forever, or so she’d thought. ‘You needn’t fucking bother waiting,’ she’d spat at Mary-Pat as she’d pulled her bags out of the Pajero, ‘unless you want to make sure I’m going.’

‘Sure, there’s no need for that, no need at all,’ PJ had said, hopping down from the driver’s seat and gently taking a bag from her, his big, red face a picture of sorrow. Poor PJ, stuck in the middle of it all, announcing loudly that he was taking the babies for a walk every time herself and Mary-Pat kicked off. John-Patrick and Melissa must be fifteen or sixteen by now.

‘It’s none of your fucking business,’ she’d yelled, yanking the bag out of his hand and turning on her heel. She’d caught a glimpse of Mary-Pat then, sitting bolt upright in the passenger seat, tears streaming down her face. ‘What the hell are you crying about?’ she’d screamed. ‘Haven’t you got what you wanted? Haven’t you been trying to get rid of me all this time? Well, guess what? It’s your lucky day,’ and she’d stomped up the steps of the bus, ignoring the muttered tuts of Mrs Delaney. She could just hear her: ‘There go the O’Connors again, lowering themselves, but, sure, what else could you expect.’

She’d stomped onto the bus, throwing the money at Paudy, who had driven the 6.15 to Dublin ever since she could remember, barely muttering a ‘thanks’ and thinking that Mary-Pat would have killed her if she could see her. She’d thrown herself into her seat and glared out the window, her arms folded tightly across her chest. She’d looked at the square, at the monument to the war dead, at the little Celtic well which had had ‘Up the ’RA’ graffitied on it – by Jim Prendergast, because she’d seen him do it – at the little row of shops: the chipper, at Moran’s, with the lovely window displays that spoke to the genteel ladies of the county, at Maggie’s general stores, with all the holy statues in the window, and she’d wanted to spit on them, to spit on the whole damn place. And then she saw the Jeep roar off up the road towards the house, a belch of smoke coming from the exhaust, and she’d wanted to hug herself tight and give in to the big, ugly sobs that she knew were waiting. But she didn’t. She gritted her teeth and pushed them down, because she wouldn’t give into them, she just wouldn’t. That would be saying that it was all her fault somehow, when she knew it wasn’t.

Of course, she’d had an attack then, a squeezing in her chest, her breathing so tight she thought she’d suffocate. She needed her inhaler, she’d thought, beginning to panic. Where was it? She’d rummaged at the top of the backpack and found it in her washbag, in a special compartment, along with a travel toothbrush and a miniature-size toothpaste and soap. A note had been wrapped around the two inhalers, one brown and one blue, in shaky green biro: ‘TAKE TWO PUFFS X 2 TIMES PER DAY, MORE IF NEEDED.’ She hadn’t packed the washbag, she thought, pulling the inhaler out with shaking hands and sucking on it twice. Mary-Pat must have done it. She’d weakened then, just for a moment, before reminding herself that she hated her sister, really, truly hated her, and that she hoped she’d never see her again as long as she lived.

And then the bus rumbled into life, and the doors of the baggage hold were banged shut, and she found her gaze pulled to the window and down the main street. She kept looking, in case she might see him. He’d come, she was sure of it. It was the least he could do. And if he came, she’d stay. Even though she hated the place and everyone in it, hated what had happened there, she’d stay for him.

She’d kept hoping until the bus pulled away, slowly, past the Protestant church and over the bridge, the water falling glassy underneath. And then it was too late.

Rosie closed her eyes, and the dappled sunlight flickered across her eyelids. She didn’t want to think about him now. It was bad enough that she was stirring up everything else after all this time, but not him. Not Mark.

‘I’m sorry, Daddy,’ she said, holding his hand, which was now slippery with cream. ‘I’m sorry for everything.’ As she gripped his fingers, the light caught the single solitaire on the platinum band on her finger. It was too big, and it slid around, the diamond jabbing the soft skin on the inside of her fingers, which were milky-white and covered in freckles. ‘I’m getting married, did I tell you that? Can you believe it?’ And then she continued, as if he’d spoken, ‘Oh, I know you think it’s all a load of rubbish, but I suppose I had to grow up some time and a wedding is as good a way as any, isn’t it? I know, it doesn’t sound very romantic, but it’s all good, honestly.’ As she said the words, she wondered quite why she felt she needed to tell Daddy this, why she needed to justify herself. She loved Craig and he made her happy – it was as simple as that. ‘But don’t tell the others, will you? I’ll have to break the news to them myself and I haven’t seen any of them yet. I wanted you to be the first to know.’

She paused for a second, twiddling the ring on her finger before pulling it off, feeling her finger lighten as she did so. God, that stone weighed a ton. She’d told Craig that she didn’t want a big, silly diamond that made her look like a footballer’s wife, but he’d insisted. ‘What kind of a guy does that make me, if I can’t buy my wife-to-be a proper engagement ring?’ And so Rosie had found herself being carried along with the whole exercise, visiting a blingy out-of-town jewellers with Craig and his mum, full of fawning staff, obsequious because they knew serious money was going to be spent.

She’d swallowed her protests because she knew how much it mattered to Craig, and as she oohed and aahed over the outsize stone, she tried not to think of the red piece of string she’d worn on her ring finger for one whole summer, years before. They’d been nine years old and got married in the old gazebo in the garden, with Colleen and Morecambe and Wise, the two goats, in attendance, and she’d thought that it was impossible to be any happier than she was right then, on that hot summer’s day. She’d been heartbroken when she’d lost that piece of string – she hadn’t even known how; she’d just looked down at her fin