She gestured to a chair at a desk. ‘I won’t be long.’
He watched her as she put away a display specimen, the skeleton of a bird with the wings fanned out to show its fragile bones. So light, they enabled flight.
She caught him watching. ‘Vertebrates this term.’
He nodded, didn’t say he’d have loved to continue studying those subjects his parents thought were a waste of time, psychology, geology, zoology, anything ‘ology’. His practical Scottish father and his dramatic Italian mother had agreed on that. There was no time in life to indulge in fancies. Not ones that didn’t bring in money. A job it had to be.
Alex gazed around. Floor to ceiling storage cabinets, at least a hundred years old, made from kauri, worn and polished with use. Specimen jars stuffed full of twisted embryonic shapes with oversized eyes and tiny limbs. Stacks of papers and books yellowing with age. He smelt the stale air, wondered if the molecules of oxygen and nitrogen trapped in this windowless room for over a hundred years changed only when people breathed in and out.
‘Ready,’ Rose said, taking off her lab coat and putting it on a door hook.
He looked at her. Small, strained and exhausted. Found himself asking, ‘Have you finished for the day?’
She nodded.
‘You have to eat. Why don’t I drive you home? We can pick up a sandwich on the way. Easier if we talk where it’s quiet.’
She narrowed her eyes. Studied him. ‘All right, home it is, but you were quite handy in the kitchen last night. You can make some sandwiches. I’ve got plenty of things in the pantry.’
He managed not to smile. ‘So be it. Sandwiches at your place.’
She nodded. ‘So be it.’
Alex noted Rose hadn’t smiled once. This wasn’t going to be easy.
* It was cold. The Antarctic blast that had caused Alex problems on Sunday morning had lingered over the city, sending people rushing to their wardrobes to find last year’s overcoats and boots. The sandwiches Rose suggested were cooked in a sandwich maker, brimming with ham, tomatoes and sharp salty cheese. The coffee a medium roast from a coffee machine. All in all, not bad. He made a fuss in the kitchen, tried to get her to relax—one of Marion’s tricks. He waited until the food and the coffee had put some colour back into her face. Watched as she lit the fire.
‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘you must think I’m pathetic, but I can’t get warm.’
‘No, go ahead. It’s a miserable day.’ He didn’t add anything about exhaustion and shock. She didn’t need to be reminded.
‘I couldn’t sleep last night. I still can’t believe it. It makes no sense. Have you spoken to Edwina’s family?’
‘D.C. Long, Marion, who was with me yesterday, is with Edwina’s children now. They’re as shocked as everyone else. Tell me about the last couple of years. When things started to change.’
Rose nodded. ‘I was thinking about it all night. This morning too. Edwina had been changing, but we hadn’t noticed. All we saw was a big woman with frizzy hair and a rabbit on the front of her tracksuit. Then, within the space of a few weeks, she got the new hairstyle, new glasses, new clothes, chucked out the rabbit tracksuit and suddenly there she was, a whole new package. It was a metamorphosis. This different creature emerged. She seemed, well, normal I guess. She became more confident. The women at the gym helped. They all fussed over her. Wow, look at you! Kind comments. You could see what it meant to her when someone said something nice. Thinking about it now, it might have been the first time she’d had any positive reinforcement. She glowed.’ Rose looked at him, but her eyes were focused somewhere in
the past.
‘Then she started the ‘back-to-work’ course. It was run in the building next to the gym and they advertised on the gym notice board. She asked me about doing it. It was hard for her, learning to use a computer. I think she almost gave up a couple of times but she kept at it. You’ve got to hand it to her, she showed a lot of determination. I saw more of her then, she’d ask for help with the technical stuff. I didn’t mind. Encouraged her, I suppose.’ She kneaded her hands. ‘Still freezing.’ She leant towards the fire, her hands stretched out.
Alex drew his chair nearer to Rose. To hear better, he told himself, but he sat watching, listening, fascinated by her. A tiny thing with such sadness in her eyes.
‘She’d started the course when she saw the cottage was for sale. I got a lot of phone calls. I went to see it with her. It was perfect. Two bedrooms, renovated, small paved courtyard. The back part of the block had been divided off, a new house built there.’
‘Had it?’ Alex asked. He’d missed that. Wondered if it was significant. Couldn’t see how.
‘I can’t tell you how hard it was for her. Turns out no one in her family had bought or sold a house in three generations. The dynamics of what you had to do floored her. What would she do with the furniture, how would she move things? What about the gas, the electricity, the water, the post? She was consumed by all those little details.’
‘What did she do with the furniture?’ Alex remembered the old pieces he had seen in Edwina’s new cottage. The radio, chairs, kitchen table; all of them had been old.
‘Yellow stickers for the furniture she wanted, red stickers for the furniture to go.’ Rose almost smiled then. More a grimace. ‘I’ve done it so many
