Free Her Name Is Rose by Christine Breen Page B

followed after a moment but it was a moment too late. She saw the back of an old red van heading toward the sea.
    When he’d gone, she looked at his cards: Conor Flynn, Master Violin Maker, Kinvara, Co. Galway. She tucked them back into the small velvet box under the scroll. He’d explained her violin’s sound would deepen, that it would travel through the layers of varnish like air through puff pastry. Rose would eventually think back on this as the thing that had opened the door and left an imprint on her heart. That he’d thought this and said it. It wasn’t what she expected and she liked that. That night after dinner Rose played “O Mio Babbino Caro” on the new violin and her mother cried. (Her parents hadn’t yet told her that Luke had been at the doctor’s office that day.)
    *   *   *
    Until now the music had never let Rose down. Sometimes she’d had doubts and wondered if she was chasing the feeling instead of flowing with it . But at her best, at the very height of her rising skill, she could disappear into the sound like a surfer riding through the tunnel of a long wave. And for that she had lived.
    Now, as Rose Bowen exits Camden Town tube station after the crushing master class and turns at Camden High Street, wandering along Parkway, that all seems a long time ago in another world. In that world she might have answered Conor Flynn’s texts that first summer. Returned his kiss even. In that world her father would still be living and they would be laughing and he’d be telling her this very minute that the Kiwi dude was a “proper bollocks.” And all would be okay. And he would say something philosophical, like even though the teaching is external the learning comes from inside, and not to doubt herself. But it’s not that world, and it’s not all right. Conor’s texts had stopped and her father was not living.
    Now she is just a girl moving through the night of the dark city, alone.
    She passes the Jazz Cafe where a late-night crowd is queuing for Imelda May, the Irish rockabilly star. She keeps walking. It’s getting darker. The tables on the sidewalk outside of Dublin Castle are crowded with young people drinking beer and smoking. The girls wear short summer skirts and string tops and briefly fill the air with their tangled perfume. The guys are skinny with hair that hides their faces.
    A lightness on Rose’s back where her violin should be makes her shoulders feel bare. It’s as though she’d had wings, but hadn’t realized it until now—now there’s a vacancy. Her feet slap the pavement as she crosses Gloucester Road. In the falling coolness she walks through the iron gates of Primrose Hill Park where the lights along the path make white patches in the grass that look like snow. Rose climbs the hill. Wind through the fingered leaves of horse chestnut trees makes a noise like rain, and hanging in the sky just above the tree line to her left is a half moon. A runner jogs with a golden retriever. A couple pushes a baby stroller. At the top of the hill, Rose sits down on a wooden bench and lowers her head to her knees, dark hair sliding along her legs touching the pavement, where it curls across the top of her shoes. A text beeps on her phone.
    Rose, please ring me. Need to talk to you. ASAP. x Roger.
    Red and purple lights of the BT Tower pulse in the distance. The light on the screen of her phone fades and leaves her face in darkness. As the late night folds around her she vows to sit still there above the city until she knows what to do. She ignores Roger’s text. She wants to call Iris but she can’t do it. She can’t confess to her mother just yet the madness that has happened. She wouldn’t be able to explain what she has just done or why she has done it until she can explain it to herself. It seemed that in the moment it was what she had to do. It was as though something prompted