Free Dearest Rose by Rowan Coleman Page A

the ladies’ loo in some motorway services, staring at your postcard?’
    ‘I know it sounds crazy,’ Rose said, smiling at Shona’s outrage. ‘It
is
crazy, isn’t it? I came here expecting … well, nothing really. I just wanted to be here, and not there. And they are both here. Frasier and my father.’
    ‘Fucking ridiculous,’ Shona said, sighing with obvious frustration. ‘Babe, this is only going to make things worse. This Frasier, he’s not going to know who you are, and if he does, he’s going to be freaked out by you. And as for your dad, well, I think you and I both know what he is, even if you have made me promise to stop using the C-word. He cut you out of his life and you’ve moved on without a second glance. How’s any of this going to help you now, when you’ve finally got away from him? You need to be finding your feet, not setting yourself up to be knocked down. You’ve made a clean break, so make it a fresh start too and run away from your past, not back to it.’
    ‘So where should I go?’ Rose asked. In her heart she knew Shona was most likely right, but Shona didn’t understand everything. She had been the only person Rose had ever confided in about the postcard, about how much of an impression Frasier had made on her, but Rose couldn’t tell even Shona how much he’d lived in her heart every single moment of every single day since. That was something too precious, too special and quite possibly too insane to share with anyone, even Shona. ‘I can’t come to you. I’ve got no family, no friends anywhere else that aren’t really Richard’s. Only the cash that’s in my secret account to live on. My only family is here, even if I have found him by accident, even if I’m pretty sure I don’t want to see him. This is a sign, right? This is the universe telling me in ten-foot-high neon-flashing letters exactly what to do. I can’t ignore it.’
    ‘You can’t handle this on your own,’ Shona said. ‘You’re not strong enough.’
    ‘Now you’re sounding like him,’ Rose said unhappily, hoping for more support from her friend. ‘I’m not crazy, Shona. I see what this looks like, but it’s not how it is. You weren’t there, you don’t know how I feel. I’ve got to see Frasier again – I just have to – before I can do anything else. I’m not expecting anything to happen, or for him to sweep me into his arms and ask me where I’ve been all his life, but I have to see him. I have to know if what happened for me, happened for him too, because even if he’s moved on and forgotten me, if I know it was real for him too, then I’ll know. And I know there is something out there for me that’s better than Richard.’
    ‘Hannibal Lecter would have been better than Richard,’ Shona said bitterly.
    ‘What’s wrong?’ Rose asked her. ‘I mean apart from me, and all this mess. Are you OK?’
    Shona was silent, which could only mean one thing. Ryan was somehow back, wanting to be in her life again.
    ‘What does he want?’ Rose asked, her chest filling with heavy dread. The key difference between Shona and Rose was that Rose hadn’t loved Richard for a long, long time, if she ever truly had. Shona never stopped loving Ryan, no matter what he did to her.
    ‘He wants me back,’ Shona said quietly. ‘He wants another chance, he wants to give it a go. For us and the boys to be a family again.’
    ‘But you know that can never happen,’ Rose said slowly, to be sure that Shona was hearing her. ‘Not now.’
    ‘He sounds so sad,’ Shona said softly, her strident tone now gentle, fragile almost. As far as Ryan was concerned she would always be like a moth to a flame, only ever seeing the light and never the danger. ‘He sounded so lonely and lost, and I … I miss him, Rose.’
    Not this time, Rose thought, panicking, not now. She couldn’t drag herself away from darkness only to let her best friend fall back into its arms. There had to be some way of stopping Shona from