Free Rosie by Alan Titchmarsh Page B

story. How could it be true? Rosie’s adoptive mother might have believed she was telling the truth, but in the delirium brought on by morphine who could think straight? She might have been well meaning, but that didn’t necessarily make her story accurate. Rosie had probably been born in Russia and smuggled to Britain, but that was about it. She had no proof even of that.
    It was ludicrous – laughable, even. But he couldn’t bring himself to laugh.
    He looked at the car in the lee of the house wall. He would have to clear out the old boathouse to make room for her. Keeping a Morris Minor van out of doors was one thing, but a drophead MG wouldn’t stand up to the elements quite so well. Salt spray had done for the old Morris over five years, and it would probably polish off an older sports car even more quickly. Tonight he would start the clearance operation. But his thoughts refused to be marshalled into the mundane.
    He wished he could talk to someone about the events of last night, someone who might help him straighten out the tangle of thoughts in his head. Debs would have told him to get himself sorted. Snap out of it. But Debs wasn’t there anymore.
    Henry? No. And, anyway, Henry was the island’s most accomplished gossip. What Henry heard one week, the
Isle of Wight County Press
reported the next. He meant well, but no. Not Henry.
    Alex? He would call her and make amends for the night before. But not yet. It was too early.
    He loaded his painting bag, board and paper into the car and folded down the hood. Then he released the handbrake and let her roll down the track before starting up out of Rosie’s earshot.
    The mist was clearing. He drove on past green fields and light woodland, the stumpy tower of Shalfleet church, then turned right on the narrow lane that led to Newtown Creek. He drew up on a rough gravel car park, took out his bag and board and made his way along the boardwalk that crossed the narrow inlets. The tide was on the turn, beginning to fill the muddy arteries that glistened in the early-morning sun.
    He found a spot for his folding chair and easel, and set to work, trying to keep his mind on what lay in front of him: a pallid sky, humps of wetland turf, and the slowly filling miniature estuaries, linked with their planked bridges. Three small boats bobbed gently in the river, their owners still asleep below decks.
    Newtown had always been a special place. It was where he and Debs had come on their first date. Supper at the New Inn, then a walk across the creek. Now he tried not to let it put him off the place. It was too ancient and beautiful a spot to be given up for sentimental reasons. Although if he had really loved her he wouldn’t want to be here and reawaken all those memories.
    Maybe he would never fall completely in love. He’d never experienced the earth-shattering, life-changing force that was supposed to infuse your every fibre and prevent you thinking of anything else. And if it hadn’t happened by the time you were thirty-eight, what was the chance of it happening at all?
    Anyway he wasn’t sure he believed in it. If brainless teenage pop stars could do it on a daily basis what value was there in it? True love –
real
love – wasn’t like that. It was a known fact. People stayed together for a long time because they got on. Because they were friends. Because they liked each other. Not because they were ‘in love’. That sort of love didn’t last. There was enough proof of it all around him. You could have one thing or the other: loving friendship for keeps, or a short-lived mind-blowing passion.
    Look at Henry. A couple of years ago he’d been besotted by a young art student from Derby. He’d taken her paintings, then her body. Then she had taken him for ten grand and disappeared. Poor Henry. Soul-mates, he’d said they were. But the girl gave her soul to someone else and left Henry with a hole in his pocket.
    For three hours he worked on the painting, until the