Aled chewed on his full bottom lip, apparently considering how best to answer this question. ‘Well?’ Rosie pressed.
‘I saw him last night,’ Aled finally admitted. ‘I was on my way out and he was arriving in this big, shiny car.’
Rosie felt her stomach lurch, though it wasn’t news to her that James had been round. He’d obviously assumed that, as on most Thursdays, she’d be out with Niamh, and had scheduled a ransacking of his wardrobe – and no doubt his spare room stash – for a time slot that wouldn’t involve facing her.
A car, though? And a posh-sounding one, at that. James didn’t drive, despite Rosie’s repeated attempts to convince him to get behind the wheel of her reliable old VW.
Rosie reminded herself that two plus two always equalled four, and there was no profit in being wilfully dim about this. ‘Did you see who was driving?’ she asked Aled, already wincing in advance of his response.
‘Um … not really. It was dark.’
‘Notreally?’ Rosie repeated, surprised to hear a note of wry amusement in her voice. He was obviously uncomfortable and trying to spare her feelings. She felt almost as sorry for him as she did for herself.
‘Go on, you might as well just tell me,’ she said bracingly. ‘Was it a woman?’
Aled sighed. ‘I think so. I thought it might be a relative? She had dark hair. I wondered if she was dropping him off – if perhaps he’d come round to try and sort things out with you.’
Rosie allowed this to sink in. Aled’s physical description of the woman he’d seen tallied with what she knew Dylan looked like … And if Rosie were the betting type, she’d happily have put money on Dylan having an expensive ‘look at me’ car to go with her Lululemon wardrobe.
‘Rosie?’ Aled said, and she realised she’d stopped walking.
Her shoulders sagged as she admitted, ‘James doesn’t have a sister. He’s the younger of two brothers.’
‘Oh, shit,’ Aled murmured, his face falling in dismay. ‘I’m so sorry. I’m an idiot.’
‘You’re not,’ Rosie replied briskly, and started strolling again. ‘But James is.’
She felt the full truth of this as she said it. ‘I’m pretty sure that’s the woman he’s sleeping with – maybe even living with, come to think of it – although he hasn’t admitted as much.’
‘Seriously?’ Aled sounded outraged. ‘What an insanely thoughtless thing to do when you’ve just broken someone’s heart …’
In honesty, Rosie’s heart felt rather more bruised than it did broken – a fact she’d filed away for closer consideration later, when her more pressing problems had been solved. Nevertheless, she was struck by this astute analysis of James’s casual disregard for her feelings.
‘It’s definitely crap behaviour, but I can’t say I’m surprised by it,’ she quipped. ‘As far as selfish slip-ups go, it might not even make his top five.’
‘Wow.’ Aled’s dark eyes widened. ‘Should I take it you’re not pining away in sorrow, then?’
They walked along quietly for a minute or two while Rosie collected her thoughts.
‘I mean, I’m gutted,’ she said. ‘Hurt and sad and all the usual feelings. But I think I’m too pissed off to be full-on devastated. He’s made me so angry the pain is tempered somehow, you know?’
Aled nodded, before adding, ‘I can empathise with the anger ateenybit … Did you know he once refused to sign for a parcel for me? It ended up at some depot near Billericay. Took me half a day to go out there and collect the thing.’
‘Oh my god,no,’ Rosie said, giggling. ‘That’s awful. Sorry. I know I shouldn’t laugh.’
‘It’s fine.’ He gave her the half-smile that she’d begun to understand was a significant gesture.
‘I don’t think he ever forgave you for making him put his bike in the shed, to be honest.’
‘I’m sure he didn’t,’ Aled agreed. ‘But Michelle – the cleaner who comes in once a fortnight – wasverygrateful.’
Conversation lapsed as they traversed main roads, then residential streets and eventually arrived back at the house. Left to her own thoughts, Rosie couldn’t help turning James’s betrayal over and over in her mind; she’d examined it from every possible angle, and there was no denying it looked worse than ever.
She’d been so quick to shrug off his bringing Dylan to their home, as though she were impervious to the insult – like a kid at the park jumping up and insisting her hideously grazed knee was fine, even though the wound was full of gravel and quite possibly needed a stitch. This was what James had done to her – or maybe what she’d allowed him to do. She’d minimised, tolerated and excused things she should never have put up with for the sake of keeping the peace. For the sake of keepinghim. Laid bare, his disrespect was staggering.
She remembered again what he’d written in his goodbye note:Sorry if me leaving means you have to move. But he wasn’t sorry at all. For the first time, Rosie truly understood that James hadn’t considered, even for a moment, what it would mean for her to lose her home, as well as her partner, within the space of three short weeks. He simply hadn’t cared enough to think about it, despite it being the likely outcome of his departure.
Anger, and something deeper, stirred in Rosie as she looked clearly at the facts of their relationship – perhaps for the first time. Well, bollocks to James and the car he rode off in. Bollocks to giving up the flat and going back to her mum and dad’s. Bollocks to borrowing money she had no idea how she’d ever pay back, and bollocks to taking her chances on some random weirdo she might find on the internet.