Her Name Was Rose: The gripping psychological thriller you need to read this year. Claire Allan
then, of course, the baby came along. Pictures of her, perhaps a little tired-looking but happy all the same, cradling a tiny newborn, announcing his birth and letting the world know he was ‘the most perfect creature’ she had ever set her eyes on.
Pictures of her bathing him, feeding him, playing with him, pushing him in his buggy, helping him mush his birthday cake with his chubby fists. Endless happy pictures. Endless posting of positive quotes about happiness and love and gratitude for her amazing husband and her beautiful son.
The outpouring was unreal – I hit refresh time and time again, the page jumping with new comments. From friends. From family. From colleagues, old school friends, cousins, acquaintances, second cousins three times removed.
And then, that night, at just after eleven – when I was considering switching off and trying to sleep once again, fuelled by sleeping tablets – a post popped up from Cian himself.
My darling Rose,
I can’t believe I will never hold you again. That you will never walk through this door again. You were and always will be the love of my life. My everything. My muse. Thank you for the happy years and for your final act of bravery in saving our Jack. I am broken, my darling, but I will do my best to carry on, for you and for Jack.
I stared at it. Reread it until my eyes started to hurt, the letters began to blur. This declaration of love – saying what needed to be said so simply – made me wonder again how the gods had cocked it up so spectacularly.
Poor Cian, I thought. Poor Jack. Poor all those friends and family members and colleagues and second cousins twenty times removed. They were all plunged into the worst grief imaginable. I felt like a voyeur and yet, I couldn’t bring myself to look away.
So that was why, then, even outside the church, fag in my hand, smoke filling up my Mini, I clicked onto Facebook and loaded Rose’s page again. The messages continued. Posts directly on her timeline, or posts she had been tagged in.
‘Can’t believe we are laying this beautiful woman to rest today.’
‘I will be wearing the brightest thing I can find to remember the brightest star in the sky.’
‘Rose,’ Cian wrote. ‘Help me get through this, honey. I don’t know how.’
I looked to the chapel doors, to the pockets of people standing around. Heads bowed. Conversations whispered. A few sucking on cigarettes. I wondered how any of us got through anything? All the tragedies life throws at us. All the bumps in the road. Although, perhaps that was a bad choice of words. A black sense of humour, maybe. I’d needed it these past few years. Although sometimes I wondered if I used it too much. If it made me appear cold to others.
Cian had changed his profile picture, I noticed. It was now a black and white image – Rose, head thrown back, mid laugh. Eyes bright. Laughter lines only adding to her beauty. She looked happy, vital, alive.
I glanced at the clock on my dashboard. Wondered if I should wait until the funeral cortège left the chapel to make their way on that final short journey to the City Cemetery as a mark of respect. I could probably even follow them. Keep a distance. Watch them lay her to rest. Perhaps that would give me some sort of closure
I took a long drag of my cigarette and looked back at my phone. Scrolled through Facebook one last time. A new notification caught my eye and I clicked on it. It was then that his face, his name, jumped out at me. Everything blurred. I was aware I wasn’t breathing, had dropped my cigarette. I think it was only the thought of it setting the car on fire around me that jolted me to action. I reached down, grabbed it, opened my car door and threw the cigarette into the street; at the same time sucking in deep lungfuls of air. I could feel a cold sweat prickle on the back of my neck. It had been five years since I had last seen him. And now? When my heart is sick with the notion that he could finally be making good on the promise he made to get back at me, he appears back in my life.
A friend request from Ben Cullen.
In a panic I looked around me – as the mourners started to file out of the chapel. I wondered was he among them. Had he been watching me all this time? I turned the key in the ignition and sped off, drove to work mindlessly where I sat in the car park and tried to stop myself from shaking.
The urge to go home was strong. To go and hide under my duvet. I typed a quick email to my friend Maud. All I had to say was ‘Ben Cullen has sent me a friend request’.
Maud would understand the rest.
Andrew – my line manager in the grim call centre I spent my days in – wouldn’t understand though. He wouldn’t get my panic or why I felt the need to run home to the safety of my dark flat with its triple locks and pulled curtains. As it was, he thought I was at a dentist appointment. He had made it clear the leave would be unpaid and it had already been an hour and a half since I’d left the office. I was surprised he hadn’t called to check on me yet. If I were to call him to try and verbalise the fear that was literally eating me from the inside out, he not only wouldn’t understand, he would erupt. I was skating on perilously thin ice with him as it was. My two days’ absence after Rose’s death had been the icing on the cake.
But my head hurt. I saw a couple of police officers in uniform as I drove and momentarily wondered whether to tell them Ben Cullen had sent me a friend request and I thought there might be a chance he was caught up in all this. Saying it in my head made me realise how implausible that would sound to an outsider; but not to me, I knew what he was capable of.
I had to get away from here. I wanted to go home but I needed my job. Maybe I would be safer at work anyway? Desolate as it was, we had good security measures. I made sure all the doors on my car were locked and I drove on, the friend request sitting unanswered on my phone.
Rose
2007
Rose Maguire: is thinking this could be the start of something new! :)
I knew – the minute I saw him – that there was a connection there. It wasn’t like a bolt of lightning or a burst of starlight, just a calmness that drew me to the dark and brooding figure sitting hunched over a table at the library, pen in hand, scribbling into a leather-bound notebook.
A Styrofoam coffee cup at his side, his face was set in fierce concentration and I knew – even as I stood there returning the books I had borrowed – that he was going to mean something to me. Maybe my brain was a little too turned with the romantic novels I had been reading, but it felt right. It just felt like it was meant to be. I couldn’t help but look at him – wonder what had him scribbling so intently into that notebook. I clearly stared a little too long, or a little too hard, because when he looked up he caught me and stared straight back, his expression at first curious, serious even, then he smiled and it was as if I saw the real him.
The strong jaw, the twinkling eyes, the slightly unkempt hair that was just messy enough. If Disney drew a modern prince, one who hung about in libraries looking intense and wearing checked shirts, they would do well to model him on the man in front of me.
I should probably have looked away when he caught me staring. Ordinarily that’s exactly what I would have done – but something about him made me keep staring. I didn’t even blush. Not really – although I did feel a little flushed.
I tilted my head to the side, smiled back. Flirtatious, I suppose. As soon as the librarian had scanned the books I was borrowing, I walked over to him. I never expected to find any sort of connection here of all places. The Central Library – close to work. A functional building that lacked any charm. It had the air of a doctor’s waiting room about it but as I approached him, and he stood up, I felt something in my core flip. I blushed then, of course, wondering if he could read my mind – see how my breath had quickened just a little at the sight of him.
‘Leaving?’