Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake (Winner Bakes All #1) - Alexis Hall Page 0,137
her yourself and so we stood by you in that as well and gave you money whenever you needed it. And even now, when you’re doing this television thing, we’ve looked after your daughter every weekend.”
“Mum . . .” Rosaline was tired from the competition, from the filming, from the job she still had to do, and was nowhere near close enough to figuring this out for herself to be able to explain it to somebody else. “If the plan is for us to have the same argument every two weeks for the rest of my life, I don’t know if I can hack it.”
“It feels like you’ve decided all these terrible things about us. About me. And we’re not allowed to defend ourselves.”
“You’re not back at the Oxford Union. This isn’t a debate. You can’t use logic and evidence to prove to me that you didn’t make me feel sad and worthless.”
“Darling, that’s unf—” All at once, Cordelia’s face crumpled. “I made you feel worthless?”
“Yes, like I let you down. Like everything I did I let you down. Because I was supposed to have this amazing life that looked exactly like yours. And instead I wanted a home and a child and a kitchen that always smelled of something wonderful.” Admittedly, Rosaline’s kitchen currently smelled of Fairy Liquid and angst, but . . . details.
A glance confirmed that Cordelia was on the verge of tears. And not in her usual I want you to feel bad so you’ll put up with my bullshit way. “Because I never gave you any of that when you were growing up?”
“No. I mean . . . no. These are the things I like. And I’m allowed to like them. Even if they’re small or seem stupid to other people.”
“But”—Cordelia blinked rapidly—“you could have so much more. You could have anything. I made sure that you could have anything.”
“Listen to yourself.” With Amelie asleep upstairs, Rosaline couldn’t quite shout and didn’t quite want to. “You’ve just said you wanted to make sure I could have anything. Why can’t I have this?”
“Because . . . because it’s what my mother had and what everybody I went to school with had and what I had to fight my whole life not to have. And I swore that would never happen to you, and now”—Cordelia covered her eyes with a hand—“it’s like you’re throwing it back in my face.”
“Oh, Mum.” Rosaline put two badly made mugs of Earl Grey down on the kitchen table and slumped down into one of the chairs. She didn’t remember her grandparents on that side very well—just vague recollections of a perfect house, a slight, diminished woman, and a man in an armchair shouting “Mary, where’s my tea?” “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel . . . face-thrown. It’s . . . I’m not you. We want different things, and it should be okay that we want different things. Because . . . because . . . ” Rosaline sucked in a breath so fast and deep it almost made her dizzy. “I’m so proud of you. You are literally brilliant and I’m lucky to have this brilliant, world-renowned, slightly absentee mother who’s always stood up for what she believes in.”
Cordelia was crying now in an open, ugly, very real kind of way.
“I don’t want you to be anyone other than who you are,” Rosaline told her. “I just need you to let me be who I am.”
Rosaline went to retrieve a box of tissues so Cordelia could dry her eyes. Then they finished their tea in a silence filled with ambiguities.
“I’m going to try, darling,” said Cordelia at last. “I really am going to try.”
It wasn’t exactly the fatted calf, but it would do. It was more than Rosaline had ever expected. “Thank you.”
“Your father . . . your father is going to need some time.”
“Fine with me.”
Cordelia gazed at her half-imploringly. “You mustn’t . . . He’s a good man. He’s just . . . ”
“I know.”
“He was the first person I ever knew who took me seriously. It’s hard not to fall in love with someone who gives you that.”
Rosaline liked to think she was an adult with a nuanced view of the world. But it still fucked with her head to realise her parents were human beings. People with flaws and histories and vulnerabilities and baggage. And some day, Amelie was going to have to learn the same thing about her.