Chapter Text
They first met when she’d been trying to steal mayonnaise. But he didn’t know that. All Robert knew was that he’d bumped into someone as they were trying to reach a shelf.
“Sorry!”
The apology was already out before he saw her, like a magic spell he’d memorised. And Robert did have it memorised, for times he forgot things, for not showing up to work, for not getting out of bed. He stopped. Cheap sunglasses, the kind you could find in any giftshop, covered most of her face, but her eyes…
It was the intensity of which she stared that got to him, made him pause. Made him feel like prey. On autopilot, he stuck out his hand in greeting.
“I’m Robert, er, Robbie, Bobby, actually no, nobody calls me Bobby,” he sighed.
This was going well.
“Just Robert, Robert Smith,” he said, then sighed again, finally managing to say something coherent.
“Rosemary… Smith.” She glanced at the shelf behind him (the one that housed unicorn mugs that he happened to own a lot of) then took his limply hanging hand.
“Oh, that’s a funny coincidence.” He tried to prise his hand away as subtly as he could, but she held fast.
It wasn’t a coincidence. She was splendidly selfish, charmingly inept in a calculated way. She would leave and lead as she pleased. All too soon and all too late, Rosemary let go of his hand. When Rosemary discovered she couldn’t pay for the mayonnaise, he offered to instead as an apology and from then on whenever Robert spotted her around Margate, he got that creeping feeling again. He saw her most often at the beach. Standing in the waves, she was a statue, or he was the statue and she was Medusa.
Was she a tourist that had gotten all her things stolen? Secret royalty? A ghost? A runaway cult member?
He kept talking to her regardless. Every time he attempted flimsy questions, she effortlessly evaded a clear answer. The mystery motivated him to get out of bed every morning, if only to check Rosemary wasn’t a dream.
The first time he saw her without sunglasses was ironically also the time she stared directly at the setting sun. Silhouetted in the dying colours of the day, she reached out and held the red-orange sun in her fist. Slow and careful, he stepped over discarded beer cans and shattered sea glass to reach her pristine part of the beach. From wet clumps of seaweed and shingles, the sand became impossibly fine and powdery and as pale as paper.
“You know, these are meant for the sun, right?” he asked, scooping up the chunky frames half-sunken in the sand. “You’ll hurt your eyes-”
Face tinged rosy pink, he averted his gaze.
“Am I the sun then?” she teased in a low voice. “We’ve been spending so much time together, but you still can’t look me in the eyes.”
Rosemary took the sunglasses and dusted them off on her jacket. Once pristine white, it was now caked in dried mud and dirt. There were symbols too, patches and embroidery that were obscured to see by stringy grey grass patches. And circles, Robert noted, a lot of golden circles.
Tucking a strand of hair behind his ear, she put the sunglasses on him. They were close together and it took Robert a second to realise Rosemary was kissing him. The glasses didn’t fit his face and slipped down his nose. Through half-closed eyes, he caught of a glimpse of her face but couldn’t commit any of it to memory. He closed his eyes.
Seagulls screeching brought him back to reality and he broke away first, dizzy from a lack of air. The first time he saw her without sunglasses was also the first time they kissed.
“Now you’re looking,” she nodded approvingly.
The sunglasses steamed up and Robert did his best to clean them on his holey T-shirt before he gave them back. The sun had long since disappeared and it was just the two of them with the slow crash of waves in the dismal gloom. It was simultaneously every time and no time of day; they were simultaneously in every place but nowhere in the same breath.
“Come on, I want to show you something,” Rosemary said, dragging him away like a hostage.
Her darkened lenses winked like stars. He could feel some kind of scar on her hand, also with points like a star. She was a kelpie, luring him into the deep.
And what could Robert do but follow?