Things I Know to be True (NHB Modern Plays)

you. I know that things can’t remain the same no matter how much you want them to. I know that people aren’t perfect. Even the people you love. Especially the people you love. And I know that love is not enough to save them.
I know what grief tastes like. It’s bitter. I know what it sounds like. It’s loud. And I know that on the day my mother died my childhood finally ended.
I know that summer turns to autumn and that autumn becomes winter and that winter turns to spring and spring back to summer. And it goes on.
Life.
It goes on.

ROSIE. I hang up. I get out of the car. I can hardly breathe. I’m standing on the side of the highway. I don’t know whether to turn back or to keep going. I’m somewhere between who I was and who I’m going to be. I want my dad. I want my sisters and brother. I want my mum. I want my mum. But I can’t think of her, of them, not now, because if I do my chest will explode. I feel like I’m literally going to fall to pieces. That my arms are going to drop off and then my legs and my head. And so to stop myself coming apart I make a list of all the things I know to be true.
I know that having your heart broken by a boy from Spain won’t be the worst thing that happens to

wondered if she had been too soft with him and let him get away with things that she wouldn’t have stood for from the others.
She thought about love and how sometimes you could give too much and sometimes you couldn’t give enough and that knowing the right place in-between wasn’t easy. And she thought about Bob. He’ll still be asleep. She looked forward to crawling into bed beside him. She loved the warmth of him in the morning.
She was thinking of all this when her eyes closed, just for a moment. She veered off the inside lane and hit the concrete divider before flipping the car. She was crushed on impact. She was dead on arrival at the hospital where she worked.

expressway. She was tired. She was thinking about her kids. She was worried about me, being on the road alone, wondering if I’d get there alive, forcing herself not to think the worst but thinking it anyway. She was worried about Pip. She felt guilty that she had still not answered her letter. But she wasn’t much of a writer and wasn’t sure that she could say what Pip needed to hear, anyway. She was worried about Mia. She regretted the things that were said between them and the coldness of their parting. She felt her bottom lip quiver when she thought of her alone in Sydney. She’ll call her in the morning, just to hear her voice. She was still cross with Ben. And found a way to let him know it on most days of the week. She

ROSIE. Her shift finished at 3 a.m. She was in the car and on the road by 3:05. She was tired. It had been a difficult shift, the usual shortage of beds and juggling of patients but they had also lost someone that night. A woman she had let herself get close to. She had allowed herself a moment’s reflection on the passing of time before she steeled herself against it and got on with the night.
She was travelling down the