Forever Rose Read online

  ‘It is a weird thing, Rose,’ said Michael, looking at me with thoughtful half shut gleaming eyes, ‘but I do not think he does.’

  How lovely to have a day when the only thing you have to worry about is where to find the World’s Best Ever Teddy Bear.

  Sunday 24th December

  Christmas Eve

  There are so many presents under our Christmas tree that Saffron has put hers under Sarah’s to even it up a bit. I have checked both heaps to make sure David will be OK.

  ‘Saffy has bought him musical socks,’ said Sarah, as she helped me check the pile under her tree. ‘And I chose a lovely magician’s hat from which it is possible to extract a rabbit and a lot of hankies and a large bunch of flowers so that is two good presents. Dad has bought him a miniature remote control car (he is giving everyone remote controlled cars or big pink scarves this year) and Mum has got him a goat in India (because we are all getting goats in India) and a spongebag. I trust that will suffice.’

  I said it would suffice brilliantly and Mummy had found him a stocking, and one for Sarah too, and she was to come to our house with Saffron to hang it up tonight and then they would both have to rush down in the morning to open them.

  ‘I have never had a stocking,’ said Sarah. ‘When I was little it was always a sack and since then it has been a Vast Heap. Thank goodness the goats are in India. Have you worked out what Tom’s getting for Christmas yet?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Oh, Rose!’ said Sarah, laughing.

  ‘Do you know?’ I asked. ‘Does everyone know except me?’

  ‘I think so, Rosy Pose,’ said Sarah.

  ‘When it is Christmas morning here,’ I said, ‘it will still be Christmas Eve in New York.’

  ‘Christmas Eve is my favourite,’ said Sarah.

  It’s my favourite too.

  Monday 25th December

  What I Didn’t Guess

  We spent Christmas morning at our house, and the afternoon at Sarah’s. The unwrapping was great fun.

  Indigo said, ‘Who bought me an ice axe? I’ve wanted an ice axe for years and years!’

  ‘Me, of course,’ said Sarah.

  David bought Mummy a miniature rose in a silver pot. It had dark glossy leaves and bright pink flowers just opening out and it smelled like springtime.

  ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you,’ said Mummy. ‘It is absolutely perfect! Oh Saffy, there’s your angel!’

  She was standing where she always stands, smiling over the presents at the bottom of the tree.

  ‘I brought her back last night,’ said Saffy. ‘Rose reminded me.’

  Saffy gave me a wonderful shoe box.

  David’s mother rang up all the way from Spain. She said, ‘I hope you are having a lovely day, David, and I am bringing your present home with me.’

  ‘I’ve got yours here,’ said David. ‘Do you want to know what it is?’

  But she didn’t want to know, and she didn’t stay to chat.

  ‘Go to Uncle David,’ said Caddy, and dumped Buttercup on his knee.

  David bounced Buttercup very gently and chanted,

  ‘A rosy apple a penny and a pear.

  A bunch of roses she shall wear…

  (My grandad used to tell me this)

  A lily-white horse beside her side

  She’s the one to be your bride.’

  ‘That reminds me,’ said Michael. ‘Rose, would you have any objections if Caddy and I got married because we would rather you said so now than at the appropriate point in the service?’

  Great shrieks and huggings and tears and laughter.

  ‘I couldn’t be more delighted,’ said Daddy. ‘But this time I’m taking out insurance. Assuming you’re inviting Rose, it’s only common sense.’

  ‘It’s nearly eleven,’ said Sarah, suddenly. ‘Listen!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I thought I heard…Saffy?’

  Saffy jumped up and glanced out of the window and then she looked at me with her eyebrows raised and a very peculiar expression on her face.

  Mummy took Buttercup off me, although it wasn’t her turn.

  Daddy sleeked back his hair and the doorbell rang.

  ‘Answer the door, Rose,’ said Indigo.

  ‘I will,’ said David kindly, and began getting to his feet and Saffy and Sarah and Caddy and Indigo and Michael all grabbed him, exclaiming ‘No, you won’t!’

  So I answered the door.

  How can it be?

  How can it be that this person is here?

  Is it a trick?

  Is it Christmas magic?

  That guitar strap looks exactly like the one I bought.

  ‘TOM!!!’ I screamed, and dragged him in through the door.

  Tom said, ‘Happy Christmas, Permanent Rose! I can’t believe you didn’t guess!’

  I said, ‘But what time is it in New York?’

  ‘What does it matter what time it is in New York?’ asked Tom. ‘I’m not in New York. I’m here.’

  Tuesday 26th December

  So What Did You Get For Christmas?

  It is turning into a very nice Christmas indeed. Tom and Indigo and David have made a band in the shed and I am the roadie who does all the work. Tom will be here for two weeks. He is staying with his whole family at their witchy grandma’s house, the place where I once lost Caddy’s diamond and platinum ring.

  ‘Oh that place,’ said Kiran when I told her. ‘I am afraid it is haunted but Americans probably won’t mind.’

  ‘Haunted?’ I asked (because we are all going to a party there tomorrow).‘Who by?’

  ‘I think some kind of yeti,’ said Kiran. ‘My brother saw it with his own eyes. It was human shaped but enormous, and it was out under those big black cedar trees digging a grave in a thunderstorm. So what did you get for Christmas? I got a flute which I definitely didn’t ask for.’

  I got a mobile phone that takes photos. It was the last thing in my stocking (apple, peppermints, sea-horse shaped bubble baths, chocolate money, pencils with my name on and my own mobile phone AT LAST!).

  ‘Eve!’ said Daddy, a bit shocked, when he saw it.

  ‘She has wanted one for ages,’ said Mummy. ‘Haven’t you, Rose?’

  Whatever she says about Father Christmas doing the stockings I think he gets a good deal of help. My mobile must have cost at least two St Matthews, with jade-green skies. I am glad I got her that mug. It is true.

  The last thing in David’s stocking (apple, peppermints, lime and lemon shower gel, chocolate money and CD – Rogue Traders: Here Come the Drums) was a battered old key to our back door.

  ‘Just so you know you’re always welcome,’ said Mummy.

  Wednesday 27th December

  Tom

  Those cedar trees are certainly creepy but I did not see the grave-digging Yeti and I did not like to ask about it because it was Buttercup’s first party and it would have been a shame to frighten him. You have to be very careful with babies because you never know how much they can understand.

  ‘He can understand everything,’ said Caddy. ‘Can’t you, Buttercup, darling? We’ve got to stop calling him that!’

  So for a little while everyone makes a big effort to call him by his real name. Carlos. Carlos Michael, in fact (Carlos being by strange coincidence Michael’s second name, as well as the Patagonian sea lion’s).

  But we are soon back to Buttercup again.

  ‘You should stick it on for real,’ said Tom, lying flat on the floor with his guitar across his chest. ‘Then me and Indigo and Uncle Davy could play the

  Buttercup

  Carlos

  Michael

  Cadogen

  Blues.’

  It is brilliant having a phone that takes pictures. I have taken a million of Tom already.

  A moment later he jumped up and passed his guitar to Indigo and said, ‘Time for another juggling lesson, Rose!’

  Juggling balls were one of my Christmas presents from Tom. It is something he
is very good at himself. He says he practises in boring classes at school.

  ‘Then what happens?’ asked Indigo.

  ‘Then I get sent out,’ said Tom, ‘which is great because there’s much more space in the corridors.’

  When I am away from Tom I worry that he will change, but when he is within reach I know that we are stuck with him the way he is.

  Good.

  Thursday 28th December

  Frances

  I have been reading to Tom’s little sister Frances which takes ages because she is three and won’t turn over until she has looked at every single inch of the pictures. And she argues all the time, even about the title.

  ‘This book,’ I said, ‘is called I WILL NEVER NOT EVER EAT A TOMATO.’

  ‘To-may-to,’ said Frances.

  ‘OK, I WILL NEVER NOT EVER EAT A TOMATO

  OR

  A TO-MAY-TO.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It says inside the book.’

  So Frances grabs the book and lies all over it saying, ‘Look at her dress! Look at her eyes! Who is that?’

  ‘That’s the girl in the story’s big brother.’

  ‘Where’s his guitar?’ says Frances. ‘Read it then!’

  ‘How can I read it when you’re lying on the writing?’ I ask, so Frances shuts her eyes.

  ‘When she shuts her eyes,’ explains Tom, ‘she goes invisible. This is useful because you can see right through her.’

  Then he read the whole page right through Frances, and took a handful of chocolate money out of one of her ears.

  ‘It wasn’t there!’ said Frances crossly.

  Tom shrugged. ‘More where that came from.’

  Frances felt her ears, staring at him suspiciously all the while, ordered ‘Don’t turn over, Rose!’ and marched off to find a mirror.

  ‘How did you do it?’ I hissed.

  ‘I had them in my sleeve.’

  ‘No. Read through her. Tell me how you read through her so I can do it to Buttercup.’

  Tom looked at me in utter astonishment and then asked very patiently, ‘Did you really not see that she went slightly transparent when she closed her eyes?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘You can only do it with quite large print…And it depends what they’re wearing, it’s easier in summer…less clothes…Of course, if they cheat and don’t close their eyes properly it’s impossible. Then you have to bluff and recite it from memory…Obviously…Are you following, Permanent Rose?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘It should be easier with Buttercup. Frances is nearly too big…Quite thick bones…What are you trying to do?’

  I had been trying it secretly with my own hand.

  ‘You need your eyes shut!’ said Tom. ‘How you gonna get see-through with your eyes wide open?’

  It’s a trick,’ said Frances, stomping back in.

  Is it?

  Is it?

  Tom’s right eyebrow was higher than his left, but his head was bent over his guitar so I could not see the rest of his face. He was playing chords in bits and pieces and he was singing:

  ‘How you gonna get see-through with your eyes wide open?

  When you came to New York

  You were

  My favourite person in New York.’

  ‘That’s a nice song,’ said Frances.

  Friday 29th December

  Uncle Davy

  If we want to cheer up David we call him Uncle Davy.

  His mother telephoned twice today. The first time she said he had better come home and try again when she got back. The second time she said that he needn’t think it would be Open House for every Tom, Dick and Harry and she wasn’t taking on That Drum Kit.

  Me and Indigo and Mummy dragged this out of him.

  Then Indigo went out of the room and had a talk with Daddy and after a while Mummy joined them while I kept David out of the way.

  ‘The more the merrier,’ I heard Mummy say when I slipped out to see how they were getting on. ‘Isn’t that right, Rosy Pose?’

  I thought of this house a month ago, when I felt like the only person home.

  Yes it is.

  So after lunch Daddy announced that he was fed up with sitting around doing nothing and he was clearing out the attic and would need everyone to help. Except Mummy because the dust would be bad for her chest, and Buttercup because he would be more use entertaining Mummy.

  Seventeen years’ worth of accumulated junk was shifted in two hours. Michael piled black bin bags of loot in the doorways of all the closed charity shops in town and made two trips to the tip.

  And suddenly we could see Space.

  Where there never was space before.

  ‘The window is tiny,’ said Mummy, coming up to look.

  ‘Wouldn’t be a big job to get a bigger one put in. The floor is fantastic. We can polish it up when they’ve painted the walls.’

  The stairs up to our attic open out of a door on the landing that looks like a cupboard. They are very steep. When Sarah came round to see where everyone had got to we all looked at her rather doubtfully. Except Indigo who hoisted her up and gave her a paintbrush.

  Then we painted the whole attic, including the ceiling bits between the beams, Scrubbable Magnolia. We have cans and cans of Scrubbable Magnolia stored in the shed because Daddy buys it in bulk in order to have plenty by when he wants to suddenly eradicate my art.

  It took ages and when we were finished Saffy and Sarah and Caddy and I were so exhausted that we hardly had the strength to force the boys to clean the floor. But we did and while they were doing it Sarah’s mother came round and when she heard what we were doing she said she had two very nice blue rugs and a futon which no one ever used that she could send round whenever.

  And a little plug-in heater.

  A desk.

  And a chair.

  Whenever.

  ‘Now would be good,’ said Sarah.

  It is not an attic any longer. It is a nice warm wooden floored blue and cream room.

  ‘You’ll have to be really careful of Buttercup on those stairs,’ remarked David to Caddy when at last we crawled down for supper.

  ‘Oh,’ we all said. ‘Oh no! Caddy will be going back to the Zoo as soon as the holiday is over. She has a little flat there that will do until she and Michael decide exactly where they want to be. Saffy can have her room back then, and Sarah too.’

  ‘I can’t wait,’ said Sarah. ‘Hurrah for the fate of a spoiled only child! It’s the only life for me. But whenever I need a break from my adoring family the attic here will be very useful to run to. Isn’t that what it’s for, Eve? An extra room for anyone who needs it?’

  ‘That’s what we hope,’ said Mummy.

  ‘I can escape up there and try not to go mad like Mr Rochester’s wife,’ said Sarah. ‘And I’m sure, Uncle Davy, you will be very welcome to do the same!’

  David worked all this out very slowly, and when he had finally realised what Sarah (and the rest of us too) were trying to tell him, he suddenly lit up with one of his huge moon-faced smiles.

  ‘I like attics,’ he said.

  Saturday 30th December

  Molly called to say ‘I am having a New Year sleepover tomorrow with Kiran and you if you want to come but it must be very exciting at your house so I will completely understand if you don’t.’

  Of course I want to come.

  Sunday 31st December

  What I Intend to Do

  Since it was New Year’s Eve, said Molly, we should make our resolutions for next year because it is very important and how she managed to pass Grade 4 Ballet and stop sucking her thumb.

  ‘It really works,’ she said. ‘If you keep it up all year.’

  ‘It is how I got my ears pierced,’ agreed Kiran. ‘I resolved to ask about it reasonably twice a day. I didn’t even have to keep it up all year either. Only till around October when they completely cracked and gave in.’

  Goodness, these hard-working people! Bu
t I am all right because I do not suck my thumb or take ballet lessons and I already have as many pierced ears as I need (one). In fact, I can think of no improvements I would like to make to the way I am, and Molly, after some thought, said very nicely that neither could she.

  ‘You could resolve to start wearing your glasses every day,’ suggested Kiran. ‘Instead of only when you want to look at stars.’

  No thank you!

  Why is it so difficult for everyone to understand distant objects, like street lights and full-length reflections and even Christmas trees and relations, look much, much nicer if they are very slightly blurred?

  Not to mention the things like tigers and Mr Spencer that are only bearable at all out of focus.

  ‘Oh,’ said Molly. ‘Oh yes, I see what you mean! About Mr Spencer anyway. He would be much better blurred. When you look at him, Rose, can you see his moustache?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Can you see the things in his moustache?’

  What!

  I am definitely keeping my glasses for stars!

  Then Molly told us her New Year Resolutions. They are:

  1. To learn to find her way by the stars like she can by the sun.

  (‘Really?’ asked Kiran and me. ‘Can you really do that, Mollipop?’

  ‘Only fairly roughly,’ said Molly.)

  2. To learn to make fire with a fire bow. And without matches. ‘Or a flint and steel, of course,’ added Molly, ‘because that’s too easy.’

  ‘How about a magnifying glass?’ asked Kiran, trying not to show that she is nearly out of her depth in this astonishing conversation.

  ‘Much too easy,’ said Molly. ‘And cheating, because where would you find a magnifying glass in the actual wild?’

  ‘Unless you could grind one out of rock crystal,’ suggested Kiran (determined not to drown).