Forever Rose Read online

  ‘Never heard of him,’ said Saffron, with her head in her bag.

  ‘Our new class teacher. He doesn’t like any of us. Do you know what he said to me last week? He said, “Kiran, you will undoubtedly find yourself in well justified but colossal trouble one day if you do not learn to understand the vital difference between plain fact and paparazzi-style fantasy!” That’s what Mr Spencer said. I wrote it down.’

  ‘Tell him less is more when it comes to adjectives,’ said Saffron, sounding very uninterested. ‘And pass me that blue file, please!’

  ‘He says we are all immature,’ continued Kiran (passing it). ‘And he says however will Rose manage at Big School in less than one year’s time if she cannot read!’

  By this time Sarah, Saffron’s best friend, had arrived because she does Extra Spanish too. Sarah has a wheelchair that she uses for transport, emotional blackmail in queues, as an occasional weapon, and as a convenient place to hug people from. I got a quick, protective wheelchair hug as she exclaimed, ‘Of course Rose can read! What’s the man talking about?’

  ‘Books,’ explained Kiran.

  ‘Books?’

  ‘You know how Rose doesn’t read books? Mr Spencer can’t take it. She stares out of the window and it makes him so mad he—’

  ‘I didn’t know Rose didn’t read books,’ interrupted Sarah. ‘What, never, Rose? Not even at school?’

  ‘Lazy little disgrace!’ remarked Saffron.

  ‘You don’t know how it is at our school!’ I said, defending myself. ‘If you finish one book, they make you pick another. And as soon as you finish that, they send you off to the book boxes again. And each book is a little bit harder than the one before. It’s called Reading Schemes and it’s just like a story Indigo once told me about a dragon with two heads. And when the dragon’s two heads were cut off, it grew four. And when they were cut off it grew eight…’

  ‘I’ve never heard such rubbish!’ said Saffron.

  ‘It’s true! Do you know what happened when Kiran finished all the books in the school library last year? They got extra money from the PTA and ordered two hundred more!’

  ‘Actually I was pleased…’ murmured Kiran.

  ‘So at school now I just…’

  ‘Hand over your school bag!’ ordered Saffron.

  ‘…usually…’

  Saffron turned my bag upside down and grabbed a book from the heap of junk that fell out.

  ‘…draw.’

  But Saffy wasn’t listening. She was asking, ‘What’s this supposed to be? Look, Sarah! What does that awful writing say?’

  ‘History,’ said Kiran helpfully, craning to look as Saffron flipped through the pages.

  ‘It’s all pictures!’ said Sarah, staring at it. ‘Give me another! What’s this?’

  ‘Science.’

  ‘It’s all pictures as well! Where’s your Maths?’

  ‘Maths?’

  ‘Maths! Numbers! Sums!’

  ‘Probably at school,’ I said.

  ‘Ha!’ said Saffron. ‘I bet it’s all pictures too!’

  (A bad guess, although I did not say so. My Maths book is all Spaces for Missing Work.)

  ‘Her not reading’s the worst,’ said Sarah, looking at me in a truly shocked kind of way.

  ‘Well, I’m with Mr Spencer,’ said Saffron, bundling all my stuff back together into my bag and handing it to me. ‘I don’t know what you’re going to do when you start Big School either! Just don’t let on you’re related to me. We’re late, come on, Sarah!’

  Slam.

  Saffron was gone.

  ‘Rose,’ said Sarah, ‘not reading’s awful.’

  It’s not.

  ‘You’ve got to change.’

  I don’t see why.

  ‘I’ll help.’

  You needn’t.

  ‘Don’t argue, I’m going to,’ said Sarah.

  Slam.

  Oh.

  Kiran left almost straight after Saffy. She was late too. There are always loads of people at Kiran’s house, waiting for her to come home and wondering where she is. I can remember when it was like that here. The kitchen used to be full. There was never enough space.

  There is plenty of space now; a whole houseful.

  Where have we all gone?

  Mummy is in the shed.

  Daddy is in London, being an artist. He says he is getting old.

  Caddy, my grown-up sister, has been very elusive for the last year or so. Last heard of she was in Greece, working in a Sea World centre, getting up campaigns to rescue unhappy parrots from unsuitable owners, and trying to get over Michael who was the boyfriend she only fell completely in love with after she had agreed to marry someone else.

  Michael is avoiding us. I saw him only the other day, teaching someone to drive.

  He looked away. Which is not fair, because if anyone was on Michael’s side, it was me. Think what I did at Caddy’s wedding. (No, don’t.)

  Saffron. Saffron is on her way to Spanish class.

  Indigo, my brother, will be at the music shop in town. He has free guitar lessons from the owner in return for vacuuming the carpets and washing up the day’s supply of dirty mugs in the little kitchen at the back.

  And

  The guinea pigs have been given away.

  The hamsters all escaped.

  So that is why

  This house

  Feels so

  Empty.

  Thursday 30th November

  It Is Dark Because the Clocks Have Changed

  I did not really notice the dark until I got back from school today. Then the house felt very lonely with only me, and I remembered Mummy in the shed. I thought I would make her a cup of tea, but when I took it out to her I found that she was fast asleep, curled up on the old pink sofa that she keeps in there.

  Mummy looked nice and warm, but I was cold so I went back to the house and drank her tea.

  After that I got out my charcoal and some paper and spread myself out on the living-room floor. I had a new box of charcoal that I had been saving for ages for a really special time. This evening I suddenly realised that this was a ridiculous thing to do. Because when a special time came I would obviously be much too busy (with everyone about and all the excitement and everything) to want to draw at all.

  My charcoal is made of willow sticks. It is a dark silvery grey colour. The sticks are so light that you cannot feel the weight of them in your hand, but they are solid too. Think of an airy dusty metal. A stick of charcoal is a bit like metal. It rings with a thin metal note when you tap it on wood or stone. The sound of it drawing on paper is like a rustle. Like an echo of leaves. If you look carefully at a stick of charcoal you can see where the leaves once hung; they have left patterns like grains of sand, as if a minute bubble burst there and left its shell behind.

  It is lovely stuff to draw with. You can layer it into darkness, or brush it away like a dream. You feel like you are drawing with shadows.

  The living room was full of shadows.

  I always used to be in everyone’s way. They would moan about my stuff and step over me and say things like, ‘Do you really need to be right there, Rose?’ or ‘I hope this is going to wash off!’ Sometimes they said, ‘Show us what you’ve done!’ and fetched each other to come and see and argued about whether it looked right or not.

  I used to get interrupted all the time.

  I was very glad when my brother Indigo came in. Indigo usually does not get home until much later. Most days he stays in town at school or at the music shop until it is time to do his paper round. It saves him having to go back out again as soon as he has come home.

  But today Indigo came back and I was so pleased I jumped up and hugged him.

  ‘I thought you might be on your own,’ he said, stepping over my drawing paper to get to the empty fireplace. ‘So I came back to make you a fire. David hasn’t been round here, has he?’

  David is Indigo’s friend. He plays the drums quite badly and that is the m
ost interesting thing about him. He hadn’t been around, and I said so.

  ‘Sure?’ asked Indigo.

  I said of course I was. David is not a person it is difficult to spot. He is the size of a Christmas tree and by the way Advent begins tomorrow and I think I am the only person in my family who has noticed this very important fact.

  ‘You’ll get presents,’ said Indigo, when I mentioned it.

  Presents! I was not thinking about presents! I was thinking about Christmas.

  But Indigo wasn’t. He was thinking about David. ‘I’m a bit bothered about him,’ he said. ‘Someone said he was looking for me. I haven’t seen him for a while. I’ll try and ring him later. Where’s Mum? Working?’

  ‘Asleep,’ I told him. ‘I think she may still be feeling ill from yesterday. She probably hasn’t even seen that it is night.’

  ‘It isn’t night,’ said Indigo, grinning. ‘It’s only dark because the clocks have changed.’

  The clocks have changed????

  ‘Weeks ago,’ said Indigo. ‘Have you only just noticed?’

  How had the clocks been changed?

  And who had done it?

  And who had agreed that they could?

  And why, since this new dark was so lonely and early and useless and black, could the clocks not immediately be changed back to their old summery ways?

  I asked.

  ‘Hmmm?’ said Indigo, raking the ashes down through the grate with the poker, adding a layer of coal, rolling newspaper into empty balls, arranging crisscrossed triangles of kindling, balancing more fuel delicately among the sticks, lighting a corner of paper and beginning to blow. ‘What’s that, Rosy Pose?’

  Nothing.

  Lighting a fire without fire lighters is not easy, especially in windy weather when the gusts puff smoke back down the chimney and into the room. The first flames are fragile; little yellow ghosts of warmth. The first red embers delicate, uncertain things. You have to blow gently on them to make them stay. You have to breathe them into life.

  Indigo is good at this. After a minute or two he sat back on his heels, rubbed smoke out of his eyes and said, ‘There, it’s burning now! Company for you.’

  He was in a rush. Already he was pulling on his old grey jacket again and feeling in the pocket for the hat that Sarah had knitted him. Indigo is always busy. His evening paper round takes him more than an hour and he has homework to do too. And I knew he wanted to ring David, and he would probably like to drop in and see Sarah for a bit, and have something to eat and say hello to Mum in her shed. He had all these things to do, but he had taken time to come home and build a fire for me.

  So it was not a fair time to make any sort of fuss about being left alone.

  Anyway, he really did have to go.

  ‘All right, Rosy Pose?’ he asked, already at the door.

  So I said, ‘Yes, I’m perfectly all right and the fire is brilliant. It’s lovely having a fire all to myself.’

  ‘I’m off then,’ he said, and went so quickly that he was outside with his bike before I caught him up.

  ‘I’ll make you a really good sandwich when you come back,’ I said, grabbing his sleeve.

  ‘Good-oh.’

  ‘What’ll I put in it?’

  ‘Anythi…’ began Indigo, wheeling his bike round the corner of the house, so I had to run to keep up. Then he looked at my hand, still holding his sleeve. ‘I’d like one of those double sandwiches,’ he said. ‘You know, three slices of bread, one on each side and one in the middle. And I’d like cheese and grilled bacon. Careful with the grill. And salad if we’ve got any, and pickles if we haven’t. I don’t mind what colour bread, brown or white is fine but I’d rather it wasn’t cut into little triangles. Quite big triangles are OK. Now I really, really have to go, Rosy Pose.’

  So I let him.

  But it is Advent tomorrow. Advent. The first warm spark of the fire. A small shining in the dark. Shield it from the winter wind. Breathe it into life. Soon it will flame into Christmas.

  ‘Advent?’ croaked Mummy, from the far side of the kitchen where she had propped herself to supervise my bacon grilling while keeping her germs as far away as possible. ‘Are you sure, Rose?’

  ‘Aren’t you pleased?’

  ‘Pleased?’ groaned Mummy.

  ‘I love it.’

  ‘Darling Rose,’ moaned Mummy. ‘(No, please, I don’t want a sandwich. I couldn’t. Even though they look wonderful.) Of course I love it too, it’s just the vast amount of work I have promised to do before Christmas.’

  ‘Say you can’t.’

  ‘Too late, they paid in advance.’

  ‘Give it back.’

  ‘Spent it.’

  ‘Poor Mummy.’

  ‘Actually, I loved spending it, Rosy Pose.’

  ‘What did you buy?’

  ‘Just stuff,’ said Mummy, very vaguely indeed. ‘Oh wonderful, here’s Indigo. I think I might go and lie down.’

  ‘Are you better than yesterday, do you think, or worse?’

  ‘Better,’ said Mummy, with her eyes shut, nodding and nodding her head. ‘Much better.’

  Good.

  Friday 1st December

  You would not think it was Advent, the way some people I know are behaving.

  And…

  Two Big Problems:

  1. Mr Spencer has said No to Christmas

  2. When David said, ‘Where will I keep my drum kit?’ he did not mean ‘Where will I keep my drum kit?’

  Big Problem No 1: Mr Spencer Has Said No to Christmas

  I did not know that it was legal for a teacher to say no to Christmas. Surely Christmas is compulsory?

  ‘Not here in Class 6,’ said Mr Spencer, pulling a hair from his moustache and looking at it to see if it was yellow or grey before dropping it on the floor. ‘Here in Class 6 we have a great deal of Ground to Make Up.

  ‘A great deal of ground to make up,’ repeated Mr Spencer.

  For a minute I thought he meant we were all going to go outside and dig, and I thought, well, that would not be too bad. Any other time of year.

  But he did not mean digging; he meant working. Working, he explained (with a particularly nasty glance at Gold Team, who are now very handily located by the bins) for an exam we have to take next year called SATS. On which, implied Mr Spencer, leaning over his desk, head jutting forward, entire weight of upper body on knuckles, thumbs inward, think of a chimpanzee (and by the way did you know chimpanzees are not quite the vegetarians they pretend to be? Do you know what else they eat? Monkey. Yes. Raw too. Of course. No microwaves in the jungle. Still. Makes you think). On which (to recap Mr Spencer on the subject of our SATS) the future of the civilised world depends.

  When Class 6 heard this news we moaned and complained and we said all the other classes were doing Christmas and it was not fair.

  The other classes are having a lovely time. They are chopping up paper like mad, and hanging tinsel in loops over the windows and learning new Christmas songs downloaded from the Internet and packing decorated shoe boxes to send to children in Eastern Europe who would never get a decorated shoe box otherwise. And they are doing many other Blue Peter style Christmassy things as well.

  We told Mr Spencer all this.

  Mr Spencer said:

  1. Children in Eastern Europe need forward-thinking governments and twenty-first century education not shoe boxes full of tat.

  2. There is enough noise pollution in this school without adding to it with Christmas-so-called-I-think-not-saccharine-puerile music.

  3. Nor will he be responsible for any fire hazards in the form of decorations.

  4. Christmas cards are environmental disasters.

  5. Father Christmas/Santa Claus, Rudolph, sugar plum fairies, singing-talking-flying-through-the-air snowmen are Not True.

  6. Turkeys cause food poisoning.

  7. Blue Peter should be banned.

  Instead, said Mr Spencer, still in his unbecoming alpha-male pr
imate position (I learned all this stuff from Caddy years ago), we will concentrate on revising for our coming exams with the full support of the Head.

  The initial groaning was very intense, but after it had died down I discovered something truly shocking. Which was that nobody really cared except me. Kiran said, ‘Turkeys do cause food poisoning. The family next door to us had it last year and we had to do their shopping for them but they didn’t want much. Diet lemonade and rich tea biscuits mostly. My brother says turkeys are meant to give people food poisoning. He says it is their defence against Christmas and Natural Evolution and one day people will stop eating them for ever and then the turkeys will have won.’

  Kiran is a (theoretical) vegetarian. They are not as reasonable as normal people.

  But Molly is not a vegetarian (in fact she eats no vegetables at all except cucumber) and she was nearly as unbothered as Kiran by Mr Spencer’s horrible remarks. She was not even upset by item 5, which I thought would devastate her because I know she leaves out vast quantities of stuff on Christmas Eve, not just mince pies and wine, but buckets of water for the reindeer and thermal gloves and books she thinks Santa might like to read.

  Not to mention believing that snowmen have magic sparks inside that take them to North Pole heaven when they melt.

  But Molly was OK. She just rolled her eyes and hugged herself. She has been hugging herself a lot today. It is because she has had an idea. (She has been bursting with this idea all day, but she won’t tell me and Kiran what it is. Only that it is not boring.)

  So anyway, neither Molly nor Kiran were a bit interested in coming with me to the Head to complain, and nearly everyone else I asked at break just moaned, ‘Oh Rose,’ and carried on eating crisps. Kai said, ‘I see enough of the Head as it is, without going to see him extra.’ Molly added, ‘I expect complaining to the Head is probably exactly what Mr Spencer hopes we will do,’ and Kiran said, ‘Molly, you are absolutely right.’