Forever Rose Read online

  Good grief!

  In the living room he plumped the cushions, lined up the books in the bookcase, threw out the chrysanthemums that had been smelling weird for days, tidied the hearth, lit the fire and carried in extra coal from the place where we keep it outside the back door.

  ‘There then,’ said David, fetched a big greasy backpack down from Indigo’s room, and went.

  Sunday 10th December

  The Shoe Box News Is Very Good

  Caddy telephoned again today. That is the second time in two weeks after hardly a word for months.

  ‘It was so lovely to speak to you last Saturday,’ she said.‘You really cheered me up…’

  Did you need cheering up then, Caddy?

  ‘…and it was brilliant to be able to ring home without being bombarded by ten million silly questions…’

  Yes. OK. I can take that big hint.

  ‘The shoe boxes, Rose! I have been worrying about them all week! Did you and Kiran manage in the end?’

  What a silly question! As if Kiran and I did not always manage in the end! And fancy Caddy worrying about them all week! If she had had a week like I have just experienced (Christmas cancelled, Mummy in a dungeon, fainted in school, ‘Cheer up Rose there are children starving in Africa’ (I must do something about that next), not to mention ninety-six muffins in various stages of decomposition…)

  If Caddy had had a week like mine, shoe boxes would have been the last thing on her mind!

  But I did not say that, because I was so pleased to be talking to her again, and despite her stress-free week, she had obviously telephoned for a second dose of unquestioning cheerfulness. Also I did not want her disappearing back into the Faraway-Natural-History-Related-Uncommunicative-Fog from which she had so recently begun to emerge. So I skipped all questions I would like to have asked her, resisted the temptation to describe my week of disasters and started on: The Shoe Box News!

  The Shoe Box News is Very Good

  Kiran and Molly and I packed shoe boxes yesterday, after David left and Kiran got home with her Christmas shopping and Mummy reincarcerated herself in her solitary cell. We collected together all our resources and we made three, one each.

  So ha, ha, Mr Spencer. They are superb.

  We started by decorating them to look like treasure chests, and inside we lined them with gold and silver paper. And then we filled them with:

  1. Teddy bears and related furry animals of which I have a huge supply, bought by Daddy from every airport he has ever visited, brand new with the labels still attached.

  2. Woolly hats and mittens from Molly’s grandma who knits them with manic speed because she lives in a very competitive old people’s home where they say they have not got time for global warming.

  3. Bath sponges, toothbrushes and toothpaste from Kiran’s mother who saw what we were doing and asked, ‘Can I help?’

  4. Sweets and felt pens and balloons and very nice stickers bought with our pocket money and a bit extra out of our housekeeping jar which Mummy refilled the day she went shopping and bought all that pizza.

  I wish we could see our shoe boxes being opened, they are so NOT full of tat. I would not mind getting one anyway. I need a new toothbrush. And a hat.

  Caddy was very pleased with the Shoe Box Success, and she said, ‘Brilliant! Brilliant! Any more good news?’

  ‘An email from Tom in New York,’ I said, after racking my brains a bit.

  ‘Saying?’

  ‘Saying “Guess what I chose for Christmas!” Only I can’t. I keep emailing back answers but all he says is “Try again”.’

  ‘It will be a guitar,’ said Caddy. ‘Obvious!’

  ‘He’s got one.’

  ‘Yes, but you know guitar players,’ said Caddy. ‘They never have enough guitars. They always want another. Anything else?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘More good news?’ said Caddy greedily.

  As a matter of fact, I did have more good news, but I was not at all sure what it would do to Caddy. However, I told her anyway.

  ‘A Christmas card from Michael,’ I said, and paused for her reply, which didn’t come.

  ‘He’s home, you know. Teaching people to drive again. I quite often see his car.’

  Still no comment from Caddy.

  ‘Well, anyway, inside the card it says Season’s Greetings Meilleurs Voeux Felices Fiestas Frohe Festtage and something in Greek (Saffy said) and something else in Chinese. It’s one of those sorts of cards.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘And Michael has written…’

  ‘What? What?’ demanded Caddy, like she was waking up from sleep. ‘What has he written?’

  ‘…“Today I saw 5 dressed up Santas, 4 snowflakes, 3 girls who looked a bit like Caddy, 2 many Christmas trees to count, 1 football match, no Roses although it would have been nice, love Michael.” ’

  ‘Three girls who looked a bit like me?’ repeated Caddy. ‘Three? Three! Oh! Oh! Oh!’

  (One ‘Oh’ for each girl.)

  ‘I thought you’d be pleased,’ I told her. ‘I was.’

  In fact, when I found Michael’s card on the mat this morning (hand-delivered, no stamp) and saw what was written inside, I had been completely overwhelmed. ‘What do you think those splashes are?’ asked Saffron, when she looked at it later in the day and saw how the signature had dissolved and blurred. ‘Tears or rain?’

  (Rain.)

  ‘Why should I be pleased?’ asked Caddy, as if she really wanted to know.

  ‘It means he thought of you at least three times in one day. Isn’t that good?’

  ‘Is it?’ said Caddy, very doubtfully.

  Caddy never used to be doubtful about Michael. She fell in love with him the first time she saw him (and so did we all, and not surprising, Michael is one of the nicest people in the world).

  Caddy did not hide her feelings for Michael. (In those days Caddy never hid anything from anyone.) She pursued him with relentless adoration until he gave in and fell in love with her too. Which he did very strongly indeed. Too strongly for Caddy: she dumped him. Michael went away, travelling with a friend called Luke. So that was the end of Caddy and Michael, except sometimes he sent postcards back to me.

  Then Caddy decided to marry someone else instead.

  The someone was called Alex and he was a slightly famous wildlife photographer which was very nice for Caddy, I suppose, because she had someone to talk to about animals at last. So then we all had to get to know Alex and put up with him prancing about with light meters and talking very importantly to very important people on his mobile phone, saying, ‘Yes, yes! Right. Oh no! Absolutely! Fly it past! Cool!’

  That’s who Caddy was going to marry, only she was saved at the last moment by a chance remark.

  Of mine.

  In church.

  At the altar.

  Halfway through the wedding service. And I am never ever going to another wedding again as long as I live.

  Not that anyone would invite me, I don’t suppose.

  After last time.

  Well, so instead of marrying Alex and whizzing off on her honeymoon, Caddy came to her senses and realised how terrifyingly close she had come to marrying the wrong man. And where was the right one?

  Somewhere in Europe on a motorbike, trying to forget her.

  Caddy did the only sensible thing she could do. She nicked all my postcards from Michael and set off to hunt for him. And that was not such a daft idea as it sounds, because Michael and Luke were not travelling fast, they were picking up odd jobs in different places and repairing their bikes and making friends. Michael’s messages told all this in black Biro jokey sentences on the backs of pictures of donkeys in rose-trimmed hats, and villas with roses on the walls and blue seas and city roofs with hand-drawn roses raining from the sky…

  I bet I could have found him easily.

  But Caddy couldn’t.

  For the first few months she telephoned from time to time to tell us how she
was getting on, and to hear the news from home and to describe her latest weird zoological job (Parrot Rescue, Coypu Monitoring, Spanish Birdwatching Tours, Australian Rabbit Counting (no, that last one is not true. I made it up) but all the time it felt like she was drifting further and further away.

  And then we lost track of her.

  Until now.

  What is she doing, and why does she need us again?

  I wish she would come back home.

  ‘I wish you would come back home,’ I said.

  ‘I am home.’

  ‘I mean really here.’

  ‘Oh Rosy Pose,’ said Caddy. ‘I don’t know if you would wish that if I was really there.’

  And then she was gone.

  Monday 11th December

  The Trouble With Molly

  Kiran called for me on the way to school this morning and reminded me that it was dinner-money day. In our family dinner money comes from the housekeeping jar on the kitchen mantelpiece. It is stuffed with as much money as we can lay our hands on, we all help ourselves to whatever is needed, and it is not counted.

  When Kiran first heard of this arrangement she was outraged.

  ‘But what is to stop you taking as much as you like?’ she demanded. ‘And buying anything you wanted? You could!’

  Well, I suppose I could. Like I could leave the taps running in the bathroom upstairs and bring down the kitchen ceiling. Or I could eat every single biscuit in the biscuit tin and then set the house on fire.

  ‘Just because I could,’ I told Kiran, ‘doesn’t mean I will!’

  But she was not convinced.

  ‘Are you telling me,’ she demanded, ‘that nothing has ever gone wrong with the housekeeping jar?’

  Long ago Caddy and Saffron spent the entire contents on a party dress for me and we had to eat quite a lot of pasta before it was filled up again. Once, at the same time as one of Caddy’s boyfriends was visiting, all the notes mysteriously disappeared. Sometimes it is just plain empty, and occasionally it is lost (Caddy used to take the whole jar with her shopping so as not to get house money mixed up with her own and forget where she had put it which meant shaking her pockets and bags listening for a clink.)

  But, nearly always, the jar is on the mantelpiece and there is something in it, and Kiran has got used to us now, and no longer stares when I fish for my dinner money. She is also accustomed to how a hamster family lives wild in the walls, and the way Indigo plays guitar with Sarah on his knee, and Mummy lives in the shed, and Daddy appears and disappears like the moon between clouds on a stormy night, and Saffron is my sister as well as my cousin. And even to how nobody minded when Caddy changed her mind about whom she wanted to marry on her actual wedding day.

  Which just shows that you can get used to almost anything.

  ‘Why does it say TWELVE SHOPPING DAYS TILL CHRISTMAS on your clock?’ asked Kiran, poking round the kitchen while I finished packing my school bag.

  ‘I just thought everyone ought to know.’

  ‘But it isn’t!’

  ‘It was on Saturday when I wrote it.’

  ‘You need to change it.’

  ‘It won’t come off.’

  ‘Oh, Rose!’ said Kiran. ‘Show me what pen you used!’

  So I showed her and she added to my message on the clock. Now it says:

  On Saturday 9th December there were

  TWELVE SHOPPING DAYS TILL CHRISTMAS

  (not counting Sundays)

  I was not pleased when I saw this. It does not look scary at all any more. It just looks like a chatty remark. And now there is so much writing on the clock you can hardly see the numbers.

  Bother.

  Outside the school gates the cheerful face of the lollipop lady reminded me of another of my problems.

  ‘Did you know that there are children starving in Africa?’ I asked Kiran.

  ‘Everyone knows. Of course I knew,’ said Kiran, but she did not offer any solution.

  I hope this is not another thing that Kiran has managed to get used to.

  Just inside the entrance hall of our school there is a plastic collecting box labelled OXFAM. We all walk past it every day.

  Sometimes you can get used to too much.

  There is one good thing that Mr Spencer has achieved by mixing up where we sit and being impartially nasty to all of us together: he has made us all friends. Today, when it was Class 6’s turn to take their dinner money to the office a very nice thing happened.

  We have to line up to pay in alphabetical order which means that I am always first in the queue because nobody happens to have a second name beginning with A or B. C is the first. That is me. Rose Casson.

  ‘Dinner money, Rose?’ says Mrs Shah, our very nice school secretary.

  ‘I am not having dinners this week,’ I tell her.

  ‘Oh,’ says Mrs Shah, very surprised because I have had dinners every day since I was five. ‘I am sorry to hear that because it is Christmas Lunch on Thursday and two hundred crackers are languishing in my office even as we speak. I trust our Culinary Department has not disappointed you in any way? I believe they are aspiring to Home-made Cheesy Mash today.’

  ‘They have not disappointed me at all,’ I say as politely as I can because Saffron and Sarah have often advised me that in a formal situation it is advantageous to reply in a style similar to that with which one is addressed. ‘Not at all. Not even with the broccoli (you cannot be disappointed if you know what to expect) and Cheesy Mash is one of my favourites. The reason I am not having dinners is that I have put all my dinner money in the Oxfam box in the hall because there are children starving in Africa which does not cheer me up.’

  ‘Nor me, Rose,’ said Mrs Shah, looking at me very kindly. ‘Go to the back of the queue, dear, while I have a little think.’

  But she did not need her little think after all, because by the time I was in front of her desk again I had my dinner money and quite a lot over, passed back down the queue to me by my friends in Class 6, none of whom were cheered up by the thought of children starving in Africa either.

  ‘Very well done!’ said Mrs Shah, as I stuffed the excess in the Oxfam box. ‘Tell your friends that I congratulate them all! It is amazing what you people can accomplish when you work as a team and although I must admit that broccoli is on the menu again you might like to spread the word that it is Chocolate Tarmac for pudding with pink milkshake.’

  So I went back to class and did this, and they were all very pleased, especially Molly. And yet Molly had no spare dinner money to give me (Molly’s mother being the sort of person who puts the exact amount in a labelled envelope). And Molly does not like Tarmac, or milk in any form, not even pink.

  ‘Why are you so happy?’ I asked her, making an excuse to pass her lonely table at the back of the room. ‘Is it still about the Zoo?’ And she nodded and nodded, all rosy and smiling to herself.

  The trouble with Molly is that she watches too much educational TV. She has about ten million David Attenborough DVDs too. She thinks he is marvellous. She has a great big picture of him patronising a gorilla on her bedroom wall. (Kiran says why can’t she have Green Day and dressed-up pirates, like everybody else.)

  Kiran was very very unhappy when she found out what she and I had promised to help Molly do. I did not mind so much for two reasons:

  1. I (sort of ) understood. I was brought up with wild hamsters, don’t forget, and too many guinea pigs, and Caddy.

  2. I did not believe it could possibly happen, no matter how much Mrs Shah believed Class 6 could accomplish when they worked together as a team.

  Tuesday 12th December

  Anything for a Bit of Peace

  At two o’clock this morning Saffy and Indigo and I went downstairs to see if the strange noises and freezing draughts that had woken us were caused by ghosts or merely burglars.

  We discovered Mummy instead, gobbling aspirin. ‘The thing about antibiotics,’ said Mummy, ‘is that they quite often make you much worse before t
hey make you better. It just proves they are working. Go to bed, darlings, I am quite all right.’

  ‘You look terrible,’ said Saffy sternly.

  ‘I always look terrible at two o’clock in the morning,’ Mummy replied, splashing cold tap-water on her face. ‘Please do not close the window, Indy, fresh air kills germs.’

  ‘Hypothermia,’ said Indigo, not obeying, ‘kills people. And anyway, Rose’s lips are going blue.’

  ‘Rose, go to bed!’ ordered everyone.

  I thought this would be a good time to start being stubborn so I said that I would not go to bed unless Mummy went too. Mummy protested a bit because she said lying down made her cough and the sound of her coughing would keep us awake.

  ‘Not as much as the idea of you down here alone and freezing to death will keep us awake,’ pointed out Saffy.

  ‘I will stay with her,’ I offered, getting my teeth to chatter in a quite realistic way, and then Indigo switched off the lights very firmly. So Mummy gave in and staggered back upstairs and I went after her. I was nearly as cold as I was pretending to be, and I thought I would not get to sleep for ages, but Indigo made me a hot-water bottle and Saffy gave me a new book from Sarah, and after ten minutes in bed with these things nothing in the world could keep me awake.

  The book was called Where the Wild Things Are. It was very short, but it got into my dreams. In the book a boy’s bedroom walls melt away and a forest grows. The illustrations of this happening were brilliant. In my dreams the same thing happened to me, and my dream forest was so beautiful and so vivid that as soon as I woke up I took all the pictures and posters and clocks and postcards off my bedroom walls and started to draw it before it faded from my mind. There was only time to sketch in the outlines before I went to school, but all day in spare moments I planned my forest.

  This drove Kiran mad.

  ‘Please pay attention sometimes, Rose!’ she ordered, when I kept losing track of the day-long argument that was happening between herself and Molly. ‘You are not listening to anything and saying, “Yes, yes, yes” to shut us up. Admit it!’