Rat Catchers

Bits and Pieces

She lay back, opened the blade and ran it over the top of her bare arm. Once. Twice. Three times...it didn't hurt very much, nearly not at all.

Rose watched thin sheets of blood run down onto the sheet. The weight was lifting.

When she woke again, the room was flooded with sunlight and her arm was stuck to the sheet with dried blood. Rose took the waterglass from her bedside table, smashed it against the side of her bed and told Frances she didn't remember waking up thirsty.

#

Her father wasn't going into the office anymore.

It took Rose a little time to realise, because he'd been in bed with his bandages, recuperating.

Charlie would go in and sit on the bed, bring a fistful of soldiers and stage battles on Tommy's chest until Frances coaxed him out.

Rose didn't visit. Not a lot.

She did sit outside the door though, sometimes; sometimes she fell asleep there.

"Rosie?"

She uncurled herself and sat up carefully.

"Come here."

He didn't have the big bandage anymore, only a small one over on his side. He was patting the mattress next to him, but Rose couldn't sit there. It was too close. It was impossible.

"Are you better?" she asked, lingering at the foot of the bed again.

"I am, thank you."

His frown was so deep, it could have held one of Charlie's soldiers in it. Two even.

"Why aren't you working?"

Rose flexed her good hand on the bedframe, making sure it wouldn't go through the wood.

"I'm having a bit of a holiday."

"Lovely."

They were like boxers, Rose realised. Dancing around each other. Tapping gloves, pulling punches, feeling each other out.

"Are you better, too, Rosie?"

She looked directly at him now, her chin raised a little. Her left hand was patchy with all the colours skin could have, coated in sticky salves and bits of bandage to keep the bits between her fingers from ripping apart. Under her left sleeve hid lines and lines of cuts in various stages of healing. She couldn't make it through one day without randomly falling asleep.

"I'm grand, thank you."

"Good girl."

She couldn't believe it.

"D'you think you're up for going back to school?"

Perhaps she'd left something of herself on the floor in the gin shed. Not a big part, necessarily, but the one that made her visible. Not Rose, the body, but Rose, the girl.

"Yea," she said. "That's orright."

#

She'd hated her school, the fancy one. She'd hated it for always and forever.

If it had been up to Rose, she'd have stayed at school in Saltley, where she'd gone with Alice and James ever since schooling had been deemed necessary.

Unfortunately, it hadn't been up to her and she'd been sent off to St. Paul's with instructions to behave and not to tell anyone she'd not had her first communion.

The uniforms were horrible. The girls laughed at her because of the way she talked.

She'd not been since just before Christmas.