ROSE IRIS LAVENDER walked with a wiggle and a waggle, not a girl of over-confidence but one simply full of life. Her mind soared free as a bird in a bright summer's sky. She would swoop and glide, under and over, around and between her fresh and often original ideas until she had finally exhausted herself. Any idea not fully thought through would be put aside in her brilliant memory, which was yet another part of her magnificent mind. Rose was never happy to let any question remain unanswered. Each stone set in her mind would one day be overturned, over and over and over again—of that there was no question. Unlike many people she was prepared to accept that all her questions might never be fully or even acceptably answered. But these questions would not be allowed to just rest like ancient stones gathering moss. She had a healthy sense of fun despite the dire situations she often found herself in. Rose was very creative and her imagination was probably the most incredible aspect of her magnificent mind. She could see things quite clearly that others were completely blind to.
She had no idea of all this though.
What she did have an idea of, was that tomorrow was her birthday. She was very young and had not yet reached double figures. But at least she was closing in on them. Tomorrow, she would be nine.
However, there was one thing that stood in Rose's way.
The world.
It had a nasty tendency of taking the most inimitable of people and turning them into soldiers of mediocrity, servants of nobody and mirrors of everybody. The world was calling out to Rose to be a particular type of girl, and telling her how wonderful that would be. It was attempting to steal her individuality. The world had always been calling out like this, as it did to every man, woman and child. The difference now was that Rose was becoming old enough to hear it.
She was starting to lose herself.
She had no idea of all this though.
And one outward feature of Rose's inimitableness that could not go unnoticed was her obsession with large black polka dots on her white clothes. It was her thing. Her dresses were always white with large black polka dots. And if she wore a T-shirt, a blouse or a jumper, it would be the same: white with large black polka dots. Her coats were fashioned in that way. Her favourite Wellington boots too. She insisted on it. Even her favourite toys were white with large black polka dots. Hillary the horse, Gregor the gorilla, Tolly the teddy bear, Deidre the dinosaur. And there was her quilt, pillowcases, wallpaper, school backpack, school pencil case and her piggybank. Yes, it was most definitely her thing.
There was no end to Rose's large black polka dot obsession. She was open to talking about it. Her mother, Mrs Lavender, Mrs Yasmin Violet Lavender, would always tell her she would grow out of it one day. But Rose had always told her mother that she wouldn't. She even once said, "I bet when I die, it will be of a new strain of the measles. One that turns the skin white. One where the red dots are large black polka dots. My coffin will be white with large black polka dots, and I'll be sleeping inside it in my white burial robes covered in my large black polka dots. Morbid I know, but the Lord God would want to see me no other way. I can just tell."
And right now, she was in the kitchen of an ordinary moderately run-down end of terrace house located on a run-of-the-mill housing estate on the outskirts of Cambridge, England. It was summer and she had on her blue jeans and one of her white with large black polka-dotted T-shirts. She was with her mother, making every effort to make the most out of her late afternoon Tea...
She had just finished hugging her upset mother who looked like a larger version of her. They both had shoulder length bright-red hair the colour of a Robin's chest, and keen lime-green eyes. Rose would often hug her mother, because her mother would often get upset. It had always been this way since Rose's father had gone missing almost a year to the day. The police had done their best to find him, but could find nothing. He had disappeared without a trace, never to be seen again.
Rose sat back and admired her chips, which her father for some reason called French fries. He also confusingly, called crisps, chips. When Rose asked him why he had to be so confusing, he told her it was because he was an American. And he told her it was just as well he was an American, or she could never have been born. Of course, this was just one more confusing thing that he had told her. She loved her father and didn't believe for a second that he was dead. There were not many in her camp—and certainly not her English mother. Rose wasn't sure if she considered herself English or American, or even a combination of both. She just considered herself to be herself. It was a shame the world was calling out for her to be things that she was currently not.
She had no idea of all this though.
The reason Rose was admiring her chips was because she had creatively repositioned them. And now she picked up the tomato ketchup squeezy bottle in an effort to creatively squirt even more tomato ketchup onto them.
"Rose! Not too much now," said Rose's mother, still wiping away the last of a new batch of tears from her eyes. She continued, "It's bad for your teeth. Remember, there's lots of sugar in that ketchup, you know." Rose's mother blew her nose with a degree of finality into a tissue. She looked a bit happier now.
"But I'll brush my teeth well, Mum. I promise."
"No. That will not stop your teeth rotting between times. So come on, Rose, be a good girl and at least put some of the ketchup to the side of your chips."
"Aw, okay, Mum. You know better than my teeth, I suppose."
Rose did what her mother ordered. Nevertheless, using her knife she did at least manage to draw a picture of a smiley face with the ketchup she had put to the side, so the tomato ketchup wasn't entirely wasted. And she smiled back at the face too.
Rose looked across the table to her mother and her smile grew as she tucked a hot chip securely into her mouth once again. She normally finished her Tea well before her mother, as she was a fast eater with a sweet tooth. Rose loved sweets, cakes, and lots of sugar, which naturally worried her mother. She even scoffed down honey-filled sandwiches. Rose was the proverbial dustbin when it came to almost any meal. But today, on the eve of her birthday, she did not seem in any hurry.
She began heartily singing to a chip she had pronged on the end of her fork as she lazily twirled it around in front of her keen lime-green eyes, a song she conjured up out of her unique quirky imagination. It was a duet, but Rose decided to help the chip out by singing its part:
Oh big chip, big chip,
Will you marry me,
With the love of an Irish man?
(Oh no, little girl with your head in a twirl,
I don't think I really can!)
Why not, big chip?
(Because, little girl...)
Because why, big chip?
(Because little girl...
I'm in love with a fish,
On another girl's dish,
And I have no wish to love another one!')
Rose's mother had already started to wash the dishes, a person determined to keep herself busy.
"Why 'with the love of an Irish man'?" she asked, scrubbing a stubborn stain off a bowl.
"Because potatoes mean a lot to the Irish, don't they."
"Oh...I see, I think..." Rose's mother turned around briefly with her hands still busy in the turbulent basin. "Rose, what's the matter, it's not like you to be taking so long over Tea?"
"Oh, nothing really. Well not really anything important, I don't suppose. You see, Mum, I'm just thinking about things," replied Rose inspecting the serenaded chip she was still twirling around in front of her curious eyes. "Dad says these black bits are bad for you," she commented, looking hard at some blackened patches on the chip. "What was it he would say...? Yes, that's it, he would say"—Rose then launched into quite a good impression of her father's Californian accent—"Black bits are hella tough on the digestables."
"'Digestables'? There's no such a word, and you know it," said Rose's mother as she shoved some more dirty dishes and cutlery into the basin.
"Oh yes, but I like inventing words. I was inspired by the word 'vegables'," she said, while placing the dubious black-patched chip to one side of her plate with a few of its friends (just above the ketchup smiling face she had created earlier which she was careful to avoid as she wanted to preserve the face as long as possible). "And vegables are good for the digestables. It all makes sense eventually, Mum."
"I'll take your word for it, dear."
"That's 17 chips eaten, 1 egg and 22 peas, with 4 bad chips left above a small puddle of ketchup." Rose pushed her plate to the side having finally finished all the good bits and drew her pudding bowl towards her.
Rose's mother turned from the washing up sink and smiled at Rose with a mixture of encouragement and pride. "You and your counting...God knows how you do it? Remember when you won the Guess the Sweets in the Jar competition at the Parkside Fete?"
Rose nodded. "That was easy. I could just tell there were 843."
"It's funny how you make up inaccurate words yet you're accurate with numbers though, isn't it?" said Rose's mother.
"Dad says inventing words and even using them wrongly is good for me. He says I should nature the habit—only joking, it's nurture the habit."
"How about a nice fresh hot cup of tea to help you with your pudding?"
Rose stared down at her sugar-coated apple tart that pushed above the hot custard in her pudding bowl. "Dad says, if all you ever eat is sugar, then first your blood will turn to honey and then your skin will turn as white as snow, and then you'll just drop down dead. Unless you jump into a giant cup of tea, in which case you'll thaw out and survive—unless you can't swim that is! So, I suppose a cup of tea should be good for a girl with a sweet tooth like me. Count me in, Mum."
"Your father never told you such a thing. You have such strange inventing qualities that sometimes I wonder if we were given the wrong baby in the hospital. And by the way, you can't even swim. So good luck jumping in a giant cup of tea!"
"Aw... I'm sorry, Mum. I just love inventing things. "When Dad comes back, we'll soon be inventing things together again."
This last remark caused Rose's mother to start to cry again.
"Why must you persist in this fantasy, Rose," she said sharply. "Why can't you accept an obvious fact? Your father's not coming back. He's...well, dead."
"He's not dead, Mum, I promise," squeaked Rose, and she pushed her pudding to the side and rushed up to hug her mother. She squeezed her little arms around her mother's waist from behind and nudged her bright-red haired head into the small of her mother's back as her mother stood sobbing over the sink with her hands deep in the washing-up basin gripping a plate. They both silently wept swaying slowly from side to side as if they were a single forlorn creature.
Eventually, Rose went back to her chair at the kitchen table and set to gorging on her pudding. "Don't cry anymore, Mum. I know everybody thinks Dad's dead but we know different don't we. You keep saying he's dead, but I know you don't believe it."
Rose's mother left the sink and walked over to Rose. She placed her slightly wet soap-sudded hands firmly upon her shoulders. She held her gaze squarely, and said, "Look, your father's dead. You must accept it, Rose."
"He told us he was going somewhere though—remember? He had to investigate something. And you know Dad. He can't let go of an investigation. I think I'm a bit like him. Of course, I'm not a university lecturer at the University of Cambridge. So I'm not as clever. But that's only because I'm eight. I know I might not grow up to be clever, but you're just as clever as Dad. Dad told me you got higher marks than him when you were students at the university. So I reckon I've got a good chance of growing up and becoming clever. Though, I don't mind if I don't grow up to be clever. As long as I'm free to be the person I want to be. Does that make any sense, Mum?"
"It probably does to you."
"Well, Dad's coming back. He can't have gone missing if he's gone somewhere. I'm sure of that."
"But he was talking nonsense, Rose. He worked too hard sometimes. And he worked with abstract things, Rose—very complicated things."
"But, Mum, they didn't find his body did they?"
Suddenly without warning, a flash of lightning ripped through a darkening summer's afternoon sky which had been clear and sunny only a few minutes ago. Drops of rain started to kiss the kitchen window. The wind gathered up slightly causing the clothes on the washing line to try desperately to escape their pegs, and a distant thunder clap rumbled in the distance.
"Looks like a real summer storm is brewing," said Rose's mother. "Funny, there was nothing on the online weather maps. I looked just an hour ago before making the dinner. Oh well, I'd best fetch in the washing. I forgot about it. Finish those dishes, Rose darling, can you?"
Rose's mother quickly ran out of the kitchen back door and scuttled into the back garden and snatched the clothes off the washing line.
Meanwhile, Rose finished the dishes and even cleaned the kitchen table because she felt a bit guilty for upsetting her Mum. She was quite upset herself.
Not too many minutes later, they were both sitting at the table sipping a hot cup of tea watching the storm build up outside the kitchen window. It was only late afternoon but looked more like late evening. Clouds closed fast and the sky went pitch black as if a shutter had been pulled down on the sky by the hand of God.
"This is a bit like the time we observed the total Eclipse of the Sun in America with your father a few years ago. That was in the summer too."
"Oh, yeah. It definitely feels the same. It's as if something strange is about to happen."
It was so dark that Rose's mother stretched up from her chair and flicked the kitchen light on.
Then suddenly, outside out of the whistling gale force wind, driving rain, flashes of lightning and distant thunder-claps, a particularly powerful lightning bolt almost blinded Rose and her mother. It was accompanied by an almost instant almighty crash of thunder.
Rose and her mother screamed as the kitchen window and kitchen back garden door rattled violently. The kitchen clock fell off the wall and landed with a clatter on the kitchen counter.
"Good heavens, that was close!" said Rose's mother with a nervous giggle. "Very portentous indeed!"
"It's an angry sky today all right," said Rose, who was also full of nervous giggles. "Dad says—"
"That's quite enough, Rose," quickly interrupted Rose's mother. Her face was flushed with anger. "Go to the living room this very second and leave me alone. I'm sick and tired of hearing, 'Dad says'. Just leave me alone!" And such was her ferocity that Rose darted out of the kitchen and into the living room.
Rose hated being told off for upsetting her mother so she jumped on the settee pulled a cushion over her head and quietly sobbed.
Then something strange happened.
Something really, really strange...?
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I hope you enjoyed this Chapter. I welcome any votes, comments or constructive criticisms (style, spelling, grammar and punctuation errors).
T. J. P. CAMPBELL.