Rat Catchers

Gunfire

Alice and Helen knocked on the back door in the morning, just as Rose was finishing her breakfast.

"No school?" asked Frances suspiciously when she opened.

"Miss Friar's sister after having a baby," Alice said without blinking an eye. "She fairly ran from the room when they called her, she did."

"Can Rosie come out?" Helen asked.

"Come in a minute," Rosie said, getting up and cramming the crust of her bread into her mouth. "I'll show you something."

They squeezed past Frances, who looked a bit put out, and trooped up the stairs.

"Out," Rose snapped at Charlie who was busy arranging horses in a pen made from dulled pencils.

"Why..." he whined.

" 'cause I fucking said," she hissed.

Her brother stood up wearily and dragged his feet on the way out. Rose closed the door behind him and produced the wild rovers at the seaside from under her pillow.

"Your da looks so different," Helen exclaimed. "Who's she?"

"Guess," Rose said.

Alice took the picture from Helen and studied it intently, looking over at Rose once in a while.

"That's your mum," she said finally with absolute certainty.

"Get out of it." Helen grabbed the picture back.

"She's the image of her, lookit," Alice waked over and pulled Rose's hair back. "Eyebrows are exactly the same and the mouth, too."

"But you said there were no pictures of her," Helen said, looking at Rose dubiously.

"There weren't," she said. "But there's one now. D'you really think I look like her, Alice?"

"The spit...well, nearly." Alice leaned in to get another look. "She's lovely."

"She-" Rose started but a bang from outside cut her off, making a three girls jump.

"Was that a gun?" Alice shrieked.

"Hang on-"

Rose flung the door open, raced across the landing and into Frances' room, pushed open the window and climbed out onto the wall dividing the their place from next door. Her uncle Arthur was standing on his back step, gun still in hand. Rose looked at the scene for a second, trying to work out what had happened.

"Are you after killing the wall, uncle Arthur?" she shouted down.

Arthur swung around, his eyes glassy, possibly with drink, and waved the gun at her. Rose nearly fell off the wall.

"Get-" he started, but then there was her father's voice shouting from inside Arthur's and her aunt Linda was shouting as well, and Rose scrambled back over the window sill.

"What's going on?" Helen asked wearily when Rose returned.

"They're all mad." Rose grabbed her coat from under the bed. "Let's go, aye?"

#

They kept busy dispersing their weaponry for the best part of the morning, until they were starving.

"Will your mum feed us?" Rose asked Alice.

"We're still meant to be in school," Alice sighed. "D'you have any money?"

Rose didn't but the company office was just round the corner. Her father might still be testy after last night's encounter, but if he was busy and she asked very nicely he might give her some shrapnel just to be rid of her.