Rat Catchers

Bits and Pieces

Rose couldn't stay awake.

It was the strangest thing.

She'd never cared for sleeping, not very much, not unless she was ill. Her aunt Polly used to tell her that when Rose first came to live in Watery Lane, she sewed bells onto the hem of her nightdress so she could hear her wandering the house in the middle of the night and retrieve her. There was no threat powerful enough to keep her in bed at night.

Now though...

Rose would drop off without any warning. She'd sit down on a chair and wake with a crooked neck, hours and hours later. Waking up in the morning was like extracting herself from a trough of treacle. Sometimes she couldn't remember walking into a room or why she'd wanted to be in it...if she'd wanted to be in it.

They'd gone back to the big house and Rose wasn't sure if this was making things better or worse. The place was so vast she'd wander off and fall asleep and no one would know where she was for ages.

Well, Frances wouldn't know where she was for ages...and Charlie.

No one else was looking.

#

It had all gone wrong.

Her father had carried her from the gin shed and sat her down on a crate somewhere outside and started running his hands all over her face and shoulders and arms. There were bruises on his knuckles and blood. There was blood on the cuffs of his jacket, too.

"Rosie. Rose."

She looked up. He's asked something, more than once most likely. She'd missed it.

"Yea?"

"Are you hurt?"

Rose didn't know how to explain just how hurt she was. It wasn't what her was asking after anyway. Tommy wanted to know if she'd been beaten. If they'd kicked her and burned her with their cigarettes. If she needed bandaging. She slowly shook her head.

"You sure you're orright?" He had her face in both of his hands now, searching her eyes. "They didn't touch you?"

"No," she said and felt something harden deep within.

He'd wrapped his arms around her then and held her and held her; but then Polly had come over and told him he was wanted inside. She'd sat down next to Rosie, pulled her close, held her hands and looked at her. For ages.

"What happened?" she finally asked in such a way that left no doubt that she knew something enormous had occurred.

There was no way to tell her. Rose didn't know for certain what had happened. So, for lack of better ideas, she shrugged.

"Nothing," she said. "Nothing happened. I'm orright."

To Rose's tremendous surprise, her aunt Polly had teared up at this, leaned over and kissed her cheek.

"When you're ready, you come and see me. Orright?" Polly squeezed Rose's hand. "When you've had a little time."

Just as she said it, Tommy had come back.

"She's orright, Pol." He'd looked at Rosie with an unfamiliar flash of fear. "Aren't you, Rosie?"

"Yea," she'd said quietly. "Right as rain."

"Good girl, Rosie," her father had never sounded so relieved in his life. "Good girl."

#

They'd gone back to the big house and had a party. The day after or a week after, Rose didn't know.