Roses

The next day, after dinner, Caroline called everyone round to tell them her plan. William was openly happy, as was Juillietta. Aurora was unsurprised; she’d been guessing that something like this would happen for a good couple of weeks.

Robbie already knew, and so was silent.

Luciana murmured a ‘thank you’ before getting up and clearing off the table.

“Now it might take a little while, and you may have to be put into care for a little, Juillietta and Aurora. But it will be over soon, if that’s the case.”

“What does it mean to be put into care?” Aurora asked.

“It means that for a while you’ll have to go and live in a place- a house- with lots of other children who are waiting for parents,” Catherine said gently.

“Where are their parents?”

“Elsewhere,” William answered her this time. “Doing other things with other people.” He winked at Aurora and she burst out laughing, much to the others confusion.

“Does anyone want anything to drink?” Luciana asked, fingering the tip of a lock of her hair. No one did, miraculously, and so she excused herself saying that she was going to wash her hair.

That was the signal that the meeting had come to an end and everyone could go their separate ways.

Juillietta and Will were going to Chuck’s house to watch some horror film, an invitation that Aurora declined in favour of getting her own black hair washed by Luciana.

She sat on the toilet, watching and talking as Luciana washed her hair in the shower.

“What’s that?” she asked suddenly, pointing to a large red mark on her sister’s thigh- another remnant of a fiery dream. “Did Robbie do that?”

“What? Robbie did what?” Luciana asked, clearly bemused by her sister’s question.

“That mark on your thigh. Did Robbie do that?”

Luciana looked down at her thigh then back up at Aurora, confusion clear in her eyes.

“What do you mean? Why would he do that? How?”

Aurora shrugged, nonchalantly. “He might have just gotten a little bit… carried away, you know,” Aurora winked suggestively, but Luciana didn’t think like that, and so it was lost on her.

“Carried away doing what?” she asked, seriously, but Aurora just shook her head, laughed and changed the subject.

It was while she watched Luciana braid her hair that Aurora noticed that it no longer shone, and that skin had no longer glowed like her sisters. It didn’t even have the same vitality as Caroline’s, or Will’s, or Robbie’s.

Instead it was just grey.

She shuddered. If that was what being in love did to you, she hoped she’d never be in love, ever.



At Chuck’s house, Chuck most fervent wish for that evening was being gratified.

Juillietta was curled up into him, her face buried in his chest and her hands clutching one of his tightly.

“What is this, anyway? I thought it was meant to be horror, not blood and guts splashing everywhere,” she was complaining, or rather, mumbling to herself. Will, on the other side of the sofa curled up with a girl of his own, chuckled at her. If Aurora were there, she’d have told Juillietta to stop being such a pussy.

He tightened his arm around the girl he was holding. She was holding out much better against the gore onscreen; she’d only flinched a couple of times at first before settling down into a state of intense horrified interest.

Maybe she was one to watch. Crime watch, of course, and he laughed in his head at his own lame joke.

The film was so boring, and having the girls there just seemed to make it more boring because it meant Chuck was too preoccupied with holding Juillietta to make interesting or entertaining observations, and not at all willing to listen to Will’s.

If Aurora were there, she’d have listened.



Instead, Aurora was downstairs with Luciana, Robert and Caroline, watching the Science of Sleep, and Robbie and Luciana.

She was disappointed by the last, because it was such a difficult task, and because the reason it was so difficult was that Robbie was sitting in one chair and Luciana was sitting in another one entirely.

She didn’t even look at him, although he frequently looked at her. She stayed focused either on the film or on her book.

The only time anything remotely interesting happened was when she looked for a second like she’d fallen asleep.

Robbie called her name, and she’d straightened out with a start, glancing around herself before seeing Robbie and smiling a smile of infinite gratitude. He returned it with one of his own, then she looked back to the screen.

Aurora felt as though she’d been cheated out of something. She’d expected much more to happen between the two. At the least she thought there would be some sort of unrecognized, awkward sexual tension. But all that was there was a one sided longing.

Juillietta and William came in near the end of the film, Juillietta’s voice raised in protest.

“I was not flirting! Not even a little bit! It was just disgusting, that’s all,” she was saying, to the sound of William’s laughter.

“Sure. I bet Aurora’d say I’m right,” they entered the living room, Juillietta pouting, William with a wide grin on his face.

They plonked themselves down on either side of Aurora, noisily.

Luciana flinched, but said nothing.

Robbie hushed them.

It wasn’t until after Caroline had gone to bed, and Will, Aurora and Juillietta were just about to follow her that the next interesting thing happened.

Luciana turned to say goodnight to them, and then stopped completely as she had in the café. The book fell out of her hands, and she begun to cry.

And then she began to scream, screams from the pit of her stomach, the words too twisted up in agony to be anything like intelligible.

Aurora, appalled, backed away from her. Juillietta begun to cry in harmony with her sister’s pain.

William couldn’t look. Luciana was far more terrifying than any horror movie he’d seen.

It was Robbie who jumped to his feet and put an arm round Luciana, dragging her back into their world.

She pulled herself out of his grip and ran towards them. They both shrank back, but not far enough, as she grabbed their arms and inspected them before sinking down to her knees, thanking God that they were okay.

“Maybe you guys should go now,” Robbie said, breaking the horrified spell that sat over them.

William and Juillietta didn’t have to be told twice, and sprinted away out of the room and up the stairs.

“Aurora, you should go too,” William said, kneeling down besides Luciana, stroking her back, gently.

“She’s my sister, not yours,” Aurora replied evenly.

Robbie sighed; this wasn’t the time to argue.

After a while of petting and sounds of comfort, Luciana was recovered enough to stand up, using both Robbie and Aurora for support, and be sat on the couch.

Again, she embraced Robbie’s support.

“You didn’t feel anything, did you?” she murmured so that they had to strain to hear her.

“No- feel anything like what?” Robbie replied, confused.

“Not you. Aurora, you didn’t feel anything?”

“No,” Aurora said, snorting derisively at the idea that she could be hurt by anything.

Luciana sighed and let her eyes drift shut. Robbie shook her gently, and they flicked and fluttered back open.

“I don’t think I can fight it anymore. I need to sleep. I need to sleep now,” she muttered, her words slurring themselves together. “Just please, wake me if I start to dream. Don’t let me dream.”

But before Robbie had time to promise that he wouldn’t her eyes had fallen shut again and her head had found it’s final resting place against his shoulder.

“Well what was all that about?” Aurora demanded.

“I don’t know. I really don’t. She’s not been sleeping recently. Probably she started to have a nightmare while she was still awake?” he offered, tiredly.

“Why’s she not been sleeping?” Aurora asked.

“Nightmares. She’s afraid of her nightmares.”

“Unsurprising. I’m afraid of her bloody nightmares!” Aurora said, and then glanced at her sister. “Is that why she looks so… dead?”

“Aurora, don’t say that,” Robbie chastised, his own weariness dancing on his vocal chords.

“Well it’s true. She acts like a zombie too. Is that why?”

“Aurora,” Robbie moaned, but Aurora refused to see why she was in the wrong and eventually he had to agree with her.

“But don’t tell Will or Juillietta. I don’t think she really wanted anyone to know,” he added on hastily.

“Why not?” Aurora asked. Robbie shrugged. “She is too complicated for her own good.”

There was a long, drawn out silence.

“So you love her,” Aurora said. It wasn’t a question, so Robbie didn’t answer it. Aurora took his silence as a ‘yes’. “What do you like about her? I’m her sister and I think about the only thing I like about her is her food. And the fact that she cleans up well.”

“That’s because you don’t see her ever,” Robbie replied defensively, and unwittingly falling into the trap Aurora laid for him. “She worries so much about you two.” He shut his eyes, as if remembering something. “She’s very special. But she needs a lot of help. She’s killing herself.”

“Do you mean that or are you just being dramatic?” Aurora asked, studying his face.

“I mean it. She’s doing too much on virtually no food or sleep. Look at how thin her wrist is,” he added, gently elevating a fine wrist so Aurora could see it better.

Aurora held her own wrist up against it, then retracted it quickly. They were the same size, except Aurora’s was reasonably fleshed out, Comparing the two just made Luciana’s look worse. Her skin was just about covering her bones.

“That is scary,” she declared.

“I know. Mum and I- we’re so worried. But she won’t stop working just in case she falls asleep. And she doesn’t eat much. She thinks staying hungry helps her stay awake.”

Robbie unfolded the duvet that was hanging over the back of the chair and spread it out over the three of them.

“I’m not tired,” Aurora stated.

“Good. Can you watch her for a little? If her eyelids start twitching, then she’s dreaming. Wake her up. And wake me up as well, if you want to go to sleep.”

“Okay,” Aurora replied cheerfully, picking up the remote control and flicking through the channels.

Robbie sighed and tried to make himself comfortable around Luciana.

Aurora looked at the two of them, and was glad that she wasn’t in love.



The next day, Caroline begun the process of adopting the three. It meant lots of long phone calls and emails, and all her time at home she spent on the phone, or filling out forms.

Social workers did come to try and remove all three girls- Aurora and Juillietta to a children’s’ home an hour away, Luciana to a council flat in the city, but the girls refused so adamantly that the social workers had to content themselves with visits every other day instead.

After that came tests. Tests and tests and tests of almost everything.

First there were literacy and numeracy tests. The girls all did well on the literacy, because they all read books at Caroline’s shop when there was nothing else to do. Aurora and Luciana’s basic numeracy skills had been perfected down to a fine art, although Juillietta’s left much to be desired- she simply had no interest in numbers- having decided she hated them on principle, and she’d never helped Caroline with the till.

Health tests for Aurora and Juillietta came up fine. Everything was perfect- they were the right weights, they had the correct balance of nutrients and were generally perfect in every way.

Luciana’s were, however, worrying.

She was dangerously underweight, and her bones were brittle. She didn’t have enough nutrients, and she wasn’t getting enough sleep.

Neglect was the word used by the social workers at first, then; depression. They were wrong, Luciana thought, but Caroline and Robbie fed this view, telling them about her obsessive cleaning and lack of sleep, her unwillingness to eat and her compulsion to work.

She was sent to doctors, who prescribed sleeping tablets that she didn’t take, and she was threatened with being admitted into hospital.

The process took six, arduous weeks, in which everyone was a little short tempered, and no one wanted particularly to see any of the others.

And then it was declared that Caroline would be able to keep Juillietta and Aurora provisionally, and was supplied with freshly printed birth certificates for them. The social workers would come and visit every week for two months, to see if she was fit to be a parent.

As much as Luciana was threatened with being taken away from Caroline, she managed to remind them, finally, that she was legally an adult- it said so on her own, new birth certificate. If she wanted to stay with Caroline, she could.

The social workers had no power over her.

Once that was over, Caroline set about enrolling them in school- a walk in the park compared to adoption.

Aurora was entered into the local primary into year five, in accordance with her birth certificate, and Luciana was entered into William’s school, in his year and his class.

And Caroline found something important.

The girls’ clothes- which she had always meant to send off for dry cleaning- had been sitting in a pile in the laundry room since the sisters had arrived, and had been covered with other clothes. Caroline had rooted them out at the start of the adoption process, to see if they had had any papers or mean of identification in them that she’d missed the first time round.

It was as she looked at these clothes a second time round that their opulence struck her. They were in a bad state- that was undeniable- but under everything, they were made of silk, and embroidered with silver and gold thread. The bodies were encrusted with stones that she did not dare to think of as jewels.

And there was jewelry, as well. Three rings, four necklaces, and innumerable anklets and bracelets.

She told them about it, but everyone was too busy to care, and so she didn’t get round to showing the girls their jewels till the night before Juillietta and Aurora were due to start school.

She put the jewelry down on the coffee table in the living room, noting Luciana sitting very stiffly next to Robbie, although not touching him.

She was relenting a little.

“Girls, remember those bracelets and things I told you about a while ago?”

They didn’t.

“Ahh. Well I found some things of your from when you first came that you were wearing which I took off when I washed you and forgot about promptly and well. They’re here.”

She placed the items on the table.

Aurora laughed with glee, and Juillietta begun crying happily.

Luciana dropped her standard of no contact, and grabbed Robbie’s hand tightly. He felt the fear in her grip.

As she watched Aurora and Juillietta grabbing everything they could, her brain was seeing them being presented with rolls of black velvet containing the necklaces by a man in a burgundy velvet shirt with puffed sleeves, slashes revealing black silk, black silk knickerbockers and white stockings.

Robbie’s thumb rubbed comfortingly against the back of her hand and jolted her back into the present world.

She took control of the situation.

“Aurora, Juillietta, put them down,” she admonished sternly, but it took a good five minutes for them to actually do as she said.

She started with the rings first. The smallest went to Aurora, who found her name inscribed on the inside. Luciana gave Juillietta the one with her name inscribed on the inside without even having to check which one it was, and slid her own onto her left hand middle finger.

It was the same with the bracelets. Although the only the only ones really different from each of the others were three charm bracelets holding intricately and individually carved charms of silver and onyx- nine on Aurora’s, sixteen on Juillietta’s and twenty-one on Luciana’s, she gave out all of the other bracelets in accordance to some inner knowledge which wouldn’t allow her to distribute the wrong bracelet to the wrong person, even though they were exactly the same.

Seemingly identical anklets were also shared out with the same care and meticulous attention.

And finally, the necklaces.

Aurora’s had a silver pendant with flowers carved into the silver and a sapphire set into the disk.

Juillietta’s was made of flat gold octagonal disks with rubies set in them. It was almost like a necklace of state, like the ones that mayors wear, but much, much smaller.

And Luciana’s was of a silvery metal- although she assured them it was platinum- with a beautiful diamond pendant shining mesmerically on it.

Which left just one more necklace- a silver one, with a silver diamond ring on it and a silver heart locket.

Luciana looked at it seeming, to the others at least, a little confused about who’s it was and why it was it was there at all.

“I want it!” Juillietta and Aurora yelled in perfect unison, both making a grab for it. Juillietta was the victor of the scrum and retreated with the necklace clasped in her hand.

“No!” Luciana said, loudly, but not shouting. Her voice held undertones of half remembered authority. “It’s mine.”

“That’s not fair, I said I wanted it first,” Juillietta protested, wrongly.

“I don’t care if you said you wanted it. It belongs to me. It’s mine,” Luciana hissed, the venom in her voice surprising everyone.

Aurora took the opportunity to snatch the necklace from Juillietta’s unsuspecting hands and inspected it briefly before throwing it over to Luciana.

“Yeah, it’s hers,” she said, confidently, a mischievous smile playing on her lips.

Robbie peered inside the ring when Luciana did, but he couldn’t read the writing at all- he couldn’t even make out individual letters.

“You dark horse,” Aurora continued.

Luciana didn’t reply. "

What are you talking about?” Juillietta asked, absently inspecting her ring.

“Nothing,” Aurora replied lightly and infuriatingly, sitting back in her chair with a knowing smile on her face.

Everyone wondered what she was referring to that had made her so smug, but no one asked and, soon enough, the conversation changed to talk of what Aurora and Juillietta’s new schools would be like.