Roses

Saturday came around slowly, and the red mark on Robbie’s neck had almost faded completely.

And it was Aurora’s birthday.

She’d been at a complete loss when Luciana told her this. She didn’t know what to do with the information, and so decided that there was nothing to be done.

Will and Caroline, however, did, and solved the problem by organizing a secret party and inviting her entire class.

This meant intense preparation work on the part of everyone in the family who was not Aurora to not only get everything ready to a standard that would be acceptable to Aurora in only four days, but also to do all this without her finding out.

Aurora came down after a mid-morning breakfast-in-bed, almost clinking. In honour of her special day, she’d decided that the least she could do was wear her forbidden finery, as she was doing nothing else.

Juillietta, who was in charge of keeping her younger sister away from both the kitchen, where Caroline and Luciana were at work on the snacks, and the living room, where Robbie and Will were at work on the décor, laughed, half in amusement but more because her horrified disgust was too strong to let her do anything else.

“Aura, you can’t wear that… those ripped trousers with that flowery top and all that jewelry. You look ridiculous!” she scorned.

“It’s my birthday, which means that I can do and wear whatever I want,” Aurora replied, a little defensively. “Will said.”

“Well, Will’s wrong. Go and change into a skirt. The black one. The nice black one, not the one from your winter uniform, either.”

“I don’t see why I have to,” Aurora said adamantly, jutting out her jaw.

“Because I said so. And it doesn’t matter if you’re a year older today than you were yesterday, I’m still your older sister which means you still have to do what I say.”

Aurora glared and glowered, but she did stomp up the stairs, muttering about abuse of authority and a complete disregard for her rights as a human being and as a child.

Juillietta ignored this, and settled back against the wall. When Aurora stomped back down the stairs in her nice black skirt, Juillietta nodded appreciatively,
“See, that’s lovely. You look much better now, like it’s actually your birthday,” she said and then added, to ease the scowl off her sisters pretty face, “besides this way you can see your anklet.”

Aurora considered her right ankle, encircled as it was with the slender golden chain and allowed her face to relax into an expression of mild annoyance rather then absolute rage.

“Put your shoes on, we’re going out to buy your birthday present,” Juillietta commanded once Aurora seemed like she was too suitably calmed down to be easily riled up again.

“What is it?” Aurora asked, but Juillietta refused to reply and a couple of minutes they were out of the house, the door slamming shut behind them.



Once they were completely sure that Juillietta had gotten Aurora safely out of the house, with no chance of returning anytime soon, the kitchen and living room doors were thrown open and Caroline began to transport snacks into the living room that was almost finished being transformed by the boys.

Luciana was working on the cake. It was a perfect cake, in the shape of Aurora’s remembered tiara- although it was highly unlikely that Aurora would even know what it was meant to be, or for whom.

Caroline was in absolute awe of it. She almost didn’t want it to be eaten- she regarded more as a piece of art than a foodstuff. She made a mental note to herself to ask Luciana to make the shop a display cake in the same proportions of epicality.

Will and Robbie had done an amazing job with the decorations as well, especially when considering the time period. The living room had been turned into a party room in the style of the twenty’s glitterazi, in honour of Aurora’s new favourite novel, Vile Bodies.

When they completed the work, Will and Robbie helped bring in the cake- complaining that it was too big and too heavy and too good for Aurora’s little friends and her little party. At least they complained until Luciana stopped them by promising- very seriously- that she would make them each giant tiara cakes on their birthday, if they were jealous.



In order to take up as much time as possible- because she’d been instructed not to let Aurora come back home before three, and it was eleven thirty when they’d left- Juillietta took Aurora into the nearby city that was still a good thirty to forty-five minute bus ride away from the town.
Aurora stayed patient for the duration of the journey only because of the promise of the present.

“Do I get to choose it?” she asked, once they’d arrived.

Juillietta shook her head; no. Aurora’s present had already been decided, and Robbie and Luciana had gone into town on Tuesday to order it for her.

It had been ridiculously expensive, and Juillietta would go crazy if Aurora didn’t show proper appreciation of it.

She led Aurora to the jewelers, which provoked a little cry of excitement from her sister’s lips, and marched up to the counter as Aurora gazed at the rings in raptures.

“Etae, I want this ring. Can I get this ring?” she asked wheedingly.
“No,” Juillietta replied without even looking back at her sister or the ring she was pointing at.

Aurora pouted. “Please, Etae? Pretty please?”

Juillietta ignored her and waited- almost patiently- as the woman in front of her in the queue attempted to buy a ring for someone whose ring size she hadn’t bothered to find out before hand.

“I’m here to collect a charm, ordered by… I think it would have been ordered in the name of Caroline Johnson,” Juillietta said when she finally got to the counter. Aurora had, by this time, moved on from the rings, and was looking at necklaces instead.

The Man opened a drawer beneath the counter, looked at it’s contents, and then looked back up at Juillietta sternly.

“I’ll need to see the card it was ordered with, please, and proof of identity,” he said, his voice clipped and curt.

“Well here’s the card it was ordered with. I don’t have proof of identity because I wasn’t told I needed any. I would have thought it’d be enough just to know that I’m myself,” Juillietta said, sliding the card across the counter to The Man for his inspection.

“I’ll need proof of identity so that I know for sure that you are Mrs. Caroline Johnson,” he said, after having checked the details on the card against the receipts the package in his drawer sported. “It’s company policy,” he added snidely, making up company policy on the spot.

“But I’m not Caroline!” Juillietta exclaimed, deeply offended. “I am Juillietta, her adopted daughter. I’ve come to pick up my younger sister’s birthday present! It’s her birthday today and-” here Juillietta lowered her voice to a conspirational whisper- “neither Caroline or Cianae could come to get it because they’re organizing the surprise party for Aura.”

“And why should I believe you?” The man asked.

Juillietta stared at him in disbelief. It was –to her mind at least- a pretty stupid question.

“Because I’m telling the truth,” she replied, her tone clearly stating that she thought the cashier was missing a screw or two.

“But how can I know you are to be trusted?” The Man asked archly, clearly thinking the same thing about Juillietta.

Juillietta was shocked by the implication that she may not be a trustworthy person, and proceeded to tell him exactly why this was a wrong assumption.

When the man was still unmoved, she sighed, and leant across the counter.

“Look, my older sister Luciana came in on Tuesday to order a charm for my younger sisters charm bracelet. She did this because today is my younger sisters birthday. She used this card-” she tapped the card lying on the counter- “to order it, and because she knew that she wouldn’t be able to get it herself, she asked if someone else could get it. The man behind the counter said yes, as log as they brought the card it was ordered with which I have here and I would like to collect the silver and onyx charm that you have in your drawer,” Juillietta said, and you could tell she was angry now by the way she barely paused for breath and was only just not shouting.

Aurora came over then, having exhausted all the entertainment possibilities of the jewelry in the shop, and leant next to her sister.

“Can we go now? I’m really fucking bored,” she sighed, and The Man looked at her in horror.
Juillietta ignored her complaints and the mans shock and picked up her sisters charm-bearing arm and thrust it in the face of The now-very-annoyed Man.

“What? What am I looking at?” he demanded, not even trying to be polite anymore.

“This bracelet! This charm bracelet, with the silver and onyx charms on it!” Juillietta replied, her temper well and truly lost as well now.

The Man had just about enough time to see the bracelet before Aurora snatched her hand away and begun to complain once more about the abuse of her rights and the misuse of her person very loudly to anyone in the shop who would listen.

“Please can you just give me the charm?” Juillietta asked, on the verge of begging but not yet quite prepared to go the full way.

The Man looked at the queue of other customers behind Juillietta, who all looked about as irritated as he felt.

This was what made up his mind in the end, not any of the (sometimes rather pathetic) arguments that Juillietta had put forth in the last twenty to thirty minutes that they’d been arguing in.

“Fine. You can take it. But you’ll need to sign here, and put your initials,” he said, thrusting the shops copy of the receipt at her.

Juillietta smiled beautifically at him and took the receipt and the pen he offered and signing her name twice; in the almost pictoral script of her motherland and then in the neat cursive Louise had taught her to write it in.

She pushed the receipt back across the counter to the man.

He signed it as well, and pulled the drawer open and pulled out a box wrapped in brown paper with a picture of the item it contained taped to the top, and handed it over to Juillietta.

Juillietta didn’t even look at it, but handed it straight to Aurora.

“Thank you,” she said to the cashier, who waved her away in irritation.

Aurora begun to tear open the brown delivery paper that covered the box but Juillietta grabbed hold of her wrist and dragged her out of the shop, disregarding Aurora’s renewed abuse complaints.

A quick check of the watch revealed it was just past one, which left the two with a whole other hour to kill before they could return to the house.

“Do you want to get ice cream?” Juillietta suggested brightly to Aurora who nodded vigourously and stopped complaining.

Juillietta nodded wearily, and led her younger sister through the town to the ice cream parlour. Only fifty five minutes to go…



Back at Caroline’s house in the small town, Luciana and Robbie were vetting the list of Aurora’s favourite music, submitted by Will, filtering out any songs that were too rude, too lewd, or just too generally unsuitable for a ten year olds birthday party.

This, unfortunately, meant the majority of the music on the list had to go.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with Aura’s taste,” Luciana grumbled as they deleted yet another song.

“I do,” Robbie said, grumbling in return. “She get’s it all from Will. That’s why everything’s shit.”

“I do not like shit music,” Will protested from the other side of the room.

“Mind your language you two! In less than an hour this place is going to be swarming with kids!” Caroline interjected, glaring at her sons.

“Mum, they’re kids that know Aurora,” Will pointed out, rather fairly. “They probably know more swearwords than you do. They probably use them better, too.”

Caroline laughed and shook her head at her son.

“You realise that is all your fault, don’t you?” she asked, still chuckling.

“Nope. Aurora knows a few good words herself. Not, of course, that you’d know they were swear words. But they are. Or they were.”

Will winked at his mum with a charming smile.

Caroline gave up trying to argue and returned in the kitchen to check they had enough drinks for the kids.

Luciana gave up on the playlist, and followed Caroline into the kitchen.

There were enough drinks, of course. In fact there were probably too many. There was probably too much of everything, but Will had invited Chuck and the two would probably be able to handle any leftovers with ease.

It was two already. Time had sped past, as it does when run through with music.

There were forty five minutes in which they could relax. Aurora’s classmates were scheduled to arrive at quarter to three, to get themselves organized in the living room before Aurora arrived.

Robbie, also giving up on the playlist, entered the kitchen, but only to steal Luciana away from it.

They went to sit into the garden, on the bench Caroline had salvaged and had restored years ago.

“Why did you want me?” she asked, a little sharper than she’d intended. She’d been wary of spending time alone with him ever since the invisible arrow in the bookshop. She refused to touch him, even though she hadn’t had another vision since.

“I just wanted to sit with you. I haven’t just sat with you since Monday,” he said pointedly.

“Yes well… that’s because it’s dangerous. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I wouldn’t. If anything happens; if you see anything, then just tell me. The only reason I got hurt the first time was because we didn’t realise”

“I don’t want to risk it,” Luciana said stubbornly.

Robbie sighed, reached out and touched her arm. She flinched away but didn’t manage to break contact.

“Nothing’s happening Luciana. It’ll be okay, really I promise you that it will,” he smiled at her warmly, to reaffirm his point that really he was fine and really it was okay.

Out of nowhere, she began to cry. Robbie pulled her into a hug.

Luciana allowed herself to be hugged for a good thirty seconds before pulling herself away and scrubbing at the tears that had gathered in her eyes and on her cheeks.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cry like that; it’s just that I’m so scared. I don’t fully understand what’s happening- I have gotten so many memories back but I can’t seem to find anything about what this is and it’s so dangerous. I don’t want you to get hurt-” she fell into tears again, and Robbie took possession of her hand and began stroking it gently, but still she cried.

Caroline came out at twenty to, to call them back in so they could help her with the organizing of the guests, but on seeing Luciana leaning on Robbie’s shoulder, body shaking with the force of her tears, she decided to leave them until a little later.

About five minutes after this Luciana’s tears stopped, but she stayed attached to Robbie. He stroked her hair a little, then screwed up all his courage and kissed her.

It was just a small kiss, on the join between his shoulder and her neck, and she barely noticed so he did it again.

She raised her head from his shoulders, revealing red, puffy eye lids and eyes that peered at him, confused.

She watched his face as he smiled, and then he leant in to kiss her.

The kiss lasted a fair few seconds but then Luciana turned her head away.

“I can’t,” she whispered, placing her hands flat against his chest. “I just can’t.”

“You know that’s not true.” Robbie replied, smiling warmly at her. She looked down at her hands in her lap and made no reply.

Robbie placed his hand on hers and said gently, “whenever you’re ready, Luciana.”

There was a long silence, in which Luciana composed herself.

Then she looked up and said, in a much stronger voice, “we should go inside.”

Robbie didn’t protest and for some reason, Luciana found herself saddened by that. But she ignored the feeling and walked inside, not checking behind her to see if Robbie was following.



Robbie and Luciana found the guests all waiting in the living room when Robbie and Luciana entered, in that peculiar nine to ten year old version of silence that is actually not silent at but, but that is instead full of shuffling feet and giggles and coughs and sudden shouts from someone being pushed over accidentally (on purpose).

Aurora’s arrival- accompanied by the slamming of the front door and the holler of Aurora to declare that she was indeed home- created an extra susurration on top of the existing noisy silence, and Caroline’s efforts to hush the kids just made everything worse. As soon as she started ‘shh’ing, everyone else starting ‘shh’ing each other, getting louder and louder in order to hush their neighbours.

It was a miracle that Aurora managed to make her way into the living room and discover her party there by the usual shout of ‘SURPRISE’ rather than the less conventional one of ‘EVERYONE BE QUIET!’.

Aurora was genuinely shocked by the sight of everyone she knew in the living room, as the concept of a surprise party was something new to her.

“Holy shit!” she exclaimed, pressing her hand to her chest. ”You guys scared the crap out of me!”

This was met with an outright snort of laughter from Harry, and various disjointed titters from the rest of the room, who were all afraid that Caroline would tell their parents.

However all that happened was that Luciana frowned at Aurora, by way of a scolding, and the party was allowed to go on.

The first thing that Aurora did, ignoring suggestions from everyone else, was to open her present from the family- the charm that Juillietta had fought so long for.

When she pulled it out, all the girls in the class died a little inside.

Luciana clipped it onto the bracelet for her, and Aurora kept on looking down at it to admire the way it absorbed and reflected the light.

Then she opened the rest of the presents, exclaiming over each one nicely before handing it to a nearby child so that she could go on to the next.

Then she overturned all of Caroline’s carefully laid plans for the party by suggesting a housewide game of Murder in the Dark in which everyone had to take part. Caroline and Luciana were sent on a mission round the house, turning off lights and surreptitiously locking a few doors.

Then, Aurora stood on the coffee table and explained the rules- which were few and would go on to be all participants- and declared that the living room was out of bounds, due to the fact that it held the food.

And then the game commenced.

Aurora picked herself to be the murderer, and gave a minute and a half’s initial hiding time before roaring loudly that she was ready to collect her prey.


Two of her ‘prey’ escaped as soon as they could into the back garden.

They were Chuck and Juillietta, who’d somehow managed to escape discovery by hiding in the cupboard under the stairs and then making a dash for the kitchen as soon as they were sure that she was quite done with searching the ground floor.

They sat on the bench where Luciana had been crying almost an hour before.

“Aurora’s going to be furious if she finds out we skipped,” Juillietta giggled, the Chuck plan forgotten in the thrill of their escape. “She’ll slaughter us.”

“Well then we’d better make our last few hours count!” Chuck replied, also laughing.

“She’ll set us alight as after party entertainment.”

“She may have my body but she will never have my soul,” Chuck exclaimed, mock heroically, making a fist of defiance and thrusting it into the air. Juillietta laughed even more.

But after a while their giggles subsided, and gave way to awkwardness.

Juillietta and Chuck were pretty good friends and the two could usually- at the very least- keep a conversation going between the two of them.

But at that moment there seemed to be an empty space, which just yearned for them to fill it, and inside of them there was a void where conversation would usually be.

The two stared at each other for a second before finding they could take no more and staring out instead at the quietness of the garden.

Then, slowly, very slowly, Chuck opened his mouth and said:

“It’s a beautiful day.”

Juillietta nodded. It was a beautiful day, he wasn’t wrong there. The sky was a bright, clear blue and the sun rained down on them, bathing them in warmth.

“It is lovely,” she agreed.

Silence reclaimed them, although the awkwardness had never really lost it’s grip.

They could carry on talking about the weather, they both knew, but they also knew that would make whatever it was that was happening even worse. They were both too proud to have a full blown, awkward conversation about the weather.

Juillietta took her turn at breaking the silence after another long pause in which it festered horribly. She broke the silence by saying the first thing that came to her mind which is, unfortunately, not the best way to go about it when tact and subtlety are not among your strong points.

“You like me,” she said, and it was an assertion, a statement of fact rather than a question.

Chuck nodded, and then said, “yes.”

Juillietta nodded. She’d known this. He’d known that she knew as well, it hadn’t been the best kept secret. It was barely even a secret; Chuck had given up on secrets years ago, when he first became Will’s friend. The introduction of Aurora into the family had only made secret-keeping harder.

There was another silence while they pondered this; it was the first time they’d actually spoken to each other about their relationship.

“So,” Juillietta said again, after a while, taking the pressure off Chuck to break the silence. “Are you going to kiss me?” Chuck laughed outright, offending Juillietta’s finely tuned sensibilities. “Calm down, it’s not that funny,” she said, the bite in her voice trying pathetically to cover up the hurt.

“Sorry. I know it’s not funny,” he said, trying to stop laughing.

“So what. Do you not want to kiss me?” she asked, so solemnly that all his efforts to stop laughing were ruined.

“No, it’s not that.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s you. You don’t like me, do you?”

“Don’t say that Chuck, of course I like you! “ She protested.

“Okay, maybe you do like me. But only as a friend. Now come on. Let’s get inside before Aurora discovers we’re missing.”

“We could just say we were hiding really well,” Juillietta offered, but Chuck just laughed and shook his head.

He stood up, and took Juillietta’s hand, and led her back into the house.

She hadn’t even thought of the Chuck Plan.



The day ended with the food, which hadn’t been what Caroline had intended at all, but which was what Aurora ordained, and as her classmates instantly loved any suggestion she ever made, and it was her birthday, she won through.

This meant, of course, that when the parents arrived there were kids still cramming the much admired and much envied tiara cake into their mouths with a haste and indifference that pained Caroline, and other kids still going back to the table for more more more.

All in all, every attendee had agreed, it had been a good day.

Luciana gave Aurora her own special gift later on. She’d used the wages she’d timidly asked Caroline for, that Caroline had been only too happy to give her- indeed which Caroline had tried to give her all the time she’d been working at the café- to by a string of seed pearls to be plaited into her hair. This was for Luciana more than it was for Aurora; she wanted to see her sister surrounded by the grandeur that had once marked their lives, even if it was only once a year.

“What are they?” Aurora asked, holding them in her hands and studying them.

“They’re pearls. Seed pearls. They’re very small, but very pretty. Like you,” Luciana said, gravely.

Aurora gave her an odd looked. “Umm, thanks. I guess. What do I do with them?”

“They’re for your hair. For special occasions.”

Aurora draped them over her head, making Juillietta laugh. Luciana shook her head.

“I’ll do it for you tomorrow. Tonight, you should sleep. It’s late.”

“It’s not that late,” Aurora protested, but Luciana didn’t listen, and didn’t leave the room until she saw Aurora changed and tucked tightly in bed.

“That as nice of her,” Juillietta commented, with no heart to her words. It wasn’t that she thought it was a horrible gift because she didn’t- it was absolutely precious. It was just that everything Luciana did for them had become valueless.

“It was. I wish she’d gotten me something I could wear everyday though,” Aurora replied, rolling onto her back. “Still. I guess it’s the thought that counts.”

Juillietta grunted agreement and after more minutes of silence, Aurora fell asleep out of sheer boredom, leaving Juillietta to ponder alone on what had happened with Chuck earlier on.