Rosie Loves Jack

by Mel Darbon

  I put my serious face on and look straight at Janek. “You will help me find my Jack? Swear promise?”

  Janek throws his hands up in the air, which sends me backwards. “Of course! Did Janek not say he would help you?” He puts his hand on his chest where his heart is. “Cross my heart and hoping to die. Is that not how you swear promise in this country?”

  The sun pushes round the corner of a cloud and makes Janek’s hair shine like the gold angel wings in the church.

  “Come! We will find this Jack together.”

  In my head my mum is saying, “Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t ever go anywhere with someone you don’t know.” But lots of people have talked to me and been good. Lawrence. The lady at the station in the orange bobble hat. The lady at the cafe like my grandma. The lady with the baby like me. Janek isn’t a stranger cos I know his name. Janek is taking me to Jack.

  He picks up my bag and I follow him out of the park.

  “Put that thing down.” Janek has a grumpy dad face.

  I hold my bag tighter and look at him through the handle space. I don’t know why he’s like that. He pushes his hair up at the front and makes his mouth move upwards.

  “Sweetie, I’m sorry, Janek is tired. Come now, don’t look like that, please come into my house.”

  His face is smiling but it doesn’t look right.

  “Come meet Lisette. She take care of you, not this grumpy old man, yes? Lisette? I bring someone to meet you. Lisette!”

  A girl brushing her long black hair comes to the top of the stairs. She’s in a T-shirt and pants. The T-shirt has Tinker Bell on it and it only just covers her bits.

  Janek pushes me forwards.

  Her mouth falls open. “What the fuck?”

  I don’t like that word. It’s badbadbad.

  “Look after her and settle her in.” Janek pulls me by my sleeve towards the stairs and turns to go.

  “But I ’ave to get ready for later and I don’t want to be left with that.”

  “It’s your lucky day, skarbie, you get to do both.”

  “She can’t have Jaycee’s bed.”

  “Jaycee? Jaycee? Where is she, eh? I’m not seeing her. Give this girl the bed and quit whining, I have things to do.” He disappears through an open door.

  I feel weak.

  The girl sniffs. “Come up, then. You can walk?”

  She looks mean.

  The stairs are jiggly. The carpet is broken up. My boot gets stuck and I fall on my bag. The girl thumps down the stairs and grabs my arm.

  “It’s that door up there, to the right – if you know what right is? What’s with the tongue thing? It’s gross.”

  She drags me up the stairs and through a door. She points to one of the beds. “Just push the clothes off the bed onto the floor. Go on then!”

  She sits cross-legged on her bed and picks up a pink, sparkly mirror. She has make up spread all over the duvet. She starts to clean her face with a baby wipe. It leaves orange all over it. Her face is very white underneath.

  The room is small. The wallpaper is falling off by the door. The window is closed but I can feel cold air on my face.

  Somewhere far away is Jack. I wish fairies were real and I had a magic wand cos then I could wave it and fly to him in one bit.

  I watch the tears dropping on my jeans.

  “Christ, stop snivellin’, you only just got here. Why don’t you take that coat off?”

  “I don’t want to take my coat off cos I want to go and find Jack.”

  “Tough shit, you can’t.”

  I don’t know why she is being so rude. I’m not going to look at her.

  The duvet is covered in little ponies with rainbow manes. They’re for babies. A big brown stain spreads over some of the ponies, making them hide.

  “Here, put that down.” The girl tries to move my bag. “I’m tryin’ to help you, you can’t sit in your coat all day. Why’s everythin’ purple?”

  “I like p…purple.”

  “Hold your arm up.” She yanks the arm of my coat.

  “Ow! You’rehurtingme.”

  “Don’t be a crybaby, just give us your other arm.”

  I don’t like the way she’s leaning over me. Her T-shirt falls forwards. She’s got a tiny blue butterfly painted on her chest.

  “What you starin’ at now?”

  “You’ve got our butterfly!”

  “What you on about?”

  “Jack and me saw the butterflies at Chester Zoo. A blue one landed on us. It was special. Then Jack gave me one. Look.” I show her the brooch on my coat she’s still holding.

  She shrugs her shoulders.

  “Then Jack sent me a little blue butterfly on my postcard. He found it on his wall. In his room in Brighton.”

  “You’re mental.” She drops my coat on the floor and jumps back onto her bed.

  I smile inside me. The butterfly will take care of me. I pick my coat up and put it on the bed next to me. “Why d’you have a blue butterfly on your chest?”

  The girl is rubbing more orange on her face. I don’t think she heard me. Then she turns round. “It was somethin’ me and Jaycee got done together. She’s my best friend. That’s her bed you’re sitting on. We was in Hyde Park boating on the lake. We weren’t s’posed to be there; we should’ve been picking up some stuff for Janek. This blue butterfly landed in the boat. It were so beautiful. We ain’t never seen nothin’ like it before. Jaycee said it must’ve escaped from Battersea Park, where they’ve got that little kids’ zoo. After, we saved up and both went and got a butterfly tattoo, in the same place, to remind us of when we was happy.”

  “Do you think our butterfly was the same one?”

  Lisette snorts. “Get real.” She turns away.

  I don’t like this room. It’s very messy and covered in litter. There are lots of fizzy drinks cans lined up on the carpet, which is all worn out. We don’t have those drinks at home.

  It smells like the changing rooms at Topshop in here. I don’t want to stay…but the butterfly is here. And all my stuff has gone.

  “What’s your name then?”

  I don’t want to talk to her but Mum says I must always be polite, so I tell her, “Rose Tremayne.”

  “Mine’s Lisette, though that’s not my real name of course.”

  “That’s silly.”

  “Only if you’re a retard like you.”

  I was so polite and she’s rude. I pick my bag up and look at all my stuff. It doesn’t make me feel better. It makes me feel worse cos I want to be with real Jack. Or everyone I love. I can see Lisette in the mirror on the wall by her bed. She’s putting too much make up on and the blue eye colour has gone up to her eyebrows. She has clown eyes. She was pretty before she did that. Now she’s drawing a big black line round her eyes. She looks back at me, so I turn my face away and find Jack’s jumper he gave me so I can hold it.

  “What else you got in that bag of yours? It’s stuffed. You been shopliftin’, Rose?”

  “No! I know what that is. There were some bad students at my college. You mustn’t steal. You’ll get put in prison… I need to find my Jack.”

  “Who is this Jack? What’s he got to do with anythin’? You’re not makin’ any fuckin’ sense.”

  “That’s a very bad word.”

  “Fuck, fuck, fuckety fuck. It’s only a fuckin’ word.” She turns her back on me.

  “Jack and me are going to get married.”

  Lisette spins around. Her mouth is wide open. “Are you allowed to get married?”

  I shove a dressing gown off the bed and cross my arms very tight. I don’t want my lip to wobble, so I bite it.

  She sees me and looks down. When she speaks it’s hard to hear her.

  “I don’t mean nothin’ and I ain’t goin’ to get in an argument with a learning difficulties person.”

  She wipes her nose on her arm. She picks up a brush and puts pink on her cheeks. She looks really silly. I did make up like that when I was playing dr
essing up.

  “Where’s this Jack person then?”

  “Brighton. I need to go there. Now.”

  “What part of ‘you can’t’ don’t you get?”

  “Why not? Janek said I could.”

  “Janek says lots of things but it don’t mean they’ll come true.”

  I can’t work out these words and what she is saying. But I don’t get a good feeling about them.

  Lisette is putting some big, big gold circles in her ears. My mouth falls open. They’re touching her shoulders.

  “What’s up with you? You look dopey – oh, hang on, that’s cos you are.” She laughs loudly.

  I do a Mum frown.

  “What?” She sniffs at the air and then sniffs her armpit before squirting some stuff on them that smells like bubblegum. She waves the can at me. “Cat got your tongue?”

  “There aren’t any cats.”

  Lisette laughs again.

  “I’m ignoring you. Like Mum said. Ignore bully people then they’ll go away.”

  “Whatever.” Lisette draws round her lips with a red pencil.

  I count the badges on my bag and pull out the tangles in the fur with my fingers. Lisette tries to do a bracelet up with one hand. It makes her cross. She throws it on the floor.

  I pick it up and give it back to her. “I can put it on for you.”

  She snatches it back. “No, ta. Don’t look like that. I don’t wanna wear it now. Tell me what’s goin’ on with you then.” Her words are less shouty. “Why’s this Jack person in Brighton?”

  “He got sent away.”

  “Why?”

  “He gets angry. Sometimes he breaks things up. He doesn’t mean it.”

  “Sure, Rose, that’s what they all say.”

  “You sound like my mum.”

  “I wouldn’t know how to sound like a mum.”

  Lisette opens a drawer and finds a mascara stick. She points it at me as she talks. Her voice is hard. “After a bloke’s right-hooked you and left you with a split lip, he’ll come crawling back, beggin’ you to forgive him, promising he’ll always love you; says he’ll change. But take it from me” – she bangs the mascara on the bed table – “he won’t.”

  “Jack won’t ever hurt me.”

  “Yeah he will.”

  “NO HE WON’T!”

  Janek bursts into the room. I fall back on the bed. Lisette jumps up and stands like a soldier.

  “Kurwa mać! I leave you five minutes with her, Lisette, and you’ve managed to upset her. You’re supposed to be helping her settle in.” He snatches her mascara and throws it on the bed. “Go get her some food and a proper drink!”

  I put my hands over my ears and shut my eyes. “TakemetoJacktakemetoJack.”

  Someone taps my knee. Janek kneels in front of me. “Enough, baby girl, we give you hot meal.”

  “I’m not a baby! I’m sixteen and ten months.”

  Janek laughs.

  “It’s not funny. I’m all grown up. You promised to take me to Jack.”

  “And I will, but first we must look after you.”

  “I want Jack. You—”

  “Shush, shush, shush, you do as Janek says and you will be fine. That is right, Lisette…? I said, that is right, isn’t it, Lisette?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Janek walks out the room. As he goes past Lisette, he slaps his hand on her bottom.

  You shouldn’t touch people’s bottoms.

  “Let’s eat.” Lisette’s voice is sulky. My brother Ben is good at sulky voices.

  “I’mnothungry. I had breakfast with Mia. Lunch is at one o’clock.”

  “You eat when you can here.” She rubs her arms hard. “It feels like a fuckin’ goose just walked over my grave.”

  There’s a girl standing at the sink, with white hair. It’s dark at the top. She’s eating pizza from a box and pulling a long bit of cheese from her mouth.

  Lisette runs over to her. “Courtney! Babe, where you been?”

  “Hey, hun.”

  The two girls hug each other and squeak like mice.

  Lisette stands back and frowns. “You seen Jaycee or heard anythin’?”

  “Nah. Quit stressin’ about her, she’ll be with Mani or somethin’.”

  “But she didn’t say nothin’.”

  The blonde girl picks up a slice of pizza and stuffs it in her mouth. She talks with her mouth full of food. “She’ll be back soon and then you’ll be moaning cos she’s nicked all your make up.”

  A bit of pizza falls on the floor. The girl sees me over Lisette’s shoulder.

  “Who the fuck’s that?”

  Lisette crosses her eyes and puts her tongue out. “Some retard Janek has dumped on us. Says we got to look after her, settle her in. It’s a piss-take.”

  “Yeah it is; where the fuck did he find her?”

  “God knows, but she’s here and now we’ve got to bloody take care of her – for what?”

  “What’s he want a retard for?”

  I’m not a retard. I don’t want them to look after me. I’m more grown up than them.

  “But she’s, you know…” The blonde girl holds her hands up in the air. “She can’t do nothing, I mean that’s sick.”

  “It’s all sick, Courtney.”

  “Yeah, but with a handicap person, even Janek ain’t that perverted, is he?”

  They are very rude cos they are talking about me. When I’m next door to them. And Lisette didn’t tell me who the blonde girl was. I just heard her name myself. I don’t understand that per-ver-ted word they used. But it sounds wrong.

  I feel floaty. The girls are fading in and out. I try and find something to hold on to. Lisette makes me sit down. She doesn’t do it nicely.

  “Thought you was goin’ to conk out.”

  “What’s…per-ver-ted? I want to know, Lisette, please.”

  “My name’s Lisette, not Lee-set. You don’t wanna know what PER-VER-TED means, do she, Courtney?”

  Courtney shrugs. “Means Janek is a dirty bastard.”

  “My brother Ben doesn’t wash.”

  The girls hold each other they are laughing so much.

  “Why are you laughing?”

  “Shit, Rose, dirty don’t mean you don’t wash, not here it don’t anyways!” Courtney shrieks and makes me jump.

  I put my hands over my ears. I want them to stop. I make Jack come into my head but those noisy girls get in his way. They stand by the sink blowing smoke at each other and flicking ash onto the dirty plates. That’s so yucky. Courtney’s jeans have lots of holes in them. I can see her bottom when she turns round.

  “Your jeans are rude,” I tell her.

  “Sexy you mean.”

  Courtney wiggles her bottom at me. I don’t think she has any knickers on. You only do that when you are in your pyjamas.

  Idon’tlikeher.

  Courtney stops texting, picks a bit of tomato off her pizza and chucks it at Lisette. Lisette throws it back and it lands in Courtney’s hair.

  “Oi! Sod off, Lisette, I’ve just washed it.”

  “You started it… Your roots need seein’ to.”

  “Your face needs seein’ to.”

  Lisette sticks her finger up at Courtney. Dad got very cross when Ben did that to him.

  I wish I was with my friends at Henley College. We don’t throw our food, like babies.

  Courtney walks up to me. “Why’ve you got that face on? You look like you’re chewing on a fuckin’ wasp.”

  I bury my face in my arms. I don’t want these girls. They’re whispering to each other, but I can hear them. I DON’T WANT THEM.

  “She won’t last, babe.”

  “Yeah, Janek will—”

  I block out their voices with my fingers in my ears and go inside my head to a happy picture. I choose when Jack took me to the fairground. I press my ears harder and make the memory come.

  The air smells of fried onions and smoky burgers. We walk in and out of different music. Each tune plays
louder than the next. Somewhere a bell clangs and a child squeals with excitement. Jack shouts to me above the noise. I put my hand on his arm and it feels warm where the sun made it pink earlier. I stand on tiptoe so I can reach his ear to hear me. He smells of summer. He turns his head as I’m about to speak and stops me with a kiss. His lips are soft and taste of ice cream. There are lots of people pushing past us but I feel like we are the only ones here. His hand rubs my back and touches my skin where my shoulder is bare. Jack smiles down at me and says, “I wish we were alone.”

  Something thumps on the table making me sit up straight.

  A voice says, “Wakey, wakey!”

  My fairground picture runs away from my day dream. Courtney is sitting on the table with some cans of beer next to her. It’s not beer-drinking time.

  Courtney takes a gulp from her can and burps loudly.

  “That’s a pig noise.”

  “Are you sayin’ I’m a pig?” She bangs her can on the table. It splashes up everywhere.

  “I’m glad you getting to know each other, girls.”

  Janek has a different shirt on. It’s black and shiny. His hair is brushed right back so I can see a diamond in his ear. His perfume smell is so strong it makes me sneeze. He takes Courtney’s beer and drinks from the can.

  “What’s up with you, Courtney, Lisette? Where are your manners? Where is drink for her?”

  “My name is Rose.”

  “Sure it is, baby.”

  “I’m not a baby.”

  “Kurwa, is she always like this?” Janek shakes his head making his ear diamond catch the light. “Lisette! Get her some juice.”

  “I like juice.”

  Janek smiles showing his pointy tooth at the top. “You’re really going to like this juice, my aniolku, my little angel.”

  Lisette hands me a glass full to the top with orange. I take a big gulp. It tastes different to my home orange.

  Janek holds his drink up in the air. “Welcome to our family. Na zdrowie!”

  Lisette puts music on. It’s one of my favourite songs. It’s called “Happy”. It makes you smile even when you don’t want to. She and Courtney grab hands and dance together. They bump their bottoms together and against Janek. He talks on his phone with one hand on his other ear. When he’s finished he shouts above the music, “The guys will be here in an hour or so.”