This seemed a pretty fitting chapter for the last update before Xmas as it sort of brings this very very first bit to a close before the big events of the following chapters. Though I'd have loved to have ended on a big cliffhanger which appears in Chapter 11... look out for it!
Happy Xmas!
In their whole lives, Rose could only remember talking to the twins about their father on five separate occasions. She'd told them as soon as they could ask questions about him, or at least, the story she'd arranged about him. Daddy worked a long way away, and he couldn't come and visit them. It didn't mean he didn't love them all, it just meant that he couldn't be here to play with them and to talk to them. No, he wouldn't be coming to the school play next week. He'd love to have been there, but it wasn't possible. No, they couldn't call him, phones didn't work where he was. They couldn't visit him either; he lived a very long way away.
"Further away than Nana and Grandad?" Janie had asked, aged five, her eyes like saucers in her head when Rose had nodded, yes, further even than Nana and Grandad who lived on the other side of town, a good twenty minute drive away.
Rose had hated telling lies, but there was no way she could tell them the truth. Anyway, lies had become the very fabric of their existence. She'd never gone into depth about her own background; she hadn't needed to. Even now, the twins didn't even question the idea that Rose had been born here, that Jackie and Pete were her parents, that Mickey was an old friend. There was no other explanation possible for anything; it was what it seemed. Normal.
The second time she'd talked about him, had been one awful time the night before their seventh birthday. Janie had padded downstairs long after Rose had kissed her goodnight, and demanded to know if her daddy would be at their party tomorrow. It had nearly killed Rose to tell her small and tired daughter that no, he wouldn't be there tomorrow. Janie had wailed and climbed onto her lap, sobbing that it wasn't fair and all her friends' daddies had made it to their parties, even Chloe's dad who never spoke to her mum. Rose had rocked her backwards and forwards, and agreed that it wasn't fair, but they couldn't help it. Daddy couldn't come, no matter how much he wanted to.
"And he does want to," she'd said softly, as Janie sniffed and snuffled miserably. "Your daddy would love to be there tomorrow, because you're going to look like a little princess."
Janie had suggested they could send him some photos and Rose had agreed, reluctantly, aware of yet another lie she was telling. But it had made the tears stop and a weak trembly smile appear on Janie's face. She couldn't know that Rose had put the spare set of photos away in a drawer in her old room at Pete and Jackie's house, along with the Father's day card Janie had made for him the following year.
The third time, had been much later, when they were twelve. Janie had been sitting opposite her at the table, doing some homework when she'd asked, completely out of the blue, how Rose and her dad had met.
"At work," Rose had said eventually.
"You worked together?"
"Not exactly. Sort of more, through work." Rose had felt very uncomfortable in the conversation and had managed to steer it away pretty swiftly, with, for once, no outburst from Janie.
The fourth time had been even briefer, and yet more heart-breaking than ever. Janie had been moaning about her hair for the thousandth time, aged fifteen, tossing it this way and that as she looked at her herself in the mirror.
"I'd look so much better blonde," she'd complained, pulling aggravated faces at herself and at her mother behind her.
"Maybe. But you know the rule."
"Not until I'm eighteen." Janie rolled her eyes. She twisted her hair into a long cord down the side of her face experimentally, so all the shades divided up. "Why do you like my hair so much?"
"It's lovely hair," Rose had insisted, loosening it from the tight hold Janie had on it. "You'll ruin it doing that."
"It's cause it reminds you of Dad, isn't it?" Janie had asked without any hesitancy. Rose her been taken aback. "Dad has hair this colour, doesn't he?" Eventually Rose had nodded, expecting more questions, but for once, Janie had left her alone.
She'd thought maybe the days of talking about him were over, but it seemed not. Something was happening, she was sure of it. Even thinking about it made her remember that time with him, years ago, another time, another place⦠she'd been young and full of life and energy, clinging onto his arm as though she'd never let go now she'd found him again. Moving down that street, as fireworks went off overhead, celebrating the Olympics, everyone happy again. It had all felt so right, so perfect, so utterly untouchable.
"You know what, they keep trying to split us up, but they never ever will," she said, her arm looped through his, and resting her head on his shoulder.
"Never say, never ever," he warned her, but she couldn't take him entirely seriously with the fairy cake in his hand. Not until the look passed across his face that made her stomach churn more than ever. Gazing up at the stars, a frown creasing his forehead, he said in a faraway voice, "Something's in the air."
"What?" She too looked.
"Something's coming. A storm's approaching."
It felt like that now. There was something almost tangible around her, something getting into her brain. They'd called him the Oncoming Storm. Well, they were right. Something was coming.
