Chapter Nine...
Rose
Rose was sat on a sofa being honest. Or, at least, she was avoiding the truth so spectacularly well that no-one would have known that what she was saying wasn't what she meant.
Everyone that is, but the boy sat next to her, his arm loosely wrapped around her waist, watching with a slight smile as she reached out and span the empty firewhiskey bottle around on the table with her fingertips.
It was almost midnight when Rose realised she needed the bathroom and climbed the stairs up to the second floor. As she passed a couple sat about half way in mid embrace, she found herself thinking how strange it was to be the one on the outside. The one who wasn't buried in the dreams of a bottle. The one who would remember this night when so many others couldn't.
When she had finished in the bathroom, she stood for a moment, wondering if there was an empty room that she could sit in for a moment. Most of the doors along the landing were closed, a sure sign that they were occupied, but at the end of the corridor there was one, slightly ajar, and she walked towards it, pushing it open.
It was dark inside.
So dark.
Just a sliver of moonlight reaching long fingers between the gap in the curtains.
And in that moment, heart-stopping, she smelled cologne and felt the bile rise.
The moonlight was glinting off a blond head as it was bowed over a writhing figure, one hand clamped over her mouth, the other hidden underneath his heavy body.
It was as though Rose had forgotten how to breath. Forgotten her own name.
Forgotten everything but the scene she could see in that sliver of moonlight. A scene she could barely remember, but would have recognised anywhere.
And it was in that moment, too, that Rose realised what her fear and uncertainty had cost. If she had spoken out, swallowed her guilt and her shame and her fear and told.
She could have prevented this too.
But this time she could fight back. This time she could scream.
This time there could be a different outcome.
...
Lily
Feeble sun, that's what Lily sees as she looks through the window. A feeble sun, straining a glistening arm around the dark billows of cloud, trying to push aside the suffocating fog.
Spring is coming.
And with it, hope.
...
Karla smiled, courteous and insipid and so, so fake, as Lily passed her a birthday card and a small, neatly-tied parcel. She can even hear herself say thank you. But it didn't mean anything.
It's like she's begun to die, a little more very day, inside, feeling nothing but a strange echoing emptiness. Even her jealousy has evaporated, fading away like the sheen over a potion, or the smoke from a cigarette.
She hated her birthday. Hated how her heart still jumped with she saw the own heading towards her at breakfast as she stirred untouched food around her plate, a letter clutched in its claws. Hated how, when it delivered its letter to the person beside her, it was still as painful as the first time. She hated how she wondered if her mother ever thought of her, and hated herself even more when she knew that she didn't.
And Lily, perfect, beautiful, caring Lily, who had remembered that she was eighteen today, when her family had purposely looked the other way.
"It's just a little thing," She said, smiling slightly, though it didn't quite reach her eyes. "Just a small thing. But Happy Birthday Karla."
At least with Lily, Karla knew she didn't have to react. Lily understood that much at least. Understood how it was preferable to live in this dreamland, half-waking, half-sleeping, separated from reality as though by a veil. Understood how much it hurt to let her painted portrait of a face distort for even a moment, to let the emotion so carefully hidden away shine through the cracks in her armour and break the surface into the suffocating world of voices, all talking, all wanting, all demanding.
And for that, more than anything, Karla was glad and sorry, and so eaten up inside with guilt, that she thought the pain must cause her eyes to bleed and her mouth to open, and all her shame to tumble from her lips.
And it was for this reason that she bowed her head and closed her mouth, and painted her disguise back across her features and swallowed her pain, her panic, her fear.
She'd been strong for so long now, that to admit weakness seemed shameful. But then she heard the rustle of Lily's robes as she stood and took two, tentative steps forwards then, slowly, as though she was scared of being beaten back with shutters and doors, Lily wrapped her arms around Karla's horrible body and held her tight.
As though she actually cared.
...
Frank looked at his knight, and then back at Hugo's bishop and tried to decide which piece to save. He was backed into a corner, the white pieces surrounding his small cluster of resilient soldiers, protecting their king and queen. His queen or his knight?
Frank had always felt a certain resonance with the knight. It was his favourite piece, coming out of nowhere to save the day, leaping around the checkerboard desert as though it was a real horse and riding, pawing the dust and waiting for the charge.
It was pure chance that he happened to glance up as his fingers hovered over the knight. Pure chance that she, too, had looked up from her books at that very moment. Lily smiled at him.
It was a tremulous smile, to be sure. Faltering and uneasy. But he smiled back anyway.
She ducked her head back down to her books and Frank retuned back to his game. But he moved his fingers from the knight to the queen standing just four squares away, and moved her to safety instead.