Rosie pushed herself up onto her knees and leaned across the cold steel table to retrieve the colouring pen that had rolled away from her. Finishing her latest picture she peered at her Dads watch that he had left next to her. Although she couldn't yet tell time she knew the numbers and before Daddy had left he had said that as soon as the big hand was pointing to the number four he would come and get her and they could leave and go home. When she was in this room she wasn't allowed to leave unless someone came to get her. She grinned in excitement as she noticed that said hand was now hovering directly over the four. Turning her head she looked out of the window into the corridor of the police station to see if he was coming; but the corridor was empty.
Rosie liked being in this room. From in here you could see out into the corridor and watch all the people go by, and on the other side of the room was another huge window that nobody could see out of because the glass was all blurry. It reminded Rosie of an extreme version of her Dad's glasses. Sometimes when he wasn't looking she would put them on and everything would go all wobbly, although if she kept them on for too long they just made her feel sick.
Daddy had once told her that this was one of the rooms that the police used to talk to the robbers in once they caught them. That's what her Daddy did. He caught robbers and locked them away. In fact that's where he was right now, in the room next door asking someone lots and lots of questions until he got the truth.
Rosie felt a bit sorry for whomever it was that he was with. She had, on occasion, been at the end of her Dads questioning and it wasn't a fun experience. The worst one was the time that she decided the living room in their apartment needed decorated so she decided to add brightly coloured painted handprints over the wall. Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if she hadn't also got the paint all over her, her clothes, her hair and then accidentally stepped in the paint tray and trampled paint all over the carpet and then sat down on the sofa to admire her handy work. Yep, he'd been mad at that one. Shortly afterwards the room had been painted dark green, the carpet stripped back to the floorboards and the sofa was now wipe clean leather. Maybe she should have just told the truth as soon as he'd asked her if she had done it. But he looked mad, so she crossed her fingers behind her back, avoided eye contact and innocently proclaimed she didn't know. She remembered him leading her over to one of the handprints and calmly drawing her attention to the hundreds of tiny lines that had dried into the paint. Then he gently took her hand and showed her the same tiny lines that ran in swirly patterns all over the tips of her fingers. Rosie had learnt two things that day. Firstly she learnt all about finger printing and secondly…she couldn't outsmart her Dad.
Growing impatient with the fact that her Dad still hadn't come to get her and the fact that she was over-eager to show him her picture, she slide down off her chair. Straightening her dress she made her way over to the door and stretched up until she could reach the handle and opened the door. Clutching her picture in one hand she peered round the doorframe in the direction she had seen Don and her Dad head in the last time she saw them.
The hallway was empty.
She let out a sigh and was about to close the door again when she heard another door swing open and Don's voice arguing with another voice that she didn't recognise.
'You're going away for a long time,' she heard Don say followed by the soft clinking of metal. Rosie peeked back out into the corridor. Her Dad was standing with his back to her. She was about to call out to him but gasped in horror at what she saw next. Being led out of the room further down the hall with his hands cuffed firmly behind his back was none other than…
'Santa Claus?' Rosie whispered under her breath.
