The Midnight Dress(4)

‘Have you picked your colour yet, Pearlie?’ asks Vanessa. ‘The colour of the year is aquamarine or hot pink or anything metallic. I’m not telling you what I’m having but it’s along those lines. It’s going to be the biggest surprise. I’m having sequins all across the bodice. My mother did my colours. She is totally psychic with colours. She can do yours if you want, but I think you’d be an autumn. People who are autumn should never wear gold. There are lots of other colours that you can choose from.’

‘Are you going to eat that apple or just look it at?’ Pearl asks Rose.

Pearl Kelly has brown eyes, very dark. She’s been nodding at Vanessa but her eyes are laughing. She winds up her hair on top of her head and sticks a pencil in it.

A boy comes over to the group. He’s tall but slouches his shoulders. He peers out from beneath his shaggy fringe, and talks very slowly.

‘Hey, correct me if I’m wrong but I didn’t know there was a Star Wars convention on,’ he says, looking straight at Rose’s hair buns. ‘Lucky I brung my lightsaber.’

He gropes his crotch for effect.

‘Fuck off, Murray,’ says Pearl. ‘Your lightsaber is the size of a peanut.’

He lopes away, his work done. Rose ticks him off in her head as someone to hate passionately.

‘Honestly, don’t worry about him,’ says Pearl. ‘You’ll get to know him, he just thinks he’s really funny.’

‘Where were we?’ says Vanessa.

‘I don’t know what colour I’m going to wear,’ says Pearl. ‘I don’t know what season I am. Maybe one of those weird seasons that isn’t really a season, like an Indian summer.’

Vanessa flicks her fringe back with an angry twitch. ‘This is serious,’ she says.

‘What colour are you going to wear, Rose?’ asks Pearl.

‘I don’t even know what you’re all talking about,’ says Rose, and her voice is husky from disuse and weeks of her own company, clambering over rocks and pretending to be shipwrecked.

‘It’s the Harvest Parade,’ says Maxine, ‘and it’s been going on for one hundred years or something. They burn the cane and then there’s this big parade and all these floats and all the girls have to wear a dress and one of them gets to be the queen and some get to be a princess and then everyone kind of dances in the street.’

‘Weird,’ says Rose.

‘It’s not weird,’ says Vanessa.

‘If you were a meteorological phenomenon, Rose, which would you be?’ asks Pearl to annoy Vanessa even more.

‘A summer hail storm,’ says Rose quietly.

She takes a bite of the apple.

They saw one, she and her father, phosphorescent green, coming across the downs. Her father stopped the car and they stood watching it approach, lazily at first then suddenly racing, whipping up the earth and bending trees until they were scrambling for cover on the floor of the car.

Vanessa smooths down the already mirror-smooth surface of her blond hair.

‘Are you saying you’re going to wear green?’ she asks.

‘I’m not wearing any crummy dress,’ says Rose.

‘Good,’ says Vanessa, ‘because girls with red hair and freckles should never ever wear green.’

‘I’d love to be shipwrecked,’ says Pearl after biology.

Rose has offered her the tiniest morsel of herself, told her about the hidden bay. She can’t believe she has – it goes against all her ground rules – it is only half past one on the first day. She’s been to too many schools to remember. She knows exactly how it all works. But Pearl has worn her down with all her kindness.

Damn, she kicks herself. Pearl is unstoppable.

‘I know exactly which bay you mean. It is exactly like a place you would get shipwrecked on, like in a movie. Like Robinson Crusoe. Do you remember that show? I’d love to be marooned and just drink coconut milk and wear a grass skirt. I can’t wait to travel. I’m going to go away as soon as school is over. That’s exactly what my mum did. I’m going to Russia, first stop, that’s where my father came from. No kidding. I never met him. Not yet. I’m the result of a brief love affair. My father, he’ll recognise me straightaway. We’ll be in this crowded station. He’ll put out his arms to me. He’ll smell like snow and pine cones. I do care about school but I can’t wait till it’s finished. I don’t know what I’m going to be. Do you know what you’re going to be? How are we meant to know what we’re going to be? My mother says life is the greatest educator. She danced in a chorus line in Paris when she was eighteen. And she was in the circus too. She could eat fire. I mean she still can. She says love is the only thing in the world that really matters. Now, for this French assignment, I have this old froofy costume thing, I mean I think it was from when I was Little Bo Peep in ballet but it might still fit me, and I probably have a crown. So what I’m saying is I think I should be Marie Antoinette. And maybe you could be the executioner and you could make the guillotine. Do you ever have recurring dreams? I dream about this place. It’s this big piece of sky over this town I don’t know – I mean a trillion stars. I don’t know where it is and I’ve never been there before but it must be somewhere I’m meant to be. I’m always arriving there from somewhere else and I’ve been on a great journey. Do you believe in that sort of stuff?’