The Midnight Dress(57)

‘I didn’t write it,’ says Pearl. ‘Don’t worry. I copied it out of a book.’

‘Okay,’ says Rose, wondering which one she might have chosen. Hoping she didn’t dot each ‘i’ with a love heart.

At the hut Pearl takes a small dustpan and brush from her backpack and sweeps out the new leaves. She holds up a Jif bottle and sets about recleaning the glass windows. Rose shakes her head and goes to sit at the edge of the falls.

‘You know how I like things to be,’ Pearl says later, when they’re sitting on a blanket.

‘Just perfect,’ says Rose.

They sit on the blanket and the shadows of the trees move over the walls. The water barrels over the waterfall.

‘I think we’ll be leaving soon,’ says Rose.

‘Don’t say that,’ says Pearl.

‘I know it, it’s the way Dad gets. He’s wound up.’

‘But you said you wouldn’t go with him,’ says Pearl. ‘That night we stayed up here.’

‘I can’t believe you were awake but not answering me.’

‘I just wanted to hear you talk. You never talk.’

Rose doesn’t know what to say to that.

‘Why doesn’t he just go and you stay?’ says Pearl. ‘You could live with us till the end of the school year, and then he could come back and pick you up.’

Rose tries to imagine herself living in Pearl and Pattie’s little house behind the shop. All the tinkling of crystals and wind chimes and the cane trains shunting all night in and out of the mill yards.

‘We could make up the trundle next to my bed,’ says Pearl. ‘You can’t go, Rose.’

‘I’m only saying, that’s all,’ says Rose. ‘It’s just a feeling.’

‘You said it yourself you didn’t want to stay with him.’

‘I can’t imagine my dad on his own.’

‘He’ll have to be one day,’ says Pearl. ‘I mean you won’t live with him forever, will you, going round and round the country?’

‘I guess not,’ says Rose.

‘Rose,’ Pearl says, breathlessly.

‘What?’

‘I need you to do something for me. You have to go to the book exchange and see what he does. See if he asks where I am.’

‘I have to?’

‘Please,’ says Pearl. ‘You know I’d do anything for you.’

Rose can’t think of anything worse. Mr Rendell’s book exchange by herself. Walking past old Mrs Rendell with her Japanese fan, pushing open the bamboo-print curtain, entering that sticky, lonely little space.

‘I couldn’t,’ says Rose. ‘Really, I just couldn’t stand going there by myself.’

Pearl is silent for some time, and when she finally speaks it’s the angriest Rose has ever heard her: ‘You don’t understand anything, Rose. You’ve never even kissed a boy!’

‘Fuck off, I have,’ says Rose.

Pearl ignores her. She puts the dustpan and brush back in her backpack, grabs the bottle of Jif. She undoes her hair and twirls it in a loop on top of her head then looks out at the falls.

‘You haven’t,’ she says.

There is nothing left to say; they sit in silence. Finally Pearl smiles.

‘I’ll do it,’ says Rose.

‘Promise me,’ says Pearl. ‘Promise me, I’m dying.’

The day is airy, blustery; a big south-easter rattles the shop fronts. The streets are busy, busier than Rose has ever seen them, with the arrival of workers for the crush. The barracks have been opened, the rooms swept out, the mill has grumbled to life and belched a dark plume into the sky. Cane ash spins in eddies on Main Street.

Rose doesn’t want to go in. To leave such a bright day and go down the aisles in the newsagency, past scowling Mrs Rendell, through the bamboo-print curtain. It’s like climbing into a snake hole.

Paul Rendell is perfectly respectable to look at, perfectly clean, with his shining white teeth, but inside, Rose thinks, he is the colour of a toad. Everything he says is perfectly measured, teaspoon after teaspoon of perfect words, not a single um or a single ah.

Rose doesn’t look at any magazines. Old Mrs Rendell watches her as she goes past. Rose feels her eyes. She goes into the book exchange and straight to a row of books, not looking around, concentrating on the spines: breathe, breathe, breathe.

Something has changed.

There is something different in the old mould-speckled romance novel air.

‘You’re Pearl’s friend, aren’t you?’ says Mrs Rendell, right behind her.

‘God, you scared the life out of me,’ says Rose.

‘You didn’t hear me say the exchange isn’t manned now,’ says Mrs Rendell. ‘Paul’s gone to work at the mill. It’s that time of year. Everyone works there. I said it, but you just kept walking right past me.’

‘Sorry,’ says Rose. ‘I didn’t hear you.

‘You young girls can’t hear anything nowadays. No, there’s no one running the place. Paul started at the mill on Monday. His father wouldn’t believe it – he’ll be jumping up and down in the grave. Paul, who said he’d never do a crush, too below him. He hurt his eye, he got a splinter in it, but the doctor wouldn’t give him a certificate. Anyways, that’s why I have to ask you to leave your bag at the front if you’re coming in here. You’d be surprised how much gets stolen. Oh, nearly forgot, he left something at the front with me in case Pearl came in, says it’s one she’ll probably like. Will you be seeing her?’