TWENTY

Rose watches Lizzie's hands as the nurses bathe her. She clenches and unclenches her fingers and occasionally Rose hears a sigh. Rose sits on a chair holding George, whom she must get used to calling Simon. Or Simmie.

Alice has to go to another emergency. Someone has surprised a swarm of wasps and run inside with the wasps close behind. The whole household — mother, father, three children — has been stung, one child badly, and is now with a neighbour while the pest destruction officer deals with the wasps inside their house.

Rose, now dressed in jeans and a blue shirt, held Lizzie's hand in the ambulance while Olga carried the baby. Olga has now taken a taxi back to Rose's house to pick up her own car so she can come back and collect Rose and George/Simmie. Lizzie has a couple of broken ribs, severe bruising everywhere, but it's her eyes, the right one particularly, that cause concern. Nothing can be properly diagnosed until the swelling goes down, but the worry is that something at the back of the right eye has been so badly damaged, the sight will be impaired. The left one, they think but don't know for sure, is not as bad, but bad enough. Her nose and teeth, miraculously, are OK. All the damage is, they say, superficial, which means it's bloody sore, looks awful, a couple of stitches in the upper lip, but will heal in a couple of weeks. Her left ear is ripped and has stitches in it. Lizzie is given pain relief, but nothing can dull the agony inside her.

The two police officers are exemplary. Kind, careful, but determined to get every detail Lizzie can tell them in that hoarse, gravelly, pain-racked voice which, until they get used to it, is very hard to understand. They take more photos, look at the baby's chest and arm, take photos of that, say they'll be in touch, that Lizzie should concentrate on getting better, that they'll deal with Mr Royston Hipp, who is at present at the station helping them with their enquiries. It's likely he'll be there some time and he will be warned to stay away from her and the baby, so Lizzie mustn't worry about him turning up at the hospital. Tomorrow, no doubt, Lizzie's solicitor will make application for a restraining order and the police will support that.

They turn to Rose. It's a shame Rose didn't get in touch with them on Friday when she found the baby on her back porch. If she'd contacted them they might have been able to prevent Lizzie's injuries. Rose agrees with them. The reservations, fears, anxieties — let's face it Rose, all on your own behalf, not the baby's — have all gone, scarpered, disappeared, just when she needs them to bolster her conviction that she'd done the right thing. 'Hindsight is a scary thing,' she says. The officers nod as though they understand. They are kind, in an impartial, detached way, they write down what she says. They keep their faces free of expression so she doesn't really know what they think of her. Not that it matters. She thinks badly enough of herself for the three of them.

They finish their questions, the one taking notes closes his notebook. They have a word with a nurse, then leave, this young man and young woman in uniform. Rose thinks they probably see more horror in one night than she will in a lifetime. At first glance they look like teenagers, but their eyes give them away.

The nurses finish and between them move Lizzie to a clean bed in a single room. Rose goes with them, not really knowing what else to do. Will Lizzie be OK when Rose takes the baby away? Will she understand this second separation is temporary? If it looks as though she's upset, Rose will stay. She will sit in the chair all night and the nurses will just have to put up with it. George/Simmie has had a couple of crying spells, doesn't like the strangeness perhaps, but he's had a bottle, been changed, seems more settled. He's not really sure about Lizzie and cries whenever he's near her. Who can blame him? She probably doesn't smell at all like the mother who left him on Rose's back porch not quite two days ago.

'Rose?' Lizzie's rough voice has become a bit clearer. The pain relievers no doubt. It startles Rose. She sits up straight.

'Yes Lizzie, I'm here. We're both here. Simmie and me.'

'You go,' Lizzie says, 'you take him and go. I'll sleep now. Come back later. He shouldn't be here.'

'He's all right,' Rose says, 'he's all right. Look, he's sound asleep.' She shows Lizzie the baby and Lizzie lifts her poor, hurt face and Rose sees a tremor. An effort at a smile perhaps? Lizzie goes to shake her head and winces. 'OK,' Rose says, 'OK. We'll just sit here and wait for Olga to find us, and then we'll go. You don't have to worry about your boy. No one will hurt him while he's with me.'

Lizzie lies back and in a little while she sleeps. A nurse pops in, checks, smiles at Rose.

'Sleep will do her the world of good,' she whispers, and goes. A woman in a blue dressing gown, holding onto her stomach, walks slowly along the corridor towing a chrome stand with a metal box and trailing wires. She and Rose exchange smiles.

Oh that first trip to the toilet after the op. She'd had a haemo-vac attached to catch the fluids draining off both wounds.

Rose remembers sitting on the toilet, trying to manage the long trailing tube and wipe her bum at the same time, shaking her head in disbelief that she was actually there, in that hospital toilet, having had an operation for breast cancer.

'How long did it take you to believe it?' Sibyl had asked later.

'I didn't,' Rose said, 'still don't.'

'Neither do I,' said Louise.

'Me neither,' said Sibyl.

Sibyl and Louise must believe it now.

Rose sees a man on a trolley being wheeled past. 'The bloody cat,' he is saying, 'I should have left the little rat's-arse up the tree.'

Rose wonders where the hell Olga is, what's holding her up. It's a relief to close her eyes though, shut out this hospital room, the green curtains at the window, the cream locker, a drawer and cupboard by the bed, the spare pillows piled on a chair on the other side of the bed, to close her mind to the sounds outside the room, the small noises Lizzie makes as she sleeps. Rose understands exactly how Jo and the Hipps feel. Who would, could, understand better? She'd skulked home for exactly the same reasons four years ago. Well it would all come out now. And she would have to deal with it. As would the girl Phoebe, her father, and everyone else, Marcy included. Rose had told Ada and Claude about the parents' urgent desire that their daughter not be put through the hoops of the media and court circus. 'I wasn't worried so much about Phoebe,' Rose told them.

'No?'

'No. I could see how it happened. She knew I was going to talk to her parents. She'd been impossible since I announced the cast. She'd badly wanted Juliet. I think now she'd told everyone she was a sitter to get it. She was the principal's daughter after all. She as good as said it.'

'In front of witnesses?' asked Claude.

'Of course not,' Ada answered for her, 'do they ever? How often,' she turned on Rose, 'have you been told not to be on your own with a pupil?'

'It's no good, Ada,' Rose said, 'they were absolutely determined not to believe me. I wasn't sure anyone believed me. I thought perhaps Marcy was just using her mother as an excuse, that perhaps Marcy thought that I really had made some sort of advance to the girl. We hadn't been getting on that well. Anyway, the thought of cameras, lights, journalists asking questions — you've both seen them — they'd probably have followed me here, done the whole dance. I knew I'd never get another job in the education system whether I proved Phoebe was lying or not. I suppose I was in shock.'

'You were a willing conspirator in your own downfall,' Ada said.

'If you say so,' Rose said, although she knew it was Ada's anxiety that made her sound so sharp.

Rose worked out the statutory month, went into school every day to an environment where everyone knew the real reason she'd resigned, where half the staff believed the girl on no other basis than that Rose was what she was, and the other half didn't believe the girl but understood why Rose had made that particular decision. 'We're all paranoid about the media,' one of them told Rose, 'it comes with the territory now.'

'Why didn't you go to the union, you should have gone to the union,' Claude said.

'I didn't need the union, I needed a fairy godmother.' A poor joke was better than nothing.

Ada and Claude didn't even smile. 'Why didn't you call us?' they asked, 'we'd have come like a shot.'

Which was exactly why Rose didn't ring them.

'Phoebe's been through huge anxiety,' her father said, 'it's already cost her a lot to even tell us. She didn't want to. But we saw she was upset, and we persisted.'

'She's lying,' Rose said.

Denis Gerrison went on as though Rose hadn't spoken, hadn't said this over and over. Previously Rose thought the principal was a fair man although she sensed he was uncomfortable with her once he'd found out about Marcy. But he'd been pleased with her work, gratified that her school productions were widely praised by parents and public, appreciative of all the extra time she'd put in. Now he looked at her as though she was the pervert his daughter made her out to be, that the lie simply confirmed what he'd privately thought.

Mrs Gerrison said Rose had done enough damage without compounding it by making the whole thing public. 'I appeal to you,' she said, 'if you have an ounce of common decency left, surely you can't want that.'

'She's lying, Phoebe's lying,' she repeated.

'Miss Anthony, I know my own daughter. Believe me, I know when she's genuinely upset or not.'

Claude had been right. She should have had some sort of advocate. Too late now for even a fairy godmother. Leave it to the Skeleton Woman, Rose. She'll do it. Eventually.

Boom boom, thinks Rose. Poor Maisy liked Fairy Tales. You only had to say Once Upon A Time and she would quieten, would stop shouting, and come close and hug you, her eyes peaceful and anticipatory. Once upon a time, Rose thinks, there was a girl called Maisy, a Down's syndrome girl, who came to live with a girl called Rose and her mother called Ada. For two years Maisy was happy. She loved Ada intensely. Almost as much as she loved jokes, loved making Rose and Ada laugh.

One day Maisy caught a cold that turned to bronchitis and then pleurisy so, so quickly. Rose and Ada read to her all the time. Maisy would only stay in bed if they read to her. She listened intently to the first few words then seemed to go off into a daze. But if you tried to skip, or if you went too fast, her eyes would open and she'd say hoarsely, 'Start again.'

Maisy liked Rose a lot, but she adored Ada. She put up with Rose because Ada said she must be nice to Rose and she must stay in bed whether Ada was there or not. The doctor had given strict instructions. Maisy must stay in bed, but at first Maisy would only stay in bed if Ada was sitting beside her. Thelma and Jo took a turn. Even Peter Paul Pearl and Claude took a turn. They were all fond of Maisy in a funny sort of way, even Claude. But it was Ada Maisy wanted. When Ada sat by her bed she was quiet. She looked up at Ada out of her small blue eyes and was happy. Her nose ran constantly and she made no attempt to wipe it unless Ada was there. When Rose was at Maisy's bedside and she had to wipe Maisy's nose she did it, heaving all the time. Maisy thought this was very funny so that was good.

In just two short weeks she got weaker and weaker. You could hear her stertorous breathing all over the house. Ada tried everything she could think of. Chest rubs, lavender inhalations, hot lemon drinks, even a drop of brandy, but nothing eased that hard breathing. Even the tablets the doctor prescribed, that Maisy would only take if Ada was holding the glass of water, did no good. She was overtaken by fits of coughing that left her spent and breathless, and Ada and Rose had to hold her up until the paroxysms passed. Rose was scared Maisy would die during one of these seizures, but was even more terrified she would die while Rose was there on her own, or just with Jo. But Maisy died peacefully one night listening to Ada read Cinderella. Ada had just got to the part where the prince was fitting the glass slipper onto Cinderella's foot when the hoarse breathing stopped. In the kitchen, Rose was drying the dishes and suddenly became aware that it was very quiet. She listened. Nothing. No terrifyingly laboured harshness, no sound of the struggle not to cough, nothing. When Ada came through into the kitchen Rose was crying into the tea towel. Ada put her arms around Rose and held her. 'I know, I know. Maisy only had one thing to offer and that was absolutely unconditional. God knows she's a lesson to all of us, me especially.'

Frankie Beacon didn't attend his daughter's funeral service but at the grave where she was buried beside her mother, in the pouring rain, he turned up in grubby shorts and singlet, drunk. He sobbed and cried loudly all through the short service. 'Oh,' he wailed, 'oh Hazel, why did you leave me? Why didn't God take me too?'

Rose and Jo dared not catch each other's eyes. Both imagined themselves mimicking Mr Beacon. 'Oh Hazel, why did you leave me? Why didn't God take me too?' Rose's shoulders trembled, and Jo turned away. Rose gave a little gasp and Ada glared at her, although a moment before she'd rolled her eyes at Claude and Peter as if to say she wouldn't mind helping God out.

Even Sam Porohiwi got sick of Frankie in the end and marched firmly over to him. Rose hoped he was telling him it was a bit late now to be crying over the daughter he'd neglected when she was alive and that if he couldn't pull himself together he'd better leave. That's what Rose would have told him. But Mr Porohiwi was a minister so he probably had a different message for Frankie. Ada and Thelma had organised afternoon tea and quite a few people came. Some of the kids from school, a couple of teachers, Peter Paul Pearl of course, Thelma and Jo, Claude, even the doctor popped in briefly.

You'd wonder, thinks Rose as she sits on that hard chair in the hospital room, why Maisy was allowed to live such a short and, from the time her mother died until she came to live with Ada, unhappy life. What was the point?

Through the window she sees trees tossing violently and heavy rain beats like big drumsticks against the windows. Beyond the trees is a tall chimney, grey and solid against the dark sky. It stands firm against the bruising blast of the wind.

The way this morning's gone Olga's probably had a puncture. Rose feels uncertain about Olga, as though the balance of something has shifted. She feels Marcy trying to get into her mind, but deliberately shuts her off. Too late, she thinks, too bloody late. Rose wants to talk to Olga. If Olga still wants to talk to her. Olga has a hard row to hoe and Rose has made it harder. Not because she didn't want to do what Olga wanted but because she did, and it was too scary. We are all aliens, thinks Rose. You're being melodramatic Rose. It's true though, melodramatic or not. Why didn't I see that before?

It's too hard, everything's too hard. If this was a Fairy Tale it would definitely be a good time for a Fairy Godmother to unpack her wand and start waving it about. Rose just wants to go home with Olga, close the door, and forget everything. Olga, she thinks, where the hell are you?

She doesn't want any more. She can't cope with any more. She's had it up to here. She doesn't want the business with Lizzie, the mess with Royston, she especially doesn't want right at this moment to be reminded about a woman who'd tied an electric cord around her daughter's neck and tried to hang her because the girl had told her mother a lie. She was only stopped by a neighbour who heard the girl's screams. Or the man who beat his son with a piece of four by two because the boy had lied and whom a jury decided was innocent of assault.

Something is happening to her brain. It only wants to bring up unpleasant, inconvenient and brutal episodes that she can't even remember reading or hearing. Maybe she should stop reading papers, listening to the radio, or watching television (and withdraw into a cocoon where she works in the shop, looks after the house and garden, sools the black cat away from the pantry window sill) and she wouldn't even know when planes smash into black towers. She wouldn't know there were no survivors so far and would not have the firemen's faces imprinted on her brain. She would work away happily on needlework projects, and Sib and Louise would not be told their bad news, and Rose would not even have had cancer so she would be free of this bloody never-ending fear every time she feels a bit tired.

Thank you very much Brain, Rose thinks, you can't let me forget for one single instant can you.

When Olga does appear, Claude is with her. Rose is leaning back with her eyes closed. Maybe this whole thing — the baby, Lizzie, Jo and Wesley, the Hipps — is a dream from which she'll waken soon. 'Rose,' Olga touches her gently, 'Rose.'

Rose opens her eyes and smiles at Olga, sees Claude and smiles at him. He looks as though he will burst with something. Anger? 'Come on George — ah — Simmie,' she says to the baby. 'We're going home.'

Olga has a quick look at Lizzie, Claude grabs the bag with the baby's gear in it. Olga looks hassled. Why is Claude angry? Maybe Olga actually did have a flat tyre. But why would that make Claude angry? Have he and Olga had an argument? When Rose is seated in Olga's car, and George/Simmie is safely strapped in his baby seat, they tell her.

'Your house has been sprayed. Done over. Hell of a mess.'

'Was it red paint?'

Olga nods.

'Knock-Knock?'

'Has to be,' Claude says, 'but he's gone, vamoosed, vanished. I rang that bugger Wesley. Gave him a piece of my mind. Told him it's his responsibility. You're coming home with me,' Claude says to Rose. 'Elena says you've had enough for one day.'

'I want to see the house,' Rose says.

'Told you,' Olga says to Claude.

Claude shakes his head but he doesn't try to dissuade her. Olga starts the car and drives slowly away from the hospital.