“Dead people receive more flowers than living ones because...” #001
“Rosa?”
“Augusta? What is it?” The young woman’s brow fell. The voice on the other end of the phone had only spoken a single word, her name. But it fell like a rock, leaving a dead silence in the shape of the question mark after it. “They did it, they actually did it...I didn’t think they would.”
The young woman speaking was on the verge of tears. Rosa froze, and looked down at the soup she had been heating up. It bubbled slightly for lack of stirring. “Sovereign?” She asked quietly, not even wanting the answer...She already knew the answer “Yes.” The other girl answered thinly after a moment or two, clearly crying. Rosa took a deep breath. “Hang up this phone, destroy it, pack a bag. You know where to meet me...” Silence on the phone. “Right?” Rosalie uttered again, harder. “Right.” The answer came back. The phone line went dead.
Rosalie Berlin let the arm holding the phone drop to one side. She was a plain, but beautiful looking young woman, brown hair, brown eyes and olive skin. Her eighteenth birthday had just passed two weeks ago. She knew she ought to have felt terror in that moment, but instead all she felt was a cool, rational, glassy kind of anger. The kind of emotion that in the first instance gave away nothing, but had the potential to shatter into a thousand painful and dangerous shards at any moment. But, for now, it did not. Very calmly she lifted her right hand back up again, and dropped the cellphone in her soup with a ‘glop’ sound. It was the end of the world, probably, and yet it was all so mundane. The soup bubbled.
It took her less than six minutes to pack, essentials only. Food, clothing, and the weapon she kept stored under her bed, and what medicine she had. She paused a moment by the medicine cabinet and counted the pills in the blister pack. Six days worth. She had meant to reorder the prescription a few days ago but had forgotten. She slammed the little wooden door of the cabinet shut with such force that several other bottles and packets within toppled out and fell into the sink below. Well, it was well and truly too late to fill a prescription now. There would be eyes everywhere.
Rosalie clothed herself in jeans, boots, and a large comfortable winter coat, unseasonable given that it was summer. She slipped out the back door of her house, sprinted through the back garden and hopped the drystone wall with ease. She looked back for a second. It had been the first house she had lived in alone, and it had represented to her a tiny oasis, a place of her own. She lowered her gaze. By all likelihood she would never be able to return to it now. She had locked the doors out of habit more than anything and still held the keys in her hand. She considered tossing them, but sentimentality prevented her.
It was a summer weekend in Hastings by the Sea, a town that thrived on its tourist industry. That suited Rosalie just fine. She walked down the West Hill via the old Victorian stairway that had long been boarded up for repair – but that was no hindrance to her. She crossed the road, away from a long block of old, Victorian seaside hotels and walked along the seafront. It was a beautiful day. People of every description were dotted here and there on the pebble beach. The cycle lane to her left thronged with cyclists, a dog sprinted past her followed by its owner, startling the teenager momentarily, she shook herself, shifting her rucksack on her shoulder. Sparing a glance backward she descended a short cement staircase and emerged in Bottle Alley – the long underpass that ran the length of the seafront, beneath the main road.
It was full of people. Couples holding hands, lone dog walkers, kids skateboarding hazardously along the cement wall separating the alley front the seafront. But despite the throng it was very easy for Rosalie to identify her friend. Augusta Hall was seated some way off on the balustrade that divided the walkway from the seafront, her legs swinging. She was sixteen years old. Her straight black hair fell all the way to the small of her back and stirred slightly in the ocean breeze. Augusta’s mother was a second generation Chinese immigrant; her father was a university lecturer Born in London. Unlike her friend, Augusta was seldom without a cluster of close and extended family about her. Born and raised in care in Kent Rosalie Berlin had no one. Perhaps that was part of what made her appealing to the programme. But she did have Augusta. Rosalie gave a little whistle and Augusta’s head whipped round. She swung her legs off the edge and landed catlike. Without so much as a word the younger girl took Rosalie by the hand and they proceeded along the alley at a swift step, not saying a word. Augusta squeezed Rosalie’s hand and she squeezed back.
The door of the Savannah boutique hotel swung open and the little bell above the door jangled sweetly. The desk was just a narrow platform at the bottom of the sweeping stairs. The hotel was a converted Victorian town house, narrow but grand. Each of their twelve rooms was named after a place or city and styled accordingly. The woman who worked behind the desk stepped out from a side door and smiled at the two women. Augusta smiled back. “Polar bears have webbed toes.” She chirped to the woman, like a kid with their hand up in class. The tall, slightly overwrought looking woman seemed to consider this a moment, before everything clicked into place her brain. “Yes, yes they do. Of course.” Her hands moved under the desk. “The Antarctica suite is yours for the weekend, please let us know if you need anything.”
Augusta took the key and smiled. “Thank you.” She squeezed Rosalie’s hand and the two girls moved away toward the stairs. For the first time in hours Rosalie smiled. “You know there are no polar bears in Antarctica right?”
