My Name Is Rose

  For Angela & Michael

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Also by Sally Grindley

  Chapter 1

  Rose nestled her head sleepily against her mother Esme’s shoulder. The accordion on Esme’s lap had fallen silent, but a whisper of song escaped her lips still. On the bench opposite them, Rani, Rose’s younger brother, was fast asleep, buried deep in a riot of red and yellow cushions. Their father Nicu’s silhouette, solid and comforting, filled the open front of the wagon. He was quiet, contemplative, eyes fixed on the winding road ahead, a shadow of the man who, five hours earlier, had brought crowds to their feet with his lusty ballads. A plume of tobacco smoke wafted from his pipe and trailed into the back of the wagon. Rose caught a whiff of its musky aroma and breathed it in. She loved that smell, especially now as it mingled with the familiar sweet and sour of Esme’s home-made perfume.

  They had had such fun! From the moment they had arrived, the village streets welcomed them with festoons of multicoloured flags strung haphazardly from tree to lamp post to balcony. Villagers waved from doorways and children ran up to hold the horses’ reins, skipping alongside them, chattering excitedly. The procession of wagons was herded into a small meadow dotted with wild flowers, a handful of which Rose had collected and presented to her mother. In the village square, a pig was being roasted over hot coals. Rose, Rani and their cousins and friends watched its skin blister and hiss, and wondered how long it would be before they could sink their teeth into its succulent flesh. Close by, a large metal pan filled with popcorn rattled so hard it threatened to explode. There were rows of tables piled high with fruit and vegetables, bread and cakes, sweetmeats and candied fruits, and others that were quickly loaded up with copper and clay pots, rugs and throws, bangles and beads, which the Roma had made and brought with them to sell.

  On another side of the square, away from the hubbub, Rose had watched her Aunt Mirela lay out her tarot cards under a garish makeshift awning, ready to tell people their fortunes. In the corner was a crystal ball, which her aunt rarely used but which spoke of mystery and enchantment. Rose loved to stare deep into it and imagine another world there, one filled with fairies and other mythical creatures, a world where everything was magical. She loved feeling the cool, smooth roundness of the ball, and hoped that one day she would be able to tell people what life had in store for them just by gazing into it, though she sometimes puzzled over why they would want to know. That day, queues stood patiently outside Aunt Mirela’s tent from the moment she had set herself up till dusk settled over them and the day came to a close.

  Meanwhile, families quickly started to gather in the two cafés that bordered the third side of the square, turning their chairs outwards to face a long wooden stage that had been erected by the statue in the centre. In the bars, village men chased their coffee down with shots of something stronger and waited expectantly for the entertainment to begin. The clink of glasses, the clatter of plates, the babble of voices, the roars of laughter all grew louder as preparations were completed. When at last Nicu, Esme and other members of their clan leapt on to the stage, the crowd erupted with shouts and cheers. From the youngest, toothless babe in arms to the oldest, toothless man in a wheelchair, everyone took part in the annual carnival and dance.

  And how they had danced! The square became a sea of bodies rising and falling, leaping and whirling. Rose had been swung round in circles so many times that one of her cousins had to help her to a chair until the world stopped spinning. From there she gazed at Esme’s fingers fidgeting endlessly over the ivory keys of the accordion. Her mother moved seamlessly from jigs to reels to haunting ballads, taking her cue from her husband, he too capable of changing the mood in an instant. When Nicu passed the singing to another member of the band, he picked up his violin and played with people’s heart-strings, stretching notes until they quivered and sighed, before changing the tempo, sawing vigorously with his bow and stamping out an accompaniment with his feet.

  Rose was so proud of Esme and Nicu. She watched them whip the crowd into a frenzy, then stroke them into tranquillity. She watched the smiles on every face and the joy in every smile. They were like sorcerers, her mother and father, weaving spells with their music that made the world a happy place. I want to have that power one day, she thought. She wanted to have that power even more than she wanted to follow in Aunt Mirela’s footsteps. She would make people laugh and love. She had been learning to play her father’s violin since she was five, and she had more talent in her little finger, he said, than he had in all of his fingers and toes put together. In that instant, she made up her mind that when Nicu next offered to teach her, instead of resisting and ignoring his look of disappointment, she would embrace him and ask to continue with her journey right there and then.

  Chapter 2

  The eerie hoot of an owl came first and wavered over the idle clip-clop of the horse’s hooves. It wasn’t connected. Or was it? A warning, perhaps? Rose had scarcely had time to register it before the startlingly bright lights careered round the corner. A prolonged screech of rubber on tarmac, a cry of alarm, a frantic hauling on reins was followed by the hideous smash of metal into wood. The air shuddered briefly, before giving way to a calamitous silence.

  And then, had she been able to hear and understand, Rose might have heard the words ‘Wretched Gypsies!’ spat, not spoken, from too close by. Had she been able to see, she would have known that a man and a woman, he in a dinner suit, she in a long silk dress and dainty high heels, were sitting in their car, checking themselves over for injury and staring at the wreckage around them.

  A loud tremor of breath from somewhere outside the car window made them tremble in turn, before the night fell silent again.

  ‘What was that?’ the woman sobbed. ‘It wasn’t the horse, was it?’

  ‘Never mind the horse,’ hissed the man. ‘I think my leg’s broken.’

  ‘You were going too fast.’ The woman began to sob hysterically. ‘I told you not to go so fast.’

  ‘They were in the middle of the road. It wouldn’t have mattered what speed I was doing.’

  ‘You were going too fast,’ the woman insisted. She grabbed the door handle and tried to open it.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing, Daphne?’ The man put his arm across to stop her.

  ‘I’m going to see if they’re all right,’ she cried. ‘Why can’t we see anyone moving?’

  ‘You’re not getting out,’ the man ordered. ‘They might be dangerous.’

  ‘They might be dead,’ the woman wailed.

  ‘In which case there’s nothing to be done.’

  Chapter 3

  Rose tried to block out the blinding light above her. It made her anxious and she wished Esme would switch it off. Even from under the curiously stiff, white sheet the light still struck her with its harshness. She listened to the strange sounds that filtered through her crudely fashioned shroud. Some
one, somewhere, was wailing. A bucket clattered and a voice chastised. Not Esme’s voice. A phone rang. Where’s the phone come from? We haven’t got a phone. Papa doesn’t like them. ‘They stop you from being free,’ he said. ‘They take away your choice to be left alone.’

  Rose suddenly noticed that one of her arms was bandaged. And then, when she shifted, she saw there was blood all over the sheet on which she was lying. She screamed when she saw the blood. She screamed and the phone rang and voices cried and a horse whimpered and the wagon rose high in the air and she was flying and spinning and falling, falling, and the trees glowered and there was pain and silence.

  She couldn’t move now. Someone was pinning her down. She could smell sour breath on her face. She began to struggle, kicking with her feet, flailing with her arms, until the pain became unbearable and she lay back exhausted.

  ‘That’s better,’ she heard. ‘We can’t help you if you fight us.’

  Rose tried to focus. A large, grey-haired woman was leaning over her, pressing down on her chest with her hands. The woman relaxed, wiped her hands on the apron she was wearing, and stood up straight when she was confident that Rose had calmed down.

  ‘Who are you?’ Rose whispered.

  ‘I’m Sister Orta. And what’s your name?’

  Rose bit her lip. She didn’t want to tell this stranger.

  ‘You’ve had an accident and you’re in hospital,’ Sister Orta continued. ‘If you tell us your name, we can find someone to look after you.’

  Rose frowned. ‘My mother and father will look after me,’ she said.

  For a moment Sister Orta shifted uneasily. Then she took a deep breath and said, ‘I’m afraid . . . I’m afraid your mother and father are dead. The boy – your brother – too.’ She didn’t give Rose time to react before she added, ‘The police are waiting to speak to you.’

  Rose attempted to get out of bed. ‘Why are you telling me this?’ she sobbed, grappling to free herself from the sheet. ‘Where’s Mama? I want my mother.’

  ‘Now don’t start getting yourself into a state,’ Sister Orta said patiently. ‘You’ve lost a lot of blood and you need to keep still. Besides, there are other patients to think about.’

  Rose no longer heard Sister Orta’s words. Her one thought was to find her mother and father, to get away from this woman with her sour breath. Esme’s face drifted before her and she reached out to grasp her.

  ‘Mama!’ she cried.

  But then she felt something sharp bite into her arm. She yelped and fell back heavily on to the bed.

  ‘You’ll feel better after some sleep.’

  Rose stared helplessly as Esme drifted away and disappeared down a long, dark tunnel, followed by Nicu and Rani. She wanted to call after them, but no sound came, and then there was nothing.

  When Rose woke again, she found the same stark white light, the same stiff white sheets, the same disjointed sounds. The nightmare hadn’t ended. She turned her head to one side, hoping to find Esme sitting close by, watching over her. There was another bed, its occupant facing away from her.

  ‘Mama?’ Rose allowed a whisper to escape, before she realised that this person had straight, mousy-brown hair. Esme’s hair was thick and black and wild. Esme’s hair tumbled down her back when she freed it from its beaded clasp. Her mother complained about the rogue white strands that she discovered from time to time, and laughingly blamed her children for causing them, but Rose had never noticed them.

  ‘Are you feeling better now?’

  Rose looked the other way. A woman was sitting in a chair by the bed. She had a large plaster across her forehead and another on the back of her hand, which was clutching a white handkerchief. She had been crying, Rose thought, because her eyes were red and puffy. She was pale too, her thin face framed by unnaturally yellow blonde curls. She was dressed in a severe navy suit, the sort Rose had seen when they rode the wagon through towns once in a while.

  ‘You’ve been asleep for a very long time. I was worried about you,’ she said.

  Rose frowned. Why should this woman – a gadje she had never met before – be worried about her? Gadje people didn’t concern themselves with Romani folk. The woman spoke the language of their country fluently, yet with a strange accent.

  ‘Who are you?’ Rose asked.

  ‘I’m a friend,’ the woman replied. ‘A friend who wants to help you.’

  Rose saw tears welling up in her eyes and wondered why she was upset, but she didn’t want to share her sadness, whatever it was.

  ‘I want Mama,’ she said simply. ‘Where is she? And Papa and Rani?’

  Rose looked beyond the strange woman to where a large, grey-haired woman was issuing orders to a young nurse. She recognised Sister Orta, who turned, saw that she was awake and came striding over.

  ‘Are you ready to tell us who you are now?’ Sister Orta asked.

  ‘Where are my parents?’

  Sister Orta stared at her. The strange woman shifted uncomfortably in her chair.

  ‘I told you,’ the nurse said firmly. ‘They died. In the accident. You’re the lucky one. You escaped.’

  Chapter 4

  Rose didn’t speak after that. She couldn’t. There was nothing to say. Words no longer seemed to have any meaning; not those spoken by the strangers who came to her bedside once in a while, nor those that scrambled themselves together in her head or fled to far corners of her brain and refused to reassemble.

  She lay in her bed and stared at the ceiling, at the cold, white light that stripped the world of colour. It made little difference when it was switched off at night. Rose could still feel the shadows flitting between the beds, checking for life and death. She could hear the hushed voices, the hum of monitors, the shuffling of papers. Occasionally, a harsh cough or a sharp cry penetrated the barriers she had built around herself and threatened to haul her back to reality, but mostly she resisted their assault. She preferred to keep her eyes open, even when it was dark, because when she closed them, her mind seized the moment to catapult her through a tunnel of harrowing images that repeated themselves over and over again. She slept only when exhaustion took control.

  Rose had no idea how long she remained in the hospital ward. It became her home, despite its bleakness, despite Sister Orta’s increasing animosity. It changed from the place she loathed with all her might when she first found herself there, to the place where she found strange comfort in the daily routine that played out around her but left her largely untouched.

  As she regained some of her strength, she was made to leave her bed to visit the bathroom. Sometimes, though she was warned not to, she would wander along the grim, grey corridors and peer without much interest into rooms where nurses were gathered or where other patients were being treated. While her bed was being remade, she would sit in the chair at the side and stare at the opposite wall. She made no attempt to look at the books and magazines that one of the young nurses brought her from time to time.

  It was a shock, therefore, when one day Sister Orta pulled the curtain round her bed, gave Rose her clothes, freshly washed and ironed, and told her to get herself dressed because the doctors had pronounced her well enough to go home.

  But I don’t have a home, Rose wanted to protest, and then she wondered if Aunt Mirela and Uncle Aleksandar had come to fetch her at last. Is it them? Am I going home with them? She could hardly contain herself in her desire to find out. I knew they’d find me eventually.

  Early that afternoon, her bed was suddenly surrounded by a group of people and she was lifted into a wheelchair. The woman with the blonde hair and the navy suit, who had already introduced herself as Mrs Luca, fussed over her and tried to hold her hand, her sickly sweet perfume mixing unhappily with the bleached air Rose had grown used to. A tall man with a moustache – her husband – hovered behind the woman, immaculately dressed but curiously hunched, his lips pursed. He looked everywhere except at Rose. Rose stared at him and saw that he was supporting himself on a walking stick. Is he
in pain? she wondered. Is that why he seems angry?

  Rose quickly understood that she was being taken away from the hospital by Mrs Luca and her husband, though she had no idea why. Where are Aunt Mirela and Uncle Aleksandar? They need to know what’s happening to me. They need to know where to find me! She had a brief, powerful urge to resist, but in her weakened state she couldn’t summon up enough energy. Her fate had been decided for her, and she felt that there was absolutely nothing she could do about it. Sister Orta stood close by, issuing instructions, glad to be rid of such a troublesome patient, Rose could tell.

  ‘We’ll be staying in our hotel, just for tonight,’ the woman in the suit was saying. ‘I’ve bought you some clothes. Nice clothes. The sort I’d buy my own daughter, Victoria. She can’t wait to meet you – I’ve told her a lot about you.’

  ‘Goodbye, then, child,’ said Sister Orta. ‘You’ve certainly landed on your feet and no mistake. Mr and Mrs Luca have been able to arrange papers for you so that you can live with them. Try to return their kindness and stop this stubborn refusal to speak.’

  Rose stared at her with loathing. Have you even tried to find my family?

  ‘She’ll be just fine.’ Mrs Luca smiled indulgently at Rose. ‘The poor thing has been through such a lot.’

  ‘Spoil her at your peril,’ Sister Orta warned. ‘Personally, I think what you’re doing is madness. We’ve had her type in here before. They’re born trouble.’

  ‘I’ll thank you to keep your thoughts to yourself,’ Mrs Luca said shortly.

  ‘Can we just get on?’ Mr Luca growled at his wife. ‘This leg’s killing me.’

  Mrs Luca signalled to a man in a blue uniform and a peaked cap to take hold of the wheelchair.

  Again, Rose wanted to stop what was happening. She leant forward in the chair, trying to stand up, but Mrs Luca took her by the shoulders and eased her back.

  ‘We don’t want you falling out.’ The woman chuckled nervously. ‘You’ve done yourself enough damage already.’