Marika Cobbold - Drowning Rose

A huge thank you to Victoria Oakley and her team at the V&A for taking the time and trouble to show me around the wondrous Ceramic Conservation Department and for being so patient in answering my endless questions and also to Alex Patchett-Joyce for all her advice about ceramic restoration. Any mistakes on the subject are entirely my own.

As always I want to thank my editor Alexandra Pringle who never stops caring and everyone at Bloomsbury, especially Alexa von Hirschberg.

Thank you also to Georgia Garrett and Linda Shaughnessy at A.P. Watt.

I also had excellent support and advice from Jeremy Cobbold and Michael Patchett-Joyce.

Finally, huge thanks to Harriet Cobbold Hielte without whose brilliant advice, help and support I dont like to write anything much other than a shopping list.

Marika Cobbold was born in Sweden and is the author of six previous novels: Guppies for Tea , selected for the WH Smith First Novels Promotion and shortlisted for the Sunday Express Book of the Year Award; The Purveyor of Enchantment ; A Rival Creation ; Frozen Music ; Shooting Butterflies ; and most recently Aphrodites Workshop for Reluctant Lovers . She lives in London.

Guppies for Tea

A Rival Creation

The Purveyor of Enchantment

Frozen Music

Shooting Butterflies

Aphrodites Workshop for Reluctant Lovers

Contents

Sandra/Cassandra

The others were in the sick bay so it was just Eliza and I hanging out. I was perched on the chair in her cubicle; Id had to move a heap of clothes meant for the laundry to be able to sit. Eliza was on the floor, writing in one of her hundreds of A5 notebooks, her back resting against the bed, long ragdoll legs stretched out, big feet pushing up against the wall opposite. Thats what she looked like, I had decided, a beautiful rag doll. She dressed like one, too. Today she was wearing red and black horizontal striped woollen tights, a floral print summer skirt with different coloured patches sewn on and a long black knitted sweater. Back when I first met her I had thought that she dressed the way she did for effect but I had come to realise that she actually thought those weird combinations looked nice. And on her, to be fair, they usually did.

Shall I take your stuff to the laundry? I asked her.

She glanced up as if she were surprised to hear from me, then she threw me a warm smile. Would you? Thats really kind.

As I went down to the basement I thought of Gillian Taylor saying that I should be careful not to let Eliza treat me like some kind of servant. She doesnt mean to, Gillian had said. She just thinks its completely natural that other people should run around doing things for her.

So what? Gillian was jealous. Everyone knew she had the biggest crush on Eliza. She said she was over it but it didnt seem like it to me.

I returned to the cubicle. Ill hang it up later, I said.

Gosh, no, Ill do that, Eliza said. I knew she wouldnt, though. She would forget about it until someone did it for her, either as a favour or because they needed the washing machine themselves.

What are you writing?

Without looking up, she said, Im re-working one of Grandmother Evas stories.

Grandmother Eva wasnt actually Elizas grandmother at all, she was Roses, but because Elizas grandmothers were both dead she was allowed to borrow this one. Can I look? I asked her.

Eliza passed me the notebook. She had framed the writing with her drawings. She was a good artist but I didnt personally go for all that fairy tale stuff, although the huge ugly trolls were cool and the boy who played the violin by the lake.

I wish I could draw, I said.

Id love to be able to sing like you. She smiled up at me. I dont know how she did it but she had a way, when she was paying attention, to make you feel special, chosen somehow.

You would?

But her attention had already wandered back to her notebook. The others wouldnt be staying in the San for ever and then who knows when I would get her to myself again. I was sure that if I could only spend enough time with her, just the two of us, we would become real friends. I reckoned she and I actually had a lot more in common than she had with the other two. Like art and music, for example.

She was absorbed in her drawing once more. I knew she didnt mean to be rude. She just loved what she was doing. I was like that myself, passionate.

Its funny how you got your artistic skill from Grandmother Eva, I said. Because Ive got the singing from my grandmother, I said, kind of implying that I had forgotten Grandmother Eva wasnt actually Elizas grandmother. Shed like that. I knew because a friend of Jessicas, a girl who was adopted, completely loved it when anyone forgot her parents werent her real parents.

Really, Eliza said, but she still wasnt paying full attention.

She was an opera singer. That just slipped out but as it happens it worked because now she looked at me, actually looked at me and without those longing glances at her notebook. I didnt want that to end.

Really? You never said.

I shrugged. It never came up, I suppose.

Where did she sing?

Oh everywhere, all the big places. Covent Garden, The Metropolitan, La Scala, all of them. I listened to myself say those things and I thought how right it sounded. It was how it should have been, my grandmother in a long velvet gown receiving a standing ovation, not standing behind the counter at Hensons department store in the regulation blue uniform. We were the first to use terylene, as it was called back then. I remember her saying that as if it were an event. An achievement. And my parents had nodded and my father had said, My, is that so and my mother had asked about the exact shade of blue. I didnt belong with them, with people like that. I belonged here, at LAGs with Eliza and the others.

And Eliza was looking at me with big starry eyes. Gosh. How exciting. I love opera. Whats her name? Is she Mitchum too? I might have heard her. My mum certainly will have. Shes a complete opera freak.

I had to think fast. She died really young.

And she still sang at all the big opera houses. Thats amazing.

I felt my eyes flickering and I bent down pretending to do up my laces. Straightening up, I said, Sorry, what I meant was she was supposed to sing in those places if she hadnt died. It was really tragic. She was studying. In Italy. I was able to look her straight in the eyes as I continued, In Florence. She was about to debut and she drowned.

Drowned. How?

Swimming pool.

Eliza looked at me and her eyes were almost completely round. For a moment I thought she might be laughing at me but when she said, Thats dreadful, she sounded genuine.

Well, it was a long time ago.

Your poor mum. She must have been tiny. She had finally put her notebook and pencil down. Or perhaps its better that way. I dont remember a thing about my father and sometimes I think thats good because Im not actually missing something concrete, although sometimes it makes me feel sadder for exactly the same reason. And your grandfather, too, he must have been devastated.

I pulled a regretful face. Well, thats another thing. She wasnt married. She got pregnant by this Italian guy. He was a count or something. I made my voice casual as if it made no difference to me if my grandfather was a count or not. Of course they werent allowed to get married.

Why? She was looking up at me, her large hands resting on her knees and her auburn hair streaming down her back and shoulders. Right then I would have killed to look like her, even with the big hands and feet and the freckles.

Oh, all sorts of reasons. I tried to think of some.

I suppose him being Catholic?

I nodded. Thats it. It wasnt allowed on religious grounds.

So youre really the granddaughter of an Italian count? Cool.