Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Violet

Crushed Roses

The rose petals are crushed, but she thinks she can make them better. She can't kiss them better, as she once did her little brothers. They claim they are too old for kisses now anyway, even though they still have the plump softness and bounce of baby animals.

The roses need smoothing with a gentle hand and the old petals need to be removed. Once perfect, she will weave them into her mother's best straw hat. Her mother tells her she has a way with flowers.

The sun is warm and the wind gentle as her parents prepare for a trip out to a street-side café. They are celebrating a ‘little bit of luck'– for once, the sheep market prices favouring her father. She can hear the unaccustomed laughter and the lightness in their voices as they get ready. It makes her smile as she sits on the steps of the house, swiftly weaving flowerheads around the crown of her mother's hat. The air smells of soapy water, earth and roses. She has already tied a yellow bow at the back of the hat, leaving the tails to hang down low over the brim.

Her mother appears beside her and accepts the hat with a smile, then drops a few words of warning into her lap. Her nine-year-old self is expected to keep her brothers fed and out of mischief. One of these tasks, she thinks, will be easier than the other. Her father places a hand on her shoulder and whispers in her ear, ‘The postman has been.'

She waves goodbye and darts inside.

Her father started this back when he was out early on the Pampas and gone for days on end. Just a few words, scribbled in his thick, clumsy script, left under her bolster. Pillow post, he calls it. It is one of the few things that truly belongs to her alone– his firstborn. Everything else is shared or fought over.

Sometimes he will leave a flower pressed between a rough sheet of paper. He knows the tangled bodies lying in the bed beside her will not look under the pillow. Little boys too busy rushing outside to find buried treasure to realise there may be a precious secret lying under their noses.