[Zedebee]

Thanks for all the lovely comments everyone =)
I'm away for a bit so here's a long-ish bit to keep you going.

March 14th 1997

16:05
As the girl ran with her playmate towards the crowd slowly gathering around the flashing lights she heard her name being called from a distance and within seconds felt two strong arms clasp around her small waist. As she turned around, struggling against the force that held her air-bound, she was met with a face she recognised and instantly her struggles subsided, her Uncle. He forced a smile at her “hello kiddo!” She could see the strain in his face. She asked what was going on, why there were policemen in her house, why there was an ambulance, what was in the ‘big grey bag’, why he wasn’t letting her go in… why…why…

March 14th 2007

07:00
Rosie awoke with a start to the nightmare she couldn’t remember living without. So many questions she remembered asking as a child. So many unanswered questions then, still so many of the same questions unanswered. She shut off her alarm and shut her eyes again, allowed her mind to drift back to the time and place that she tried to forget for the best part of her life. The flashes…the bag…the police…the crowds…the knock on her door. Rosie was brought back to the now with a start, “come in”, she allowed herself to mumble.
“Morning love, thanx for the water, much appreciated.”
She replied to the sound of her dad’s voice with a nod and shut her eyes again until she heard the door click behind him, indicating his leaving. As she listened to the sound of his footsteps moving across the hallway and down the stairs, she sat up in bed. Looking around her she took in the surroundings that she absorbed on cue every morning; her bed in the middle of the room –single, her wardrobe on the opposite side of the room in the left corner, the window next to this looked out onto the road, her desk to the other side of the window, her sink to the other side of the wardrobe and her rug to the opposite side of the bed, nothing colour co-ordinated, everything lived in. Rosie rose from her bed and completed her daily routine; shower, clothes, breakfast. She looked at her face in the mirror, ‘the image of her mother’ her father had once said. Rosie couldn’t see it at the time, but sometimes, when comparing photographs of them both, she could apply the crescent eyes and the pale complexion to the two.
In autopilot she made her way down the stairs and out of the door, receiving the usual hungover grunt from her father and the slightly cheerier “bye Rose” from the wife.

She slung her bag onto the seat beside her and got into the car, turning the key and preparing to leave, when a call of “ROSIEEEEE !!” startled her enough to make her stop in her tracks. She waited as she saw the figure of her friend Jack come into view and jump in the other side of the car.
“Charming, Rosie, really charming. I give you driving custom for the whole four months since you passed and suddenly the ONE time when I’m two minutes late you get ready to leave without me!” He said it all very seriously but slowly his face broke into a grin, and with Rosie’s sincere apologies he gave her a punch on the arm and warned jokingly that if she ever pulled something like that again the consequences would be harsher. He gave her a wink and settled back into his seat, “Y’alright there love? You seem a bit distant?”
“Nah I’m all good, head’s away in the clouds it seems, sorry again about nearly leaving, nothing personal?”
Jack laughed again, “Really Rosie, you’re forgiven, and hey when is your head not in the clouds?”
Rosie smiled, Jack, one of her best friends, had been one of the people she had first gotten to know after they had moved to the new area when she was seven. Now at eighteen, and three months older than Rosie, he was one of the heartthrobs of the school to everyone but her, and although he would never let on to his adoring fans, she knew he really had a heart of gold.
They pulled up into the parking bay and Jack jumped out, “Gotta run, have to catch Kim before first period! See you after break!” Rosie laughed, there was always some girl he had to run and see.
“See you then, have fun?”
It was his turn to laugh, “Oh I will,” and with that she watched him walk briskly through the school gates.



The day went on in its usual fashion, leaving Rosie tired after first period, and in need of a serious coffee boost by break time. She sat there with her friends at break, nodding and smiling but not really listening, all I have to do is get through the day, she kept telling herself, then I can forget again. Towards the end of break she felt a nudge in her ribs and looked up to see Jack standing above her, “God girl, earth to Rosie! You’re lucky you have friends good enough to elbow you for me!” She heard Louise giggle apologetically beside her,
“Sorry Rose, he was insistent!”
Louise, Rosie knew, had a huge crush on Jack, just like every other girl in this school, she thought, so Rosie knew that sadly if Jack had asked Louise to jump off a cliff, she probably would have done so too. She smiled at her, apologised once more that day to Jack, and headed off with him to PSHE, a great-excuse-for-a-gossip kind of lesson. PSHE was the lesson founded more recently by the government to “enlighten the young people of today about topical issues affecting the world around us”, or in other words to tell the kids of the day about sex, contraception and obesity. All very interesting, if most of the information receiver by the class hadn’t already been learnt through word-of-mouth years ago. As they entered the classroom however there was an ill silence across the class, people were muttering under their breaths, but no notes were passed, nor text messages sent. When the two sat down, they both saw why. The word ‘SUICIDE’ was staring them down from the middle of the board, in big red capital letters. Jack gave Rosie a “here we go” kind of look, and they both removed their books from their bags, breaking the fallen silence momentarily in doing so.
“Suicide,” started the teacher, “is a word you will all be familiar with. It is the word commonly used to describe the act of taking one’s own life. But I want to ask you today, what you think it really means to commit suicide? What do you think goes through a person’s mind? How do you think they feel? What kind of impact can it have on the people around them? Firstly, I want you to retrieve a piece of paper from your bags and I want you to write on it a few words of what comes to your mind when I say the word ‘suicide’.”
There was a flurry of white, as people removed pieces of paper from their bags and started to write. Rosie could see Jack beside her writing furiously everything that came to his head, in fact, everyone around her seemed to have a lot to say on the matter.
“Now, I want to go around the class and I want you to all read out what you have written on your piece of paper. Lets start from the front and work backwards. Lewis?”
“Selfish. They hurt people around them,” a few people nodded.
“Kim?”
“Cowardly. They just take the easiest escape from life when everyone else has to sit here and live it.” Rosie inhaled slowly.
“Okay, Sophie?”
“Sad. I think it’s sad that people feel they have to resort to such drastic measures just to get away, and I think they must be very sad to do it.” Her head was starting to spin.
They had reached the back corner where her and Jack were both sitting now.
“Jack?”
“Disgusting.” She held her breath.
“Would you like to elaborate on that, Jack?”
“I think it’s disgusting, anybody who can do that to the people around them is disgusting, they don’t deserve to live in the first place, they’re clearly selfish, they…” Jack was cut off. Rosie had heard enough. With Jack’s words ringing in her ears, she grabbed her paper and her bag and ran out of the room. She ignored the voice calling her back and ran. Away from that classroom of anger, she ran out of the doors and out of the school gates onto the park. She ran across the green of the park, running and running until she felt her lungs giving up on her and she fell to the ground in a pool of tears.
She did not know how long she had been there when she realised she still had her piece of paper clenched in her right hand. But as she released her fingers she wondered how reading it again would feel. She unscrewed the paper to read the one word written there, coal to chalk, pen to paper. The one word that she thought of when someone said the word ‘suicide’ to her, the one word that could never be uttered under her own roof unless it was to relate to an actress, a wife to her father, but an actress of the part none the less. She read over the word again and again, until it was just a blur through the tears in her eyes. She shut her eyes and still she saw the word tattooed onto the back of her eyelids, “Mum.”