A Royal Rose

Chapter Five

Rose awoke to the noise of her mother pottering around in the kitchen, the smell of food wafted under her bedroom door. When her eyes adjusted to the light, it took Rose a few minutes to where she was but the memories of yesterday filled her mind. She wasn’t in her small bedsit with the peeling wallpaper but surrounded by fluffy pillows and posh white cotton sheets. It wasn’t a drunken dream; I did meet my mother! She reminded herself.

Wrapping a thin cotton dressing gown around herself, she went to the kitchen to find Aine. She found her mother serving up some breakfast, “I’ve waited a long time for this” Aine said.

“I had to remind myself where I was this morning, it still feels so surreal to me. Breakfast smells delicious!”

“It was your grandfather’s favourite! There’s a picture of him over there with your grandmother” Aine told her daughter, as she pointed over to the framed pictures on the mantelpiece. Rose tucked into the scrambled eggs on toast, it was a huge portion, but she imagined it was because the eggs were so big at this size.

The rain hammered down on the ground and the floor of the Holt was sticky with mud. It looked like it had been raining all night, Rose was quite grateful for the excuse to stay in and talk to her mother all day. She was pleased the conversation flew quite naturally and that they both seemed to like similar things. She had noticed that Aine hadn’t got a significant other and despite looking at all the pictures dotted around there was no trace that there had been anyone else either. Rose hoped that her mother hadn’t been lonely by herself all these years.

Rose went over to the mantelpiece to look at the pictures in the frames. The man in the photograph was a very important looking man, her grandfather looked a bit like Winston Churchill, and her grandmother who was stood next to him looked very formidable – dressed head to toe in finery. Rose and her mother had decided once the weather was better tomorrow that they would have to go out and have a look around the Holt, to see the places that Aine had mentioned in her stories that she had been telling her about – the Fae Church with its rich history, for example, was where her grandparents had been wed.

Rose also saw on another picture, the whole family together, her grandparents with her mother and her brothers together as children. Even as a young girl, Rose could see the resemblance between her and her mother.

“All my life, I was told I looked like my dad by my grandparents and I never really saw it myself. However, I look at you and I see me. It is uncanny” Rose said as she admired the old photo in the gold frame. Aine walked over with a dusting cloth and she started to dust the ledge, holding up the picture of her family stared at the picture. “Do you miss them?” Rose asked.

“Every day. Particularly my brothers as I know they are out there in the human world, but they wouldn’t remember me, or each other” Aine said with a heavy heart.

Rose felt bad for her mother, the last one left of such a big family. She put her arm around Aine’s shoulder, her mother put the duster down on the mantelpiece and cried onto her daughter’s shoulder.

“Somedays, I wish life was so very different but then I wouldn’t have you. I know things happen for a reason and that the gods have their reasoning… but what I wouldn’t have given to have kept you” Aine said, wiping the tears away from under her eyes.

Me too, thought Rose, Me too.