Rose Water by Hannah Retallick
At the school gate this morning, Grandma scrubbed my bully with her words. She leant down to Billy’s ear, her breath turning his face white and hollow, as though he’d been gripped by a demon. Then she strode towards me, grabbed my sweaty hand, and led me to the car. I touched my stinging elbow. Sophie tripped, Billy had said to the teacher, but I’d told Grandma the truth as soon as she arrived to pick me up.
‘He will not be bothering you again.’
I believed her.
Grandma is difficult to love sometimes, because of the way she talks to people, but she’s hardly as bad as everyone thinks. I should know; I’ve lived with her ever since my mother scarpered. Grandma never attacks me. She attacks my enemies. What’s difficult to love about that?
Tonight, she bathes me in a tub filled with scorching water and a trickle of her favourite rose oil. She sits on a stool nearby – legs splayed apart, ballooning her long black skirt – and tells me stories from her early life, as she often does, leaving no details unspoken.
‘Things didn’t come easy then.’ She clasps her hands. ‘The war, of course, the blitz, the evacuations, the food rationing. No, things didn’t come easy. Sometimes it was necessary to take drastic measures to protect yourself. Yes, indeed, that wasn’t the time for any sort of weakness.’
Grandma’s words curl around me like the steam curls around my reddening body. With her eyes fixed on the wall behind me, she tells me about the people she lived with in Suffolk while the Nazis battered London. The couple, Mr and Mrs Foster, provided her a temporary home to get her out of the city. It didn’t last long. No more than a month after she arrived, the unthinkable happened.
‘Unexplained deaths, that’s what the police said; a mysterious, troubling coincidence.’ She paused, then added, ‘When they met their tragic end, I was not too inconvenienced. I returned home. I much preferred it there.’
Grandma glances at the shrivelled skin of my hand that rests on the side of the bath. She stands, pushing on her thighs to pop her body up, leans over me, and pulls the plug. It makes a gurling sound.
‘Get out, Sophie,’ she says.
Once I’m standing, she wraps me in a rough towel; it’s like sandpaper on my back when she rubs me down, rubs me raw.
‘There, finish drying yourself. You’re a big girl, aren’t you?’
‘Y-yes, Grandma.’
‘Never did like them, mind you. Mr Foster had creeping hands, if you understand me. His wife was no better, simpering and weak, going along with it all.’
‘But Grandma, what hap–’
‘Carefully, now. Mind your balance. Is the heat making you faint?’
I can feel tears welling; I think rose water has got into my eyes. I bury my face in the towel and wait for a moment until I have control over myself, hoping she won’t notice.
Hannah Retallick is from Anglesey, North Wales. She was home educated and then studied with the Open University, graduating with a First-class honours degree, BA in Humanities with Creative Writing and Music, before passing her Creative Writing MA with a Distinction. Hannah has gained recognition in many international competitions, including receiving Highly Commended in the Bridport Flash Fiction Prize 2022 and winning the £2000 Edinburgh Award for Flash Fiction 2024 – the biggest flash prize in the UK. Her debut short story collection, Something Very Human, was released by Bridge House Publishing in November 2024.
Hannah Retallick won the £2000 Edinburgh Award for Flash Fiction 2024 with What You Do When You Find Your Mother Dead. – please watch via the link here ….
www.hannahretallick.co.uk/about
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