The Red Ribbon Read online

  Rose didn’t answer.

  I’d never asked Rose if she’d had time to pack. Whenever I tried to talk properly about her arrest she shrugged me off with fairy tales about being locked in a dungeon by ogres, then carried here by a wooden dragon and dropped into Birchwood with a bang.

  We dodged around boxes stacked up to the rafters.

  I’d heard most people were given a few minutes or even hours to pack their belongings for the train journey here. Me, I was just going down the street — in the gutter of course, because I was on a List and that meant I wasn’t allowed to walk on the pavement — swinging my satchel, and wondering what would be in the new issue of Fashion Forecast. Next thing I knew, a truck with bars across the back windows pulled up next to me, and police were shouting and dragging me. I screamed for help. People in the street pretended not to notice. The truck doors banged shut, marking my very un-fairy-tale switch from one world to another.

  I wondered, what would I have chosen to bring if I had had a chance to pack one suitcase? Clothes, of course, and soap and my sewing kit. Food, oh, all the food I could fit in a big bag!

  “Books,” breathed Rose, spotting a cascade of hardbacks.

  What idiot would waste space lugging books when they could have clothes and grub? An idiot like Rose, obviously: she took a step forward, spellbound.

  Mole caught her arm. “You can’t have those. You came for fabric.”

  I fetched out the shopping list Marta had drawn up. Mole scanned it quickly. “Come this way.”

  In another hut, among the bolts and folds of fabric, I found exactly what I needed. I knew it would be perfect for Madam’s dress. It was a heavy, fluid satin that shone like hazy sunshine on a too-hot field of wheat. It was in sections, rather than an uncut length. Nervously I smoothed the pieces out, checked them for size, and pulled a few stray threads from the edges. It was clearly the remains of another, bigger dress — a magical ball gown — unpicked for recycling. Who’d once worn it?

  “What do you think, Rose? Rose?”

  No sign of her.

  I panicked. For one moment I imagined Rose buried under mounds of thousands and thousands of pieces of clothing. I had a vision of pulling at her arm, only to find it was an empty sleeve, or a trouser leg or . . .

  Lost in contemplation of a book.

  She wasn’t even reading it. Someone else was — a guard.

  He was a young guy with a bit of mustache fluff on his upper lip and a hand that kept dropping to hover over the gun on his belt. He’d obviously been at the book for a while. He was somewhere in the middle of it, tracing the words with a stubby finger. Rose’s eyes were following that finger as if it was loaded with gold and diamond rings.

  I hissed her name. Rose didn’t hear me.

  The guard didn’t notice her standing there at first. When finally he did, his forehead crumpled with annoyance, but he just stared at her.

  “Is it a good book?” Rose asked politely, as if he was some nice boy she’d bumped into at the local library.

  The guard blinked. “Um, this? Yes. It’s good. Really, really good.”

  “The sort you can’t put down?”

  “Um, yes.”

  Rose nodded. “I think so too. I’m biased. My mother wrote it.”

  The guard stared at her so hard I thought his eyeballs would actually pop out. A fiery blush crept up from his collar to the roots of his hair. He looked at Rose, then at the name on the spine of the book. Without another word, he closed the book, walked to the stove, and threw it in. The guard wiped his hands on his uniform as if they’d somehow been contaminated. If he could’ve scoured his eyes and purged his brain of that book, I think he would have.

  I tiptoed over, turned a stone-cold, stunned Rose around, and guided her out of that hut.

  “Hurry up!” said Mole. We both stumbled after her.

  A room full of spectacles — thousands of glassy circles looking at nobody. A mountain range of shoes — brown brogues, football boots, dance sandals, ballet flats. New shoes, old shoes, dull shoes, bright shoes. Big shoes. Baby shoes.

  My shoes . . . ?

  Just clothes.

  There was no hiding from the truth now. No looking away. No pretending. The Department Store wasn’t a glorious treasure trove. It was a terrible graveyard of lives. We all came here wearing clothes and carrying luggage. Everything was tricked or ripped from us. Take away people’s things, and you’re left with a simple naked body that can be beaten or starved or enslaved or . . .

  All those clothes and all that luggage could then be stored, sorted, cleaned, and reused. How horrifically efficient.

  Rose had been right. This was an ogre’s hoard, collected by modern, business-like ogres in suits and uniforms. Instead of a fairy-tale castle or dungeon, They had built a factory. It was a factory that processed people into ghosts and turned their possessions into profit.

  Rose tripped over a small brown suitcase. It broke open and waves of photographs spilled out. Rose skidded and went flat down on her behind, surrounded by a sea of snapshots. Beach holidays. Baby cuddles. Wedding groups. First days at school.

  Unknown eyes looked up at us as if to say, Where are we? Why aren’t we on the mantelpiece or by the bed or in the wallet anymore? I helped Rose to her feet, conscious of all the faces being trampled. I heard Rose say “Sorry,” as if they were real people. Which they once had been.

  I clutched Rose and looked straight at her.

  “We can’t end up invisible or nonexistent,” I gabbled. “We’re still real, even if They’ve taken our clothes and shoes and books. We have to stay as alive as possible, as long as possible, just like Girder said. Do you know what I mean?”

  Rose’s gaze didn’t waver. “We will live,” she said.

  I told myself, Look down at your sewing, not up at the chimneys.

  I wrapped myself in a world of silk and stitching. I made the dress of dreams. Outside there were the sounds of trains and dogs, and the stink of latrines and worse. Inside there was me and the magic of my work. I had flashing scissor blades, a glittering needle, twinkling pins, and shimmering thread.

  I set up a dressmaker’s dummy, padded out to the exact shape of Madam’s measurements. On the other side of the workroom, Francine did the same. I wasn’t worried. Not after Francine picked out a cheap-looking chiffon fabric the color of baby vomit.

  Rose did a lovely job of pressing my silk. I’d arranged with Marta for Rose to sew more, but she was still doing the ironing. Rose said she didn’t mind ironing.

  When she said that, Marta took me to one side and said, “What you don’t understand about Rose is that she’s not like us. We know what we have to do to survive. She’s still stuck thinking she can be her own sweet self.”

  I wanted to say something to defend Rose. Nothing came out.

  Marta nodded. “Rose wouldn’t last five minutes without you. You’ll be getting out of this place if you keep your head screwed on right. Her . . . I wouldn’t bet on it.”

  Everyone in the workshop knew by now what a talented needleworker Rose was. Her fingers could turn skeins of silk into swans, stars, or flower gardens. She embroidered all the natural life we never saw in Birchwood — ladybugs, bees, and butterflies. She stitched yellow ducklings on a child’s dress Shona was making for the daughter of a very high-up officer. The ducks looked so chirpy and so real you almost expected to see them waddle off the frock and into the nearest puddle of water. Except there wasn’t any water in Birchwood, not for Stripeys, at any rate. Our lips were cracked with thirst. What came from the taps wasn’t safe to drink.

  When Shona saw those ducks, she just buried her face in the little frock and started to cry.

  “Shh!” I said. “Marta’s next door with a client. Don’t let her hear you.”

  “I miss my baby,” she sobbed.

  “Course you do,” said Francine. “We all miss somebody, isn’t that right, girls? Now wipe your face and finish up that seam you’re sewing.”

 
; “Look out!” said Rose.

  The door to the fitting room opened. I saw Marta’s fingers on the handle. She was chatting to a client.

  “The child’s dress? With the ducklings? Yes, sir, I’ll just have it fetched for you. Yes, she will be growing fast at that age. . . . Just learning to talk, is she?”

  Rose moved to hide Shona from Marta’s view.

  “Give me the dress, quickly,” I hissed to Shona. “You know what’ll happen if you’re caught like this again.”

  “Give her the dress,” said Francine.

  “Come on, Shona,” coaxed Rose.

  Shona’s cries grew louder and louder. I couldn’t hold or quiet her.

  What would Marta do?

  Slap her.

  I slapped Shona. Hard.

  That happens in films when people get hysterical. I never thought it would actually work — not when getting slapped was all part of daily life in Birchwood. To my surprise, Shona drew in a deep breath . . . let it out . . . then slumped.

  When Marta came back to the workshop, we were so quiet you could’ve heard a pin drop, if pin-dropping had been allowed. By then Shona was back at her machine, hemming curtains for the officers’ quarters. The duck dress was, we heard later, a huge success with the little girl who got to wear it.

  Rose was also working on the sunflower for my creation. She cut a sunflower shape in silk and backed it with a layer of batting and another layer of plain cotton canvas. With white tacking threads, she marked the lines that the sunflower petals and leaves would take. Next she unwound a length of silk from the skeins Marta had doled out, and she began to stitch. I loved watching Rose sew. She got so absorbed.

  “I like embroidery,” she said later, when we were curled up in our bunk together. “Sewing’s when I come up with my best plots. My mother says she cooks up her stories in the kitchen, when she’s baking. Tragedies turn the lemon cakes bitter. Comedies make her spicy dishes zing!”

  “I thought you lived in a palace with an army of servants.”

  “Absolutely. Cook used to fume like a broody volcano every time Mama took over the kitchen. You should’ve heard her bashing pots around and muttering, It’s not right, folk not knowing their proper place. Mama didn’t help matters. She was easily distracted and always left the washing up for someone else to do.”

  “For you?”

  “Oh no! I’ve never washed a pot in my life, not till swilling out my soup-water dish here. My job was to listen to Mama’s stories, lick the mixing bowl out, then eat whatever Mama had made.”

  “My grandma used to lie in the bath when she was inventing dresses, until the water went cold. The toilet was in the same room, so me and Grandad were always busting to go on days when Grandma was really inspired.” I sighed. “Can you imagine ever getting to have a bath again?”

  “Oh, yes,” replied Rose quickly. “A massive soak, with bubbles piled up so high they spill over the edge. Along with a really good book and lots of fluffy towels.”

  “You read in the bath?”

  “And you don’t?”

  “Do you like reading more than sewing?”

  Rose hesitated. “Do I have to choose?”

  “You do if you’re going to come and work in my dress shop after the War.”

  “Ah, I’ve an invitation to join you in this place of wonder?”

  I almost wriggled with joy at the thought of it. “Won’t it be amazing? My very own shop. Perhaps some of the other girls in the sewing room could join me. Shona’s pretty good, and Hedgehog . . .”

  “Who?”

  “You know, the bristly girl who never smiles but sews a mean invisible hem.”

  “Oh, you mean Brigid? She can’t smile.”

  “Why not?”

  “The usual. She made a vow to the queen of the Frost Giants that she wouldn’t smile for a year and a day.”

  “What?”

  Rose sighed. “She’s embarrassed about her bad teeth. A guard kicked her in the mouth once.”

  “Oh. Well, we need to find out if she wants a job when we get out of here.”

  “Any idea where this legendary dress shop will be?” Rose asked.

  “Somewhere classy. A nice street — not too quiet, not too hectic. Big windows with ridiculously sumptuous displays, and a door with a bell that rings when customers arrive . . .”

  “Thick carpets, bowls of happy flowers everywhere, and swags of curtains across the fitting-room cubicles?”

  “Exactly!”

  “Doesn’t sound so bad, I suppose,” Rose teased.

  I stopped what I was doing, which was squishing the lice that lived in our dress seams.

  “Not too bad? It will be the most wonderful thing ever!”

  “Better than bread and margarine?”

  “Equal to bread and margarine. Seriously, we’ll wear smart suits and blouses with crisp white ruffles down the front. And put our hair up in the latest fashions . . .”

  “Styled by the hairdresser next door.”

  “There’s a hairdresser’s next door?”

  “Certainly.”

  “I was hoping there’d be a hat shop.”

  “There is,” said Rose promptly. “Two doors along, next to a bookshop. And a bakery on our other side, run by a woman who specializes in iced buns and chocolate cream éclairs.”

  “Oh, god,” came a voice from the bunk below. “Did someone mention chocolate?”

  “Shhh!” said everyone else. “What if Girder hears?”

  “Girder hears everything!” came the boss’s big boom. “If there’s chocolate anywhere in this block, it needs to reach me in no less than three seconds.”

  Rose continued in a whisper. “The place I have in mind is perfect for us. The streets aren’t too busy. There’s a park just opposite, with a fountain where the children go paddling in hot weather, and an ice-cream kiosk, and a magical apple tree that just snows blossoms in springtime.”

  Ice cream was almost too painful to recall. I loved creamy-yellow vanilla, with crystals of ice on the edge of the scoop, then the cold mouth-meltingness of it all . . .

  “You make it sound so real,” I said. “You and your storytelling!”

  “Maybe it is real,” Rose replied. “Maybe I know a place like that. Maybe it actually exists.”

  “Where is it, then? Anywhere near here?”

  “Ha! As far from here as from the sun to the moon. It’s in the most dazzling place in the world. A city full of art, of fashion . . .”

  “And chocolate.”

  “Definitely chocolate. A city lit by so many lamps they actually call it the City of Light. That’s where our shop will be, with our names scrolled in gold writing above the window — Rose and Ella.”

  “Ella and Rose,” I corrected, gently but firmly.

  The next day I was ready to savage something, someone, anyone.

  “What’s the matter?” Rose asked.

  “Isn’t it obvious? The dress is a complete disaster! I made the cotton toile as a practice piece and it seemed OK, so I cut the fabric and tacked it and it’s totally wrong. The worst thing I’ve ever made.”

  A toile is a rehearsal — a dress rehearsal, if you like — where you put the dress together, but not in the actual fabric.

  I groaned. “Francine will win, and Marta will have me sewing cushions if I’m lucky.”

  “Wrong how?” Rose asked.

  “Just wrong.”

  “Ah. That explains everything.”

  “Don’t make fun of me.”

  “Then tell me what needs doing to the dress to fix it. The size?”

  “No, it’s made to Madam’s exact measurements.”

  “The draping?”

  “No, that’s fine. Except she probably won’t like it.”

  “The color?”

  I nearly exploded. “How can you say that? The color’s beautiful. Look, stop trying to criticize it. Given the conditions I’ve been working in, it’s a miracle I’ve done this well. Marta hasn’t helped, al
ways hovering, asking when it’ll be ready.”

  “So it’s good, then?”

  (Why was she smiling at me?) “Not good enough.”

  “Of course it’s good enough, and the next one will be better. That’s how it works — you get experience and improve.”

  “Why can’t I just be better now? This is the most important thing in the world to me, Rose. If I can’t be a dressmaker, what am I? Nothing!”

  Rose caught hold of me and hugged me close. “You’re a good friend,” she whispered in my ear. Then she kissed my cheek. The spot where she kissed me tingled for hours afterward.

  Rose finished her sunflower while I was still wrestling with the dress. It had a burst of bright petals done in satin stitch, and knotted seeds so real-seeming I wanted to gouge them out and eat them.

  “I know you had the flower in mind for the shoulder,” she said, “but I think it would sit nicely on the hip, where the silk gathers and falls.”

  “No, it’s got to be the shoulder.” I held the flower there. Then switched it to the hip. Annoyingly, Rose was right. On the shoulder it looked tacky, on the hip it looked perfect.

  Rose watched me. “Do you think it’s nice enough?”

  “Nice?” I nearly choked. “It’s not nice. It’s wonderful. The best embroidery I’ve ever seen.”

  How could she dismiss so much talent? At that moment I didn’t know whether I wanted to shake her or . . .

  My heart beat quickly and I bit my lip.

  Or kiss her.

  Then my machine was sabotaged.

  I had my head down in pure concentration when a man came in. An actual male, opposite-gender man.

  The effect was electric. The air crackled. Brigid touched her head, as if she still had hair to preen instead of hedgehog bristles. Francine pinched her cheeks to tease out a bit of color. Marta managed to look flustered too — probably because hormones were something even she couldn’t boss around.

  In Birchwood They mostly kept male and female Stripeys separate. The only men we saw on this side of the barbed wire were guards and officers. Now here was a male prisoner! A reminder of fathers, sons, brothers, husbands, and sweethearts. Not that I’d ever had a sweetheart. Grandma would’ve turned inside out at the mere idea of a boy coming to call. You’re far too young to be thinking of that, she would’ve said.