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1 Rose Appleby

The woman has her back to us. We can see the flute of pink champagne held in her steady hand. We can see the dangerously low cut of her beautiful dress. We can hear her melodic laughter like tiny bells tinkling. She is talking in a girlie, flirtatious voice to a charming, older man. Her voice is not always like that. She can alter her tone depending on who she is talking to. It's not said, but we just know she is an elegant, successful and intelligent woman. She is vulnerable and strong, witty with an acidic tongue for anyone who tries to put her down. She is a modern woman'

Rose's eyes snap open. She had that same ridiculous dream last night about a woman she doesn't know that causes her to feel inadequate. It does not take much to make her feel inadequate though. Her attitude is that if she can attack herself first then it will not make any difference what anyone else says. She has already put herself down to a much greater degree than anyone else ever could. The strong sunlight is painful, so she vainly uses her hand to shield her eyes. Her mum has evidently pulled the curtains open so the sun will act as the alarm clock she keeps forgetting to set. Rose takes a deep breath readying herself to deal with the new day she already knows will be awful beyond expression. She fumbles with her hand for the notebook she is vaguely aware is on her sideboard. There it is and the pen with the gnawed end she uses to write in it is wedged in the notebooks spine. She scrawls in a fat, untidy hand her dream and thrusts the notebook back onto the sideboard. She now jumps out of bed. The rushed activity means she is out of bed before she knows it. If she paused to think about it she might never bother to get out of bed. She is hastily brushing her teeth now as she crams pens, pencils and paper into her rucksack. ''Disorganisation' should be your middle name, Rose Appleby!' as her mum likes to say, and as she likes to ignore. She is using a face cloth to attempt to scourge the dark circles and blemishes off her dull skin. As usual it does not work. She looks closely into the cloudy bathroom mirror. Looking sadly back at her is a small, slight eighteen year old with lank, black hair that hangs like a dead rag down her bony back. Her skin is ghostly-pale except for a shock off freckles on each cheek. Eventually she looks away in disgust.
She was a mediocre student throughout most of her school life until she hit sixteen. At sixteen she got the opportunity to really express herself. She took up Art something her parents had always dissuaded her from doing. Her palette was mostly blues, blacks and whites, colours that swirled together to create something depressing and pessimistic. That encapsulated her personality, she thought. Her teachers raved about her paintings, saying she had 'a good eye' and 'an innate talent' to each other and to her parents. This pleased Rose well enough, but really she would rather have not had the talent. She would rather have been unimaginative and dull-witted, but happier and more attractive than what she was now. It was the autumn term and the sixth-form was buzzing with talk of a fantastic university-life to come the next year. They would drink, sleep-around, get high on drugs and generally have a good time. Rose tried to imagine herself in the setting they proposed, but couldn't. Where was her life going? She would drift gloomily around the school playground, the backdrop to the majority of her life thus far and mull it all over. The dream diary that recorded her recurring dream of this perfect, confident woman, almost Amazonian in her splendour, represented who and what she wanted to be. There was only one obstacle to all this-how was she going to get there?