Roses Are Red

00: Prologue

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Winter

December 27th, 1956

Samantha Esther Clarke lugged a box up the steps of her new home. Her mother was already inside, sorting boxes in their new small house on Yorkcaster Road in Allerton, Liverpool. It was December, and Samantha had already decided she hated the snow. It was something she wasn't used to. At her old home in the bay area of California there was only immense amounts of fog and sometimes rain. It was far too cold here in Liverpool.

"Sam! Did ye unpack your jacket yet? It's not Santa Rosa here, darling yer gonna catch a cold," her mother called to her. Sam frowned, what was going on with her mother's accent? Sure, she was used to her mom's accent being slightly British, though less posh than the British people she watched on TV. Now it sounded almost completely different from her mixed British and American accent she used at home.

Sami marched in the house and set down the box she was carrying. "Mom, why do you sound like that?" She asked and made her way into the living room where her mom had pulled out Sam's new snow jacket and scarf. She looked at the two items and shuddered, mumbling something about hating snow.

"I'm home now, love, I can talk how I grew up talkin'," Maria Clarke said and stood up, handing her daughter the red scarf. Maria had grown up in Liverpool and was a true Scouser. Though she had forgotten her daughter didn't know much about her life before her husband. Maria had told Samantha old stories about her friends and the docks by the Mersey River and how the lights of the city looked when she sat on the roof of her parent's house. Besides the small stories from childhood, Samantha knew little about the place where her mother grew up. Samantha was an American, through and through. Maria regretted not talking about Liverpool and her roots more. Samantha was now experiencing a completely foreign place with knowing little about it.

Samantha shrugged on her brown winter coat and wrapped the red scarf around her neck. "You've hid your accent my entire life?" Samantha questioned with her eyebrows raised.

"People couldn't understand me, yer father had a little trouble at first too, so I worked to make meself more understandable when I moved to California," Maria said. Samantha shook her head, appalled by her mother's hidden accent. "Now ye need practice being able to understand it too before yer school starts, so I'm goin' back to my roots."

Samantha grimaced at the thought of school in January. Being an American was going to draw attention to her, as if her read hair didn't do that enough. She was the outsider for one of the first times in her life. Now she had just found out that she may not be able to understand the other kids she was going to school with? That only made the situation worse.

Her mother and her worked to move the boxes into their new house from the moving truck. Then the pair unpacked the boxes, slowly. Samantha only set up the necessary things in her room. Her mattress sat without a frame on the floor. A record player sat in the corner with a cardboard box of her records resided next to it. Next to her bed she had a lamp that illuminated a photograph of her family. She was just a small girl in the photo, probably around five, and her father held her on her hip while her mother gave Samantha a kiss on the cheek. She had always admired her parents loving relationship, they had always seemed practically perfect for each other. It was crippling to Maria to lose her husband, and to Samantha as well.

It had been only four months since they had lost her father. Maria had decided to move Samantha to Liverpool once her school semester ended. She had concluded it would be better for her to return home, and give Samantha a fresh start and a new home. She had begged and cried and screamed at her mother. Samantha didn't want to leave that life behind, a life where her father was alive.