The Girl with the Flaxen Hair

<p>Jane Piccadilly bought a mistake-house. In a hurry. </p><p>While her perfectly white shoe sunk into something brown and offensive. </p><p>There was always a mistake-number-one with something new wasn't there? </p><p>And there was always only one mistake wasn't there?</p><p></p><p>Dear Alice's little girl <em>plain Jane</em>. The middle of seven sisters. </p><p>The one who was the least seen but saw the most. </p><p>The one who could slip out of a family gathering and no one would see.</p><p>The middle invisible child.</p><p> </p><p><strong>The one who saw the bodies. </strong></p><p></p><p>Jane Piccadilly made the mistake-house an un-mistake </p><p>and her six sisters moved in-Poppy the librarian </p><p>Violet the hairdresser Daisy the carpenter Rose the photographer </p><p>Zinnia the botanist and Flora the farmhand. </p><p></p><p>Then came the letters left at the front door. </p><p>And the strange man with a carpet bag who sat on the bus seat.</p><p></p><p>It all pointed to one thing. The unravelling. </p><p>Of the mistake house with its secrets. </p><p>Of plain Jane and the threads that held her past and her present</p><p>her trauma and her guilt and her shame deep inside her </p><p>straining and breaking. </p><p></p><p>The truth always has a way of exposing itself. </p><p>Plain Jane wasn't so plain. Was she? </p><p></p><p></p>