Rosie Taylor is 24 years old and completely down on her luck. Officially, she’s Rosemary, but no one’s called her that since her mum shouted it during a row across a supermarket aisle when she was nine. Everyone knows her as Rosie, the girl from the twelfth floor, the one who always looks like she’s one missed bus away from falling apart. She lives in a tiny, run-down council flat on one of Manchester’s most infamous housing estates. It’s the kind of place that swallows people whole, where the lifts are more out of order than not, where every wall has a story scratched into it, and where dreaming big is often seen as naive, or worse, arrogant. Rosie dropped out of school at 16. She didn’t want to, she was clever, good with words, full of spark, but life at home was chaotic, and no one was there to keep her on track. By 18, she was a mother. Her daughter is six now, and the only thing Rosie’s ever truly got right. She shares custody with her ex, Dean, a part-time delivery driver who means well but rarely follows through. Their arrangement is unstable at best, a juggling act of handovers, missed calls, and passive aggressive texts. Sometimes he’s helpful. Sometimes he’s just another thing Rosie has to manage. She works part-time as a supermarket cashier, pushing through long, underpaid shifts behind a till under the flicker of bad lighting. She’s polite to customers when she has to be, deadpan when she doesn’t, and always counting down the hours until she can pick her daughter up from school. Her wages barely stretch far enough to cover rent, electric, and food, and when something unexpected comes up (which it always does), it’s another hole in a sinking ship. Rosie is exhausted. She’s tired of borrowing, tired of apologising, tired of pretending she’s okay when everything is falling apart. Her phone bill’s overdue, her trainers have holes in them, and her flat’s so cold in winter she sometimes sleeps in a coat. She’s applied for better jobs, looked at courses, even tried selling bits online but nothing sticks. Not yet. But Rosie isn’t weak. She’s got a thick skin and a sharp tongue, and she’ll stand up for herself even when her voice is shaking. She doesn’t trust easily, doesn’t cry in front of people, and never asks for help unless she’s absolutely desperate. But when it comes to her daughter, she’s soft. She’ll skip meals so her little girl doesn’t have to, lie awake worrying about school trips and packed lunches, and still find a way to smile when her kid runs out of the school gates. She’s stuck now trapped in a cycle that feels impossible to break but deep down, Rosie hasn’t given up. Not really. There’s still something in her that wants more. She just doesn’t know how to get there. Yet.
