Pacifier

🌹Sam🌿

I didn't like the cottage, not so much the cottage but being there. I felt claustrophobic, like I was stuck there inbetween places not really sure what I was there for.

Della, she was the answer to that question. I was there out of selfish love for that girl, and any other reason would have fallen short of enough.

But I'd promised I wasn't leaving her any time soon and I meant to keep that promise, whether I felt like I was going slowly insane or not.

It was my own fault, I was impatient and greedy, restless and unsatisfied.
It had been me and her alone for so long and now that we were in the company of others it felt strange, it felt crowded.

And it felt like we were walking a dangerous line, always. I couldn't touch her, couldn't hold her or kiss her, couldnt shoot her stupid winks when I wanted to wind her up. It felt unnatural to sleep alone on one of the sofas downstairs and it felt even more unnatural to know that I was letting her out of my sight even for a moment.

I knew she was safe here, knew that with me and Van around, even if we weren't in the same room, there was no one slipping past us and causing those girls harm but it didn't stop me tensing at the thought.
Everytime her and Izzy decided to wrap up in jumpers and blankets and sit outside on the lawn, every time they strayed from my line of sight, I got nervous, restless, wound up.

When she lay with her head in her arms in the grass and I sat on the back step beside Van smoking and making plans, I couldn't help but look over at her, think that her head would be better resting in my lap, my hand in her hair. Where i could hold her and touch her and remind myself that she was still here, still mine, still safe.

It was doing my mind no good being confined to that stifling little cottage. Every day my nerves fluctuated and frazzled, everytime I thought I saw Van watching me watching Della. Everytime I thought he might work it out.

Because I knew that if he did, if he realised what a fucking idiot I'd been falling for a bottlemen lass, he'd kill me.
In that house I felt like a dead man walking, already doomed.

Every day we lingered there, never achieving anything, just waiting, and for who? For what? We didn't know if anyone else would make it. We couldn't guarantee we still had anyone left to wait for.

The days were short, grey and dark, gloomy days, like the weather knew my mood and was holding a mirror up to me. Or they weren't, and they were bright but cold, frost on the grass first thing in the morning, more like Della, whos moods were strange and fleeting.

Some days she sat outside on the lawn with Izzy, twirling her pistol on her finger as she leant back against the apple tree at the bottom of the garden behind a dry stone wall. With Izzys head in her lap the two were out of sight from the road, but from the angle Della sat I knew she had a view of the road and I knew she, like me, was always watching it.

Somedays she remained indoors, watching the television yet paying no attention, seeing nothing.

But all the time she was vacant, drifting. Had I spoken to her she wouldn't have heard me and all that I managed was good mornings and alreets and little squeezes of her shoulder as I walked behind her and past. Never able to linger too long for fear of Vans watchful gaze, though I was naive for believing that he was watching us.

I should have seen sooner how his eyes followed Izzy and lingered when she rested.

And then one night Della crumbled, subtle, but disintegration all the same.

It was late, later than any of us should have been up, but me and Van had fallen into a pattern, of insomnia and whilst the girls slept upstairs we sat up in the kitchen around the table smoking, sometimes talking. He asked me about Della, sounded guilty every time.