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"DADDY PLEASE, DON'T GO!" OLIVIA sobs, she grabs onto her father's arm as he walks out of the door, a suitcase being trailed behind him and tears pooling down his face as he listens to his daughter's cries. Steve pulls Olivia back towards him, she collapses in his arms as Steve holds her tightly, shedding his own tears, "Daddy, please."
The door slams shut, shaking the house and making things rattle. Olivia lets out a scream of pure pain, hitting and scraping at her brother's arms, trying to get her too let him go so she can run after him, beg him too stay and not leave her. Their father was leaving for someone he found in another continent, in London, a woman he was going to marry and have kids with and he wouldn't return again.
Or so they thought.
Their father did in fact return, he returned 10 times after that, and another 10 after those, each time sadder then the other but Olivia still waited on the porch steps for him, no matter the weather. When she got that letter in the post telling her that he would be home she went outside and sat on their cement porch steps, wrapped tightly in a blanket with her teddy bear and a hot chocolate, or an ice cold cup of water and a fan on an extension lead too keep her cool.
As soon as he walked down the drive way, she dropped everything she had and would run into his arms. Every single time, like it was a loop, stuck in her mind and every single time he would catch her and hold her tight, promising her he wouldn't go again. And every time he broke his promise and left them, wether that was in the middle of the night with no warning and just a check of 10 grand left on the table, sometimes he would give them a warning and say goodbye, other's he would just get up and leave.
And every time Olivia would be distraught, she would lock herself away in her room every time, not eat and just read the postcards he sends her. On her birthday she would get gifts in the mail from him, expensive gifts, designer bags and clothes, expensive teddy bears and toys, on Christmas it was books and makeup. But every year, she sat at the door on Christmas Day with her new toys, waiting for him to walk in, covered in snow and holding a new teddy bear but he never did.
On her birthday she did the same, playing with her new toys or chatting too Will on the radio and he never walked threw those doors, not once. And as if burnt into her brain, she would spend the next day crying in her room because her father never showed up.
On the one year for Christmas that her mother and father was home, she didn't get any gifts, she got multiple arguments given, drunk parents and hiding away in a broom closet waiting for Steve to get home from a party. She hated it, listening to her parents fight, having screaming matches in the living room, kitchen and in the hallway. The doors slamming, the bottles smashing, the swearing. All of it left her traumatised.
