✨️ONC 2023 Shortlisted✨️
'And I knew then, with an earth-shattering certainty, that everything I'd worked for, strived for, suffered for, had just turned to dust. My life as I knew it, scattered along the pavement with shards of windscreen and the c...
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The fireworks pop and stutter overhead, the flashes of colour bursting across all our skins, the sparks mirroring the ocean blue of Connor's eyes. Christmas passed quietly. I'd stayed at Dad's and let the days slip away in a lazy blur of TV sitcom repeats and chocolate wrapper piles. My belly is now undeniably rounder, and the sickness had left me behind the month before. The days were subdued, quiet from us both trying so painfully hard. Seeing Dad tear up over Mum, his voice gritty as he'd sang had stayed with me. Same as the expression on Mum's face. It wasn't that my anger towards him had gone, but it had faded to something manageable. Something that could keep the venom off my tongue most of the time. I hadn't gone over to Mum's, and she was still silent other than a half-hearted 'Merry Christmas' on Christmas day morning.
It's New Year's eve, and we were once again in the Grady's garden, Kitty's playing old soul and disco from her phone as she sings along in a haze of drink and nostalgia. The kind that hits you hard as the clock stretches towards midnight. Nick is lying on a sunlounger by her side. He's been snoring for the past two hours. Dad is watching the fireworks with a thoughtful look on his face. I suspect he's not seeing them at all.
I try to relax, to enjoy the warming flames as they heat the air between us, as the smoke dances along to a melody of its own. The fireworks display is providing our entertainment. But it's hard to focus on anything but the slow, ticking countdown to midnight, on how different my life was this time last year, how different it will be again this time again next year. When I'll have a living, screaming baby curled in my arms. An image that still felt too distant, too abstract to be real. People were noticing now, seeing my swollen belly against the rest of my slender frame and coming to their own judgements about me. I had controlled how the world saw me for so long. To find it slipping through the cracks was painful.
Sarah rushes into the garden panting, her breath billowing before her mouth. Her eyes burning as brightly as the fire.
"What are you doing? Didn't you get my message?" She barks in Connor's direction. He exhales reluctantly and leans forward, his elbows on his knees.
"I got your message. Let it go."
Sarah purses her lips angrily. She looks around the circle, searching for back up and I suspect I'm the only person here who doesn't know what she's talking about. Kitty sighs unhappily. Dad avoids her gaze.
"She's home. And they're not. Come on, we need to go." She looks at Connor desperately. I see the fear in her eyes.
"Sarah..." He drags himself up and approaches his sister slowly. Gently, he puts his hands on the tops of her arms. "She isn't going to change her mind. Maybe never. She's safe... for the time being, and that's all that matters now."
Sarah pulls away from his grip, putting distance between them. Her eyes are wet, the fireworks fizzing ahead glowing green in the tear tracks on her face.
"How can you say that? How can you just give in?" Connor's body tenses, his shoulder turn stiff and I resist the urge to stand but I still don't know what they're talking about it. I glance over at Dad, who deliberately avoids my eye.
