The sound of the clock ticking in Samantha's living room was driving me mad. I never had much of a habit for television but I would have given just about anything to magic one into Samantha's house. She had a radio, and eventually I got up from the small kitchen table and turned it on. It was on the classic FM station, which made me feel slightly queasy, knowing our father was no doubt listening to the same station at that moment. The look on his face when we had dropped the boys off with them the day before was still with me, still crawling across my skin like bugs. I'd never felt like my father had looked at me, in my life. He had a habit of looking away from people when he spoke to them and his children were no exception. It gave the impression that he permanently just wanted to be anywhere than other than he was. I'd always felt his eyes just kind of glide over me, like I was part of the architecture of the house. But when we dropped the boys off it felt like he had stopped, registered my for the first time, and realised that I wasn't just Child 3 in his parade of offspring, but that I was Elaine. Distinct from other people. It was a feeling that stuck to me like glue.
The boys were still there. I had asked my parents to keep them for a few days, and Dad had agreed. I didn't ask what my mother thought, I just pushed her out of my mind. Dad would look after them until I could figure out what kind of mess my life was in now.
I tuned the radio to the generic mix FM station, where they play reliably popular songs from the last fifty years. It's not necessarily great music, but its inoffensive and fills the background silence with a comforting low hum of familiar noise. It was barely after five in the morning. I couldn't sleep properly in a house that wasn't mine, and I found myself wandering about in the middle of the night. I liked to walk though the rows of ceramic creations in Samatha's workroom, silently getting to know the pieces. There were vases and statues and one strangely large ceramic fox, sniffing the air with one paw in the air. They became my friends, in deathly silence, as I paced around the house in darkness.
I sat down at the kitchen table. The kettle is right next to it, on the bright blue bench top. I pressed the button down and watched the comforting blue glow light up the little corner of the room I was sitting in. My heart was bouncing around inside my chest, as it had been ever since Kelly had smashed the big blue vase by our front door, and I had taken the boys out of the house and brought them to Samantha's. I was living an inch away from what felt like a heart attack, and the exhaustion was starting to ray my edges. I focussed on clearing all the cobwebs out of my brain, breathing deeply and evenly, as the water rumbled in the kettle next to me. I was starting to feel calm when the front door suddenly shook and rattled in its frame, as someone on the other side banged on it as loudly as they possibly could. My finally slowing heart slammed against my rib cage as adrenalin immediately flooded my body. I jumped up reflexively, my chair scraping backwards across the floor. The banging continued, but I froze. I remained where I was in the kitchen, looking through the gap under the kitchen cabinets but above the bench, where I had a view of the trembling front door. It felt like an eternity passed before Samantha appeared, emerging from her bedroom with her hair so wild around her head that it looked as though she had suffered an electric shock. She stumbled slightly in the doorway and braced herself against the frame, breathing in like she couldn't get enough air.
"What's going on?" Her voice was a sleep-slurred mumble. I couldn't speak. I found myself frozen in place like one of her statues. Inside my mind there was a calm voice, but not one part of my body would do what it said. I shook my head, my mouth opening and closing like a dying fish, and Samantha marched her way over to the front door. She flung it open to expose the two police officers who were standing in front of it. It wasn't Wakefield, and it wasn't Ridge. It was two uniformed police officers I had never set eyes on before, a man and a woman. There was a police car behind them, but it's lights were off. Part of me was glad that at least the neighbours weren't being drawn outside by flashing lights to gawk at the crumbling of my life. The female police officer was standing in front of the male one. I assume she was the one who had been banging on the door. She held a pale blue sheet of paper that I knew immediately was some kind of warrant.
