He'll have to break all the rules to keep her, but first she has to break just one and let him in...
It's taken four years, but Anna Fray has finally put the past behind her. Mostly. She fills her days working in a bar and her nights watching bad ro...
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The steady drone of tyres speeding over asphalt is the only sound I can hear as I stare out at the dark woods. Mum hadn't turned on the radio when we left my cousin's house.
"Mummy needs to concentrate, Annie," she'd said. It was what she always said whenever she drove in the dark. She usually avoided it where she could, but it had taken longer than usual to get back from St. Bees and drop Ali at home. Then Auntie Jo had started talking, and when Auntie Jo started talking it could be hours before she stopped.
I should be asleep by now, it's way past my bedtime, but - despite the lull of the tyres on the road, and the sweeping bends as we moved through the countryside – I couldn't sleep. Whether it was the sugar from the ice cream today, or the stream of new memories playing through my head, I hadn't been able to drift off. Instead, my short legs swung against the leather of the back seat as I stared out into the darkness.
It was pitch black outside, uncomfortably dark. The kind of darkness that played with your imagination, swirling and morphing into creatures and things that went bump in the night. With morbid curiosity, I watched as the car's headlights lit just enough to see around us, just enough to make trees and shrubs jump out of the darkness, bright and ghoulish against the gloom, before vanishing again.
Was that a face? A hand? Are those fangs? Claws? Are we being chased?
An overreactive imagination, that's what Mum said I had. It could turn creaky floorboards, moaning as the house cooled after midnight, into footsteps heading towards my bedroom. More than once it had tricked me into thinking that the soft toys piled on the yellow reading chair were actually my Grandma Mary watching me while I slept. An overactive imagination, Mum would say with a sigh, just because I saw things – believed in things - she couldn't.
I tore my curious eyes from the passenger window and looked towards Mum. Even with her face set forward and blank with concentration, she was beautiful. But maybe all daughters thought that. One day, when I grew up, I wanted to look just like her. I wanted her sleek chestnut hair, the kind that shone red when the sun hit it just right. Mine was mousy brown, fluffy, and full of kinks. And my eyes, far too much like my Dad's cool blue, lacked the warm turquoise my Mum's had, like the colour of the sea when we went to Greece. Her skin was the colour of golden syrup, just like the one she drizzled on my pancakes every year. She was everything warm and comforting and safe.
Her eyes caught mine in the rear-view mirror and crinkled with a smile. The navy eyeliner she always wore, just in the outer corners, was smudged and creased with tiredness.
"You should be asleep, Annabella-ding-dong," she mused, eyes flitting to the road.
"I can't," I mumbled and flashed a glance out of the window. My heart fluttered as monsters raced out of the black towards us before disappearing from view, replaced by trees, so tall they had no end.
