Frigid Flora

eight - cosy closet

Chapter Eight

My dad once told me that dread was like an invisible demon that sat upon your shoulders. It was hefty, it weighed you down and only you could hear the sharpening of its knives.

I felt that all too familiar weight on my shoulders, the heavy feeling sitting in the pit of my stomach as I watched Parker drive away.

The lights were on and I could see her shadowed figure moving about behind the living room curtains. It meant that I had absolutely no excuse to explain my whereabouts. I had planned on just pretending to have stayed in all day when she returned from work but it was clear that I couldn't stick to that plan. If I told her the truth (that I had been hanging around with a group of boisterous young males which had the appearance of wild youths) there wasn't a doubt in my mind that the woman would have heart failure. She wouldn't believe me if I told her we only had ice-cream.

Even I wouldn't believe me.

With bated breath, I unlocked my door. Having heard the jingle of my keys, I was immediately met with my mother as I stepped inside. She worked in the bakery that was roughly a fifteen minute drive away and was still clad in her working clothes; a shirt sporting the bakery's logo and a pair of loose fitting jeans. There was a smear of what looked like flour on one of her flushed cheeks and her fair hair had been piled into a messy bun atop her head. She looked dishevelled to say the least.

"Where have you been?" She demanded with a hand on her hip.

"I-" She was giving me that parental look, the one that said to spill the beans or else there'd be trouble. The look that even when you're thirty years old would still make you quake in your boots. "Um..."

"You better start explaining yourself young lady, I've been worried sick!" She ran a hand through her hair and I watched as an almost unnoticeable cloud of flour puffed into the air before settling on her shoulders. I idly wondered if she'd had some kind of baking disaster to get so coated in the ingredients. I imagined her making snow angels on the floor of the bakery, only minus the snow, plus the baking flour. She raised an eyebrow, completely unaware of my distracted thoughts.

"Well you see, really funny story-" I chuckled awkwardly, trying to buy myself some time to conjure up a plausible excuse. She knew exactly what I was doing. "I was driving to school when I saw this homeless man choking on his meatballs," It was at that moment I swore to myself to never again get caught in a situation where I had to lie on the spot. I had no idea where I was going with this. "And I, um, had to dislodge the one choking him from his throat."

"He was eating meatballs for breakfast? That seems unlikely."

"Are you saying that you know this homeless man's dietary habits?"

"What has this even got to do with being absent from school?" She demanded.

I swallowed before I spoke, trying to moisten my mouth which was currently as dry as chalk. "Oh- right," I paused. " Well once I had saved his life he asked if, uh, he could borrow my phone to call his brother for help. They had a bad relationship, you see. He wanted to make amends and unfortunately he wouldn't pick up so I told him that I'd stay with him until he did. I couldn't exactly go to school if that meant leaving a poor old man by himself because that would be morally wrong." I said the last sentence so quickly that the words blurred together and I was surprised that mum had managed to make sense of it at all.

"Flora," She said stiffly. "When the school called me to say you weren't present, I phoned you. You never picked up any of my calls so I came home straight away only to find that your phone was stuck in between the cushions of our sofa. How exactly did you phone this man's brother?"