Safe And Sound

Safe And Sound.

My names Ainsley, I'm 21 and I'm a misfit from Cardiff, Wales. All my life I have been running from the good and the bad. It's just me, my motor, and my savings account.

I know what you're thinking, it won't get me far, yeah yeah. But when your parents think you're staying at a friends while they're on a business trip for three months and are still transferring £5000 a fortnight plus extras, on top of the £50,000 savings, it does get you far very far.

In fact it gets you as far as I am now, on a 72 hour ferry, to wherever the world takes me, away from here, away from home and away from everyone I have ever known. I know the payments will stop eventually when they find out I'm not actually at a friends but until then, this is all I have. I never told anyone I was leaving, because truth be told i never actually had a friend, whose house I could stay at, I never had a boyfriend to love me unconditionally, I never had parents to tuck me into bed at night, because they were never home. I never had anything, so leaving behind everything back home is easy for me. Yes one of the real reasons I'm running is because I got into some bad shit at home but right now is not the time to bring up my past.

I won't go somewhere plush and fancy, and I won't go to the slums, I'll go somewhere where you can't complain, or have too much of a good time, somewhere neutral. Somewhere where you are going to struggle, but where it's not so hard that you don't have to sell your body. Most of all, the place I'll go to- is a place where nobody will know me.

Why you ask?

I want a new beginning, I want to start my life fresh, where I have no background and no baggage. I want to meet new people, try different cultures, and really see the world. I don't want to live a high and mighty life style like i have been for 21 years, I want to struggle and the heartbreak I want to know what it's like to be in trouble financially I want to experience all that. Instead of having everything handed to me on a silver platter with gold rims and handles.

As for the running away in general, its self explanatory as to why I'm running from the bad, it brings nothing but pain into peoples lives. But the good? Everything is too good to be true and even if it wasn't whatever, or whoever it was will leave eventually, like my parents fortune it wont last forever so why wait years when i can just leave now. Everything with be fine as long as you keep well away from both and just settle for satisfactory however pleasant or unpleasant you find you, you'll be safe and sound

*

"Anything to drink, miss?" The onboard waiter asks me, holding out a drink, on a silver platter.

"Ergh can I not get a break"

"Sorry, miss?" He looks at me, clearly confused at the statement I muttered to myself.

"I'll just have a water, please" I ask in a sickly sweet voice. When I got aboard this ferry, I thought I was going into coach, clearly not though, and the only ticket they had left was first class, and that's where I am now. I've asked to be swapped with someone in coach, but this bloody waiter won't let me.

Maybe if I ask a different one..

"Excuse me? Could you help me out, please" I question another onboard waiter. "I was just wondering if there was a single riding passenger in coach that I could swap with?"

He motions for me to follow him to a computer, where I assume he is checking single riding passengers in coach.

"We have one, goes by the name of Farrah Hardy, you want me to ask for you?" He replies, walking over to the door saying 'coach class'.

"It is okay, I mean would you mind if I done it myself?" I ask trying not to snap, I know it's their job but you can't do everything for everyone.

"Erm.. No, no be my guest, Booth 35" he states before lazily walking back over to the punters at the stupidly priced bar.

After walking the aisles, I finally come across, booth 35.

"Excuse me- but are you Farrah Hardy?" He jumps a bit at the contact of my hand on his shoulder, and looks at me with fear in his eyes..

"Y-yes what do you want?" He ask, slowing backing out of my touch.

"Don't be scared, I just wanted to ask if you'd like swapping, I'm in first class right now, booth 1C but I was hoping I'd get a coach ticket and I didn't, so would you mind swapping and upgrading?" He sits and stares at me for a while, and it's only when he blinks, do I realise that his green eyes are glistening with tears ready to be unleashed. I barely have a second to react before he pulls me into a spine crunching embrace, muttering countless thank yous into my ears.

He pulls back a little and just stares at me. "Why are you doing this, is this a set up?" I motion for him to follow me to a lounge area, and begin to explain to him how I don't want to royalty treatment, and how I don't want to be waited on hand and foot, he don't look like he understands, and I finally realise why when he opens his mouth to tell me his story.

"When I was 5 years old, my parents were the cause of a major car crash for drink driving. I wasn't with them at the time I was at my first day of school, and when they broke the news to me, I was ecstatic, because they had survived, but what I wasn't told that was, that because they were the cause and were drunk, 10 times over the limit that I would lost them anyway, and that night they were locked up in prison, and I haven't seem them since," he pauses to take a breath, and I can't believe what he is telling me, and what he has been through. "Obviously the school phones social services and I was taken away, effective immediately. Within 6 months I was adopted, on one of their visit days, they took me out to the water park for my sixth birthday, they seemed like a really good family. But once they had signed all the adoption papers, they were the nastiest people I had ever met, but being a six year old, I couldn't do much about it so I had to live through the constant beatings and violence. I lived with this, right up until I was 10, when a social worker was called because of the noises my neighbour heard during one of the most severe beatings I had ever gotten, the police were obviously called to, and just as I was about to take my 15th punch to the gut, the door was busy open, the adoptive parents were caught red handed and I was hospitalised, that's about one of the last things I remember about that night, when I woke up, I was in a hospital room, full of get well cards and flowers from teachers and students at the school I attended. About 5 minutes after I awoke, a Doctor walked in and, I quote, 'it's nice to see you have finally woke up, Farrah. Do you know what year it is?' i said to him that it was 2002, and that I was 10 years old, to which he replied, no, it'd 2010 now, Farrah, you're 18, and I had never cried so much. He explained what happened, and how the punches I received, caused my brain to bleed, and swell, and that's how I ended up in a coma for 8 years. They said i was lucky I didn't come out seriously brain damaged.. But here I am- a year later still the same person, I just lost my teenage years, and now I'm running, because that life was no good for me, I'm running to start new, like you"

By the end of his little throwback into the past, I do actually have tears falling down my face, everything he said, was ejected from his lips with raw passion and emotion. He has had, the complete opposite life to me, and doesn't deserve to be sat here in coach. I know I should be here to give him some sympathy, but that won't help it, he will only feel worse about himself and think people just think of him as a pity case with no hope, when that would be the most untrue statement ever to be made in history.

"Go pack your things and get your ass into first class, I'm not letting you stay in here any longer, you deserve the luxury more than I do, you deserve to be waited on hand and foot more than i ever have. just go and have fun- treat yourself, don't worry about bar costs or any costs for that matter I'll pay for those at the end of the trip, I'm Ainsley by the way, Ainsley McFarlen"