Confessions of a Bitch

Cinderella

**Sorry for any mistakes in this chapter. Sorry I took long to update.**

I shouldn’t be here. Even worse, I shouldn’t be going through mum’s belongings. You see, there has been an unspoken rule we’ve had… a quiet, yet visible boundary we’ve never dared to cross. A long time ago, I was Annabelle: the small girl in faded blue jeans and a dirty yellow shirt, with a scar on my face. I was the girl who cowered in the shadows as my mum would scream late at night as my biological father would hit her.  I was the girl no one talked to at school. I was the girl who lived in silence, struggling to survive a day at a time. 

That was until we moved here, to Geraldton.

The Lady Lair is clean and the rubbish bin, empty. Mum must have taken it out in fear I’d come back and take the torn pieces of paper from the bin and sticky tape them back together, to recreate the portrait that scared her shitless.

I open her cupboards and rummage through them, trying to find what I’m looking for. To be honest, I do not know exactly what I’m looking for. A photograph, perhaps, or a letter …I’m still not sure. I close the cupboard and head towards the wardrobe in the corner of the room. Mum always said she kept her spare clothes in there. Every woman needed a spare wardrobe.

Except this time, the wardrobe is empty.

A small box is tucked away at the corner and I hurriedly snatch it and yank it open. The box is filled with stacks of old photographs. I sit on a chair and slowly begin looking through them.  There are some very old ones of a woman smiling at the camera. The woman looks like mum, but older. Who knows? She could be an aunt, a distant cousin, or my grandmother. I continue rummaging through the box until I find the photograph that holds the answers to all my questions.

It’s a photograph of dad, scowling at the camera. I’m in his arms, playing with a ruined teddy bear. On his arm is a tattoo. It’s the exact one that was on Viper’s car. My breath hitches as I assemble the puzzle in my mind.

What does my father have to do with this?

He still has a couple of years left in jail, so what is he up to? For a split second, I think of returning back to Port Headland and going through his records to see what I can’t find. However, the idea is quickly disposed of. Mum would be pissed if she finds out and Viper will use it against me.

The sound of footsteps startles me and I hurriedly close the box, place it in the wardrobe and hurry outside of the Lady Lair, and into the hallway. “Mum?”  There’s no reply. “Mum, is that you?” The sound of footsteps briefly gets louder before the door opens and shuts and silence once again fills the house. I scramble to the kitchen and my heart lurches in horror when I see Victoria’s necklace on the table. I pick up the necklace and the note beside it. Scrawled in black ink and sealed with a kiss are the words:

You better start praying, bitch.

V.