Lost in Paradise

Chapter 2

Emma's phone vibrated, shaking the wood beneath it. It sent ringing through her ears, pushing her pounding headache to lash out, scratching at the insides of her temple. It didn't wake her though. The nightmares had already done that - the train of five o'clock thoughts that ran tracks around her mind, almost weaving a web of images that scarred the tissue on her brain had awoken her. She thought that coming back to England and resuming her life as Emma would be better, she thought that because the nightmares had disappeared when she was Bella, they might just go when she was Emma again. She was wrong. she forgot how exhausting it was to feel the empty pain smash against her body, she forgot how exhausting it was to wake up every morning and have to slot your half leg into a metal contraption, knowing how the missing leg had came to be. She forgot that she hated Emma.  She lay motionless, listening to the vibrating phone beside her bed. 'Time to get up.'

Her daily ritual was exactly that - everyday for the past few months she would wake up, make a glass of orange juice, shower, brush her teeth, read some of her book, go to the gym, shop for food, come home, cook too much dinner, throw most of it away, watch TV, shower, then go to bed. Her daily ritual had become so repetitive, she could automatically count how many words there were to the pages of her book, and how many calories was in each piece of food she picked up at the supermarket, and how many miles she'd run everyday on the treadmill at the gym. She was alone, hopelessly waiting for someone to whisk her away back to the old times where everything was so much more sinister but so much more exciting. She didn't need money. She didn't need fame. She needed thrill. That's what drove her to the stealing.

She only started small, packet of chewing gum, packet of sweets, the odd small thing that slipped like butter into her pockets. But then it became worse, watches, phones, iPods - she couldn't stop herself. It's not like she needed the products, usually she would throw them out or take them to the charity shop. She needed to feel something again, to feel excitement, anxiety or a rush. She knew that it was wrong, but there was nobody here to stop her. Living on the Isle of Wight was apparently not the dream that she'd always thought it would be. 

Her ritual was different today, because somebody knocked at her door. She hadn't had a visitor since she'd moved into the three-bed detached house, or a phone call. That's what made it scary. The knocks sent shivers through her spine. 

She shuffled downstairs. She could see through the glass that somebody was stood at her door. She didn't know whether to open it, whether she should let in whatever demon that was at her door. Because that's what everyone who had ever walked into her life had become; a demon. 

"Go away!" She shouted, closing the gap between her and the front door ever so slightly. 

"Emma?" a woman's voice replied - it was innocent, almost too innocent. 

"Who is it?" Emma asked.

"Just open the door." And so she did. Yasmine was stood on the other side, her hands clasping the rather large lump on her belly. 

"Oh my -" Emma stopped mid-sentence and grabbed Yasmine's arm, yanking her through the door. 

"Ouch," Yasmine winced.

"How did you find me? You do realise someone might've recognised you?"

"I needed to talk to you. My husband is a hacker and I'd heard that someone had spotted you in Portsmouth five months back so I knew you'd only be there to come to the Isle of Wight. So I got him to hack into some CCTV and he found you on some street cameras."

Emma gulped. Suddenly her throat had become tight. What if Yasmine had saw her stealing?

"You do realise how stalkerish that sounds, don't you?" 

"I had to find you and Dylan, where is he anyway?" Yasmine asked, taking a seat in the living room. The sofas were grey, just like the rest of the room. It felt as if nobody had really ever lived here. 

"He, erm. He moved to New Zealand before I moved back here. He said something about being able to start again with Romania," Emma replied.

"Oh. Well, I think you should sit down to hear this."

"Just spit it out Yasmine for goodness sake."

"It's about Gina. She was killed a couple of weeks ago."

Emma sat down. Yasmine was right, she cared a little bit. But Yasmine wouldn't have traveled all this way to just tell Emma that Gina was dead. 

"You didn't come all that way to just tell me that, what else? Did you kill her or something?" 

"No," Yasmine paused, "but Robert might have."

Emma glared at Yasmine, trying to make sense of what she was saying. And that's when the breeze flew across her face and she turned her head to the door, realising she'd left it open and stood, blocking the doorway, was Dylan.

"It's true then?" He said, "Robert's alive?"