CHERUB

Grace 'Graci-Lou' Louise Houston

Graciela Louisa Horton entered from the back of the bakery, and went straight up the to residential flat above it, dangling the keys on the tips of her fingers as she walked through the kitchenette and into the cosy living room.  On a comfy leather armchair in the centre of the room, sat her father, stationery and withered.

Graciela Louisa Horton returned to the same blank face of her father, every afternoon of the week.

It wouldn't matter if they had guests, if Graciela had brought friends over - it was always the same bleak expression on his stony face

"Hey, dad. Sup?" Graciela asked half-heartedly, expecting nothing to be muttered from her father's weary lips.

She was right. The greying hairs of his unattended moustache quivered, but no reply.

Gary Horton hadn't moved from this trance for seven years, since the death of his wife, the mother of his three children, due to a brain cancer that left her in a coma.

Jacob Horton, the eldest child, became the main supporter of the family business at a very young age due to the state of her father.

"Jake! You home yet?" Graciela called out, secretly hoping for no reply.  She needed some time to herself, to clear her head.  After hearing no response to her call, she traipsed down the hall to her room.

The space was quite small, with a desk cluttered with loose papers and unfinished schoolwork.  She sighed and slumped at her Ikea desk chair, flipping through that pages of the latest Frankie magazine.  She swivelled around in the plastic seat in discomfort, before getting up and collapsing onto her bed, and muffling the sounds around her with a set of head phones, listening to her iPod on shuffle with the volume up way too loud.

- - - - -

Several hours later, Graciela heard a knock at the door, and effortlessly mumbled permission of entry.  Jacob cautiously walked in and looked down at his sister lying limply on her bed, the music so loud it was blasting out from her headphones so that even standing in the doorway you could hear it.

"Grace, dinner's on the table, it's takeaway, I got vegetarian for you, is that alright?"

Graciela lay unaffected, so she either couldn't hear over the loud music, or she didn't care.

"Grace, listen!" Jacob shouted, growing impatient.

"Whatever, I'm coming." Graciela muttered as she threw her iPod onto the soft duvet cover and her headphones dragged onto the dark grey carpet.

- - - - -

The next morning, the bright rays of sunlight shone through the translucent white curtains, illuminating the whole room.  Graciela slouched out of bed, absentmindedly getting dressed into her heavy school uniform and stumbling into the kitchen.

"I'm making eggs, Grace, would you like some?" Her older brother, Jake, asked while holding the handle of a fry pan over the hot gas stove.

"I'm not hungry." Grace bluntly replied, yawning as she did.

"Oh come on, Grace, you have to eat something.  You're not going vegan again are you? God, I don't know how we survived last time you went through that phase." Jake rambled on for a couple of minutes, before Amelia, the youngest of the Horton siblings, interrupted him with fine details on the exciting events of her week so far.

"And so Mandy and Jo went to the fair, but Annie said Sandra couldn't go because Alexandra got a kitten for her birthday and Lizzie was very jealous, of Katie too, she got two ferrets which Sarah thought was very copy cat of her, and Carrie and Rosemary couldn't come to Lena's party so Lena doesn't want to sit with them anymore, so now Delly and Chanelle sit with Hanna and Ayla, but I sit with Emily and Lilly and Lucie." Amelia explained in a very matter-of-fact way, especially for a seven year old.