These Days

v

BEFORE HOPE WATERMAN BECAME THE INTOXICATING LANDSLIDE THAT NOW REMAINS, CIARA RECALLS HER STRICT LIPS AND SCOLDING FROWN. She used to insist that manners should be as frequent as the oscillations of her high ponytail, that Ciara's potty mouth was unneccessary and foul.

That version of Hope Waterman would be furious at Ciara right now.

But that Hope Waterman didn't like Ciara McAdams very much. That Hope Waterman thought that Ciara McAdams was haughty and big headed and useless. She thought that Ciara McAdams was wasting her life away.

Ciara sighs, standing slowly and heading over to the counter (behind which Hattie Spencer is stood looking very shocked), pausing quickly to snap her fingers in front of the waitress' gawking face. "Any napkins, Hattie?"

Hattie swallows and nods, scurrying away and returning a few moments later with a wad of scrunched up tissue. "Are you okay?"

Ciara shrugs. "I'm fine," she says.

But it's a lie, a huge, glowing, red fat lie and Ciara McAdams has been strong for far too long and she knows that she didn't mean what she said, she didn't mean to say that he was fucked up and she certainly didn't mean to hint that Hope Waterman might be fucked up because oh God, no, Ciara McAdams knows that she is the most fucked up person in the vicinity, in the entire world. And she knows that her sharp, spiteful tongue is just a defense mechanism for her icy heart and that her jealous, biting snaps are just the icing on her heart broken cake and she knows that she was wrong but she can't turn back time because if she could then Hope wouldn't be dead and Ciara wouldn't be standing here wishing that she was dead and -

And she explodes. All of today's fears and yesterday's emptiness and this whole entire nightmare of a fortnight's sorrows come seeping out from beneath her heavy lids.

"Oh my God, Hattie, I'm not okay," she sobs, her lower lip trembling in time to the tsunamis flooding from her eyes.

And then she turns around and walks out, scrunching her eyes slightly so that the tears fall away and the doorway becomes a little less blurry. It's cold outside and the first few flakes of the winter are just beginning to fall. It's monumental, Ciara notes, and she knows that she'll probably see at least a dozen Facebook statuses about it when she finally brings herself to log back on. She wishes that she could attach Hope to the weather, to remember her everytime that it snows by the way that she hated it or by the way that she lived for it.

But she can't.

Hope wouldn't have cared.

She would have shrugged and continued on.

Would have. The words echo about in Ciara's skull, bouncing around her tangled brain. She finds them difficult to comprehend.

She finds this whole fucking thing difficult - no, impossible to comprehend.

Hope Waterman is dead.

A snowflake lands on the tip of Ciara's nose. She wipes it away, shivering. In the distance she can hear people singing. She assumes that it's a choir of some sort - probably for a charity event. They've started already, despite the fact that Christmas is still over a month away.

Her phone buzzes and Ciara retrieves it from her back pocket, grimacing and inhaling deeply before sliding her thumbprint against the answer icon.

"When are you going to be home?"

"Hello to you too, dear brother," Ciara responds, sniffing. She hates this weather. It makes her throat all crackly and her sinuses all tingly and she always sounds like she's right on the verge of breaking down.