Serenity Falls

Chapter 51

Hello everyone! Hope you all had a good Christmas :D I did! As a surprise my Mum and Dad got Serenity Falls printed out as a hardback copy, so now it's on my bookshelf! It's not quite getting published but hey, it's close enough for me :-) Anywayyyyy, here's the next chapter!

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Alyssa pulled up to the entrance of her house, reaching out of the sleek black convertible to press the button on the gate which would grant her access. As she did so, she heard the crackly voice of their security guard, John, through the speaker.

"It’s me," she said coolly, in the same way she did every day when she returned from school, although today had been far from ordinary. She leaned back in the soft leather seat, rested one arm on the edge of the car’s door and waited for the gates to open.

"Good afternoon, Miss Taylor," the voice on the speaker crackled, as the gates gave one loud creak and began to move apart, allowing her to push down on the accelerator and begin cruising up the long driveway in the direction of the garages where all her father’s cars were kept.

She barely noticed the long stretches of lush green grass and stunning greenery that embellished the grounds of their estate. The gardener had been hard at work for the past few days and the area was looking better than ever, but this was not something that Alyssa noticed. She passed them every single day and never showed any interest, and plus, after the day she had had, all she wanted to do was go up to her room and try to forget everything that had happened.

Still, she should’ve known that wasn’t going to happen.

As she walked up the stone steps and through the front door of the house, shortly after parking her Jaguar in the garage, she could hear her father’s voice in the sitting room.

That’s strange, she thought. I didn’t think he would be back from the business trip so soon. After all, when he went away from home, he was usually out of the house for weeks at a time, travelling directly from location to location without even bothering to return home.

"Daddy?" she called, throwing her bag down and walking across the entrance hall in the direction of the lounge. The door was open, so she walked straight in.

She was greeted by the sight of her father stood in the middle of the room, talking to Tiffani who was perched on the edge of the couch. This room was rarely used, despite its beauty and incredibly large open log fire that provided more than adequate warmth, and she had not visited it in a while. In fact, there were many of the rooms in the house that she did not visit, being so many of them anyway.

"Alyssa." His voice was sharp, and his eyes fixed on her as soon as she entered the room. He did not look happy, to say the least.

She froze, immediately realising what this was about. How could he have known what happened today? She had only just returned home, having spent a long day in Mr Delmar’s office and then in isolation. They hadn’t trusted her to be in the school with Courtney in case they started fighting again which, to be honest, was likely. She had expected Mr Delmar to phone her father, but she hadn’t foreseen that he would fly home today.

"I didn’t know you were coming home today," she said, forcing a slight smile on her face in an attempt to lift the mood, but Mr Taylor looked far from happy.

"I wasn’t planning on it," he responded. "That was, until I got a phone call from your principal."

"Oh, yeah, um... about that..." Alyssa started, before she was interrupted by him speaking again.

"So you recall it then? You recall fighting on stage with Courtney?"

She bit her lip, unsure of how to react. She honestly wasn’t prepared for an interrogation at this point – her father had never flown home this quickly before, even when she got in trouble at school.