Trust No Bitch: Part 1

Lilly Philipps: Wednesday, 4th November, 2015

The breeze was, at a leisurely pace, beginning to swap its summer wings for winter claws and though it was still a little too premature to go fully out with gloves and scarves, most students never missed an opportunity to exercise their latitude when it came to clothing choices. Many wrapped themselves up in giant coats, with them doubling as blankets for early morning lectures; Lilly didn't have it so easy. She had to pretermit her love of colour coordination and instead settle for the first coat not to accentuate the ever-expanding bulk of her pregnant stomach. She had agreed to meet Gemma and Alice in order to incite some kind of fighting spirit in Clara and would not permit herself to rock up late over some outerwear. Alice would not let it rest. They had agreed that between them they would confiscate Clara's alcohol and if worst came to worst, have a "bit of a go at her", to which Alice had initially objected, claiming that it was too early for tough love. There had to be a more ordered way to go about it, she said, maybe watering down Clara's alcohol and weaning her off the stuff without her realising. Gemma, on the other hand, the one who had proposed the "tough love" course of action, was an intransigent advocate of the strategy. It worked wonders on her younger brothers, she had reassured them. Lilly was reluctant to be too harsh on Clara herself; after all, she was usually the one to wipe the tears away, wrap the person up in a blanket, offer them a hug, be the doting mother figure. The kind whose child, more often than not, grows up to be the resident spoilt brat. Inadvertently, she tended to indulge people's sadness because for the most part, she would never dare to tell anyone to "just get over it". From what Gemma (who, in Lilly's opinion, had always had a knack for knowing just the right way to look after a person) had told them, however, they had little chance of helping Clara any other way. And she was right, to an extent. Eventually, Lilly'd had to resort to that kind of approach with her impuissant dad after her mum passed away and whilst it had almost reduced Lilly to tears to do it, yelling at him to get out of bed, there was a noticeable improvement. Tough love was a selfless thing, often harsher on the giver than the receiver. She'd tried to tell herself that maybe that was the reason for Cleo's treatment of her. Cleo's way of building her up. Only that didn't fit with the sequence of events; before she'd stood as tall as the skyscrapers of New York and yet after Cleo she was the flattened Chernobyl. It was of Cleo she thought as wrapped her coat tightly around herself on her way to Clara's flat. She found Alice and Gemma already there, huddled surreptitiously around Clara's front door.

"You're going in first." Gemma commanded, providing little in the way of a greeting other than a slight nod of the head.

"What? Why me?" Lilly countered. "Because I got here last?"

"Yes. And because she probably likes you the best." Alice replied.

"Why do you say that?" Lilly asked.

"Take my word for it."

"But she's playing, like, satanic music in there." Lilly hissed, gesturing towards the door.

"Jesus, Lil, it's just Jack White. Now are you going in or not?" Said Gemma." The doors already open so we don't need your underwire this time, babe." She quipped with a smirk.

"Funny." Said Lilly, outwardly huffing, inwardly seething and jerking the door handle, finding that the door swung swiftly open. Before stepping in, she peeped round the door frame. Though her vision was obscured by cigarette smoke, she could make out a human-shaped protrusion in the duvet cover. Lilly took a deep breath of the corridor's relatively fresh air before edging herself into the room and pulling the door to behind her. The first thing that hit her was the smell: sadness.

Stale and heavy, like it felt on the body.

The sooty vapour from Clara's cigarettes clouded Lilly's view of the room, like a crow closing its wings over its sequestered nest, the leaden sky only slightly visible through the drawn curtains. The little light from outside that was creeping into the room, however, was no help whatsoever in illuminating the pathway towards Clara's bed. Lilly couldn't help but be reminded of something she had read around the time of her mother's death and her dad's subsequent depression. If happiness be the flame, shining forth and illuminating all those who step into its pathway, its warmth spilling onto their form, then what can be said of misery? It is vine-like, you see, mummifying its victim, suffocating them the more they resist. Entwining anyone who dares to intervene until all they can do is cut it loose for fear that they too will fall prey to it. That being the case, Lilly found herself in a forest the second she entered Clara's flat. She immediately felt inclined to bolt back out of the front door and swing it shut behind her so that the despondency infecting the room couldn't spread but like your typical horror movie idiot, Lilly kept going, despite knowing that if she were in such a film, viewers would be yelling at the screen for her to turn back. It's only Clara, she reassured herself, though it transpired that her asseverations did little to comfort her. Her stomach contorted itself more and more with each step she took towards the mass under Clara's duvet.