ALANA'S MISTAKE ✔

Chapter 17

The next morning Snow crept into Alana and Noah's room as the sun began to rise and crawled under their duvet at the foot of the bed, wriggling up between them, popping her head out of the top of the covers and nestling herself down. She closed her eyes and pretended to sleep. Both Alana and Noah were awake by now and neither of them could help smiling.

She looked like a little angel lying there with her blonde curls strewn across the pillow and her cheeks all rosy. Her hand rested just in front of her face, her small fingers relaxed and open. She breathed quietly through her nose as her eyelashes rested on the tops of her cheeks. Alana leaned over to gently stroke her daughter's face.

'Is somebody awake?' whispered Alana.

Snow's eyes sprung open.

'Yes!'

She grinned, showing off all her little white teeth. Noah groaned and rolled over, still half asleep. Alana scooped Snow up under her arm and she rested her head on her chest as they sat up against the headboard.

'Why don't I tell you a story?' said Alana, quietly into Snow's ear. 'But we have to whisper so that we don't wake Daddy, ok?'

Snow nodded, enthusiastically and silently. With that, Alana told one of Snow's favourite stories, the Princess and the Pea, all about a princess who simply could not sleep because there was a tiny pea underneath her mattress. Alana embellished the story, making sure she did all the different voices, making it so that the princess had to build her own bed in a far off land, just to get away from that pea.

Snow listened to her mother's every word, nodding along, wide-eyed and giggling when the story got silly. Alana's hair fell onto Snow's, a similar shade of blonde except a little darker than her daughters. They both had the exact same curls: tumbling and cascading over their shoulders.

When they were done with the story, they both crept out of bed, leaving Noah to doze on his own. They wrapped themselves up in their dressing gowns, put on their fluffy pink slippers and went downstairs to eat breakfast. Snow ran ahead to turn on her favourite weekend cartoons on the TV. Alana reached the bottom of the stairs and looked at the pile of mail that lay at the foot of the front door.

She absentmindedly picked it up and began flicking through as she passed along the hallway to the kitchen. There were random leaflets and envelopes that obviously contained bills and then there was a bright red envelope with writing on the front that she did not recognise, addressed to her. She sped up to get to the kitchen, threw down the rest of the mail and focused all her attention on the lone red envelope.

She felt a familiar tingle of nerves. She hardly ever got letters, just a few cards in the post at birthdays but she knew all of her relative's handwriting and this definitely did not belong to any of them. Her stomach flipped. She checked to see that she was alone - Snow was still in the living room and there was no sign of Noah. Then she ran her finger along the top of the envelope to open it.

She pulled out the paper inside - cream coloured and thick, covered in black handwriting, with small, detailed drawings interspersed between the writing, her name emblazoned along the top, in a fancy, hand drawn font. Alana. She scanned to the bottom of the page. It was signed: Elias. Her heart sank. She checked again that she was alone, sat down onto one of the kitchen stools and began to read...

'My dearest, sweetest Alana,

I wanted to write to you to say, thank you, for being there when I most needed someone. If it weren't for you I could be dead right now. Dead, and gone, snuffed out like a candle. No more. It was you that saved me from that, you know? And I will always, always, always be grateful.

Alana, my guardian angel. I should write a song about you. In fact I think I will, just as soon as I get out of this hospital. They won't let me go, they say I'm not stable but there's only one thing that can ever make me stable and that's you, sweet girl.

My father always said to me that you can't tell the heart what to do. The heart wants what it wants. And he was right, after all this time I now know he was right... I can have any girl, I have had any girl, night after night after night. But what does it mean? Nothing, it means nothing. But you know that. You don't live like that.

Those girls, no one, nobody understands, not like you. You're an artist, you have the soul of an artist, I saw it in you the first time I saw you and I saw it in your work. You were there that night at the gig, I saw you then, from the stage, dancing. Glowing. Like an angel.

I want to be with you, Alana. Is there any way? Any way at all? I want to meet your child too. Your daughter. I bet she is so beautiful, just like you. Does she look like you?'

Alana stopped reading abruptly and looked up from the paper, running out the room to check on Snow. She sat there, wrapped in a blanket watching cartoons, completely oblivious. Alana let out a long breath, returned to the kitchen and kept on reading.

'As soon as I'm out of here, let's you and I go for dinner. I'll take you somewhere better than falafel. You can't just walk out my life Alana, I can't let you. I'll be in touch.

Ever Yours, Elias'

At the bottom of the page was the drawing of an angel, the wings spread out, and the face turned down towards the ground.