No Promises - New Hope Club Book 2 (George Smith)

Twenty

"You've been taking up my mind with your little white lies" - One Direction

Haley's POV

"Where did we live before we moved to Bedford?" I asked during dinner. My dad gave me a weird side glance.

"In Northampton but we moved here in 2003, I guess." Mum said and put her fork down on the table. "Why are you asking?"

"No particular reason. I just wondered." I said and smiled at my mum. Well I was such a bad liar but my parents didn't notice anyway, they just kept on eating.

After dinner was over and my parents had finally gone to bed after hours of watching TV, I sneaked into the living room and rummaged around in some drawers until I finally found what I had been looking for.

I pulled out the box from one dusty drawer and opened it. There were some loose pictures and photo albums in it. I know that my suspicion was weird but my intuition somehow told me to check old photos of me and my brother.

So I took the first album and opened it. I smiled as I looked down at the pictures of me and my brother in a paddling pool, me and Grayson building a snowman and me and him in church on a Sunday, wearing our best clothes.

There were loads of pictures that brought back lovely memories but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't find any photos of me younger than four.

I searched everywhere but there were none, I was sure. So I started looking through old slides but even there were no pictures of me under the age of four.

The first picture of me that existed was shot on 15th July, 2003 and showed me sitting on a stool in the kitchen, eating spaghetti with tomato sauce all over my face. I didn't know where it came from but I somehow had a really strange feeling in my gut, saying that something was very wrong here.

I jumped as someone turned on the light in the living room. I spun around to see my mum standing in the doorway, her bathrobe tightly wrapped around her body as if she was cold.

"Why aren't you asleep yet?" She asked softly and came over to me, sitting down on the sofa as she stroked through my hair. Even though I was 18, I still loved it when she caressed my hair. It just made me feel like a child again.

"Couldn't sleep so I thought I could look through some old photo albums." I said which wasn't quite the truth but close at least. My mum smiled and looked down at the pictures.

"I love that one." Mum said, pointing down at one picture showing me as a seven year old while carrying Grayson to the pool.

"Mum?" I asked. "Why are there no pictures of me from when I was younger than four?"

My mum's face fell and went pale.

"What makes you think that?" My mum asked, trying to cover up her surprise but she couldn't cover up the fact that she was feeling very uncomfortable.

"Because there are obviously none?" I asked but my mum shook her head, pointing at a photo.

"You're two in that one." She said. I obviously wasn't but I just turned it around and showed her the date that was written on the back.

"I was five at that point." I pointed out. Yeah sure... Five and two was really close. Notice the sarcasm.

"I guess the other photos are just in another box that got lost when we moved here."