Sweet Satisfaction (Purple UGC Winner 2014)

Sweet Satisfaction - Eleven

Eleven

Everything around me was spinning into a multi-coloured mess of blurry objects. I swayed on my ankle, feeling faint. Father caught my elbow. Mother had sprung to her feet, eyes wide.

“To whom?” I croaked, heart rate increasing.

“Mr John Knowlbodye,” Father answered shortly, with a hint of pride.

“John Nobody!” I burst out, flying my hand to my mouth.

“Elsie, you must not call him that. He comes from a well-respected family,” Father told me reproachfully.

Anger was frothing in my mouth as my teeth clamped together. Father had the right to tell me off but not even consult with me over my own future? I let out a cry of despair, sprinting as best as I could out the room, hurtling up the gold-carpeted steps and flinging myself onto my plush bed.

John ‘Nobody’ Knowlbodye, as I called him, was a sly, towering man who lived in an enormous villa in Spain when he wasn’t busy in England. Spain, oh Spain! A beautiful country, needless to say but a cruelly hot country a whole sea away from home. I resumed sobbing, as a longing to stay a spinster and stay in my home country pumped painfully in my chest.

A creaking noise slid across my floorboards. Mother slowly walked in and sat on the edge of my bed gingerly.

“I know this must be a shock dear but no-one marries for love anymore.”

“A shock?” I cried, “First you, then this!”

“‘First me’?” Mother wondered, frowning.

I laughed bitterly like an evil magician, conjuring unhappiness on myself.

“Oh Mother, what have you done to yourself?” My voice became softer, barely a whisper.

“I told you last night, she’s just been worrying,” Father snapped, striding into the room. Mother jumped, sliding off the duvet, startled.

“Please, why have you been worrying?” I asked, grabbing hold of her skinny wrist and looking into her sorrowful but scared eyes.

Father made me jump as he beat his fist against my desk; the contents shook violently. My neatly stacked sketches fluttered to the ground where they crumpled.

“Elsie, are you completely idiotic? You were injured in a bomb attack and two people died in the street you were in. Do you not think we were worried? My saintly sister didn’t even tell us about the soirée,” Father said, placing a hand on my Mother’s quivering shoulder.

Another bout of guilt settled in me: it had never crossed my mind that they were so scared. Those two people were Alice and Percy, two innocent people who I would never know but had effected my life so badly. My life was about to change- I was going to be married. I was going to be married! Annoyance, did however arise in me at the ‘saintly sister’ part.

“Rose does try her best. It was only a little soirée with the Bassingtons,” I argued feebly. Father made a spitting noise of disgust.

“Those light-headed Bassingtons- more friends of her filthy mother, I suppose!” He absent-mindedly picked my snow-globe up, peering in at the perfect, undisturbed world.   

Both Mother and I gasped, staring at him. He dropped the globe, freezing. The smashing of it rung in our ears and the fake snow wafted into the air away from each other, each little piece torn from its family like John Knowlbodye was about to do to me.