We were just kids: The beginning of all beginnings

Later that Day

"Grounded!" Ste and Nancy yelled to the two pairs of eyes staring back at them.

Leah rolled her eyes. It wasn't her fault. He hit her. Quite frankly, she had no idea why she was being told off, or why she was walking home with the English teacher who was moments away from a mental breakdown. She sighed and began to walk ahead when she spotted Laura and her pals sniggering in the alleyway. Leah turned in the other direction, before being pulled back by an unimpressed Ste.

Charlie, however, was more respectful of the person who had brought him up since birth. He knew he did wrong, and after Nancy had finished giving her five minute speech on 'how to treat a woman', he focused his attention to the ground. Guilt ran through his head. He shouldn't have hit Leah, no matter how much of an annoyance she had been.

He tried to take his mind off of the situation by kicking a stone around. It was a dull grey, just like the floor and the sky: the cars in the street: roofs of houses. The mood didn't pick up when the stone accidentally hit Leah on the leg.

Charlie turned his head to Leah, not saying anything, but giving an apologetic look. Leah glared back, assuming that he purposely kicked the stone her way, sighing in disgust and turning away.

"Sorry"

"For hitting me or kicking a stone at me?"

Charlie huffed and turned away, before coming to a sudden halt.

"Nancy? Why are we here?"

"You two need to start getting along" she replied.

The rest of the party of four stopped, the wheels of Nancy's folded wheelchair scraping across the uneven gravel in the carpark of the Dog as they did so (she kept it with her at all times incase of an emergency).

But the two eleven year olds weren't there to pull pints, clean tables or serve Marnie Nightingale's over-priced, extremely over-the-top posh, food (for a start, they were too young to do so, despite Charlie knowing how to pull a pint by the age of nine).

Instead, they were directed to the shabby trailer parked there. Cindy Cunningham's attempt to ruin The Hutch; The Hatch.

"Saturday's and Sunday's, 1 till 3" Ste beamed.

"Both of us? No! I'm not working! This is child labour! This-" Leah remarked

"You get paid" Ste knew that his daughter would jump at the chance of earning any kind of money.

"I suppose two hours a week isn't that bad"

"Four" Charlie chirped

Leah's eyes turned to Charlie, her head following their lead.

"What?" Charlie laughed "you'll have to get used to it" he smirked.

A/N: so I've decided that instead of writing long one story or book (this one will probably be quite short) I'm gonna write a series of stories, spread over the characters teenage years and ending at their early adulthood. I'll be able to get a lot of this done during the six weeks (I hope). And I hope that if you are reading this, you'll stick with Charlie and Leah's story, and enjoy it.