My jaw is nearly on the floor as I drop the luggage by the large wooden door Cheryl’s just closed. I soon forgot about my tiredness from the 11 hour flight as soon as i walked out of LAX airport. As soon as I landed I could feel the difference in atmosphere, in the taxi I was basically pressed up against the window staring at everything and anything we drove past. We drove up a long road between long palm trees I felt like I was living my childhood dream. My eyes are widened as I stand by Cheryl’s side lost for words.
“Do you like it?” Cheryl smiles at me putting an arm around my lower back and pulling me into her side.
“It’s beautiful”
I stand in awe with Paisleys hand in mine looking into the huge open space house right on Venice beach that belongs to Cheryl. I thought her house back at home was absolutely gorgeous but this just takes the cake. The large beige coloured corner sofa looks to be the comfiest sofa ever, it looks like if you sit on it you will sink right into the big cushions and become lost for days. The sofa is in front of a stone wall which has a gigantic flat screen hanging from it in perfect position in front of where I will probably spend every night. Its open plan so from the living room area I can see the kitchen. The counter tops of the benches and island have smudges of black in them like charcoal being smudged with chalk, expensive.
“Wow!” Paisley breathlessly runs and jumps onto the sofa and just like I thought she almost sinks into it.
“Look at this” Cheryl takes my hand and pulls me through the house until she heaves the double windowed doors open and exposes us to the smell of the salty Californian sea It smells like heaven, this smell always reminds me of my days back when I was a little girl and my mum and dad would take me and all three of my other siblings to the beach but of course it was nothing like this one in front of me.
“Oh my god” I subconsciously cover my parted lips with my hand as I’m taken aback by how beautiful the whole place is. Her back yard isn’t really a yard, she has her own space with chairs around a fire pit but it leads onto the empty beach which I know that in less than a few hours will be being enjoyed by countless amounts of people. The only thing separating her property and the beach is a white rope cording off our space. “You have the beach as a back garden!?”
Cheryl laughs in reply and Paisley comes to join us outside. She looks so excited that she may just scream. She points her finger in front of her, at what? I have no idea it could be anything and she jumps up and down hitting my thigh as she does so. “Beach! The beach!” She does now in fact scream and I chuckle picking her up to put on my side. She hasn’t really been to the beach apart from a few times when she was younger, I’m not too sure why I’ve never really taken her but she’s been telling me all morning how she can’t wait to play in the sand or mess around in the sea which is so clear and calm that it’s like something from a movie. The beach is a thousand times different from the one I would visit as a child, not a drop of litter can be seen messing up the earth, no bunch of teenagers are sat with cheap bottles of cider looking out into the dirty coloured sea and there’s no grey sky posing the threat of rain hovering above the dry sand. Here its calm as its early in the morning, the sun is already present in the sky and if you listen closely you can hear the quiet voices of people not that far from us, its truly beautiful.
“Do you want to see upstairs? I’ll show you the best part”
“Come on then” I grin and she leads me by the hand upstairs to a long hallway. She takes us straight over to the door separating us and the room she has described as ‘our bedroom’. After seeing the whole house I know it’s going to be lovely. As she opens the closed bedroom door of course I was right, it is. The bed against one wall seems to be larger than the one we have back at home not that seemed possible. It’s on top of a large white shaggy rug right by a wall with brown curtains draped right across it.
