A Fractured Fairytale

Chapter 10-You are my sunshine

The chair, licked with rust, fell to the floor as I ran out of the tent, an irritated voice stalking me as I did so, “You haven’t even paid yet!” The voice was strained and angry, there was no way I was going back. She didn’t try to follow me, it was just her voice, which echoed out of the tent. Death had a way of remaining in my mind after the fortune tellers and there was no way I could dodge it either. The rain dampened my hair as I searched frantically for Julia among the bustling crowd. I didn’t know whether to believe what it said on the card or to ignore it. My shoes were like buckets of water and my socks drenched by the immediate rain, which had stolen the sunshine from our sky. People were fleeing the fairground now as the sky began to darken with the gathering of huge grey clouds, it was so quick it was as if somebody had just flicked a switch and the weather had changed dramatically.

The mud squelched, clinging onto my shoes like a monster wanting to pull me down to hell and as a car drove down the middle of the fairground it viciously spat mud at me, from its tyres.

A voice jumped from the mouth of Julia and head towards me, “Elsie!!! There you are! For gods sake you gave me the fright of my life.”

As I saw Julia beckoning me over, I let out a breath of relief, which drifted into an apology. “Sorry.” I called, hoping she had heard my attempt to make amends.

“Well hurry up then! It’s pouring down! Your father will be expecting you home!” Julia held her hands over her head, like an umbrella, in an attempt to shield herself from the rain and salvage the makeup on her face. As if she were a clown, black smudges rested beneath Julia’s eyes, where her mascara had run. When I reached Julia, she hugged me close, “You didn’t run away because you knew you were going home did you?” She paused, checking to make sure that Kevin wasn’t listening. “Because you know I can stay as long as you want and I will make sure that everything is okay before I leave.”

I nodded thankfully, searching for the right thing to say, “I know, thanks.”

‘I will make sure everything is okay before I leave.’ Those were the exact words that fell clumsily from Julia’s lips, she promised, but I don’t know why I ever had faith in her.

The journey on the way home seemed painfully shorter than on the way to Dorset. I suppose it was because when I left home, I wanted to get away as quick as I could, but this time I was dreading going back, so any length of time would never be long enough. Apart from the occasional robotic sentence from the SatNav, I expected the car to fall into a long silence, but it went against my first thoughts and never did. Julia chatted constantly about irrelevant subjects, and Kevin chipped in every so often so that he didn’t feel excluded from the conversation. Alfie drew smiley faces on the window as the weather coughed and condensation spiraled across the window. Phoebe began reading a story to Belle, who listened contently and when she came to a section where a character spoke I chimed in, so that I could do different voices. As if she was watching a rehearsed performance, a smile broke out across Belle’s face, her grin being contagious and spreading across mine and Phoebe’s face too. The second book we read to Belle was called, ‘You are my sunshine’ and was more of a poem than a story. It was very short and only had a maximum of one sentence per page. “You are my sunshine,” I began, my eyes sped ahead, reading the words before my voice got the chance to say them aloud. “You are my sunshine. My only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are grey.” I flicked the page, “Don’t you ever ever leave me. Don’t you take my sunshine away.”

That day was the birth of a song I would remember throughout my entire life, I didn’t know it yet, but it was also a song I would sing to Belle until the very end.

The gravel crunched, like the breaking of bones, underneath the rolling of the car tyres as we arrived at the house and pulled up into the driveway. I knew that I had two options now: I could either blame dad for this happening, or accuse the alcohol.

If I could shake up the world and turn back time, I would. I would tell everyone that mum was going to die, including dad and then he wouldn’t have to turn to the drink to make him feel normal again when mum’s death took place. If I could turn back time, I could of prepared my father for all this. The thing was, there was no way of reversing the hands on the clock, no other way of escaping this web. I had to do it right this time and I only had one chance. One chance to tell my father everything-about knowing before anybody else that mum was going to die, about the nightmares, about the pills, about her suicide, about the clumsy nurse, about how mum never wanted her own husband to find out she was ill, about how she planned out her entire death and had her last moments when we were all sleeping, about that last conversation we ever shared together and last of all about the death card at the fortune tellers. He was oblivious of it all, but not for long. I had to tell him and I had to tell him tonight.