Something Special

Chapter 1

The lights hurt Tara's eyes but she opened them up anyway. There was a lamp pointed towards her, bathing her face in a bright white light. She looks around, wincing at the sharp pain in her face. For a second she was confused, where was she? But then she remembered. After her dad has hit her in the face she had blacked out. In the small snippets of consciousness she had seen her dad looming over her, disgust in his eyes. A pair of steady grey eyes carefully wiping antiseptic liquid over the cut on her cheek. Being eased onto the sofa. Tara's dad going through her bags to retrieve her money. Him leaving the flat, slamming the door behind him.

All of these thoughts came back in a rush. Slowly she sat up, bringing her hand up to massage her aching cheek. She gasps in surprise when she sees a white bandage wrapping up her palm. Slowly she unwraps it, wincing when the material tugs at her deep laceration. 'I must of cut it in the broken glass when I fell.' she thinks.

Swinging her legs off of the sofa, she cringes at the shot of white hot pain across her abdomen. Tara slowly shuffles towards the dusty mirrors on the back wall of the living room. She sighs when she sees her face. Her right eyes was black and puffy and she had 3 stitches across her cheekbone. With a grunt she lifts up her crumpled black blouse to look at the extent if the damage. He'd bruised her right side if her ribcage and part of her lower abdomen. It was tender to touch. The rest of her chest was a mismatched, patchwork if bruises but he didn't worry about those. They were relatively old.

The person who stitched up her face must of been Dr O'Grady. She lived on the bottom floor and helped patch Tara up sometimes when her dad got to violent. Luckily she didn't ask questions and was cheap.

Ian Lincoln hadn't always been violent. There was a time when he loved his family very dearly. He had a good job and lived in a nice house. His wife loved him and his daughter idolised him. Then one day he snapped, he caught his wife in bed with the next door neighbour. He half beat her to death and left her to die in a pool of her blood. Luckily Tara walked in and using her 7 year old knowledge helped call the ambulance. When they came the wife said she'd fallen and it was all an accident.

They didn't believe her.

For the next 8 years Ian would come home drunk as a sailor and beat up his family. He stopped going to work and sponged of his mother who in her old age had gone slightly delusional and let her son bleed her dry if every last penny. Then when Tara was 15, she came home to find her mother hanging from the ceiling fan. She'd committed suicide. And then Tara was alone. Her father had blamed her and started getting drunk every night. He didn't even go to her funeral.

But Tara was determined. She finished her GCSE's with all A's and A*'s. She'd gotten a scholarship to one of London's most prestigious 6th forms and worked every night waitressing at a swanky London bar. She hid her pain with a smile and her bruises with her makeup. She grew tough but she grew up scared. Frightened of one man and one man only. The man she once loved with all her heart.

She came home from school one day when she was 13 ecstatic. She'd been asked to go to the school disco by Bryan Davies. The star footballer of year 8. Her dad broke her ankle so she couldn't go to the dance and made her stay at hone for two weeks without school. When she got back to school, the rumors were so hideous that she cried her tiny 13 year old heart out in the toilets before vowing that she'd never draw any attention to herself ever. She sat in the back at lessons. She didn't read aloud. She didn't compete in sports day. She didn't go to prom. She was invisible.
Except to her father.

................................................................

Alex hated waking up to girls he couldn't remember sleeping with. Rubbing a hand across his forehead he stared at the red head in his bed. Her skimpy clothes were scattered all over his room. He picks up her black bra from his lampshade and groans. NOT TODAY!! He was going back to 6th form for the first time in ages a and now was not the time he wanted to be dealing with naked chicks in his bed.

He prowls over to his bathroom and takes a quick shower and then some paracetamol to ease his aching head. Who goes on on a Sunday night?! Sighing he gets dressed into some jeans and a tight t-shirt. He was suddenly glad his 6th form didn't have a smart dress code. If he'd had to put a suit on right now he would of cried. Like, actual tears.

He wanders downstairs to the kitchen, smiling to himself when he realises he can smell bacon. His little sister Cassie was at the frying pan making bacon rolls. He wrap his arms around her waist and she squeals with delight. "Alex!!" she spins around and give him a hug. Unlike most sibling they got on really well. They hardly ever fought. "Morning sis. How are you this fine morning?"

She returns to her cooking bacon and murmurs something about not sleeping well because of all the racket coming from my room. "It sounded like you were murdering a goat!!" She complains. Sliding bacon onto his plate. Smiling sheepishly, he squirts ketchup into his sandwich. "Sorry 'bout that."

They lapse into a comfortable silence. Both lost in thought. "Good morning Alex." says an unfamiliar voice. He spins around in his stool to he the girl from him bed standing in one of his tops. She had black makeup under her eyes and her hair was all over the place. Without the club lights she looked, well, ordinary. "Good morning..." He suddenly realised he didn't know her name.
"Mandy." She says with an angry pout. "Do you not remember? you were saying loudly enough last night when we were-"
"LALALALALALALA!!" Cassie says drowning out the rest of her words. Mandy glared at her but doesn't say anything. After a couple of seconds of awkward silence Alex glances at his watch and gasps.

"Shit." He says. Shoving the rest of his roll into his mouth. "Ah bollocks." Swallowing heavily, he turns to face Mandy. "I have to go. Help yourself to some food and then call a cab if you want. Cass?" she looks up at him, amusement shining in her brown eyes. "Be nice!" Then grabbing his rucksack he shoots out of the door. Barely stopping to take his leather jacket.

He couldn't be late for school. Not today.