A case of Stockholm.

Chapter Five.

11:42am and I still hadn't left my room. My mother and father were both stood outside of my room trying to coax me out.

"Gwendolyn please, let me in." I stay silent. "I just want to talk. I was going to tell you but we were still working it out. Look, your father and I have been thinking and maybe we should postpone the whole thing."

 I look at the door blankly. Postpone? This meant that in their minds that the marriage was still going ahead. This was getting ridiculous. I could find multiple reasons why this wouldn't work: a) I had only just turned eighteen. This was far too young to get married in my view, I needed freedom. b) Aiden and I had never gotten along very well, we're too different. c) He didn't like books and d) He was too posh for lasagne. Lasagne is the food of the Gods in my eyes. My own personal Ambrosia. That's four perfectly good reasons to me. That's not even mentioning the fact that I didn't love him. Sure he would take care of me but that's not what I wanted, I wanted to be wanted and loved unconditionally but I had read enough books to realise that romance and true love only existed in works of fiction. I wasn't one of these perfect book characters that gets the guy of her dreams.

No, I was stuck with Aiden Hamilton.

Don't get me wrong Aiden was a great person if you liked guys that cared more about your class instead of who you are as a person.

"Gwendolyn, sweetie, please come out or just let us in. This was it. My father had called me sweetie. They must have been desperate to get me out of my room. However, that hadn't worked for years and that wasn't about to change. They would have to try something different. It was then that I realised that I was in quite a predicament. Around 5 minutes had passed since I had last checked the time.

The meaning of this? It was almost noon. Lunch time. What would I do for food? It was at that moment that I had the genius idea to climb out of my window. I picked a pair of black converse from my many shoes- most of which were converse- and slipped my feet into them.

I walked over to my window and looked down. My first floor bedroom was looking quite high. Heights had never bothered me but now, at that moment, nothing had bothered me more. I took a deep breath and carefully climbed onto the windowsill. Lowering myself, I hook my right foot into the trellis and begin to climb down rather unsteadily. In countless movies characters had done this expertly. Me? I was a novice. My feet kept slipping on the leaves climbing the trellis. The sooner I reached the ground the better.

Once I had reached the ground (after a not very graceful landing which ended with me tripping) I made my way to the kitchen. Hector was already preparing lunch when I got there.

"Miss Gwendolyn," He looked surprised to see me. "I was just about to bring your lunch up to your room."

"I wanted to get out of my room for a while so I thought I would save you the trouble and collect my lunch instead."

"Really Miss Gwendolyn, there's no trouble. It's my job, I'm paid to do it."

"I was just heading to the library anyway Hector." He smiled and handed over my BLT sandwich and I walked towards the library. The smell hit me first as it always did. The books had the most amazing smell. I went to my armchair and sat down to eat my sandwich. I have to say that Hector made the best BLT sandwiches ever. Perhaps I was biased though.

After eating, I decided to pick a book from the hundreds lining the shelves around me. I trace my fingers across their spines reading off their titles one by one. Breakfast at Tiffany's, Nineteen Eighty-Four, The DaVinci Code and then I came to more spaces. Carrying on, A Tale Of Two Cities, The Red House until I came to I Am Number Four by Pittacus Lore.I pick it up and walk over to my armchair and collapse into it.