Penny Black

Chapter 3

Daddy was gone. He didn't come home later that morning. He wasn't home for tea either and bedtime came and went without a story. As life would have it, Daddy would never tell a bedtime story again.

Eight weeks, four days and twelve hours later Penny sat at the foot of her bed, her arms aching to reach out and up for a cotton-shirt cuddle; to bury herself deep in its fold and soak up the scent of love. How was it possible to have so much love with nowhere for it to go? A solitary tear fell silently, landing on her jeans with a tiny splash; it was just a moment in time, so insignificantly small in this vast universe and of no consequence to anyone and yet Penny's world stood still for an eternity as she watched the tear fade and dry.

Life was hard enough, now that she had started at Caligo Girls but it was almost impossible to navigate a day without the fear of coming home to a house without Daddy. His place on the sofa remained empty. She would not sit in it and Mum never sat down at all. There was no time in Mums' day anymore, it seemed, for anything but being busy. There was a house to tidy and the new job at the supermarket kept her away until tea time. She was never there when Penny came home and she was gone before Penny left to catch the school bus. If loneliness had a home, it was here and Penny was its hostage.

She looked at the clock. Mum would be home in 20 minutes and she needed to start making tea. Penny was twelve now, as Mum constantly reminded her. She was old enough to 'do her bit'. Penny gripped the freezer door. The claws of grief tightened around her ribs and took her breath away as she reached for the fish fingers. They felt as cold as her heart and the warmth of their memory from happier times was not enough to melt it.

As she recovered her balance, there was a knock at the door. Mum was home early. It was unlike her to forget her keys. Penny was glad of the interruption to her thoughts. A good telling off for her laziness would muster up enough anger to balance out the sea of sadness that turned her stomach these days. As she worried about how she was going to balance homework with culinary duties and bath-time, Penny opened the front door slowly. She was always cautious when she was alone at a time like this. Her heart sank as she remembered Daddy's words of wisdom on such things. She wasn't sure whether to be afraid or relieved. It wasn't Mum at the door. It wasn't anybody. She stepped forward to look down the street and as she did so, she noticed it; a white ribbon tied to the gate post. It wasn't there when she returned home from school and why was no-one to be seen? She wondered whether she had heard a knock at all.

She ventured toward the gate post and as she did, a gust of wind lifted her untamed hair as though calling to the ribbon to control it. The ribbon waved back as it fluttered in the remaining breeze. It was beyond white. It was like light, moving through the air and it captured Penny so that she could not move. She could only stare at it while the world around her quietened and grew dim. And all she could remember was her last night with Daddy and her dance among the stars.

'What's the matter with you?', complained Mum as she threw the gate open. She was flustered and angry and clearly ready for a fight. Penny roused from her daydream and quickly untied the ribbon from the gate post, shoving it into the back pocket of her jeans. She hadn't even noticed Mum approaching.

'I see you've made a start,' yelled Mum from the kitchen. 'At least that's something.'

Penny ran back into the house and up the stairs, the third step from the bottom creaking as she went. She paused for the briefest moment, surprised at her own disregard for the fear of the step. She carried on up, too excited to worry about that right now.

'Where do you think you're going?', Mum shouted. 'You're not finished here yet. And bring any dishes from your bedroom on your way back down.'

Penny was aware of Mum ranting somewhere in the background, like the soundtrack to her life that it had become. And that's all it was at the moment. Just a soundtrack. The main event was right here, in her hands as she drew the brilliant white ribbon from the pocket of her jeans and reached beneath her bed for something that had been banished forever after the day that Daddy had died. Her fingertips were stretched so far to the middle of the space beneath her bed, she didn't care if she dislocated every bone in her body to reach what she wanted. Finally she was able to nudge a tattered old cardboard box and edge it slowly toward her until it was in her grip. She tore at the lid of the box with her short nails until it came free and removed the tissue paper that concealed the contents within.

Penny's heart pounded as her head filled with the pain of remembrance. Too many memories came flooding back, too many for her soul to hold but she couldn't look away. The paper-weight was as perfect as she remembered it. Clear and pure, filled with little silver stars, interweaved with ribbons of brilliant white light.