A Love Story

Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

October 2003

Nine Years Earlier.

“Now you listen here girl!” My father roared from the couch, his bloodshot eyes remained glued to the television as he shouted, absentmindedly scratching the beer belly bursting at the seams of his stained, dirty vest. I watched him in the same detached manner one studied lab rats with.

Flecks of spittle coated the dusty television screen as my father roared on. “You ain’t bloody leaving this house till you make my breakfast!” I sighed in resignation as I looked at the man I called father.

Johnny Beckingworth, as far as I knew had never moved from the moth eaten couch before the television that had been blaring on since my birth. He lay over there, guzzling cans of beer day and night, except once a month when he unfortunately had to show his face to the government to collect welfare.

“You hear me girl?” he roared, agitated at the thought of missing his next meal, “I don’t see no good in you going over to that fancy school if they ain’t teaching you how to respect your elders!”

“Yeah I hear you!” I screamed in an effort to be heard above the cacophony of the television, as I turned on the stove in the small corner I liked to think of as the kitchen, but even to the most optimistic soul it could only pass off as a sideboard.

I cracked a few of the fresh eggs old Andy Keelson had given me early in the morning after I finished helping him in the farm today. The aroma of fried eggs drafting from the sizzling pan was a welcome relief to the pungent body odor emanating from the couch.

I peeked at my cracked wristwatch that I hid in my pocket so that my brothers wouldn’t steal it.

7:12 am

Bloody hell I was late for school again.

“Can’t see why you didn’t drop out from school like Davey and Fred!” My father droned on. My older brothers Davey, twenty-one and Fred, nineteen had both dropped out from school when they were only fourteen and fifteen years old.

“Both o’ them are already earnin. You’re just wasting your time I tell you, haven’t brought a penny back home though God knows those rascals don’t share a penny with me either!” My father ranted again, the same old song and dance just like he did every morning.

Nobody at our house knew exactly what Davey and Fred did and quite frankly I didn’t even want to know. In the Beckingworth family the MO was each to his own. Davey and Fred stayed out all night and slept the whole day, whatever they earned they kept to themselves.

I just grunted in response keeping my thoughts to myself. What my father didn’t know was that every morning I got up early at five in the morning and worked at the farm, next to us, owned by old Andy Keelson. Old Andy gave me a decent enough wage for helping out with the livestock that I secretly saved up. At least the pay was decent enough considering I was a Beckingworth.

You see in our small town of Rhinefield, the most notorious family that everybody loved to curse was the ‘damned’ Beckingworths. Johnny Beckingworth had arrived some twenty years ago to the lovely small town, parked his trailer and never budged away.

All my life I had lived here with my father, grandmother and two brothers. My mother who had run away with some pub owner after my birth was never mentioned unless my father needed to blame something.

The whole town of Rhinefield held a united stance against the Beckingworths. Not only because Johnny Beckingworth was considered a dirty, despicable and worthless cheat by all (including me) but also because the moment Davey and Fred learned how to walk they became hellions who vandalized at every opportunity, were frequently arrested for breaking in and committing thefts and had several furious fathers waiting to strangle their necks.