Hello Me

Chapter 2

"Sweetheart!" Ellie scanned the crowds to see her mother waving frantically. Her mom's smile lit up her small, heart shaped face and the blue eyes Ellie had always been a bit jealous of. Trust dad to have the dominant genes and to give her boring old brown. Ellie felt tears pricking at the back of her eyes at the sight of the petite, sandy haired woman she hadn't seen for nearly two months.

Ellie grinned and walked quickly, dodging the crowds of other reuniting travellers to throw her arms around her mother. She let out a long breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding and felt a tug at her heart as she caught Jen wiping a few tears from her eyes. She held Ellie at arm's length to look her up and down.

"I've missed you so much! Now I know all this is going to be a big change for you, and it's a bit of a shock to the system that it's all happened so quickly, but darling, I'm so glad you chose to move to England with me, and I know we're going to have a ball. Just my Ellie and me! Dad will miss you, of course, but he will visit....we'll work something out," she said, a little dismissively. "Now, let me take your bag." Ellie felt herself tense as a flicker of annoyance passed through her mind.

Chose to move to England? Hardly much of a choice. Being told your parents are divorcing and one of them is moving back to their hometown four thousand miles away, oh and your dad waited all of five minutes to get a new girlfriend and wants you gone – big choice. Ellie forced herself to calm down. Lately she'd been feeling so angry she could hardly remember feeling anything else, but even she could see that starting her new life on an angry note wasn't the best plan, not when she hadn't seen her mother for so long. Ellie realised Jen was still talking and tried to tune back in.

"It just wasn't the same without you. Christmas is a time for families, but I knew you'd be with me soon, and I wanted you and your dad to have a special Christmas together, just the two of you. Well, just the two of you until his girlfriend showed up!" her mother looked pained, and Ellie wondered for a second if Jen was as angry as her about this whole situation. Impossible.

"But anyway.... did you have a Happy Christmas, darling?"

"It's Merry Christmas in America, mom," she said with a smile and a roll of her eyes. Her mother gave her the same look back.

"And it's mum here, not mom," she said with a grin and a light poke to the ribs. "Come on love, let's go and find the car and you can tell me all about your journey. Did you sit next to someone nice?"

Ellie watched the old buildings zip past the window as they headed out of London and the car began to gain speed. Slowly, the tightly packed houses of all shapes and sizes, tree lined roads and red double-decker buses gave way to the fields and hedgerows she'd seen earlier from the sky. The morning's initial sunlight had faded into a drizzly grey, confirming Ellie's suspicions that she'd never experience good weather again, though the freezing temperatures and slushy snow in Illinois last night hadn't been too wonderful, either. Already everything seemed different. The people in London's airport had looked as miserable as the now-grey sky. The cars were all tiny, and the roads stretched and curved in every direction. Even the motorway seemed narrow in comparison to the huge freeways in America.

Despite visiting this country when she was small, it felt completely foreign. It had been nearly eleven years since Ellie had stepped foot in England and it couldn't have felt less like home if she'd woken up on the moon. The promise she'd made herself to hate living here felt like it was going to be an easy one to keep, though when Ellie looked across at her mom, smiling and chattering away as she drove, she felt a pang of guilt deep in her stomach. Even though this was partly Jen's fault, Ellie knew she was trying her best. She made herself focus on what her mom was saying.