CHIM - Life in the limelight SEQUEL

Chapter 7

“Paisley, come on!”  I scream standing at the bottom of the stairs. I’m leaning onto the banister, my arms lazily draped around it while the other shoves the last of my toast into my mouth. Crumbs tumble down one by one onto my jacket but I swiftly brush them away onto the floor for me to clean once I come back from the school run. I’ll have to take Alaina with me because I don’t want to leave her with Cheryl. Not just yet. She’s in the kitchen, strapped into her high chair staring at a piece of toast because shes refused to eat it despite my continuous efforts to get her to do so. I let out a gasp of exhaustion mixed with frustration. Paisley still isn’t ready, I’ve been stood here for too long shouting for her to hurry up but she seems to just have one speed.

There’s a bang from upstairs. It rumbles through the air causing me to let out a bigger sigh. “Paisley, what are you doing? Come on we’re going to be even later!”

“I can’t find my shoe!” She shouts back. I glance around the hallway. Over the messy pile of shoes in all colours and sizes. Mine, Paisley’s, Alaina’s but not Cheryl’s because she hasn’t been out her room even though I tried my hardest to get her to come down to eat some breakfast. I’ve even left a tray outside of her door that she’s locked and refused to open. She’s going to waste away but what can I do? I can’t march her out of her room and down the stairs to sit in front of a plate of food and try and get her to eat it like I have just attempted doing with my 18 month old. She’s not a child, I refuse to treat her like one.

“Come and put your boots on then, we’re late!” With a grunt I return back to the kitchen. Alaina’s eye flicker onto me as she sees me and then she pushes her toast away from her with the palms of both her hands. She has a pout mirroring Paisley’s. She’s never normally this grumpy in the mornings. “Just have a little bit” I plead picking up the untouched toasted bread between my index finger and thumb. She shakes her head then twists to the side, holding onto the leather of the back of the modern highchair. “Fine” I drop it. I’m giving in. I don’t have the time for this so i lift her out the chair and onto my hip. Paisley comes shuffling through the open door. Her hair is un-brushed, messy and tangled dropping in front of her face as she takes one annoyingly slow step at a time. She’s dressed for school but she looks a right state. Her buttons on her light blue polo shirt are open, her jumper is clutched in her hand and she’s dragging it behind her on the unclean floor.

“I don’t want to wear my boots” she’s complaining, its only now I realise she has a novelty pair of fairy wings on her back. The glitter is twinkling under the dim light and the white feathers are bouncing as she walks. You would think we had all day. I tell her to take them off and I vaguely think back to all those mornings similar to this one just a couple of years ago. Cheryl often offered to take her to school, she didn’t mind. Not in the slightest. She loved it. She’d stand at the door with one of her arms through Paisley’s backpack so it would sit lazily on her own back, often she’d be protected from the cold morning weather with a thick woollen hat pulled down to her eyes that would twinkle with happiness. That’s just a memory now, I shake it off and pull Paisley towards me.

“You can’t go to school in a pair of wings-“

“Why not? Fairies do ”

“Because it isn’t school uniform and you’re not  fairy” She raises her shoulders then drops them. Her eyes snapping open, almost as if she knows im going to take them off her. Her hands grasp at the elastic her arms have been slid through and she closes her fist around it so when I attempt to take them off her its pointless. She’s putting up a good fight “Paisley-“ I warn and she shrugs me off her. Her eyes are blank , she brings her hand up to her mouth and she tugs on the skin surrounding her nail between her teeth. I’m becoming frustrated, she doesn’t listen. She never does or ever has.