Chapters:

One

1
                                       One Week Earlier
The wheels of my suitcase scrape along the concrete as I tug it up my parent’s driveway.
As the battered front door comes into view a feeling of weight descends down onto my shoulders. The house, even from the outside looking in, feels sad.
The rusted gate that has been a fixture of our family home since the day we bought it swings in the breeze. Beside it, hung up by a loose nail, is a chipped wooden board with the words
‘Welcome Home’ in faded blue paint. The irony is almost too much for me.
The house hasn’t changed a bit. The rose bushes my mother had once tended to like they were her children are still scorched from the hot African sun. The soil dry and hard, unloved.
The hole dad had started digging near the aloe plants to the right of the property hasn’t seemed to progress at all. I’ve never known what that hole was for.
The place looks run down; with windows so dirty you can barely see through them. Some are shattered, shards of glass coating the ground. This place has never felt like ‘home’. Memories flood to the forefront of my mind, eager to make their presence known. I don’t welcome them back.

They’re watching me from the window, their Jack Russell squealing inconsolably at my arrival. Her voice box clearly hadn’t been damaged when she’d swallowed that fishhook last year.
I clench my jaw as the front door groans open, begging for oil. It reveals my mother in her usual ensemble of tracksuit pants and an oversized shirt. Her usual shock of dyed red hair is faded and frazzled. She looks horrific. The stench of stale alcohol clings desperately onto her as she lurches forward, drawing me into a clumsy embrace. I close my eyes, willing myself not to cry. Spittle from her thinned lips soaks my shoulder.
I’d been told to brace myself but nothing can prepare you for this. The drinking has thinned her blood so much that her arms are covered in bruise like marks of broken blood vessels. Her skin has drooped and become riddled with liver spots that she is too young to have. Her eyes which had always been too dark to make out the pupils have become sunken slits in their sockets. There is not an ounce of life in them anymore, they are lackluster and empty. She is half the size of me. Her leg muscles so disintegrated it makes her walk in a way that looks like she’s shat herself.

Dad welcomes me with an awkward pat on the back. Age has softened him, I notice as he hefts my luggage inside.
A coffee table in the middle of the lounge is barely recognizable beneath the dog hair, dried muddy paw prints, nail clippings, dust and pill packets to control my mother’s seizures. I wonder for a moment as I look around the tip of a room when they had let the maid go or if she had simply walked out on them. I know I would have.
We all walk into my old bedroom, a heavy wave of nostalgia crashes through me as I look around. They’ve done it up nicely for me; made the bed, placed a vase with an array of brightly colored flowers on the bedside table; pincushion proteas, arum-lilies and blood red roses (clearly not from their garden). They smell strong, giving me an instant migraine.
I thank them in a low voice, my cheeks ablaze. I can’t stand this feeling, the feeling of needing them. I’ve never needed anyone before so the relief of having my family and friends so close by after so many years away is foreign to me.

“I’ll start looking for a place of my own tomorrow,” I tell them, fixing my bloodshot eyes on the cobwebs in the corner of my windowsill. Cleaning rich bastards’ yachts over the last couple of years has turned me into someone that no one who’d previously known me would recognize. I wasn’t the same anymore.
“You can stay as long as you like. We’re happy to have you home,” dad says, giving me one of his smiles that say he feels sorry for me. Mum’s hair bounces up and down on her bony shoulders as she nods her agreement. I sigh.
“Thank you.”
They leave the room, shutting the door gently behind them. I am left alone in a strange silence that I should be used to by now. My gaze falls to a patch of paint on the wall that didn’t quite match the rest; a touch up from a recent dent made by a fist. Dad’s fist.
Better the wall than my mother’s body, I think queasily. I hate thinking it, but I can’t help but understand his frustration. I’d want to punch through walls if I had to live with her, too.
Having a mother that far gone with alcoholism is impossible to explain to someone if they aren’t in the same situation. You feel so ungrateful for despising them because so many people have lost their mothers and would do anything to have just one more day with them. I avoid my mother like the plague and although I hate to admit it, there are times where I think it would be easier if she were dead. It disgusts me to know that if this woman who had carried me in her womb for nine months, raised me and loved me and had become my best friend were to draw her last breath I would feel relief. What kind of daughter feels that way?
There had been years of trying to help her, coax her into going to rehab, removing all of the alcohol from the house and challenging the entire family to take part in ‘Sober October.’ All to no avail. The second we would go out as a family to a restaurant, the sommelier would come over and ruin everything but it was never really the sommelier’s fault, was it?
I used to hate that saying, ‘You can’t help someone if they won’t help themselves.’
I guess I never understood it until now, in my late twenties as I watch my mother slipping away right before my eyes. It’s like watching your mother dying of cancer. She is deteriorating, balding, weakening… but unlike cancer, this is her choice. Granted cancer and alcoholism are both diseases and once the latter has you in its clutches, it won’t let you go. But she still chose to pick up that bottle in the first place.
I keep thinking that there must have been a moment when she realized that what she was doing was dangerous. There must have come a time when she was busy burying a box of wine under her shoes so that no one else could find it or see it and thought to herself, ‘
this is bad.’ Surely?
Where is the turning point? I drink alone sometimes. I love cooking with a glass of red in my hand and I can admit that if I have a bad day I do turn to a drink for comfort. I wonder then if I am heading in her direction. Do other people do that? Drink alone at night? I don’t have enough to make me drunk, just enough to feel lighter. Not enough to forget, but enough to feel like that’s a possibility down the track.
I shake my thoughts away before they fester.

I look reluctantly at my suitcase, filled with my life from the past few years. It’s crammed with books mainly. I wasn’t able to bring everything that I’d wanted back with me from the house I shared with my ex in Spain. I wasn’t ready to unzip it yet, something about doing that made it seem all the more real when right now it still feels like I’m in some obscure universe. Nothing feels right.
I sit on the lumpy bed and press my fingertip into a thorn from the stem of a rose. Mesmerized, I watch blood trickle down from the palm of my hand onto my wrist. I am completely entranced until my phone beeps. I didn’t even have to look before knowing that it’s from him. No one else has my new Spanish number. Not since he smashed my old phone and snapped my sim-card in half.

Hello Guapa. Are you home safe?
His message disarms me instantly. Guapa. I used to love it when he called me that. It had been ‘our thing’ when I’d started learning Spanish for him. I’d reciprocate with ‘Hello Guapo,’ and we’d smile at how the word sounded through my British accent.
It had gone from Guapa to
Amore. He didn’t call me that anymore.
How could he text me something so
normal after what he’d done? I’m infuriated. The childish part of me wants to send him a stack of ‘Fuck You’s’ in return but I swallow back my temper. It goes down like knives. I know I should block him, remove any trace of him from my life – let my battered heart and the bruises scattered across my body heal and slowly forget about him, but I have to wean myself off of him slowly. I’m also waiting for an apology. It’s all I want, acknowledgement for what he’s done… and honestly, I don’t know how to let him go yet. Not fully. Leaving Spain was been the biggest and hardest decision of my life because regardless of what he’d done, I was still in love with him. I am in love with him. I hate that I am. I hate that I love someone who has disrespected me for so many years of my life, cheating on me with over eight women and abusing me both physically and verbally. I’ve never felt more ashamed of myself. Ashamed that I can’t control my feelings for him and ashamed because I feel so worthless when deep down I know he is the worthless one. But love doesn’t just disappear. As much as I hate him, those feelings still remain. It’s the most contradicting, confusing feelings I’ve ever had and all I want to do is sleep for eternity. But life doesn’t stop so neither can I.

*

It doesn’t take me long to find a flat just off of the main road, past an old sign pointing to a rifle range. It’s a cozy two-bedroomed, fully furnished wooden cottage with a small overgrown garden, dark green fencing and bars in front of the windows. It even has a fireplace inside and a porch out front that I can’t wait to use while reading my book in the sun. Even though I’ve seen the figures increasing in my bank account for the past few years, it still stuns me that I was able to pay for the place six months upfront. Having this much money is very new to me. It’ll get me by for a while at least.
My new landlord, a frumpy old woman covered in cat hair, told me that I could move in immediately which I was more than happy about. Staying in such close proximity to my mother just wasn’t a good idea.
My first evening in the cottage feels surreal. I feel like I’m house-sitting for someone. Nothing feels like mine because everything from the mattress on the floor to the beige sofa crammed into the dusty corner belongs to my landlord. It’s so different to the home I had created for Sean and me in Spain.
The artwork on the walls is no longer the memorable photographs I’d taken of a set of waves rolling into Jeffrey’s Bay, South Africa. Something to remind us of home while in Spain. They are replaced in this new, unfamiliar place with a triptych of black and white shots. An unknown lighthouse surrounded by a raging murky sea. The panels unsettle me. I tear myself away from them eventually and creep into my quaint kitchen, the sagging floorboards creaking beneath me. Uncorking a bottle of wine, I splash a hearty lug into a glass I discover in one of the cupboards above the sink.
The hinges of the cupboards are rusted and whine incessantly as I open and close them, familiarizing myself with my surroundings.
I curl up into a ball with my glass of wine and create a new resumé on my laptop, listening to the sound of my fingertips hitting the keyboard.
Try to sell yourself more, people had always advised me.
You’ve done so much at such a young age, they said as though it was something to be proud of. I don’t see it that way as I look at the document in front of me. I see a history of a woman who can’t keep the same job for more than six months. I see someone restless, noncommittal. I’ve never really known what it is that I want to do with my life and it sure as hell hadn’t been my latest stint on the yachts but I’d done it for him.
I finish it up and read through the brief history of my life, realizing that it doesn’t really seem like mine. I can barely remember the days of becoming best friends with office fax machines and printers, having stacks of papers taller than I was to file away, being a circuit coach at Curves International or selling art for one of the most respected, eccentric artists in South Africa. Had this really been my life? I take a sip of my wine as I mull this over in my head.
I’m grateful when I come across an old CD player with a selection of albums from artists I gather are from the Fifties or Sixties piled alongside it.
I slot in a CD from one of the only bands I actually know, The Beatles. The sides of my mouth tug up into a small smile as Here Comes The Sun fills the room and before I know it I’m swaying my hips along to the music, sipping my wine as I circle my new living quarters.
I’ve been so uncertain about where life has taken me, but in this moment, listening to this song, it feels like everything really is alright.
When the song strums to an end I’m out of breath and my small smile has spread from ear to ear. My cheeks are hot from the alcohol and my head feels light. I laugh, feeling stupid even though I know no one can see me.
I stop in front of my fireplace and crouch down with a firelighter wedged between my thumb and forefinger. The room is soon emblazoned with an orange glow. I switch off the music to listen to the sound of the crackling fire. I’m sitting cross-legged on the floor warming my bones besides the flames when I hear a thump. My heart rate skyrockets as I fly to my feet and look wildly around the room, the blade of my nose flying this way and that. The first thought to enter my head is, ‘
how did he find me?’ I realize then that it won’t be as easy as I’d envisioned to stop living in constant fear of him.
Wine sloshes out of the glass that is firmly grasped in my hand, landing on the floor. It leaves an angry red stain instantly, making my mind suddenly switch over to my deposit rather than the unknown noise. I scurry over to the sink, wetting a sponge and returning to the stain to try and scrub it away with little success.
“Fuck...” I growl, tossing the sponge to the side and picking my wine glass back up to take another sip.
The same thumping noise shatters through the near silence once again, shooting a shiver up my spine. I tingle from head to toe, goose bumps scattering my forearms as I feel my nipples harden beneath my bra. My eyes, swollen and tender from crying earlier, dart madly around the room. My phone flashes at me from across the lounge. I’m too scared to move.
When a high-pitched wail reverberates through my eardrums my heart jumps into my throat. It’s coming from my bathroom, behind the door I’d closed earlier in the evening. I can feel the blood pulsing through my head as I consider my options. Funnily enough, the first option, albeit unrealistic, is to call for Sean to help… the one man that I am scared of.
I try to remember the bathroom. Are there bars on the windows? If not, are the windows big enough to fit through? I can’t remember. The wine has made my memory of the cottage hazy at best.
Something scratches at the door, making it bash against the framing. I cling to my knees in fear. I see a wrought iron fireplace tool set, scramble across the room and seize one of the tools. Feeling the weight of it in my hand gives me courage I don’t think I could have conjured up without it.
I fly towards the bathroom, letting out a baffling battle cry as I thrust open the door. A pair of shiny eyes blink up at me in the darkness giving me such a fright that I fall backwards, sending my weapon clattering to the floor.
It’s small, whatever it was. I crawl carefully over to the light switch and smack my hand down onto it. Blinded by the brightness, I struggle to get my sight back for a moment, and then I see it. It has wrapped itself around my discolored shower curtain, its tail shivering in the sheer delight of being noticed. A cat. I’ve never liked them.  
I look at my open window, bars barricade the area but somehow the cat has managed to weasel its way in. I try shooing it away in irritation but it weaves itself around my legs, leaving a layer of fur behind on my black leggings.
It purrs as soon as I swat it, its head butting into the back of my hand. I soften slightly as I caress its delicate skull with my fingers. No sooner have I done so when its eyes suddenly widen and it takes off stealthily through the gap between the burglar bars by the window.
I stand dumbfounded for a moment before dragging my feet back towards the fading fireplace. I top up the logs, grabbing my phone and unlocking the screen with my fingerprint.
Settling down onto the sofa, I feel a pang of loneliness shoot through me. I blame it on the cat. That unexpected company if only for a matter of seconds has done something to me. My heart pines for another message from Sean even though I haven’t responded to any of his others. Even though his messages irritate me, a part of me still wants them.

I scroll through my contacts, their profile images appearing alongside their names on my phone. Peyton has updated her profile picture again; it’s an almost daily occurrence. This time she’s updated it to one that isn’t even of herself. It’s a photo of her daughter. I never really understood the point in putting up a photograph of someone or something else, but then again I’d never had a dog or a cat, or in her case, a child.
Harley’s extravagant grin shines out at me from my phone. It’s a contagious smile. She really is a beautiful child.
I start typing a message to her.

Peyton, you have the most beautiful daughter in the world!

The wine has allowed me to venture into a happier place, at least for the time being. I revel in the moment, until a ping on my phone tells me that I have a new message. I expect it to be from Peyton, so when an unknown number shows up above the text it takes me by surprise.

You’re sexy.

I frown, staring at the message in confusion. The mere thought that it could be Harley is so perverse; I shake it from my head instantly.

The phone pulses beside me, showing me I have another unread message. I don’t want to look.