Whispering In The Woods....

Alone....

"Goodbye."

This is what I whispered as we drove away from my home, a small house built into a boring London estate, the same as every other house on the street. It never had its own personality. It was always just the same three bedroomed semi-detatched house as all the others. Every building had those same square windows with the white plastic and the double-glazing, each one letting in the minimum amount of natural light possible. The dark bricks looked like they had been painted black. The only different was the curtains, though I didn't feel that curtains were quite enough to give a house what I would call 'character'.

It never seemed like a home to me. Just a house that I slept in, a house that seemed to haunt me and I couldn't wait to leave. The house always seemed dark, well, since grandad had died, at least. And that was 5 years ago now. He always seemed to bring happiness into our dark home. Mum hadn't been the same since he had died either, and I had always been so close to him as well...the world seemed like a darker place without him.

That's when I started to feel so alone in the world.

I was never able to talk to mum, it just didn't feel the same. People at school never understood me either, so I left was alone to deal with my anguish, suffering in silence.

Our house. It was the place in which I had grown up, but I felt completely disconnected from the whole world, like I could've been the only person in the world. It felt like that sometimes. My mum always said that, sometimes, the loneliest people are the happiest in the world.

Like I said, she only said that sometimes.

It was good that we were moving, but it sort of felt like I had put my whole life into a box, picked it up and moved on. Sometimes, just sometimes, I wish I could pack myself into a box and disappear.

"You're rather quiet," my mum commented.

"Just thinking,” I replied, looking away from her. I couldn’t bear to look into anyone’s eyes right now. As much as I hated this house, this town, this life, it was all that I had known. It was hard to say goodbye.

My mum seemed satisfied - for now at least. She never seemed to be happy with anything I had ever done, and she always seemed to ignore me...almost like I didn’t exist to her. But it had always been like this, even before grandad died. I often wondered if she even wanted to have me, or if she wanted me to belong to her at all. You could say that our relationship wasn’t the strongest. In fact, it was one of the weakest mother-daughter relationships I’ve ever had the misfortune to come across. And the worst part?

It was in my life. Not anyone else’s life. Mine. And there was nothing I could do to change that.

I did use to try though. I tried to talk to her all the time and make her laugh, like a daughter should, but she just got annoyed with me. But that was when i was younger. Now I’m older and more ‘grown up’, I just try to stay away from her, knowing that it won’t change anything between us.

Maybe the move will change all this. Perhaps that’s the reason why she wanted to move in the first place - to put more life back into her lifeless body. She might feel like a change is good, and I hope that it is will change, if not for me then for herself. Maybe it was that dark house that affected her this way.

We drove for what felt like hours, passing neat small fields of green that were neatly cut and always perfect and never-ending rows of houses, cars and empty streets. The neighbourhood felt quiet, deserted and lonely. Solitary. As we carried on down the main road, however, the landscape around us began to change. The neat houses were replaced with odder, more intriguing buildings, the green fields taken over by overgrown patches of wild heather. The very air around us was different, tingling with some sense of...of I don’t know what. Secrets. Tangible secrets. As though there was something hidden here. Something dark, hidden even in the happiness of the countryside that seemed to surround us . The countryside looked like an alien landscape compared to what I was used to seeing everyday, so green and beautiful, unlike London’s grey and ugly appearance.

It was half an hour before we reached our new house.The home that I was going to live in for the next couple of years at least, until mum hated it and decided to move. That seemed to happen a lot. Mum would see something, love it for a short period of time, and then slowly begin to hate it. She never seemed to realise the impact it had on me either, and this always made me  wonder if that’s what happened with me.

The house was beautiful, there is no denying. It was a superb mansion, at least three stories, hidden with attics and cellars and secret passageways. Perfect for me. I would be able to lose myself inside it, and I could tell there would be plenty of place for me to get away from mum...if I needed to. In my moment of amazement, Mum placed a firm hand on my shoulder. My God - for my mother, this tiny gesture was the equivalent of a loving hug. Of course, I’d never had one of those.

“Well, this is it then, sweetie,” she said. I hated her calling me that. Eurgh...“Sweetie”. It made me shiver in disgust...like she was trying to fix the damaged relationship we had. Though she was the one who ruined it, of course, which is why I never understood why she was the one trying to mend it.

“I guess so.”I replied. This was as far as we ever got to having a conversation. She would say something, I would reply. There was no variation, no adaptation, no blabbing on about the things that don’t matter. Nothing to suggest that we were even friends, let alone family. We only ever stated facts, never anything friendly or comforting. It was as though we had run out of things to say...and we hadn’t had much to say to begin with.

Mum got out of the car and picked up a box that was balanced on the seat in the back. We didn’t really take much. to be honest, only the essentials. Then she walked up to the house, unlocked the door then disappeared inside. I just sat in the car for another few minutes thinking about what this could mean for me. After just sitting in the car thinking, i finally decided to get up and take another box into the house.

The moment I stepped into the house I loved it. It was old, traditional, but full of character. It would be difficult to make it feel truly ours, but we would do our best. Then mum walked back outside to get another box or something, but all I could do was stand there in awe of my new home.

The staircase was huge, and it split off into two with balconies that ran round the house leading to the bedrooms, just like in the grand mansions of Lords and Ladies from the early 1900s. As I stood in the doorway, I began to wonder how mum could have afforded such a beautiful house.

The answer hit me as I took in all the details of the house, and I first noticed the portrait.

It was the portrait of a family hanging just of the top of the stairs before they split off. I decided to look more closely at it, so I placed the box down and started to walk toward it. The more I looked at it though, the more I began to realize it looked like my grandad. I had seen pictures of him when he was younger, but the man in the picture looked like he was alive 100 years ago...surely it can’t have been him? As I continued to look at the painting, I noticed something shine underneath it. The glint of polished metal met my eye. On a brass plate under the painting was a sign that read, Alfred Lockhart and Emily Carter, Owners of the Lockhart Mansion.

After I read that, I realized. My mother was the heir to the Lockhart fortune. I knew we were a rich, old family, but I never knew how rich. Of course, mum didn’t have to buy it, either - she must have inherited it when grandad passed away.. It was nothing to do with my dad, since my mum never got married, and I don’t even know who he actually is. Looking at the portrait again, and the beautifully expensive drawing of Alfred Lockhart and Emily Carter, I realized just how inappropriate that was. A single mother in this old family? It would have been unheard of, frowned upon, in families such as these. How dissapointed grandad must have felt.

Maybe it was my dad’s fault for how my mum was, or maybe the family honour that tore her apart when dad left her alone. Then all sorts of thoughts invaded my head, why had mum never mentioned it, had grandad ever been in this house, where was my dad, does mum even know who he is? But then, my thoughts were disturbed.

Mum walked up the stairs and said, “I take it you’ve met your Great Uncle Alfred then!” But she disappeared into a room on one of the balconies. I didn’t see her again for the rest of the day.

That’s our relationship to a T.