Anna [J.Shelby]

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The next day, John and Anna dropped the kids off with Polly, got in the car and travelled the hours it would take for them to reach her rural hometown in somerset; John soon understood what Anna means by living a very closed off life. The houses and village was built around the big church, in which many were coming in and out of.

"Now do you see why I hated growing up?" Anna asked John, who smirked in return.

Anna pointed towards her parents home, directly opposite the church.

Anna stepped out the car, looking around, noticing the stares she was getting from both her parents friends and complete strangers to her who were walking through the streets.

"They're still all nosey, stuck up sods" Anna snorted.

Anna knocked on the door, her mother, Suzie, immediately anwsering it.

Suzie's eyes instantly dropped to Anna's stomach, and up to John by her side.

"You're pregnant and unmarried?" Suzie asked her daughter, shock and disgust filled her voice.

"No, mother, I am married." This revelation was even more shocking to Suzie, her own daughter had never invited her to the wedding.

"I suppose you better come in, then" Suzie said, eyeing John with a turned-up nose.

Johns gaze was quick to intimidate the small woman, what Polly and Anna liked to call the 'Shelby glare'.

Ignoring her mother, Anna walked up the stairs to her fathers room, John awkwardly staying behind with Suzie who continued to glare at him.

"Dad!" Anna grinned.

Her father, Martin, looked over at her slowly, a small smile on his face as he sat down beside her.

Martins eyes trailed down to her stomach, with a small smile, he held her hand.

"Im married now, father, I never told you, because I didn't really know how" Anna trailed off.

"Whose the lucky man?"

"His names John, he's downstairs with mother"

"Ay, poor man, under your mothers eye" He replied, coughing.

Tears welled up in her eyes, "im going to get you help, you have many more years, and 4 grandchildren to meet. And another one on the way, you aren't going on me yet dad"

Martin smiled tiredly in reply.

After having enough, John followed after Anna and so did Suzie.

"So this is your husband" Anna's father spoke.

John cleared his throat, "I am."

"Not half as bad as I imagined" Martin teased his daughter with a wheeze, making Anna laugh.

"Anna, a word downstairs" Suzie snapped, the former following her mother down the stairs and Suzie closed the door behind her.

"How dare you bring a man like that into my house!" Suzan screeched at her daughter once all the doors were closed.

Anna looked at her mother in anger.

"Excuse me?" Anna asked lowly.

"Do you not realise who he is, Anna? He's a gangster!"

"Yes, mother, yes I fuckin' know who he is, he's my fuckin' husband!" I snapped at her.

"Dont you dare bring those words into my household" Suzan hissed.

"You know nothing about John, or his family. All you see is whatever the hell is in the newspapers. I knew you wouldn't accept him because you can't accept anything that's beyond your control, can you? Like how your daughter had an abortion without you knowing, like how your daughter married someone that wasn't of your choosing. Like how your husband is lying there dying because instead of getting a real job you've chosen to commit your entire life to a fucking church" Anna breathed.

"I chose the church because that's all I've known my entire life, you would have done good to have followed that path, look at you now! Look where you are, look who you've become, look who you're married to for goodness sake! This is not how I imagined your life would turn out, you screaming at your own mother for her minor mistakes when you've made some pretty large ones in your short life time" Suzie scoffed at her daughter.

"Perhaps I've made mistakes, perhaps I have. But at least I'm twice the person you'll ever be" Anna spat.

"Come on John, we're going home" Anna called for him, he arrived at the door, acting as if he had heard none of what she had just said.

"What about your father, aren't you going to stay for his final days?" Suzie asked in disbelief.

"He won't have final days, he'll have years because he's coming home with us, and he's going to get the treatment you can never give him" Anna told her, walking into her parents' room, packing her father's items and giving it to John to put in the car.

"Come on, Dad. I'm taking you to Birmingham, with me" Anna told him, folding back the bed covers and helping him into a coat and shoes, sitting him back down.

"What about your mother?" He wheezed.

"Mother made it easy for me to decide whether she comes or stays by slandering me and my husband"

Anna walked downstairs to get a few of her fathers things, John following to help her.

"Whose that in the garden?" Anna asked her mother urgently, glancing over at the familiar man in the garden.

"Steven Daye, our gardener" Her mother replied, sulking away from her.

Anna's breath caught in her throat, as John came up beside her.

"What's wrong?"

"Thats the man who raped me." She whispered, breathlessly. John stiffened beside her.

"Steven Daye. I'll fuckin' cut him" John lurched forward, Anna immediately pulling him back and looking up at him.

"Just get my dad and we can go home"