Hob's Hill

Two

-THREE HOURS EARLIER-

Ellie pushed up her reading specs and rubbed the grimy corners of her eyes, guilty knots wringing themselves in her gut. A blonde lock flopped free from her hair tie. She sighed, and swatted the hair. Propping callused elbows on the nicked surface of her desk, she held her head.

How long had she been sitting there, pretending to be reading? She shifted, bum sore. Her chair leg wobbled with the movement. All was quiet, but her ears rang. She tugged their shells, wishing the noise away. Maggie’s shrill complaints replayed vividly in her memory. The responsibility of being the older sister conflicted with Ellie’s want to be a friend. She questioned her own authority.

Who was she to talk about love? Romance? Ellie pinched the bridge of her nose. Her instincts felt right though. That boy...

Her whiskey gaze flitted to a picture teetering amongst the clutter. Three smiling faces crowded in front of a park statue. The youngest, and cheekiest, grin of her baby sister was of particular interest. The, then, toddler bounced in their mother’s arms. Mum’s cheeks were flushed and beaming, focused on the photographer - their father.

Ellie’s gaze watered. “Oh, Mum. Tell me what to do.”

She stayed fixed to the memory, as if the greyscale inks could suddenly animate.

But of course they didn't.

Ellie swallowed and released a shaky breath, covering her stinging ears.

Was I too harsh?

She gnawed the sore groove in her lip where she’d chomped on it earlier that week, having tripped on a yard rake and smacked into a tree – very graceful of her.

I should call dad.

She scooted her chair back but stopped herself and checked her watch.

2 a.m. He’d be on call about now. I shouldn’t worry him with this until morning.

Her desk lamp flickered. She shot it a glance. It was an old, hand-me-down, bare bulb affair with thin glass and a thick wire nearly as old as she. It fluttered and she tapped it. Any day now, she thought, it’d pop and die. She sympathized with it.

Resigning herself back to her book, she flopped her specs down and bent to glaze over the words, looking but not reading. The chatter of her own thoughts nearly drowned out the rolling rumbling of distant storm clouds.

A shattering thunder bolt struck, rattling the cottage.

It happened in a blink. The light popped, her picture frame slipped, a precarious stack of school books made several solid thumps onto the floor boards, and her window unlatched itself violently, smacking her bed frame as it swung open with a gust of wind.

Diving for the picture, her fingers grazed the edge, and she would’ve had it if the light hadn’t snuffed her sight. The glass smashed and scattered. Stunned, she froze in that lunged position, reaching out, blinking to get her bearings. Her curtains flapped and rain spluttered in.

“Bloomin’ heck,” she hissed.

Hand searching for her seat to reassure herself it was right where she thought she left it, she sat with a wobbly complaint of the wood and began groping her desk drawers for a torch. She grazed paper clips, a dish of biting thumb tacks, a mirror, a hair brush, her only and rarely used lipstick, thread, needle case, bobbles, everything but a cool metal cylinder with a little switch that would shed light on the damage.

She chopped down on her sore lip. Something like hysteria bubbled up and she pinched the bridge of her nose again.

The broken frame was a little thing, and easily fixed. Nothing that should’ve made emotion well up within her... but it did.