From Noah, With Love [ON HIATUS]

DAISY (NOW)

I was young and naïve to think that running away would cure my heart ache. Running away just led to more mistakes, more depressive episodes and a potential STD. University life wasn't all peaches and cream; it was alcohol fuelled romps, irish coffee, late nights riddled with last minute assignments and bad, bad decisions.

When I finally graduated I was elated. The 3 years of partying and halfhearted effort was supposed to pave a path to a successful future, but true to Daisy Howards style, my yellow brick road to success seemed to twist and turn back to a dark place.

I was going back to the place where everything began. It wasn't a grand return like i'd imagined it. I wasn't dressed top to bottom in designer labels, waving wads of cash everywhere. My accent was still pretty basic; I wasn't a posh University-lite either and I kind of wished I'd prepped a bit more before coming back.

I wish I wasn't wearing this awful pink dress.

I looked good, but I felt terribly self-conscious. Like I was walking around naked, laying all my cards bare for the people i'd been hiding from.

I should've booked a room for the night, but I was a broke, debt ridden graduate- so she was the only logical choice. I stood outside her house, and no amount of perfume samples and travel deodorant could hide the guilt- or sweat. I sweated when I was nervous and the dense pit stains grew the longer I stood outside her door.

I wasn't even sure she lived there anymore. I didn't even know whether she was alive. But I kinda hoped she was, because 1. I was homeless 2. I was broke and 3. I needed to a see a reassuring face; and what's more reassuring then a mother's face?

The door swung open and behind it stood a short, angry teenage girl. She gave me the escalator eyes and raised an eyebrow, questioning my sudden appearance.

"Hi I'm lo-"

"If you're a preacher then you better leave. We're Freemasons." Did I look like a preacher? It wasn't the look I was going for.

"No, I'm not a preacher-"

"That's what they all say." The girl turned to shut the door, but I pressed my foot into the small opening.

Her attitude  was beginning to annoy me and the fact that I couldn't get a sentence out without a snarky retort made me want to drag her by the hair and smash her face in the pretty flower bed next to me.

The house had never looked like this when I was younger. It didn't look clean or kept- people usually mistook 182 Park Avenue as an abandoned drug den. Everything was new here, white paint, sprinklers that worked on cue, freshly cut grass. This was a family home, not the nightmare house i'd grown up in.

"I'm looking for Caroline Howards. She lives- well, she used to live...," the mention of that she devil made her face drop.

"Oh, you're here for her." She flicked her silvery blonde hair and turned her back to me.

"Carol, someone's here for you." The young girl gave me one last look and disappeared into the house.

My breath hitched in my throat as I heard the sound of footsteps. She waltzed down the stairs with an eager grin and I suddenly forgot why I was so nervous. This was my mother, for god's sake; the women who'd given birth to me- the one who abandoned me several times a year to camp out at some strange man's house. She was the one who would take me to the local swimming pool when the water bill wasn't paid, the one who'd taught me how to steal food from the school kitchen, the one who conditioned me from a young age to go on a wild goose chase for prince charming; a rich guy who'd take care of me. She drank away the benefits that were given to her, she didn't step a foot out of the house unless it was to entertain a man, or to get some cheap beer. I remembered it all.