All at Sea

All at Sea- Short Story

English Controlled Assessment for GCSE- one of the tasks is to complete a piece of creative writing. Cue a considerable degree of alarm. Panic stations! But who better to give me feedback than my amazing readers! I hope you like it, even if it is a bit sucky.

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Have you ever kept a secret? A secret too big to share with anyone? Secrets start small, of course, hiding roses, pretending not to notice the strange car that arrives at four thirty on the dot every afternoon, getting rid of the scent of his cologne which hangs around the house like a storm cloud. But secrets are like any other living beast- they grow. Bigger and bigger and bigger until it isn't quite so easy to turn a blind eye. Your tongue feels dirty from the endless lies and your face aches from all the smiles that don't quite reach your eyes. My secret? It was a whole person.

I won't go much further, I decide abruptly, stopping to survey the distance across the water, still and smooth as a looking glass tonight. If I squinted, I could just make out the tiny pinpricks of light in the encroaching darkness, little homes nestled into the shore. I imagine them to be full of mothers washing up after dinner, fathers resting after work, children protesting at their far too early bedtimes. I know that somewhere, in the midst of all of these little dots of light and love is my house. Dad was so proud of it, he told me that he had worked hard to get it, and he had to work all the more to keep it. Sometimes, I wonder why, when he spends so little time in it. He might as well live at the office.

When I was little, I used to think it was plucked straight out of a fairy tale, overlooking the deep sea, with brush grass giving way to pebble beaches filled with wonder and excitement and new discoveries. That house felt safe, guarded. Surrounded by the sea and the trees and the magic pebble beaches, no harm could come to us. I don't think like that any more. I'm 10 and 4 months now. I know better than to dream of impossible stories. If home really is where the heart is, then, both of mine have broken beyond repair.

I wonder what Mum was doing back home? Was she waiting at home with open arms, ready to forgive her husband? Was she packing James' bag, telling him that she loved us so much more than him? Was she sitting at home, wondering where her beloved daughter was now? A smile plays at my lips at the thought. A little further, I tell myself. To the caves and no more. It won't be long now. Mum always was a worrier, she'll soon be at my back, screaming and fussing and hugging, making me swear not to do anything so silly again. But I know I'm not silly. This plan is anything but silly. It's perfect.  

Mum always had a good head for planning, too. With a scowl, I remember how she planned everything down to the letter, with me none the wiser. It had been what others could describe as an ordinary afternoon, the blue tint had leached out of the sky, replaced with grey and a overbearing bleakness in the air. Not a day you would have expected to be the start of a very slippery slope downwards. Yet, on that day, a Hannah hunched in front of the TV, snaffling a packet of crisps in her lap had no idea what she was going to swear to.  

"You're a good girl, Hannah," she had told me out of the blue, unprompted  and leaving me with an intense stare that could have meant everything...and nothing.

"I always try to be," I told her, between chews of Salt and Vinegar, which now left nothing but a bad taste in my mouth.

She nodded slightly, muting a soap star mid-scream, and sitting in front of me slowly. her fingers tentatively closing around mine. It felt nice, I remember.  There was a gentleness in it, despite her calloused palms and the all too obvious trembling.  Mum spent her time at home, Dad said he wasn't going to have his wife being the breadwinner of the house. So she handed in her resignation, had little me and has stayed and cared for me ever since. Sometimes, I catch her looking at me, you know. I catch her looking and I wonder if maybe I am her biggest regret. But I don't like to think on such things.