Are you okay?

07:33AM

"Well that's no way to treat your mum, is it?" She smiled, but she spoke with an edge to her voice that let on she hadn't been expecting my attitude. It wasn't an annoyed edge though, but rather more saddened at the way in which I saw her now. "I was just on my way to the hospital when I recognised you sat in here. I- I thought I'd come and say hello."

At my lack of response, she moved around the side of my table and sat down in front of me in the space Matteo had been occupying mere seconds ago. Desperate not to meet her gaze, I looked behind her to Matteo who had resumed reading his lengthy textbook, successful in blocking out the sound of my mum and I's awkward interaction.

As though sensing my gaze on him, his blue eyes flicked up to mine before he asked if I was alright, mouthing the words with his eyebrows furrowed in slight worry. I sent him a subtle nod, smiling weakly before taking a sip of my hot chocolate and stealing a glance at the woman before me.

Peeking out of her half-zipped jacket was the all too familiar light blue of her nurse uniform, an unspoken reminder of why there was such tension between the two of us. "Shouldn't you be at home?" she queried, playing with the ends of her scarf before her hazel eyes flicked up to meet mine, our uncanny resemblance fitting the irony of her words.

Like mine, her hair fell in curled ringlets around her face, with the same green flecks in her eyes and a distant sadness etched into her expression. In a way one could say our inherited similarities weren't the only thing that linked us together; below her jawline were little scars, spreading down around her neck and dotting across the top of her collarbone. Like mother, like daughter, I guess.

"Shouldn't you?" I retorted with a wry laugh, hating the way I felt guilty upon seeing her crestfallen expression as she nodded indiscernibly, accepting the truth in my words. "Besides," I continued, taking on a much softer tone as I let out a small sigh, "The place you refer to as home, is not where my home is."

My home was found in the low rumbling of trains, dotted about in the myriads of stars in the sky, past the bright yellow 'Mind the gap' line and the red and blue symbol of the London Underground, in the worn pages of my journal and the cool ink flowing from the tip of my pen in the sleepy silence of the night - not in the house where He lived.

I wanted her to speak, to explain, to agree with me and apologise and tell me that she would make it all better again like she used to; I wanted closure as to why she just left me. But instead, she merely stared blankly at me, a torn expression on her face before she glanced away, continuing to fiddle with the frayed edges of her scarf.

"So is that it then? You have nothing to say?" I pressed, scanning her for any sign of remorse or rue for how she destroyed anything left of the good in me. It irritated me the way she was trying to pretend like everything was okay; the way she was ignoring the elephant in the room and trying to act like she had any right to question my whereabouts or why I wasn't home.

"Cassie," she began quietly, resting her gaze on the table as she let out a shaky sigh. "I've spoken to you about this before, Your dad, he- he just gets a little upset sometimes-"

"A little upset?" I repeated her words back to her, an incredulous tone to my voice as I blinked at her. "Is that what you want to keep telling yourself mum? Is that what we're calling abuse now?"

My rebuttal no doubt caught her by surprise: I used to nod and agree with every word that dripped off her tongue like bittersweet honey, ignoring the twinge in my heart that was protesting at every word. Trust myself, is what Romeo said I should do. Right now, I knew with everything within me that the ideology my mum was attempting to retain should never have been created, and I wouldn't let her reinstate the darkness I'd worked so hard to eradicate.