Author Note: This is a first draft of The Girl That Fell Out of The Ocean and is still raw, if you enjoy please comment and vote.
Marxby Manor Present Day
Can we ever truly leave our past behind us?
The past, it lives in our hearts, it has defined who we are but the past is gone, dead and so are the people we once were. Our pasts, they build us, form us and leaves us changed. So we can never truly go back, can we?
Marxby Manor was closed to visitors but Lavinia had wanted to come to the Manor anyway. The Manor was situated on a high green cliff with ferocious grey waves crashing beneath its stony gaze.
The waves would violently crash against the cliffs edge as if it was trying to knock Marxby Manor from its pedestal with rage and fury.
Away from the cliffs was a long stretch of white sand where Lavinia and Charlie stood, they could see the tip of the Manor from the beach but Lavinia didn't turn towards it, she just gazed out at the sea.
Her red hair being whipped around her face by the wind Charlie let his fingers interlink hers, Lavinia's hand tightened when she felt his grasp.
"I lived on this beach," she said.
Charlie didn't say anything he just watched her intently.
"My brother and sisters and I, my parents would have to practically drag us out of the water,"
Lavinia let go of Charlie's hand.
She looked up at Charlie for a brief moment her eyes were full of tears, her eyes desperately seeking something that Charlie didn't know how to give her.
"The not in there," she said briefly glancing up at the manor.
"Where are they, Charlie? Where are they if there not here?" A tear was streaming from her eyes now. Charlie moved to wipe the tears from her face but she moved away from him, away from him and towards the sea. Lavinia walked into the water her dress floating around her as she stormed into the waves, the waves they took her and she was gone.
Charlie ran into the water after her screaming her name so hard he thought his throat was going to start to bleed.
"Lavinia," he screamed.
Up to his waist in waves his paddled and splashed and cried looking for her.
"Lavinia!" he cried.
She was gone.
She had just vanished.
He was alone.
Lady Dolly - October 1915
The morning I arrived was a cold one, full of mist and the slight splatterings of rain. Travelling to my new life as a VAD, a volunteer nurse, I had been posted to France and was arriving at what would be my new home, a military hospital.
I had got what I wanted but it had come at great, personal cost, I had sent my husband to war, I handed him that feather with every intention of it getting me my own way.
It was a decision that I would have to live with, Niall has left before me and we had said our goodbyes. As a married woman I still needed his permission to even be here, he allowed it on one condition, if he ever summoned me home, I would obey. Considering Niall was now a Captain in the Kings army I didn't see that as a likely event and so we went our separate ways.
I arrived at the hospital with three or four other VADs, all squashed on this little brown rickety waggon. The place looked quite established, a mixture of wooden cabins and large tents, men in uniforms and nurses running everywhere but somehow in an organised fashion. From behind us came a voice presumably of a soldier "Captain, the new recruits,"
"Thank you Private Lennox," another bellowing Scottish voice replied.
The Captain, a doctor, stood in front of us, helping each new VAD down by hand. When he got to me I ignored his hand and walked straight past him and just followed the other girls my heart hammering in my chest.
The Captain was Will, Will was here, with me.
Will.
Will.
Will.
I carried on walking and did not look back.
Marxby Manor Present Day
Charlie let the waves take him, let them fall on his body and wash him further out to sea. It seemed funny to him that despair hit him in his legs and then rose up slowly through the rest of his body finally hitting him in his heart.
He was under water, his eyes opening with the cold salt water piecing his eyes and then he saw her.
Her burning red hair floating under the sea, Charlie swam towards her pulling her slight body above the stormy waves; Lavinia was so still she just hung over his body like a doll.
"What were you thinking?" He said.
Nothing, Lavinia was so still, the life seemed to have been taken from her.
Charlie placed her on the sand, but before he had a chance to do anything she coughed what seemed like half the sea onto beach.
"I'm sorry Charlie," she said.
Charlie just looked down at her, helplessly, it didn't seem to matter if she was sorry or not.
"What on earth were you thinking?" said Charlie.
"I don't know okay? I just thought if I was going to find them it was going to be here, in there," Lavinia lay on the sand and pointed aimlessly out to the water.
"I'm so sorry, Charlie," she began to cry, to silently sob; Charlie took her in his arms and tried to make her pain go away.
"I'm never going back am I?"
"No," he said holding her tighter.
"No, you're not."
Lavinia buried her neck in is soaking wet shirt and left it there, comforted by the pounding rhythm of his heart that she could feel beneath his chest.
Hi everyone, sorry this chapter took my a little longer than normal! Thanks for continuing on with The Girl Who Fell Out of The Ocean, please comment and vote!! :-)
The posting schedule for The Girl That Fell Out of The Ocean is Wednesday and Sundays!