Prologue

Twenty-four years ago

Primrose Hill, London

Ruth can feel the dirt gritting in between her teeth as a mouthful of soil forces its way down her throat. It’s not as bad as swallowing sand at the beach, which leaves all the grittiness and texture in your mouth for hours afterwards. She wants to be sick; already the acid is burning at the back of her throat, but she won’t be, not in front of them. Tears prick the corners of her eyes but she fights them. No, she will not cry! 

            A shadow falls across her face, her skin ripples with gossebumps. A figure is blocking out the light of the sun, she squints as her eyes adjust to the change in the light. Her sister is offering her, her hand. Ruth stares at the creamy white palm, thin lines etched across the skin. One was our life line, her mother once said, and the other was your health. Her sister’s life line was very short. She’d noticed that from the beginning.

Ruth hesitates, scrunching her fingers into the mud, unwilling to get up. Was that pity in her sister’s eyes, or was she laughing to? She never could be sure about her sister.

A sound, incoherent to her drifts up the hill and her sister draws her hand away, snatching it back. A flock of birds leap from the trees, cawing as they fly to safety. Her sister’s eyes fill with terror as she steps back, the mud squelching under the soles of her feet, the sound of a twig snapping. Then, her brother’s voice; Ruth can’t see him, but her body tenses and she realises she has nowhere to hide. If she gets up he’ll tackle her to the ground again. This time, it’ll hurt.

            His voice is soft though, her muscles relax; he will not hit her, not now. But there was no mistaking the menace that was there. It had been there since day one.

‘Don’t!’ He says. Just his voice was enough to make her body tremble.

            Her sister moves out of the way of the sun, Ruth squints again as its rays tingle her face with warmth. Her eyes haze over a little but quickly return to normal. She hoists herself up, wincing at the pain in her knee. Her arms are burning; one of her scars on her arm has started bleeding again. A single tear streaks down her cheek, there will be fresh bruises in the morning

Her sister is racing back down the hill, her pig tails flying behind her, like Amanda in Matilda. She can picture swinging her sister around, round and round she’ll go and whoosh off they’ll come. It was fun to picture it, if only in her head.

            Her brother is waiting for her, her mother standing beside him and obediently she takes her hand. She looks up at Ruth once then turns away. Ruth can see her knees trembling.

Her mother is looking at her, the expression on her face scornful, as though she is inspecting the rubbish. No, not her mother: who was funny, beautiful, kind and always full of life. That was how she knew her. But that was all pretence, a lie. She sugar coated everything; she tried to make life better for her. That’s what Ruth had to believe. 

She wasn’t well, her father had told her, and went away to clear her head but couldn’t come back for her. Why couldn’t she? It was the question that swam around Ruth’s mind for days, years.

Ruth had learnt later that she had gone for a swim and had never come back; her body had washed up on the shores of the Thames the very next day. Suicide was the word she had learnt that day.

            She watches her step mother and her children walk away from the hill, back across the park and into the depths of London where the traffic is roaring and machinery hums as yet another high rise goes up. They seem to be going up all over the place these days.

            Ruth hadn’t wanted to come today. But she had promised her Dad, she’d promised she’d make an effort. He’d seemed stressed when she told him she didn’t want to come; maybe that was what made him say what he said, and it had hurt her, right to the core. It still did.

            ‘You know, I didn’t have to take you on,’ there had been no feeling etched into his tone.

            His words burned in the back of her mind and she fought to push them out but she was unable to detach herself from them.

            She wanted that bitch gone, and out of her life. Maybe if that happened, her Dad would learn to accept her, maybe he would even love her. While they were there, she would never feel safe.

She looked down at the deep red lines on her arm from where he had sunk in the knife. She’d had counselling for months after she had said she’d done it to herself. He’d sat there, smiling, knowing that he had triumphed. They wouldn’t have believed me anyway, she had conceded. And she had been subjected to talks about her mother and how her own mother’s suicide had affected her. Bullshit.

The wind snakes its way up the hill and stings her face. She raises her fingers to her cheek and pulls them back, rubbing them together, staring at the blood.

Thank you for taking the time to read my piece. I would be grateful if you could leave me your thoughts or any suggestions for improvement.