Once

Fourteen

For the second time in a row Elle was awakened by the sound of a little girl screaming.

For a second she was panicked. She opened her eyes, clamping them closed again almost at once at the intense sunlight blazing between the open curtains. The moment she woke up that dream from last night and all its horrible details had come shrieking back into her brain.

She realised almost at once, though, that the scream she'd heard had been a real one, and, unlike the one from her dream, it was not a scream of fright. It was a girlish squeal of excitement. It was now being followed by a series of others, all of them coming from somewhere very close by.

She sat up in bed and looked out of the window. In the garden below her dad was standing over the paddling pool, filling it with the garden hose. The twins in their swimming costumes were circling round him, darting about the garden like butterflies, and screaming with delight every time he splashed them with the hose. Kaye was sitting a little way off at the garden table, beaming happily at the joyful scene playing out in front of her. She had on a pair of colossal bejewelled sunglasses that made her look like she had the glinting eyes of a black-widow spider.

Elle pulled her face away from the window. That was not a scene she felt like watching for any longer than she needed to. Anyway, she was already late - it was almost half-nine already. She threw herself out of bed and raced along to the bathroom. She showered and, with no time to wash her hair, she just tied it up in a ponytail and wrapped an old bandana round her forehead. It didn't make much difference what Elle did with her hair. Even when she washed it it just ended up dry and scratchy as old straw. And no one ever cared what she did with it anyway.

Back in her room she dressed in a hurry, pulling on an old band T-shirt and jeans, and throwing a plaid shirt over the top. As she yanked on her high-tops she could hear the squeals of laughter still ringing out from the garden below.

For some reason her eyes flicked up to the noticeboard on the wall. Tucked in there among the old concert tickets and postcards and the little doodles Jax had made for her there was a single photograph - a blonde woman, grinning at the camera, eyes staring out at her across the room.

Her mum. She hardly ever looked at that picture anymore, but for some reason this morning she found herself staring back at those eyes - eyes she barely remembered. People sometimes said she had her mother's eyes. She wouldn't really know if that was true or not.

She sometimes wondered whether she'd be different if her mum was still alive. Would she talk to her? Confide in her, maybe? Perhaps she'd talk to her about this weird feeling she'd been having since yesterday morning. This feeling swelling up inside her that something big was coming. She felt like she was standing on the edge of a cliff watching an enormous storm gathering across the horizon, and knowing it would soon be coming right for her.

Would she talk to her mum about this sort of thing? Probably not. The crippling feeling that she was just being stupid and melodramatic meant that she didn't really want to say any of this out loud. Besides, it's not like she ever shared anything she was feeling with her dad, or even really with any of her friends. She didn't imagine she'd be any more open or chatty if both her parents still happened to be alive.

As she stood up from putting on her shoes she stole a final glance out of the window. The twins were now leaping in and out of the paddling pool and her dad, finished with the hose, had gone to sit with Kaye. As she watched Kaye leaned in close and whispered something to him - something that made him laugh out loud. She felt, irrationally, that Kaye had probably said something about her.

There they all were. A sweet little picture of a perfectly happy family.

In another minute Elle had raced down the stairs and out of the front door without even telling them she was going.