Intent [Wattys 2017]

Prologue

| Prologue |

EMMA

Today is the day I have been waiting for my entire life. I finally get to leave the small town I've had to call home for the past 17 years and start my new life at Oxford University. I still can't believe I actually got in. This next step is my saving grace, an escape from the memories of this town and I never have to come back. There was nothing left for me here, only ghosts. My mother and step-father are moving to Ireland to be around his family and god knows where my drunk of a father is these days, not that I even want to find out. To be far, I haven't had anything in this town since my childhood friend left to go to London because of his father's promotion when we were eight years old and hadn't heard from him since. He's just another ghost at this point, but maybe the only friendly one.

It's raining of course, a typical day in Durham and with a five hour drive ahead of me I just wanted to get going. No need to linger at my childhood home or say heartwarming goodbyes to my mother and her husband, Steve and their two babies. It's not that I didn't love them, I did really I just don't believe in any of that weak emotional tearful bullshit. If you knew how I had grown up you would understand. With a father more drunk than not and a mother too afraid to actually do anything about his behavior it was left to me to take care of the both of them. It wasn't until my dad roughed me up pretty bad that she got the police involved. It wasn't the first time of course he had done small things like this before. He would hold my arm a little too tightly so it would bruise or push me over causing me to scrape my knee, marks I would just equate to roughhousing at school to my mom.

I couldn't tell my mom, she was too weak and blindly in the love the man she married to know the truth about him, so I hide it, before the big incident of course, I couldn't hide that even if I tried.

Things got a lot worse at home after he left. I didn't have a safe haven so at the ripe old age at eight I started to see how far I could push my father thus resulting in the big incident when I saw my dad being carted off by the police as I lay on a stretcher, barely strong enough to keep my eyes open. That was the last time I ever saw my dad.

So if anyone could already tell I had a lot of ghosts here. Mom now had Steve and young twins to take care of and a new life in Ireland to look forward to so I didn't have to worry about her anymore. Steve was good to his core and I trusted him, so leaving wasn't that big of a deal. I had been fighting and waiting for this moment for years and it was finally here. I was pulling out of this driveway for the very last time, never to return.

I have never really been afraid of change. Life will just keep going on without you so you need to push through it and this was a welcome and earned push forward.

The drive was long and tedious. Everyone seemed to be taking the same road as me down south and they were all moving at a snail's pace, there's a speed limit for a reason people, you can go at that speed!

It really surprises me how stupid some people seem to be. After he left I didn't make many other friends apart from Lina, my best friend for the past few years and who was thankfully coming with me to Oxford. All the years in between him leaving and meeting Lina were lonely and filled with more books than I can even remember. I was grateful to live a thousand lifetimes through my books.

___

Being the planner that I am I had already mapped out my root to my room and orientation. Lina was supposed to meet me in an hour so I had some time to look around. Luckily the sun was now shining illuminating this magical place that I had longed for for so many years. Parking my old sports mini cooper in the lot I pulled back my loosely curled and now slightly stale blonde hair into a ponytail I grabbed my crossbody purse and set off to walk around the campus.