Narcissus

Chapter Twenty-Five

When I awoke, there was a soft hum in the air and I could feel a considerably large weight pressing down upon myself. Opening my eyes, they fell upon a humongous ball of black fur.
"Felix, you're far too big now to come and sit on me in the morning!" I wheezed, gently guiding the cat off of my lap. He had been on a diet for years and years and years, but the black and white rescue cat stubbornly refused to loose any weight and it wasn't difficult to tell as his belly drooped almost to the floor.
Checking the watch I had discarded on my bedside table, I saw that I had around an hour to get washed and make myself presentable before Isla's babysitter would be dropping her off, as I had arranged for her to pick Isla up around eight o'clock from the wedding last night. I couldn't remember what time I got home, but vague memories of being convinced to get a taxi to the pub when the wedding started to dwindle down filled my mind as I stepped in the shower.
Breakfast came in the form of a smoothie, and I sipped daintily from it as I climbed the black, wrought iron spiral staircase that led directly to my room. My room was hidden in the largest turret of the castle, although it was not too large - enough to fit a double bed, a wardrobe, a desk, a small loveseat and a set of drawers. There were two curved windows opposing each other, one above the desk which looked over the back of the house to the forests and mountains of the Scottish highlands, and another window with the loveseat below it overlooking the front drive. I sat there now, curled up, my elbow resting on the ledge.
Quite a few minutes passed of me daydreaming lazily, the sun shining for once and lighting up my face with a golden glow. Then I turned, searching for where I had placed my smoothie to finish off my breakfast before Isla arrived. That was when I saw it. It sat innocently on the oak wooden floor, staring back at me.
A hair tie. That was all it was. A simple hair tie. But it was a brown hair tie. Isla and I had never owned a brown hair tie in our lives.
And so now, a feeling of immense dread settled over me. It was quite an all consuming feeling and now the smoothie which had been in my hand all along was forgotten because I stood up and the very air was vibrating around me and I couldn't quite breathe and I saw that there were two pillows side by side on my bed and I never did that never ever I always threw that spare pillow off the bed I always slept with one pillow and then-
Then the memories came flooding back. Emma. Emma with her wispy long dark hair, Emma with her secret keeping eyes and Emma with her blood-red lips...
Then Isla was home and running into my arms and the babysitter was looking concerned, asking me why I was so pale, but I paid the nosy girl and took Isla through to the living room, where I listened to her give me a detailed run through of her entire night, despite the fact that I was there for most of it. I didn't have the heart to tell her I wasn't in the mood to listen. That I wanted to curl into a ball and shut out the entire world forever.
Isla clambered onto my lap then, almost as if she could sense my despair although I knew she could not. Years of hiding my feelings left it easy to disguise things despite her being my child, but she nestled into my neck anyway and for a few moments, everything felt right with the world.
A few hours passed and I was standing in the hallway, Isla beaming up at me as I zipped up her raincoat for her. There was a floor to ceiling mirror in the hallway, and I caught my reflection. Dressed in hiking boots - albeit, cream £300 hiking boots - and black jeans with a white raincoat I was a far cry from my younger self, when I walked the halls of Hallway House with my Louboutin's clicking obnoxiously on the stone floor as I glowered at every student. My hair, just past my shoulders, was much softer and more golden now, compared to when I used to take the family jet to Paris to get my hair dyed platinum blonde every month.
The black Bentley glinted tauntingly on the driveway as Isla clambered onto the booster seat in the back, a reminder that I was not quite as separated from my old self as I would like to be. The car engine purred to life, a frown appearing on my face as I remembered the surprised and rather dirty looks I had garnered from the other mothers at Isla's school the first day I had dropped her off due to my choice of vehicle.
The Tesco Supermarket just behind the high street seemed to be, unsurprisingly, empty.