Trecco Bay

A Body

CHAPTER TWO

She brushed her finger over the limp arm, tears stinging in the corners of her eyes. Cassandra couldn't breathe. Instead, her throat gasped for air, crying out into the morning's silence. It was a quiet road just metres away from a sandy, Welsh beach. It wasn't all so gorgeous though. The woman was sat in a ditch by the side of that road, mud covering her bare legs - shorts included; her long, golden hair falling over her face.

In her arms, a woman with similarly-golden hair, only this girl was younger. The younger girl wasn't moving, she wasn't breathing. She'd been motionless and without a pulse for hours. Cassandra rubbed the tears from her own cheeks, accidentally replacing it with mud that she'd picked up from the ditch. Ignoring the dirt, she pulled her phone out and attempted to call her family, but each call rang out. Nobody was answering.

"Pick up!" the woman roared, brushing her muddy hand through her hair in frustration. The motionless girl to her side was her sister, Alana. Her only true sibling, though she'd never admit that's what she thought.

"Jesus, finally! Where the hell were you? Why weren't you answering me," the girl sobbed down the phone. "I need you to come to Denby road right...right now. You need to come now," Cassandra shouted, trying to emphasise the importance of being quick. On the other end of the phone was Alana's boyfriend, Craig Norton. Cass didn't have the man's number, she didn't care for him enough for that, so she was forced to call him through Facebook instead.

Cassandra knew little about him, she was too engaged in her own love life to pay attention to anybody else's. Still, there would be no man good enough for her little sister and those who came before him were frightened off by the thirty-five year old. Their mother would always speak of how innocent and friendly he was, but Cass didn't believe any man could be innocent.

Ten minutes later was when his car pulled up and he stepped out. The moments before that had been nothing but a slow blur. It felt like he'd taken three hours to get there. Craig had curly brown hair that matched his brown eyes. It didn't exactly compliment his leather jacket and old jeans.

"Cassandra?" he called out in confusion, walking towards her cries. She didn't have the energy to call back, her body slumped over the smaller woman. And Alana was small. Her delicate figure was even beautiful when it wasn't moving, far different to Cassandra's more athletic one. "Alana?" The very moment his eyes found the girls, his face could only be described as ghost-like. Pale and in shock, sickened. He looked even paler than Alana. "Why the hell haven't you called an ambulance?" he snapped, grabbing Cassandra's phone out of her hand and dialling before she could say anything.

She shouted back, "There's no point," not even taking a moment to look up at him. He halted. She'd felt his presence arrive, heard his footsteps and then his voice. She didn't need to look at his broken face, it would only mirror her own emotions.

Craig bent down to get a closer look, his finger tracing the bruises on Alana's body. They were fresh, probably from the evening before. Cassandra knew it was unlike Alana to stay out all night, but had guessed that she was with Craig. Now wasn't the time to question him, not when she could barely find a single word to utter.

"She has marks everywhere. Her neck. Her face." The man lifted up the younger woman's clothes, nudging Cassandra out of the way gently. "Her body." They weren't big marks, just marks large enough for him to see that this was no accident. Every word Craig spoke was just an echo to Cassandra, going in one ear and out the other.

The pain in the Craig's chest became too much for him to speak much after that, his words turned into croaks the more he spoke. Although Cassandra wasn't listening to what he was saying, she could hear how he was saying it. "We...We need to get her away from here. I'm calling an ambulance," he breathed out, though he wasn't certain all of the words could actually be heard. With tears scattering his face, his lips fell down to kiss his limp girlfriend on the forehead.