Take A Chance On Me ☆ [Mamma Mia - Bill Anderson X Reader]

☆27☆

You have stayed in Kalokairi, never leaving the island except for bulk shopping trips on the mainland and your niece's school, always mothering, always working... for almost five years.

In a few months it's Sophie's fifth birthday, hammering home the fact that your soul has been trapped here doing exactly what you swore you were never to do again. Since the day years ago when your little girl asked you what it was like before she was in the world, you've felt the songbird in your soul lose a feather each day you wake up and find yourself here again.

You can't live like this much longer, otherwise you might break. And nobody wants to see that again.

Today you finally walk through the door of the family house you helped Donna fix up completely last year, extremely fatigued from the whole day of caring for and running around Sophia. Namesake Great Aunt Sophia is nearing the end of her life - she told you so herself, right before she ordered you to tuck her into bed the other night. A visit from the local doctor that you had to organise yourself confirmed that the old woman's heart was slowly giving out, and that she would have a few months tops to live. At that, Sophia told the doctor to "just shoot me now," which made you laugh before you showed the doctor out, then collapsed onto the beaten yellow sofa for a moment or two of shut-eye before she called out for a cup of tea.

Speaking of tea, you sigh to yourself as you pick up a note from the table saying that Donna had taken Sophie to  the bar she sings at for the evening but they'd be home soon - you'd better start making dinner for everyone.

You begin to make a gigantic Moussaka, attempting to put on the tinny old radio to prevent you from falling asleep right in the middle of cooking from exhaustion; it doesn't catch the close radiowaves, out of - you assume, in your tired and bitter state - pure malice towards you.

Inside, you can feel every thought and emotion slowly bubbling to the surface: every day still here; every time you've had to babysit and raise a child that isn't even your own; every night you've have to make dinner because your sister is trying to earn a living instead of trying to learn how to live as a mother; every day you've had to work twice as hard as her because, surprise surprise, as soon as you and your twin are in each other's vicinity you seem to be resigned to being second best and underrated.

Suddenly the bold doorbell you attached yourself to the rickety door rings, loud and shrill and repetitive and digging its way into your brain, and somewhere inside you snap.

You slam the knife down, chopping an aubergine lopsided and chunky, and as your hand goes to clutch your old tree spirit necklace, the last relic of your old life besides your dear camera, a long-forgotten song unfurls in your head:

"I hear the doorbell ring and suddenly the panic takes me,
The sound so ominously tearing through the silence,
I cannot move, I'm standing,
Numb and frozen,
Among the things I love so dearly,
The books, the paintings and the furniture,"

You dart your eyes around the things in the kitchen, the walls that seem to be getting smaller by the second, and as you notice how in the evening light everything looks frightening and threatening, your vision gets blurry. You sing the next line filled with genuine panic and dread:

"Help me...

The signal's sounding once again and someone tries the doorknob,
None of my friends would be so stupidly impatient,
And they don't dare to come here,
Anymore now,
But how I loved our secret meetings,
We talked and talked in quiet voices,
Smiling,"