Annie could feel the muscles of her chin tremble like a small child, There's static in her head once more, the side effect of the constant fear, constant stress she lived with.
"Anna?" At the sound of her mother's trembling voice, It takes somethin...
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You've got a warm heart You've got a beautiful brain But it's disintegrating
Tommy explained it all. Well, all that he could tell her and for the most part, she believed him. "So you're a bookmaker?" She raised an eyebrow, he nodded but he could see that she was skeptical. Michael wasn't skeptical when he told him. He found himself comparing her to him throughout the journey, they were quite similar in some ways. Appearance wise, yes, that much was quite obvious. She was a quiet one, but in no way timid, she seemed to just like the quiet. She was intelligent from the way she could detect his half truths so easily, he presumed she was educated well when she revealed her fluency in french, conversing with the waitress with ease.
Sallyanna felt nauseous. A part of her had been waiting for this moment her entire life, but now that it was finally here. She couldn't even take a minute to herself to properly digest the information. "How did you find out I was alive?" She finally asked the question that she'd been wondering for too long.
The truth is he heard about Ada and Polly's little trip to Sparkhill by one of his factory workers, and he grew curious. He visited there straight after and was met with a short brunette who was absolutely not delighted to see him standing on her doorstep. Though, through fear, she told him everything and then he thought maybe he wasn't so right about Sallyannas life, maybe it wasn't as straightforward as he thought.
"There was a boy in Stratford, the Stationmaster's son." He started, he immediately noticed the discomfort in Sallyanna's expression but pressed on anyway. "You wrote to him two days after you were pronounced dead." His blue eyes watched her, hoping to catch something in her expression, but there was just nothing, no shock or surprise. Just nothing.
She leaned back into her seat, her head was all over the place, her mind too busy buzzing with thoughts and memories that she barely heard his next question .
"How did you manage that , Sallyanna?"
Somewhere between England and Australia, Sallyanna had woke up in a fright and bent over as sharply as if she'd been punched in the stomach, drops of blood spattered her lap and knees and the dust at her feet. By slow, torturous degrees, the coughs eased in intensity and then slowly, slowly passed. She'd been shoved under the deck of the boat for the last four months, that's where she caught the blasted disease. She laid back in the bed, her back groaned in protest but it was either the thin mattress or dusty wooden floor.
Cold licked at her face and crept under her clothes, spreading across her skin like the lacy tide on a frigid winter beach. With purple lips tinged with blue and gently chattering teeth she wrapped the thin sheet of blanket around her tighter. Although it felt as if she were lying in an ice bath, in reality she'd sweated through all of her clothes.
There was something strange in the aura, this morning. The room was filled with an ominous brittle silence. Her head turned to her left and she looked towards the red head in the bed next to her. Annie was normally woken up by her coughing and spluttering and it was a bit off putting that she hadn't today. Sallyanna pulled away her blanket and on shakily legs, stalked towards the girls bed. As she got closer, she saw the girls face was turned away from her. Sallyanna tapped and shook at her shoulder but to no avail, she didn't move one bit. She pulled back the blanket a bit to look at her name badge, there it was written in black ink the name, 'Cleo.W"
She tried calling the girls name but not even that worked. At this point Sallyanna was becoming nervous, the girls head was still turned away from her and she finally mustered up the courage to reach up and gently pull the girls face towards her. Lifeless green eyes stared straight back up at her.
A scream shook through Annie's entire body and she fell to the floor in shock. The girl was-
She was dead.
With tears in her eyes, she looked down towards her shaky hands. She touched a dead body. She could feel the metallic tasting bile make its way up her throat and she threw up her breakfast in the bucket beside her bed , her body was now shaking with sobs. With tears streaming down her face, she gently stood to her feet, her eyes couldn't tear themselves away from Cleo's green lifeless ones and this time she felt sick with herself.
Sick of what she was thinking of doing. She could hear footsteps, someone was coming down the steps and she realised she had to act quick. She had to choose. It was now or never. Shamefully, Annie reached up and unclipped the dead girls name label, quickly swapping it with her own.
And with the last bit of dignity left in her, she returned to her own bed and hid beneath what little bed sheets they provided her.
Sallyanna cleared her throat, she'd always have to live with that. The guilt and the shame ate away at her at times. The constant worrying thought that the girl could have had someone out there expecting her to come home to them, forever wondering where it had all gone wrong. Sallyanna soon realised, that that's exactly how her mother must have felt all these years, and that made her feel so beyond disgusted with herself.
"Well I wasn't actually dead, obviously." She countered, "I did have the flu, but they made a mistake, mixed me and some other girl up." She confessed. He didn't believe her, and he was so curious, the state of not knowing was killing him, but he didn't question it, either. The sad look in the girls eyes made him drop it and she so was internally grateful that he did.
"Does she know that I'm alive?" She seemed weary, tipping over and almost stuttering as she asked the question. He detected what was a glint of vulnerability in her brown eyes and thoroughly thought through how to answer her.
"No." Was all he came up with, he shook his head as he said it. She nodded, feeling the moisture in her eyes, her hands were also sweating incredibly and she tried swallowing the lump in her throat.
"Excuse me, I just- I'll be a minute." She'd left the booth and headed straight for the small cubicle at the back of the train. She didn't shy away from letting the tears fall down her cheeks and made no effort to wipe them away, her lips rigged at a small frown.
It was all just too much for her. Too much all at once.
A/n What did you think about Anna's secret? Kind of dark , bless her , no child should have to witness something like that.
