AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She’s here.
Right in front of me.
I was five years old when she walked out on me, and every time she pops back into my life, it’s without any shame.
“Ainsley,” my mother says, approaching like she’s about to hug me. She looks pretty much the same as the day she walked out on me, besides the start of wrinkling around her eyes and a scatter of greys in her hair.
I hold my hand up, and she stops short of reaching out for me.
It must have been her I thought I saw outside my house and the library the day I walked home in the storm. I didn’t recognise if it was my dad with her, but I only saw someone for a second through the pouring rain.
My stomach lurches, and for the first time ever, I’m glad I skipped lunch.
“H-How did you find me?” I ask. “Have you been here before?”
“Jess said you’re at uni here.”
“Well, she shouldn’t have. What do you want?”
Money is my guess. That’s what she’s always wanted when she’s contacted my aunt. It’s not enough that she’s raising her child, but she also wanted cash from her. It should have been my mother paying them to take care of me.
“Don’t be like that, love. There’s a lot you don’t understand.”
I grind my teeth. “You dropped me off at your sister’s house and never came back for me. You flit in and out of my life when it suits you and act like the victim when you’re called out. What else do I need to understand?”
I ball my hands into fists and bite back an anger so strong, it scares me a little. Casper pales in comparison to this bitch.
Every time I’ve seen her, which hasn’t been a lot, she’s told me that I don’t understand. Not once has she offered to explain it to me, though. Aunt Jess always tries to paint a nicer picture, even with the facts.
“Where do you live?” she asks softly.
As if she doesn’t know already. Why pretend she doesn’t know when I’m fairly sure I’ve seen her hanging around.
I instantly have my back up.
“Where I live is of no concern to you. You don’t get to keep doing this, Katie. I don’t want or need you in my life, so please go away.”
With her long ‘poor me’ sigh, she asks, “Can we go somewhere and talk? Please?”
“Where’s my dad?”
She dips her chin. Another ‘poor me’, as if she’s not the one who caused all of this. I’m not a total bitch. If she’d at least taken some responsibility for what happened, I wouldn’t hate her so much, but she has quite literally given me nothing.
When she decided not to be a mum, she should’ve kept away. There’s nothing worse than having a parent who keeps saying goodbye.
“Your dad’s… getting himself together.”
“Is that what you call adjusting to life outside of prison? Okay, this surprise visit makes sense now. Why you’re here. He’s just been releasedagain,so you two need money. Nice.”
“Come on, don’t be like that.”
My dad is the biggest waster with no job, high on whatever they’re taking these days, and doing anything to get the next hit.
“Don’t be like that? Are you kidding me? I don’t know how you can walk over to me and expect things to be normal. There’s not one thing you can say to me that will ever make up for what you did. Not that you’ve ever bothered to try. Go away, and never come back here again.”
Her eyes widen, and it’s the first time she’s ever appeared scared to me. That I remember, anyway. She was always very strong and very sure of what she wanted, and that wasn’t me.
But I’m not a kid anymore, and I’ve not wished she would clean up her act and be there for me for a long time now.
