Chapter 1 - In the dark
Susan is unhappy. Her life hasn’t quite worked out as she had
previously imagined. She is thirty
something, divorced, a single mum and out of work, on what started as a career break. Every day has the same routine, get out of
bed with the usual struggle to motivate herself, make breakfast for her
daughter Aimee, put on a wash and then a smoke outside in her back garden. There was a time when she was happy. Susan was a regional manager for a large corporation
driving the length and width of the country.
She would meet new people, face challenges every day and then come home
feeling content that she had accomplished something. Susan had met and fallen in love with a man
who she thought she knew who unfortunately turned out to be a monster, leading
to a very messy divorce with ongoing custody battles regarding her child. In her mind she was once soaring with the
eagles before falling back to earth like a fallen angel. Susan often thought to herself ‘where did it
all go wrong?’ Did it all start with meeting
her husband, with the birth of her child or was it destiny that she should fall
from grace and that there was no way, regardless of whether or not she turned
left when she could have turned right, could life have been different? Susan is in a very dark place from which she
cannot see a way out. Her friends feel
frustrated by her lack of interest in socializing with them, her inability to
let her hair down and the fact that she no longer seems to be the fun and
lively person they once knew. Susan knows
that her friends lack empathy towards her as their lives are seemingly
happy. All of her friends and relatives
keep telling her that things will change, she shouldn’t feel sorry for herself
and that we all have problems. Susan is
sick and tired of listening to it. She
is also sick and tired of her friends trying to set her up with their male
friends and colleagues, even their partners friends and colleagues, people who
they might have met only once at their husband’s Christmas party at work. Susan has met them all. She’s met the egomaniacs, the posers, the
pretentious, the drunks, the fighters, the womanizers and the compulsive
liars. Susan finds that life is pretty
grim at times and unfortunately she believes that there is always room for more
disappointment, more anxiety and more annoyance. Susan is sitting in her back garden smoking a
cigarette whilst watching the birds circle overhead for food. The sky is full of blackbirds, Robins and
Magpies all watching and ready to land on Susan’s departure from the
garden. Susan puts out her cigarette and
then looks through her French patio doors to see if her daughter is still
playing in the living room. Aimee is
playing quietly by herself. Her toys are
scattered all over the floor but Susan doesn’t mind as she rarely has company
and it keeps Aimee busy and out of her hair.
Susan lights another cigarette and keeps the birds waiting another
while. For Susan, a cigarette represents
a form of escapism, a short time to herself where she can gather her thoughts. The door bell rings and Susan puts out her
cigarette on the ground next to the wooden bench on which she sits. She quickly looks through the front window
and can see a van parked outside; she knows from the vehicle that it can only
be her favorite delivery man Alex. Susan
rushes to a mirror and checks her hair and makeup before frantically moving to
the front door. Susan is smiling,
something that most people who know her, rarely happens these days. In front of her stands a six foot dark haired
man, athletic in build and dressed in black.
Alex smiles at Susan as she opens her front door. ’Hiya’ says Susan. Alex gazes at Susan’s eyes and says ’how are
you, I’ve got a couple for you today’.
Alex hands the parcels to Susan and their hands touch for only a brief
second which seems to last a life time.
Alex seems to remain frozen in time before he hands her the scanner
’would you mind signing this for me, please’ says Alex. Once again, both of their hands meet skin on
skin for a brief second and for Susan, such a simple touch can send her head
spinning. Alex, through Susan’s eyes, is
the object of her affections. The
problem is that Alex is not the most assuming of men and therefore is none the
wiser. To Alex, Susan would not even for
one minute, look at him as an attractive person worthy of being with her. Susan and Alex talk for quite some time
before Aimee comes running out to join them.
Susan loves the fact that Alex seems to love children and that Aimee
never misses an opportunity to show him her doodles or toys. Eventually, Alex
uncomfortably removes himself from her porch and walks back to his van. As he opens his door, he turns to Susan as if
he wants to say something but cannot bring himself to do so, in case he makes a
fool of himself or should cause her any embarrassment. Alex gets into his van and stares at his
feet, he can feel Susan’s gaze on the side of his head and turns to wave at her
as he pulls away. Susan looks sad and
waves back at him, she closes the door and her heart beats faster again. As she walks through the hallway towards the
kitchen, her insecurities kick in and tell her that a man like Alex would never
be interested in a woman like her. Her
mind starts to convince her that she had a better figure before Aimee was born,
maybe he doesn’t like Blonde’s, what if he’s anti-smoking or maybe he just
isn’t interested. Susan feels gutted
again. Her insecurities are very strong
and who would be surprised, her life like so many others has not been without
stress, trauma and hurt. Susan’s husband
Peter was an arrogant prat who would take great pleasure in putting her down,
making her feel ugly and had openly flirted with other women, especially the
younger ones in front of her; this did nothing for her self-esteem. When a women like Susan feels the way she
does, she will go through endless month’s of changing her hair color,
obsessively exercising and dressing much too provocatively when visiting her
local supermarket. All of these measures
put in place to simply attract the attention of the opposite of sex. Susan was in need of a confidence boost and
she needed it bad. Unfortunately for
Susan, Alex could be the cure to her problems but as she learned a long time ago,
nothing special in life comes without scaling a mountain a hundred times
over. Susan sits down in her kitchen at
the dining table and starts to open her parcels with a pair of kitchen
scissors. Alex is firmly on her
mind. As she opens her parcels, Aimee
comes running into the kitchen and grabs onto her mum, placing her head on
Susan’s lap ‘mummy, I’m hungry!’ Susan
says ‘give mummy a wee minute and I’ll get you something!’ Susan continues to look through her parcels
before leaving them to get lunch for Aimee.
‘What would you like honey?’ said Susan.
Whilst preparing Aimee’s lunch, Susan is fantasizing about Alex arriving
at her door and stepping towards her, embracing her in his arms and then
kissing her passionately on the lips, her heart racing, the feeling of his
stubble against her skin and the firm grip of his strong hands as he makes her
feel complete again. Alex is a man’s man;
he’s strong, tall dark and handsome and has that look of a hero in his eyes as
if he would face a 100 foot Dragon with only a sword, fearless, dependable and
sexy as hell. What she would give for a
moment alone with Alex where she felt strong and confident and was able to tell
him how he makes her feel? Susan thought
to herself ‘that will never happen, imagine his reaction’. Susan needed to come up with a plan that
would allow Alex to know how she felt about him without telling him to his
face, or more importantly that it was she who felt that way about him. Susan thinks back to a time when she was out
working, on the road for nearly ten hours and was on her return trip to
home. On her arrival at home she opened
the front door to find her husband sitting watching a football match on the
television with his feet on the coffee table surrounded by empty beer cans and the
lack of smell of dinner cooking; she knows it’s a common cliché, but it is a
reality that many women face. Susan
remembers saying hello to Peter and tries to kiss him, he responds with ‘moves
out of the way Susan, you’re not made of glass!’ Susan recalls the feeling of disgust that she
felt, the smell of his stinking breath and the look of anger in his eyes. She walks into the dining room, sits down at
the table and stares out of the window.
That night, Susan went to bed without eating dinner and she cried
herself to sleep. She wondered, would it
have been too much trouble for him to make dinner, to kiss her and tell her he
missed her or at the very least to act as if she even existed. To add further insult to injury, Peter woke
her up at twelve thirty in the morning smelling of booze and wanting sex. Just like many women, Susan wanted to say no,
but she knew that to refuse him would end in her having to lie to her friends
and family about the bruises that he would issue her with. That night Susan cried once more as this man
whom she had no love for, would push his sweaty body against hers until he had
spent himself or fallen asleep trying. These
are bad memories and a constant reminder of how things shouldn’t be in a
marriage. Peter didn’t last very long
after the birth of Aimee as things got so bad that she had to wait for him to
go to work and then pack up her car with all that she could carry, take her
daughter crying from the home that they shared and run away as far as she could
go. Since that day, she has fought tooth
and claw to keep this violent man away from Aimee and herself. It hasn’t been easy as he has lied to the
courts to try to wear her down, he has forced her to move several times since
leaving him and has had to call the police and have him arrested for harassment
on too many occasions. Most of that is
behind Susan now. The decision for the
court was easy when she informed them of how Peter stood on her stomach when
she was pregnant with Aimee, how he tried to cut her throat when he got jealous
and insecure and how she showed the court, a massive collection of death
threats that she had been sent to her mobile phone. Susan has been through the wars. Most days, she feels safe. It has been quite some time since she last
had a nightmare about Peter finding her and taking her baby away but still in
the back of her mind, Peter is always looming and perhaps she needs a strong
man by her side to protect her from this monster. Perhaps a tall dark handsome man who would
aid her in her hour of need against him?
Sometimes she still feels that a storm is coming and that Alex could be lying
beside her holding her close whilst she keeps Aimee safe and Alex watches over
them both with his fearless eyes.
Susan’s phone starts to ring and she is brought back to earth abruptly;
she picks up her phone and says ‘Hello!’
Every day since Susan left her husband, her mum would call her like
clockwork. Her mum is a worrier and she
is more than aware that Susan hasn’t quite been herself since the violence and
abuse. During their daily conversation,
her mum repeatedly tells her that if her dad was alive, he would have kicked
the living hell out of Peter and that would have been the end of that. Unfortunately for Susan and her family, her
father passed away two years before she got married and she had to be given away
by her uncle instead. Alex reminded
Susan of her father, everyone knew that her dad never suffered fools gladly and
that a wife beater would be advised to run as fast as he could in the opposite
direction of him as her dad didn’t achieve the nickname of Rocky for nothing. Rocky died within six months of being
diagnosed with lung cancer, it was swift, vicious and destructive. Susan missed him a lot and has never felt
quite as safe as she did when her father was around. She has never forgotten how safe she felt as
a child being cuddled in his strong arms.
Life can be like being kicked in the head repeatedly until you can’t
take any more, then getting back up again to be kicked back down again in a
vicious circle. In Susan’s mind, there
very rarely is a happy ending and she has yet to see the light breaking through
at the end of the tunnel. Every day, her
heart tells her that she should profess her undying love to Alex and take a
chance at happiness whereas her brain tells her differently. Does Alex feel the same or is it a one sided
feeling from a desperate woman missing something from her life. Sometimes people, who are feeling vulnerable,
can misread a friendly person’s conversation and care as a romantic interest
and sometimes a rose is just a rose. On
the other hand, in life sometimes two people can meet regardless of their
circumstances and maybe for just a brief moment, something as simple as a smile
and a meeting of their eyes, can open up a universe of happy opportunities for
two unhappy people who have often felt incomplete, and for the first time in a
lifetime, the darkness can subside.
No comments:
Post a Comment