Heartbreak

Twinbrook: 15 Years ago

The glorious time with the Lagranges was over.  It was time for Annabella to return home.  In the days following her mother’s return from hospital – as suspected – her mother tormented her with more insults and accusations, which resulted in Annabella spending more and more time with Graeme and dealing with the wrath of her mother’s injurious tongue whenever she returned home. 

Her mother’s movements were laboured and extremely painful and Dr MacKenzie came around often too administer morphine to ease her pain.  As a result Annabella’s mother remained mostly in bed, avoiding movement as far as possible.  Dictating from her room.

Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months and slowly the year started drawing to a close.  It was a week before Graeme’s graduation.  Annabella noticed an unfamiliar tension between herself and Graeme and she made a mental note to ask him about it. 

Graeme, being serious about pursuing a sports career after graduation trained vigorously both on and off the football field.  Annabella would meet him at the gym and they would jog to his home together in what he would call his cool-off run, keeping a slow and steady pace so that Annabella could keep up.

Annabella didn’t care much for exercising, but would do anything to spend more time with Graeme – as opposed to spending time at home with her mother. 

One afternoon after freshening up she heard Graeme and his father talking on the porch in hushed tones – she only managed to hear the last few words of their conversation:

“When do you plan on telling Annabella?” she heard Graeme’s father say.

The conversation abruptly ended as they noticed her standing at the door.

“Tell me what?” she asked joining the conversation.

They both looked equally guilty.  Graeme especially looked like a dear caught in headlights – ready to jump the fence and run to safety.

Graeme’s father is the first to speak.  “Hello Annabella.” He walks over to Annabella and gives her a hug.  And then turning to Graeme, giving him a meaningful look: “Graeme, you’re running out of time.  I’ll give you two some privacy.” He goes inside the house, leaving Graeme and Annabella on the porch.

Annabella turns to Graeme: “Tell me what?”  She insists - tension mounting between them.

“I was waiting for the right moment to tell you Bells.”  Annabella kept silent, not knowing what to expect, only knowing that it can’t be good news.  A heavy hand grabs her heart and holds it, ready to squeeze every inch of life out of it. 

“Let’s go for a walk”

“I don’t want to go for a walk Graeme.  Tell me what’s going on!” she replies almost hysterical.

“I was offered a scholarship at the Academy in Shang Simla. We are leaving after graduation.”  He blurted the words out as if they had been kept captive inside his head for a while, now escaping like little prisoners, quickly, before they can get caught and locked up again. 

“We?” She asked hopeful – hoping that it included her.

“…… My family ….. and myself.”

She felt her throat close like a rosebud.  She could see he was trying to figure out what the right thing was to say – to do.  Who else was there if he left?  He is the only one who gave her overt affection, held and hugged her.  She would spend the rest of forever with a hole inside her that couldn’t be filled - the hole where her heart used to be.

With eyes full of unshed tears she looked up to him: “I’m going with you.” She says plainly.

“Bells you know you’re mother will never let you go!”

“I don’t care!  She’s now almost hysterical.  She turns around to run towards the door but Graeme catches her before she reaches it.  The impetus of her flight spinning her around against him so hard he staggered.

“Annabella!  Listen to me!”  He never called her that unless he was agitated and hearing her name on his lips the way her mother uses it everyday made her stop struggling – time suspended – she stared at him, heart knocking frantically – she seemed to die from the pain of it. 

“Don’t you think I’ve thought about it?  Do you think I want to leave you here with her? Do you not understand that I love you - with all my heart?  I’ve thought about this – tried to figure out a way to take you with me, but the only way that you would be able to leave this country with me legally is with your mother’s consent.  You know she will never let you go.  You’re a minor.  The moment we board a plane without her consent we will all be arrested!  We will end up in jail Bells.  I will end up with a criminal record.  I will lose the scholarship and any hope of ever getting another scholarship from anyone.  Please understand.  I have to do this.  It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity – a chance to make something of myself.

If I don’t do this, if I don’t take this opportunity to make something of my life, to have a future I will come to hate you for it.  I will resent you for keeping me here.”

She felt too tired to breathe – as if someone had driven a stake through her chest.  She just kept staring at him with large eyes - full of tragedy. 

He pulled her into his arms and held her, stroking her hair.  “Bells, I wish with all my heart we don’t have to be apart.  I don’t want to leave you.  I love you.  I always have and I always will.  Remember it.” 

He bent to kiss her.

She clung to him too afraid to let go.  Realising she would have to come to terms with the idea that she would never kiss Graeme again; she would never feel the print of his hand on her waist; she would never hear him laugh again …..  her reason for existing extinguished.

“I’ll write to you Bells.”  He offers desperately.

She didn’t reply.

She plucked his hands from around her waist and walked out the door.  He stood there quietly, hands hanging stiffly at his sides.  His eyes filled with haunted grief, a doomed look.  Trying to desperately imprint her image into his brain’s core before she vanishes out of sight.

All the way to her mother’s house she thought about the best way of going about asking her to let her go with Graeme.  Everything in her cried. The prospect of asking her mother for anything horrified her.  She didn’t even notice her cap flying off of her head – now lying forgotten at the side of the road.

The door was slightly open and as Annabella reached to open it wider her mother pushed it open, waiting for Annabella to enter the room and slammed it shut the moment she was inside.  Her mother’s gaze was beating her down, contemptuous and scathing. 

“Well.  Nice of you to remember you have a home.  Where have you been all day?”

Annabella clears her throat.  Buying time.  Anticipating her mother’s outrage.  White-faced, trembling, searching for speech and finally managing to say what she intended: “Graeme and his parents are leaving for Shang Simla in a week.  I can go with them if you give your consent –

I …. I want to go with them.”

Her mother’s lips opened.  She smiled, still regarding Annabella with wide contemptuous eyes – a stinging gaze, almost as if she couldn’t be bothered answering.

“You ignorant little savage –

revolting little philistine!” 

She locked her fingers in the bunched hair on top of Annabella’s head and hauled her closer.  With her mother’s face mere centimeters from her own she imagined she could smell sulphur and brimstone on her breath when she pushed her away from her and hissed, intentionally pausing between each word to give them a sharp, lucid cruelty:

“Over

my

dead

body”.

The look in her mother’s eyes scared her.  As if she was staring directly into the depths of Hell. 

Despite this Annabella looked at her with a calmness that even surprised her:

“Be careful what you wish for – Mother.”

Bridgeport Mental Hospital

Annabella feels a chill in the air and turns away from the window. 

Her mother locked her up in the storage room for a week – when she got out Graeme and his family had already left.  She left him there on the porch that day thinking that she wanted nothing more to do with him – she never had a chance to say goodbye.

She considered taking her own life. 

Inconspicuously gathering her mother’s prescription painkillers over a period of time so that no one would notice.  That time she figured suicide would be her final statement. 

A fuck you to the people who didn’t understand how hard it was to be the Annabella they expected her to be. 

She could never bring herself to take them – eventually flushing them down the toilet.  Sitting on the cold bathroom floor – sobbing uncontrollably.