The painting was the first thing to go up in the new house. Before a
single box was unpacked, or a single ornament unwrapped before, even,
the furniture was pushed into the unadorned lounge.
She hung it over the fireplace, a riot of colour against the white
walls, casting a little spirit into the shadow-less room; it seemed to
quiet the echoes and melt away the cold. The man leaning protectively
over the woman, the smile on her face and the flowers in her hair, the
spring blossoms dusting the ground at their feet, reminding her of a
person and a day years ago and there in our story begins.
***
The sickly scent of sugar and jam filled the kitchen, a cake rising in
the oven.
"Adeline, you're home. How was school sweet heart?" Though, clearly
not caring about the response, her mother raced on, pushing back hair
from her haggard face, her hands covered in flour, before returning to
the dough she was kneading. "Ellie has run off again." Her mother
managed a strained laugh through a false smile, her artificially
off-hand tone barely masking the fear that lay behind it. Adeline
swallowed. That explained the baking; all the delicious food in their
kitchen. Whenever her sister went out like this, with no explanation
and no excuse, her father would not be pleased.
Adeline, as a child couldn't understand why her father got so
unbelievably angry, and even now as an old woman of 75, she still
couldn't come up with a valid theory to explain his behaviour. The long
and short of it, she guess, was plain and simply that he was a violent
individual. Her sister, 15 years old, wasn't a wayward girl by any
stretch of the imagination, far from it, she studied hard in school,
helped out around the house, but she was a teenager and, Adeline
figured, it was this her father rejected so aggressively. He couldn't
stand Ellie's bottles of perfume and pressed powders which she lined up
beside her mirror. He hated the skirts her mother allowed her to buy
and he despised the ribbons she wore in her hair. Her wanderings were
somewhat a mystery, though Adeline had once seen her in the woods
picking flowers, exactly where she vanished to every evening was
unknown to both Adeline and her mother. They dared not involve
themselves by asking her about it; for fear that the girl's father
would find out see it as encouragement.
Adeline loved her sister. Loved the way she skipped to the hen house as
she fed the chickens (they had owned five chickens, which lived in the
large garden between the well and the apple tree, it had always been
Adeline's job to collect the eggs each morning, almost as soon as she
could walk, this became her routine, even on freezing wintry mornings
before the sun had even risen), the way Ellie hummed jovial tunes as
she did her chores always cheered Adeline up. Ellie always seemed to
have a smile on her face and a spring in her step. She'd wish good
morning to the bad tempered old men of the village and so winning was
her smile that they would grin back 'good morning, miss'. Though their
father's outbursts no doubt affected her, her reactions were never long
lasting and by the next day she'd return to school as light-hearted as
ever.
Although Adeline didn't realise it at the time, as she stood in the
kitchen, fear rising inside her as she looked up at her mother's watery
eyes, tonight the delicious food would do nothing to dampen her
father's temper, tonight's eruption would be the worst yet.
Ellie fled to her room in tears, no doubt to try to cover the bruise
swelling all over her cheek. The next morning, Saturday, she didn't get
out of bed. Adeline fed the chickens for her sister, trying to ignore
the dark silence which hung over the house. She didn't know where her
father was, and thought it unwise to bother mother. You see, although
their father was a terrifying man, with an explosive temper which
balanced on a knife edge, he had never before harmed any body with
anything other than words. Once or twice he'd thrown ornaments, or
swept his plate from the table, but he'd never hit anybody, until last
night. That afternoon, Adeline peeped in on her sister, but regretted
it instantly. Her face was pale, her features seeming to hang from
jagged bone with none of their usual beauty. Her smile had dissolved,
her eyes were dark, their sparkle gone.
A few nights later, Adeline was awoken in the night by a tapping. As
she came out of her sleepy haze and her senses focused, she realised
the sound was rocks, tapping against glass. Staring out of her window,
she was alarmed to see a boy in their back garden, throwing little
stones up at Ellie's bedroom window. Her anxiety faded however, as
Ellie opened the window, smiling, the first smile her face had worn in
days. She called down to the boy in the yard, but Adeline was unable to
hear their conversation without the two spotting her.
The next day, Ellie didn't come home from school and Adeline made a
decision to search for her. She didn't need to look for very long, in a
clearing in the woods; sitting amongst the long grass and spring
flowers was her sister, back to her free spirited self once again.
Adeline didn't disturb Ellie, for with her was the boy from the yard.
Adeline, enjoying the warmth of the sun, the smell of the fresh grass
and flowers, didn't want to go home to the drab little house. Instead,
she sat in a tree, watching the birds, when she glanced back to her
sister and the boy, she saw they were kissing, the boy wrapping his arm
around Ellie, who had a daisy in her hair.
