Rain clouds are scudding across the sky, but every so often there’s a scrap of moon to see by. Stella pauses to study the painted hands—they are all she has left now—and her buoyant mood slips. It was a mistake to start thinking about her sister; that’s what’s broken her rhythm. All at once the floorboards feel hard on her bum and she notices her back is aching. Her eyes well up and she swipes them, briskly, with her sleeve.

Stella fumbles in her pocket for a Biro and turns the painted hands over, so that she can use the back of the paper. Not that she knows what to write, or who she’s addressing—only that she doesn’t want to die, and words are the grappling hooks with which she attaches herself to the world.

Rain hurls itself against the little window and the sound makes her even sadder; she keeps having to sniff and mop her eyes so that she doesn’t drip all over her writing.

Stella Maria Lyell, she writes.

Stella Maria Lyell.

There must be something more intelligent to say, but she can’t think what it is.

It rained like this when she ran away from home for the first time, at fourteen. It was the rain that drove her sheepishly back again, after a night on the streets. She hadn’t planned sufficiently; she’d had nothing to sustain her but a hazy, dwindling resentment and £3.60 in small change. How ironic, now, to think she’d been defeated by a few spots of water. She would give anything to be out in it now—to lift up her face, open-mouthed, and feel it dribbling down her throat.

A new noise begins beneath the downpour; she feels it through her legs like a distant drumbeat. It’s the sound of feet on the stairs.

“Here we go,” she whispers, as her fingers fail and the pen rolls across the floor. “Here it is.”

While the key is still turning in the lock, Stella manages to drop the paper inside the empty wash jug. If it stays there unread till doomsday, so be it. It is hers; it exists; she has signed it with her name, and there’s a funny kind of comfort in that.

Freya: September–October 2014

FREYA

September–October 2014

Chapter 1

1

Cory’s arm was heavy across my neck, and it was difficult to slide out of bed without disturbing him. Every tiny movement made the mattress roll and sag, and he’d already hauled me back twice, just when I thought I was free—knotting me up inside his sleepy embrace. I managed it the third time and dressed quietly in the dawn twilight.