Where We Begin
Contents (42)
About Where We Begin
Seventeen-year-old Anna is running into the night. Fleeing her boyfriend, her mother, and everything she has known.
She is travelling into the country, to the land and the grandparents she has never met, looking for answers to questions that have never been asked.
For every family has secrets.
But some secrets - once laid bare - can never be forgiven. A dark, deeply compelling, coming-of-age YA novel from the author of As Stars Fall.
Contents
About Where We Begin
Title page
Contents
Dedication
Prologue
NOW
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
HERE
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
THERE
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
THEN
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
WHERE WE BEGIN
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
A note from the author
Acknowledgements
About Christie Nieman
Also by Christie Nieman
Imprint page
For David and Wendy and Graeme
Hi Mum,
As you can see, I’m not here.
I hope this isn’t a big shock to you – it shouldn’t be, if you’re honest.
It seemed like the best idea to go now, while you were both still out of the country. Easiest for everybody.
Nintendo is next door, and Anthony’s collecting the mail.
When you speak to Dad, you can tell him I’ll let him know where I am in a week or two.
I’m sorry, I guess.
I do wish things could have been different.
I wish you could have been different.
Anna
1
The windows on the coach were fogged up on the inside and beaded with rain on the outside. Not that it mattered. When I used the long edge of my hand to wipe away the condensation there was nothing there but night and my own fluorescent-lit reflection looking back at me, all double-eyed and shadowy with the second thickness of glass. Behind me, no other bodies protruded into the aisle of the bus, no other legs or arms: the last of the other passengers had stepped off at the previous town, a half hour gone. It was only my shiny red suitcase that now slid about on the shelf above, a big crimson beetle, with its iridescent carapace, scuttling back and forth over my head. My large framed memento mori – a possession too precious to risk a drop to the floor – sat propped on my feet, pressed uncomfortably against my knees by the angle of the seat in front.
The coach moved oddly, sitting so far above its wheels that even though I was in one of the lowest seats – only two seats behind the driver – it felt as though I was being waved about at the end of a stick. It was not helping my nausea. Not at all. I adjusted my earphones and turned up Adele singing ‘When We Were Young’, and leaned out into the aisle so I could look through the windscreen in an attempt to calm my queasiness.