Save Her by Abigail Osborne (novel books to read .txt) 📗

Today, she had cancelled her appointments. She was not in the mood for dealing with other people. Her mind was racing with everything had had happened in the last few days.

Sophie brought up Flora’s ‘new’ house on Google maps. She stared at the house that had once represented nothing but pain and suffering for Flora. Even now, all these years later, she could picture the walk from her mother’s house to Flora’s. She could still picture a teenage Flora, waiting outside on the wall, kicking her legs against bricks and chewing on the end of her braid as she waited for Sophie so they could walk together to school. Sophie knew that the loss of her parents was a weight that Flora carried around her neck. She had always done what she could to help her bear it. But the loss had come to define Flora and made her crave love and a family of her own.

Although Sophie had not lost her parents in the traditional sense, she may as well have. Sophie was an accidental by-product of Lily Moore’s never-ending search for a ‘good time’. Booze and men were her way of life and that did not change when she became a mother. Lily had decided that six was a perfect age for Sophie to gain her independence and start to look after herself and gave herself permission to return to long nights at the pub with a different man to share a ‘good time’ with each night.

On Google maps, Sophie was only able to look at the front of the house. But she didn’t need a picture to remember the inside. It had become a refuge for Sophie. Especially in the years before Flora’s parents had died. They always welcomed her as if they she was one of their own. It was a house that did not have the heady scent of booze and vomit; where she did not have to put her mother in the recovery position; or try and block out the animalistic grunts coming from her mum’s bedroom. It was a house full of laughter, where she was asked how school was going and people actually listened when she spoke.

Then, in the Pauline-era, after the car crash that killed Flora’s parents, it was a place to sneak into to be with Flora. She could almost hear the end credits of Emmerdale playing in her ears as she thought back to sitting outside of Flora’s house waiting for the tune that was the customary signal that Pauline would now be asleep on the sofa with a cigarette in one hand and an empty bottle of wine in the other, and it would be safe to creep into the house.

Sophie’s mother was neglectful and powerless to her addiction. But she was never vicious. Flora’s Aunt Pauline was the embodiment of cruelty. When she had taken custody of Flora and moved into her sister’s house, it was like she had also adopted the task of terrorising Flora like an evil spirit.

Flora eventually admitted to Sophie that the bruises on her hands were not because she was clumsy but from the walking stick that Pauline pretended to the authorities she needed to keep the disability payments coming, but only seemed to need it to whack Flora for some perceived insult or disobedience.

The physical violence was nothing compared to Pauline’s love of psychological torture. Sophie’s blood turned to ice once more as she recalled the night Flora had turned up on her doorstep wrapped only in a bed sheet. The frost in the midnight air had been vicious and Flora’s whole body had been icy cold and turning blue. She was shaking violently, but Sophie couldn’t tell if it was from the cold or fear.

Through hysterical tears and hiccups, Flora told a horrific tale of how her aunt had decided that she dressed like ‘a common tart’ just like her mother. She’d walked into her bedroom to find her aunt there, cutting all of her clothes to shreds, switching between laughing manically and shrieking insults about her mother at the top of her voice. Pauline had even ripped off the clothes Flora had been wearing until all that was left in the room was a bed sheet.

Flora had stayed with Sophie for a whole week. They’d managed to get by sharing a school uniform and Sophie had given Flora some of her clothes, but they were completely different sizes. Sophie had a stick-thin pencil-shaped figure whilst Flora had feminine curves and breasts that seemed to grow each day. Using the precious earned money from selling at school, she bought Flora new clothes and a new uniform of her own. It was a while until Flora had built up the courage to return home. Her aunt appeared not to have noticed that she’d been gone or that she had replaced her clothes.

Sophie would have loved Flora to stay with her forever. However, Lily’s drunken rampages were becoming more frequent. Three times Sophie had only just managed to intervene when Lily, convinced Flora had stolen her beer, tried to evict the girl forcibly from the house. Soon Flora began to feel that the wrath of her aunt was easier to stomach than Lily’s. This was just one more reason for Sophie to hate her mother. On the face of it, it had probably been a good thing: the two girls could not risk going into care.

Top and tailing on Sophie’s blow-up mattress – her mother had sold her bed for a bottle of vodka from Jimmy up the road – the girls had discussed what going into care would be like. They both agreed that it was probably worse than what they were going through now. Plus, they wouldn’t have each other. Sophie smiled as she pictured the pinkie swears that they used to make. Make friends, make friends, never, never break friends. There is nothing I can’t do as