Chapter 1 Pt 2

Summer

Summer was coming back to reality much harder than she could ever have imagined. Jamie really wasn’t the love of her life. He was an immature idiot that preyed on school girls because they were easy to manipulate. None of the sixth-formers his own age glanced his way. This revelation only made things seem so much more difficult though. Now staying at her Dad’s one bedroom flat on a uncomfortable sofa, Summer was looking at things in an utterly different way. Her mother had kicked her out for what Summer thought was a morally terrible reason; because she had not pressed charges against Jamie. No crime was committed. It was consensual sex. At least as far as her mother was concerned. Jamie knew the truth and Summer was determined to find out.

How could she have been so stupid? Jamie was ugly, thin with an evil smirk that occurred every time he manages to manipulate so that he got his own way. Not one of his physical features could be described as attractive. But still, Summer had been drawn in, hook, line and sinker.

She had never listened to her friends when they told her how gorgeous she was, how jealous they were of her auburn hair, perfect smooth skin and long eyelashes. Summer even thought that the lads who had asked her out on dates had been joking, her self esteem was that low. The thing is, now she couldn’t remember whether she had had confidence before Jamie came along. How was she going to function properly alone?

Kerry

The house was empty with Summer gone. It was too big for the two of them anyway, but held so many memories of her late mother and father she refused to let the house go. Now she wanted it out of her life as it reminded her of her own daughter. Kerry had given birth to Summer at the tender age of fifteen, and really didn’t want her daughter going down that path. Ever since she was old enough to understand, Kerry had tried to drum this into Summer, even down to the fact she got her daughter to complete her work experience in the nearest abortion clinic. What more could she have done to protect and deter her?

The attic door swung open swiftly, causing Kerry to duck and swear rather loudly. She had had to poke at the latch with a stick as she wasn’t tall enough to reach it. Her lips formed into a small warped grin as she thought of all the ways not having a man around had made her so much more self sufficient. Summer once told her how proud she was that her mum could cope so well on her own. Her friends parents all crumbled one by one as they went through their divorces.

Propping the ladder up against the opening, Kerry precariously climbed the rungs one at a time. The gin and tonics she had previously consumed may have been taking their toll; her head lolled forward every so often, quite haphazardly. As her head emerged through the hole, a strong, cold draft smacked her straight in her oval face.

All of a sudden Kerry came to a complete standstill. She couldn’t physically move her leg to step on to the solid ground of the attic floorboards. Looking down in slow motion she saw the problem. A long gleaming point had torn her jeans and in doing this stopped the fabric being able to move with her relocating body.

Perching her drunken bottom on the square hole of which she was climbing through, her trembling, drunken hand freed the denim allowing her to collapse without grace in the dust that covered the attic floor. Unbeknownst to her drunken self, blood trickled down her smoothly shaven leg and absorbed into her cartoon character fluffy slippers.

Her existing reason for clambering into the attic in her inebriated state hid itself in the back of her mind, while the origins of the draft took preference. It was then she realised, the whole room was damp and grimy, and there was a hole to the left of the entrance. The tiles had been removed, a mattress leaning over it. Condom wrappers were strewn here, there and everywhere. There was even a plate with a half eaten sandwich. Kerry wasn’t sure whether it was the copious amounts of gin she had consumed, or the hard evidence of her underage daughters sexual activity, but the floor was now splattered with various substances that were once in the young mothers’ stomach.