Chapter One: A Sign

One thing you can always count on when it comes to Springtime in England, the need to bring a jacket of some description to shield you from the mini rainstorms which battle the country many times a day. But it appeared in my tired state this morning as I left for work, I didn’t quite take this into account and swiftly left the house in my thin work clothes.

Due to my miss area in judgement, I was now walking the streets of London battling the intense wind pelting the streets and my face. My dark red hair stuck to my face causing little droplets of water to trickle and run down my neck, I was completely wet through and freezing. Accompanied by the selfish drivers who decided racing through a puddle and sending a tidal wave of puddle water to coat my entire being was a good idea, I was not having a good time and dreamed about walking into my home where a wardrobe of warm clothes awaited me.

But when I pushed open the broken front door which my father said he would fix on numerous occasions, I find the man in question laying in a heap in the middle of the living room. Beer cans and empty glass bottles surrounded his body, showing me, he had been on one of his many benders whilst I was at work.

With a little sigh, I close the door as best I could before slowly walk into the house, stepping over my drunken father who lay with sick falling from his mouth and dripping onto the white carpet under him. I best add that onto my list of cleaning once I get out of these wet clothes. After successfully, dodging all four of my fathers' limbs, I reach the kitchen to hang my keys up.

“Do you have to be so fucking loud; can’t you see I’m trying to take a nap?” My father’s drunken voice growls out from behind me, this indicating I had not been as quiet as I would have hoped.

“Sorry dad, I was just putting my things away after work.” I say not wanting to start him off with one of his moods, my father can be the nicest of people when he isn’t drinking, but as soon as that disgusting liquor gets down his throat, the evilness deep from within him comes to the surface.

“Speaking of work, did you manage to make it to that job interview?” I ask turning around to face him as he still lay in his own bodily fluids on the ground, but my question only allows him to release an annoyed groan in my direction.

“Get off my back woman! Can’t you see I’ve had a tiring day! The job wasn’t right for me, so I never went!” He groans out where I simply roll my eyes a little making my way towards my bedroom, I don’t know why I had expected him to buck up and do something right for once.

“I guess it’s down to me to cover the rent this month…again.” I mumble to myself with my arms crossed as I passed him, but now bringing up the topic of money, my father perked up a little bit. “Before you ask for money you’re going to have to wait, I don’t get paid until tomorrow and have no cash on me.” I say before turning to walk down the hall and away from my father, who proceeded to drunkly shout abuse at me about the way I spend my money.

I shake my head in response with an empty expression, he’s one to talk, whatever money he gets he spends it all on his drinking habit to forget his feelings. My father wasn’t always like this, there was time in his life where he barley ever drank, perhaps once every couple of months but wouldn’t even get blackout drunk, as like he does on a daily basis now.

I knew what was coming and prepared myself, walking through my bedroom door, I close it with the sliding lock I fitted a few months back and even pull my old chest of drawers over to act as another barricade in case my sliding lock were to fail. As like I could predict the future, my fathers' loud footsteps sound getting closer to the door before he tried the handle.

If my father wouldn’t blackout each time that he drinks, he would remember trying my door a number of times when he was like this and finding I hadn’t moved the lock from my door. I ignore the constant yelling and thuds on my door as I fetch some fresh dry clothes from my wardrobe and slip my freezing wet ones into the washing basket beside my bed.

As I sit on my bed staring up at my now crumbling red painted wall, I couldn’t help but wonder why I didn’t pack up my things and leave. My father had done such horrible things to me and spoke some of the meanest words, that I had more of a reason to leave him in his sorry state and never look back! But then I think of my grandmother and how disappointed she would be of me.

I never grew up knowing my mother, I knew a first name but that was all. She never wanted children so when she fell pregnant with me, she was more than ready to terminate. But my father was back then such a lovable man and wanted nothing more than to be a father, he begged my mother to keep me and reassured her that once I was born, if she still didn’t want anything to do with me, she could leave. I don’t know if it was my fathers' words or the ten thousand pounds she received from my father after the fact, but she agreed to have me. As you can tell from the situation that I’m in, my mother didn’t change her mind and after I was born, she left and never came back.

Due to my father now being single, he had to work any job that he could find to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table, this meant I would spend most of my time with my grandmother whilst my father worked. She would repeat how much my father was doing and when the time came, I would need to repay him somehow.

Perhaps that’s why I’ve found it so hard to leave or not leave should I say, because I know how much my father put on the line for me whilst I was growing up and even before I was born, I owe him my life on some level. But I had to face the facts, my father was not the same man that he was when I was growing up, I don’t remember the last time he smiled at me genuinely and not because I gave him more money to go out and drink.

I needed a sign or something to point me in the right direction, something to scream at me that there was more out there, and I needed to find it! With a sigh, I lay back on my bed staring at the ceiling with those same thoughts rushing around my head, whilst the knocks from my father died down as he passed out by the foot of my door.

What I didn’t know in that moment, I would be sent a sign of change the very next day but not in the form of a feather or a series of numbers, but a person who was about to change my life forever.