LUCY, 2024

ONE

I scan the shoreline as the ferry pulls away, the autumn sea breeze whipping my hair into my face and wonder what Mum will do when she finds out I’m gone. Apart from totally freak out obviously. But I couldn’t face being cooped up in that house for another second. I mean, I’m nearly sixteen. How many other sixteen-year-olds have a 7pm curfew and have to check in with their mum every couple of hours?          

I used to try to convince myself that she only did it because she cared so much. That my mum loved me more than any other parent had ever loved a child before. But I know different now. Yes, she’ll freak, but only because she gets off on dictating my every move. Well, enough is enough. I’m done.

            Beside me a girl of about five or six is jumping up and down and squealing as the ferry sways with the waves. Her dad laughs along, feeding her excitement by pointing out the jellyfish in the harbour. Part of me wishes I could rewind time to when I was that age, when I was happy too. The girl bumps into me and I can’t help smiling back.

            “Sorry about that,” her dad says.

            “No worries.”

As I brush a strand of hair from my eyes, I catch sight of someone across the deck standing on his own, away from the families with children and the tourists returning home. He looks to be in his late twenties or so, and his dark trench coat flaps in the wind, revealing a shiny scarlet lining. He holds my gaze a moment too long, so that it starts to feel uncomfortable, then disappears inside. Was he watching me? I shake off a feeling of unease and re-focus my attention on the island. This will be my first trip to the mainland that I can remember and it’s a bit scary. Well, a lot scary if I’m honest.

            I’ve never known where I come from, but the scrap of shiny paper in my coat pocket has a scribbled address on the back of it. Mum doesn’t know of course. I made sure that I left everything in her room exactly as I found it, but she had gone to so much trouble to hide it under a pile of junk at the back of her wardrobe that I knew as soon as I found it that it had to be important. Anyway, it was kind of her own fault for leaving her bedroom door unlocked. I mean, why would she do that anyway? Why go to all that bother? Not for the first time I wonder what exactly it is that she’s hiding.