The Valley of Flowers Read online

  As she entered the passageway, she pulled the door closed behind her, noticing immediately that the passage light was still on. A sudden stab of apprehension clawed at her heart, wondering what this could mean; her father was always imploring her to economise, and leaving a light on all night was akin to the crime of murder in his book. Elly carefully searched the passage into the kitchen, pursuing any indication that her father was near, but finding it empty she continued her search into another part of the house. Still clutching her schoolbooks, she approached her parent’s bedroom and listened at the closed door, hoping to discern any sign of life. She held her breath, intently listening and then after a long moment released it, wondering whether she should dare to open the door and invade his private sanctuary.

  She decided to knock and see if he was still in bed. “Dad! Are you in there?!” She waited anxiously, but there was no answer.

  Elly nervously reached for the door handle and clasped it in her hand, hesitating before twisting the knob and cracking the barrier open. She cautiously peered around the room from her position at the door, but everywhere she scanned the area was in chaos, seemingly from her father’s attempts to remove a painful chapter from his life.

  The pictures of her mother were missing from the wall and even the bedside drawers she used were turned upside down and her personal items scattered about the floor. The bedding had been reefed from its base and deposited about the room while memorabilia lay in scattered piles of turmoil. Elly gazed dumbfounded at the turbulent mess, but her father was nowhere to be seen. She ventured a few steps into her father’s domain, imagining his pain etched into the very fabric of this intimate place he had shared with her mother.

  As she scanned the destructive scene, her eyes rested on two tiny velvet boxes lying open, crushed and discarded on the floor. She quickly tiptoed over to the place they were lying and squatted down to investigate. A large diamond ring lay next to one crumpled box and a gold band lay a little distance away, still contained in another.

  The consequences of the actions were clear; her mother had rejected and broken her vows to her father by callously thrusting the symbols of her commitment back at him and he had responded by forcefully discarding the rings, in a vain hope of erasing her from his memory.

  It soon became evident that her father was not in the house and she began to wonder whether he had come home at all last night. With a heavy and anxious heart, she made her way back into the kitchen, trying to concentrate on the looming school day instead. As she approached the kitchen table, a scrap of paper lay in a crumpled heap towards the centre as if it had been thrown there. She stared at the note for a few uneasy seconds before willing herself to pick it up and read its content. As her eyes scanned the messy paper, she recognised her father’s handwriting and then the seven words scribbled across it tore at her heart.

  Won’t be back until after this weekend.

  *~*~*~*

  Elly’s worried gaze reflected in the dirty windows of the school bus while she sat staring absentmindedly at the hilly scenery passing by the moving vehicle. The noise of younger students reverberated around the cavernous transporter, but she had blocked it out, concentrating on the ramifications of her father’s note instead. A nagging thought held her captive, pondering whether he had discarded her as well, in the fervour to distance himself from any reminder of her mother. The implications of spending the weekend alone in the house just added to her burden and a frustrated tear formed in the corner of her eye; the recollection and the curtness of the note made it appear overwhelmingly…

  He had rejected her too.

  She reached up to her face and swiped at the recalcitrant tear with her hand and ordered it not to make a scene. Instead, she tried to concentrate on her dream and the young man who had filled her emotions with longing; but to her dismay, the dream had faded and along with it, so had the strong feelings. She searched her memory in a vain hope to reconnect with the joyous sensations the young man had invoked in her; but it was gone, destroyed by the cruel reality of her bitter world and all that was left was just a faint hint of a tender and warm afterglow.

  The rumbling movements of the school bus shifted into a tight turn and the action shook Elly from her musings. In front of her, the school buildings perched atop the hillside came into view and for now, she needed to forget about the dramas happening at home and redirect her thoughts into her school environment. The bus squealed to a halt at the entrance to the buildings; a cacophony of babbling noise assaulted her senses as the bus aisle filled with young teenagers eager to alight the lumbering vehicle.

  Through the bus window, Elly scanned the moving mass of humanity milling around the classrooms and waiting for their day to begin. She searched the faces, looking for Tina’s familiar figure, hoping she’d be able to add some comfort and normalcy into her crumbling world. Soon she recognised Tina standing by a group of older teenagers, surveying the mass of exiting bus passengers, obviously searching for someone. Elly’s face crumpled and revulsion rose when she saw Tina holding hands with Danny Dickson, as if he had been suddenly and forcefully grafted onto Tina’s body.

  As soon as Elly climbed down the steps off the bus and reached the sidewalk, Tina recognised her friend, broke from Danny’s clasp and excitedly rushed over to meet her, engulfing her in a BFF hug. “Elly, am I glad to see you!” Tina gushed.

  Elly warmly returned Tina’s embrace and momentarily gazed past her to Danny Dickson, waiting impatiently for Tina to return to his side. Tina caught Elly’s disapproving glare staring past her and back at Danny Dickson.

  “Come on, Elly, he’s cool. Give him a chance,” Tina implored, an adoring smile lighting her lips as she gazed back at the dorky teen boy and nodding her head as if he had given her an instruction and was demanding a response.

  “You’re my best friend for ever, right?”

  Elly nodded, wondering what Tina was leading up to.

  “Danny has a friend who has a car and we have arranged with him to go away camping for the weekend, but here’s the catch. My parents wouldn’t let me go, until I told them you were coming with us.”

  “You what, Tina?! I like your parents and I don’t want to lie to them!” Elly was indignant.

  “Yeah, but if you come with us you won’t be lying. Come on, Elly, for me... please! Danny’s friend is way cool too and he has heard about you and wants to double date with us.”

  *~*~*~*

  Chapter 3

  Elly grasped at her schoolbooks and pressed them against her chest, crossing her arms and locking the books into her grip as she stepped down off the school bus. The day had been reassuring in its familiarity and normalcy, but now as she walked the five minutes to her home, her heart pounded and her head began to ache in anticipation of a new domestic nightmare unfolding.

  She hadn’t seen much of Tina all day and when she did happen to glimpse her, she was attached to Danny Dickson and surrounded by his crowd. Elly longed to confide in her best friend about her own troubles, but Tina was too distracted with Dickson to even notice her.

  As Elly dawdled along the sidewalk, the well-known housefront came into view and shook her from her fractured thoughts. Unkempt lawns and dry spindly weeds protruding above shrubs and bushes advertised to the neighbourhood all was not well within the Parker residence.

  Elly ambled up to the front door and grasped her books precariously with one arm, then reached around her neck for the gold chain and the front door key. With an unsteady hand, she leaned in to the door and threaded the key into the lock and twisted the tumbler, carefully pushing the door open once she had withdrawn the key and hoping her father may have changed his mind about not coming home.

  She stood on the threshold for a moment, listening to the sounds of the big empty house. In an anxious voice she called out, “Dad!” But no one replied. Then with the gaze of a commando searching for a hidden enemy, she measured each step cautiously throughout the building, wondering what she would do if she came
upon someone intent on doing her harm.

  With her anxious search coming to an end, there was only one room left to check. Her eyes stared for a long moment, pondering the door to her father’s room and hoping she would find her desperate parent cleaning up the mess and assuring her she was still an important part of his shattered life.

  She listened intently at the closed door and then slowly reached for the doorknob and twisted the handle, causing the door to give way under her guidance. Then pushing it further open, even now the chaos of the morning lay where it had fallen and in the pandemonium, nothing seemed out of place. Elly stared at the destruction so eloquently contained within the four walls, pondering the devastation with harrowing trepidation and feeling like she had been an innocent victim, too, callously discarded onto the bedroom floor with the other reminders of her father’s turbulent pain.

  Elly sniffed back a tear, trying to convince herself that he still did care about her and the present circumstances would pass once he had had a chance to process his grief, but the thought wouldn’t help her cope with the next three nights alone.

  Closing the door to the scene and satisfied the house was empty, she flicked on the kitchen light and then the passageway light, apologising in her thoughts to her dad for wasting electricity. Finding the door to her room once again, she pushed it open and locked it behind her.

  The familiar surrounds of her sanctuary brought Elly immediate relief and even if the world beyond her bedroom was in tatters, the world inside it was not. She reached for her pink laptop, ran her fingers over the keys in an appreciative caress and then gently depressed the start up button. After manipulating the computer’s start up sequence, the familiar scene of her and Tina in an embellished hug, set as her desktop image, danced across her screen. It was a photograph her dad had taken only months ago when they were still a family and Tina was staying the night, just before she became interested in Danny Dickson.

  The sudden, repulsive thought of Danny Dickson tore at her insides, and Tina’s animated plea to join her on a double date with Dickson and his friend on a dubious weekend camping trip rang alarm bells within her head. Being in Tina’s company on the weekend instead of being alone had its appeal, but she suspected Tina’s motives for the trip were to carry out her desire to go all the way with Danny, instead of enjoying a fun time together. The more she pondered the situation and the more Dickson’s greasy features came into her mind’s eye, the more revulsed she became. Even the thought of being in close quarters with Dickson was starting to make her feel creepy, and then another disturbing thought flashed across her imagination. What about Dickson’s friend? If he was as creepy as Dickson, which she suspected he was, what expectations did he have of her?

  Elly’s stomach was in knots as she tried to put the distressing thoughts out of her mind, but she only had tonight to think about her answer before delivering her decision on Friday morning at school. She had promised Tina she would ask her parents and now that her dad was nowhere to be found, the decision was hers alone, leaving her in a quandary.

  She knew Tina was intent on the camping weekend–with or without her–and no matter how she toiled with the decision, either way she figured she would let her BFF down.

  Elly needed a distraction and decided to check her emails, finding her inbox stacked with mail... all from Tina. She excitedly opened the first email and sighed at the content. Tina was begging her to join her on the weekend trip and the more she read, the deeper the guilt Tina laid upon her. Finally, she finished reading Tina’s diatribe and opened the next email. It contained one word.

  PLEASE!

  As she worked her way through the remaining emails, they all contained one word, the same word.

  Please!

  Nausea began to rise at the stress and guilt Tina had piled on her, making it almost impossible for her to refuse, but she didn’t want to say yes to something that Tina may regret in time to come and let Tina or Tina’s parents down.

  With the weight of her decision crushing Elly’s shoulders, she needed to confide in someone, someone who could be trusted to listen to her desperate thoughts and offer a solution.

  She reached beneath her pillow with a searching hand for her silent confidant, and touching the hard cover of her pink diary as it brushed against her fingertips gave her a deep sense of hope.

  At least it was still there and willing to listen to the deep cries of her troubled heart.

  Elly drew out the trusted guardian of her inmost and secret thoughts, reached for her gold necklace, found the tiny key and inserted it into the diary’s lockable clasp. She turned the pink sheets over until she found the next blank page, before hesitating and searching her thoughts carelessly then putting to pen her guarded troubles.

  June 7th

  Dear Diary,

  I feel so confused and my world is coming apart at the seams. I don’t know how I’m going to make it through the next few nights alone in this big, deserted house. I feel weak and totally freaked out at the thought of the coming days by myself, too. I sense Dad has rejected me, along with everything that reminds him of Mum; I know what she did was selfish and she was only thinking of her own happiness, but she did that… not me!

  Why is he punishing me for what she did?!!!

  Sorry, Diary, I didn’t mean to get angry at you and fill your beautiful pages with my blubbering snotty tears. Okay, I’ve got it together again; now where were we…?

  This whole thing with Tina is just adding to my burden and I really don’t know what to do. It’s as if she wants me to collude with her against her parents in making a decision and I just know Danny Dickson will take what she wants to give and use her, and then when things go wrong, he will just leave her with the mess. If I say no and she gets hurt, I won’t be able to forgive myself. But, if I go and she gets hurt...?

  Oh, Diary, please tell me what to do!

  Elly lay face down on her divan, leaning her head on her hands and staring past the open diary on her pillow to the headboard of her single bed, deep in thought until her melancholy musings were interrupted by the kitchen phone. Thinking this could be her father wanting to tell her he was on his way home, she almost tripped over herself trying to get off the bed and answer the expected caller. Maybe her dad would come to her rescue and take the decision out of her hands.

  She threw open her bedroom door and ran down the passage to the kitchen, then coming to an abrupt halt in front of the wall phone, she swiped at the incessant noise in a frantic, ill-timed snatch and almost dropped it. “Hello... Dad?!” she panted.

  “Hello, is that Elly?” a woman’s voice enquired.

  Elly deflated like a bursting balloon; the voice didn’t belong to her father and she tried hard not to let her disappointment show through. “Yes, it is.”

  Elly, dear, it’s Donna Rankine, Tina’s mum. Can I speak with your mum or dad, please?”

  Elly’s heart was pounding, wondering what she wanted with her parents and then the reason struck her like lightning. Tina would be listening to her mum trying to talk to Elly’s parents, discussing Tina’s camping trip and whether Elly was permitted to go.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs Rankine, but neither of my parents will be home for a while,” Elly’s nerves jangled sharply talking to Tina’s mum, hoping she wouldn’t pry any further.

  “Oh, I see. That’s okay, I just wanted to know whether they are allowing you to accompany Tina on the weekend trip with Danny’s parents.”

  *~*~*~*

  Chapter 4

  Elly’s blonde hair tangled around her face and settled like soft velvet thread across her pillow. Her eyes were hollow and staring, matching the turbulent turmoil at war with her emotions. The focus of her unmoving gaze positioned on a spot on the far wall of her bedroom as she listened–frightened–to the noises of the big house settling in the cooling night air and keeping the desire for sleep far from her panicking thoughts.

  Her bedside table light illuminated the familiar room, chasing the prowli
ng caricatures of her imagination away from the stage of a desperately terrified theatre fuelled by too many late-night horror movies, and leaving her heart pounding violently in fear with each new unidentified creaking noise.

  In contrary to her father’s rules, she defiantly decided the elegant little table lamp would remain on duty all night, ensuring she had full control of the frantic darkness and flooding her insidious world in a protective glow, even if it was only a deluded attempt to protect herself from the lurking unknown.

  In a forlorn bid to find comfort, she twisted in her blankets, repositioning her body to face the opposite wall and at the same time swiping at her hair, keeping its long strands from blocking the view of her intimidating situation. A stab of worry and a growing sense of angry frustration crept across her mind, once again surveying the scene of her father’s bedroom in her memory and wondering where he was. She was sure she hadn’t deserved his abandonment, leaving her to cope with the fallout from his pain and apparent rejection… alone… or had she?

  The unsettling thought kept her checking for any possible misdemeanour on her part that could have caused her parent’s action, but she dismissed all contenders that came to mind. She tried to reason from his painful perspective, but her reckoning was interrupted and chased away by the memory of the dreadful silence of his destroyed bedroom and the crushed images of wedding ring cases lying strewn across the floor.

  A rogue tear slipped from the corner of her eye, tantalising her emotions to release the floodgates holding back the prickly feelings, but she refused them their right and her gaze settled on the bedside clock instead, stubbornly counting every moment of her ordeal. With the back of her hand, she swiped the tears from her eyes, clearing her blurry view and noticed it was just after midnight.