The Silent Deceivers

Chapter 32

Begin Again 2.0

After Luke left with my empty promise to call him soon, I slowly climbed the stairs, pushed open my bedroom door, shut it and the crawled into bed. It was still light outside but I didn't care. Effortlessly I tugged my duvet cover over my head and laid there drifting in and out of sleep for the entire night. A week passed with nothing to show, every so often I made an appearance downstairs to restock on supplies, get the latest update of the gossip in the house and then resumed my position tucked up I bed. Eventually my phone ran flat so I wasn't disturbed by the irritating ring of fake concerned callers. Permission was only granted to Roxy and Sue, my counsellor to enter my room for any given amount of time. Lisa was permitted only if World War TV started downstairs and Andy was out. She agreed to it but only if I followed the orders of Sue. That was the compromise!

It was a good few weeks before I began leave my bedroom in the morning and return to it at night, like any other 'normal' person and that was down to visitors that turned up on the door step.

 Subconsciously from the corner of my eye I had just watched ten fifteen roll over to ten sixteen when Roxy walked into my bedroom. I had heard the chime of the doorbell a few moments before and from the weary look on her face I knew they were calling for me. I set my book down on my bedside table remembering to fold over the corner of the page.

"Who is it?" I asked.

"Abby and Grace." Her voice quavered.

"Oh." I said surprised.

"They're in the living room if you want to see them." She informed me.

Her expression was guarded but I could tell she was worried. Without time to weigh up the pros and cons and to convince myself to back out I grabbed Roxy and walked down the stairs. The door to the living room was ajar and through the gap I could see the familiar glow of Grace's red hair. With Roxy's hand clutched around mine, I gave to door a gentle push and it swung open. Both their heads turned in sync, stood there like a lemon, shifting my weigh from one foot to the other awkwardly.

"Hi," Grace smiled at me.

"Hi." I replied walking over to the sofa. "What are you doing here?

"We wanted to say thank you for what you did. The police informed us about you, you know finding out the truth about David," Abbi's voice cracked. "And for bringing them to justice."

"We also wanted to apologise about blaming you and being so mad at you. We should've realised that you had nothing to do it with it.  It was wrong of us and we're sorry. We're sorry for abandoning you too, we left you when you needed us the most and we shouldn't have. Again we're sorry." Grace finished. 

"I'm so sorry." Abby sobbed, coming over to me. "I'm so sorry!"

I stood up and engulfed her into a hug as she descended into tears on my shoulder. "It's okay." I whispered to her.

She pulled away and stood there holding my hand. Grace stood up and came over to me. Smiling at each other we hugged and then we pulled Abby into another one. After three minutes of swaying back and forth we started to laugh. It returned instantly to old times. Some may criticise that I was too quick to open the door to them but in honesty I needed to move on and diminishing the fire between us was the first step. It was a start.

After letting go both Grace and Abby turned to Roxy who was still sitting patiently on the sofa and apologised to her, for their first opinions of her ad judging her and asked if they could get to know her better which she graciously accepted and agreed to.  For the next few hours we sat in the living room catching up and reliving our pasts in the attempt to place them in a drawer and lock it. It was to the relief of Lisa that we sat there laughing.

For the days after that we rebuilt our friendship a building block at a time and after having a five hour phone call with him I began to receive frequent visits from Luke Rays, so much so that he even took up home schooling with me and Roxy who wasn't going back to Bridgewater until the trial was over, which greatly annoyed our tutor but we had a great time. Although it was bad news for our teacher it was great news for my acting skills. I went back to playing pretend the whole experience had destroyed me and I spiralled back down into everything that had controlled me before. I'd been through some harrowing things in my life and the one thing that took me down completely was the deception of a boy. I had so many underlying issues anyway that I needed to filter through dating back to even before my parents died and the events and revelations of that day was the icing on the cake.  After the trial had been concluded and their sentences dished out, I still couldn't let it go. I never wanted to have anything to do with the two criminals again but I couldn't erase them and their actions from my mind. It took intense therapy and a firm, caring support system but I finally managed to override my demons, clear my history and open up a new web page.  Lisa, Andy and I buried the bad blood between us and moved forward, to form a strong relationship and Grace, Abby, Roxy and I all became inseparable. Eventually I returned to the chaos of public school, sat my exams and passed, I was able to move onto college with my year and that to me was my greatest achievement.

The events of that day may have been laid to rest and the case may have been closed but it will always be with me, just as David will always be with me and just as my parents will always be co-existing with me.  You can forgive, you can forget but you never truly let it go.