Emily and I

I sat in the garden of the house I grew up in sulking.
My mother and father had always been wealthy. My mother was a woman who wore expensive dresses and expensive jewellery and acted as if she was better than everyone else. I knew better than anyone that she wasn’t, she was just another woman. I sighed as I sipped more tea. Sitting on a finely crafted lawn chair at a finely crafted table with my mother and her finely crafted friends was not my idea of fun. I was seventeen; this wasn’t how I was supposed to be spending my life.

My mother’s friend Mavis, laughed at another of my mother’s comments. My mother liked to comment on people she didn’t like; generally these people happened to be people less fortunate than herself. She didn’t care about others, my father did, but he was never here, my father was obsessed with his work.

“Emily darling, smile, you are in the company of the best of people here.” I didn’t say anything, but best of people would hardly be a way I would describe my mother and her friends. I swept my auburn hair back and tied it into a ponytail. “Emily, let your hair hang freely, people are going to think you are common if you tie it the way the rest of those girls tie it.

I stood up, staring daggers at my mother. “I am common mother.” As I walked away from the table, my mother and her friends had the look of shocked disapproval on their faces. My mother would discipline me later, who cares?
I entered our house and almost screamed. My boyfriend Thomas was standing in the middle of the living room with a pistol in his hand. Thomas saw the shocked look on my face and traced the look back to the pistol. He looked ashamed and flicked what I assumed to be the safety of the weapon on and put it in his pocket. Thomas was wearing that suit again, I couldn’t help noticing how handsome he was, but this wasn’t the time.

Clearly, he was in some sort of trouble. He was sweating and shaking and his eyes flicked to random points in the room, as if he was looking for exits.
“Thomas, what’s going on?” it was all I could ask. Thomas shook his head and took me in his arms. “Dad is dead, they came and killed him about an hour ago, and I’ve been making my way across the city slowly to get here.” I looked at him shocked, but I found my hand consoling his own. “Who killed him Tom, why did you come here?” A single tear threatened Thomas’s face but he slapped it away.

“It was the gangsters, my father’s men were behind this.”