Losing Hope

Prologue

The glass shines in the sunlight, casting a myriad of rainbow colours against the plain white walls, I follow the dancing patterns with my eyes, slightly mesmerised, reminded forcefully of a kaleidoscope, creating numerous patterns on my mundane walls. Eggshell blue, that's what Mum calls it, sorry, what Mum used to call it. Until the incident.

My wardrobe is battered and broken, posters of The Script are tacked on the doors, peeling at the edges from age. My sisters battered CD player lays on my desk, dusty from misuse. The room is exactly as Hope left it two years ago, messy but comfortable.

The ceiling is yellow with tobacco smoke, curling slightly at the edges. As I watch, the dust swirls in a cyclone pattern, occasionally changing as if a high wind rushed through the room, a wind that I can not feel. I sit up, looking around the room and throw the quilt off of myself, yawning and stretching as I walk over to the curtains and throw them open, momentarily blinded by the blinding sunlight that streams in, reminiscent of a thick, white fog.

My eyes adjust and I am staring down my cold street, lined with dilapidated houses, with harsh metal doors and broken link fences. Litter is piled up in peoples garden, a monument of the disrespect of the residents of my street. Hope always hated this street.

The street where they dump all the problem families, the asylum seekers, the sex offenders and the women on police protection. I want to leave this street, with the scary people and the bad memories, I want to stretch my wings and fly, high, high into the sky. Or better, I want to fall asleep and into a dream world, down a rabbit hole like Alice In Wonderland, taking me away from the dreary, mundane life of Greater Manchester. I can't wait until I'm sixteen and I can finally escape, move out and make a life for myself.

There's no university for me, I want to go to music school. Mum said my piano skills are enough to earn me a scholarship but I think otherwise. But that won't happen now, I have to look after Mum. Hope would want me to do that, she said to me once

"Do what you want kid. If you want to walk on the moon then don't give up until you reach your goal."

My chest aches when I think of Hope so I turn to the room, ready to dress for the day. I stumble down the stairs in a confused haze, courtesy of late nights and early mornings. Hope haunted my dreams again last night, flitting in and out, smiling and then disappearing in a flash of white. I wake up – drenched in sweat and tears, every night since it happened.

Mum is laying on the sofa again, one hand thrown over her prematurely lined face, the other resting on her stomach, rising and falling with her breathing. Mum used to be so beautiful, the life and soul of a party. Every new year without fail, she would invite friends and family round for a jolly knees up, everyone would get drunk and Hope and I would sneak a bottle of alcopops and climb on to the roof, which is accessible from Mum's bedroom window.

The room stinks of alcohol, tobacco and pain, an almost overwhelming combination. Beer cans litter the coffee table, along with my school newsletters, final demands, bills, a warning letter from the landlord and an overflowing ashtray.

Mum is clutching a half empty bottle of vodka in her hand, It's tipping precariously towards the floor, threatening to spill at any moment and ruin the once cream coloured carpet. Sighing, I take the bottle from Mums hand and place it on the coffee table. I grab a blanket from the kitchen airing cupboard and throw it over her, watching her breathe, scared that when I leave she will succumb to alcohol poisoning. This has been a fear for two years now, it never goes away.

I can't lose Mum, not so soon after Hope. Swallowing a painful lump in my throat, I grab a bin bag and clear up the empty cans, empty the ashtray and tip the vodka down the sink. Well if it's not there then she can't drink it. Well that's my logic anyway.

I throw the bottle in the glass recycling box just outside my house, dumping the rubbish bag in the big wheelie bins that the council provided while I'm at it. I then go back into the house to get ready for school, dreading the day ahead, knowing I'll get teased and tormented by almost the whole class. I trudge up to my room, glaring at the bareness of it all, the empty bed in the corner, still there from when Hope was here.

I pull on my ugly uniform, pull my hair into a quick ponytail and do all of the other boring things associated with being of school age. I then sit down on my bed, staring into space, remembering happier times, times where Hope and I hogged the mirror, singing into our hairbrushes, pretending to be pop stars.

But there's no more singing, no more hogging the mirror, no more pop stars. Let me explain. My name is Julianna Stratford and this is my story.