.: Entry One-Hundred and Five :.

My name is Elliot Parker, and the story of that two hours of my life is still not finished.

So, there we were, in the kitchen. I said the new floor looked good, turned out he had laid it himself. Credit where credit is due, it looked better than the last load of lino. So I asked what else was different. The old living room, the one I had painted was all new with a carpet and everything I had put in there was gone. That was the first clue.

He asked me if I saw her on Sundays, the day he wasn’t about. I said no, I work Sundays. He said he thinks she’s been having an affair. I shrugged. Not my business, but I don’t see her Sundays. I said I was only there because things were tense when she came over earlier. He said she had told him she was off out at a breakfast with her mates. I shrugged again. I told him where she was, I explained it was the only day I could make. She had been hounding to spend time with me and that was the only day I was willing to give her. She had told him she goes to visit her mother and she can’t help it if I am there, she wasn’t happy about it. I wondered how much more ridiculousness we were enduring.

I asked to go to see my room. He told me there wasn’t much there. He was right, the units I had brought, built and installed in my room a few months before I left were gone, thrown in a skip apparently. My bed was gone. What little of my stuff remained was likely to be in the bin bags stacked in the corner of the room. The little she hadn’t thrown away was in bin bags. The last of my life was there, crumpled up in a heap in the corner of the room. That’s when it hit me, how little she cared for my existence, it made me in that moment question if she ever did. I wouldn’t have the questioning lingering much longer though.

We went back downstairs and talked some more. Some of it was catching up, some of it was dispelling Madam’s myths. This was beginning to get ridiculous. I asked him if he had a job, he said no, she had been telling him not to that she was insisting he didn’t get a job, didn’t apply and didn’t interview. And I believed him, she did the exact same thing to me all the time, she hated when I did get a job in that hell of a school. Surprising, considering how badly she was desperate to kick me out again. I told her that she was making it seem like he was scrounging money off her and putting her into debt, she was always making it seem like she had no money at all. She had been taking money from my nana. He was surprised. I explained to him that I wasn’t blackmailing her at all, fact of the matter was when he left for prison she made me move back in and I managed to get rid of some of her debts for her. She made me delete all my social medias at the time so that him and his family couldn’t find me (telling me he was threatening me, but telling him and his family that I died) for that she gave me a little bit of money in her words as a present to make up for it.

The more we spoke the more we found out, I wanted to take the little of my stuff and leave. We were discussing if we going to confront her with it or walk away when the choice was taken from us. The key was in the door and she was walking in. So we sat in the other room and waited in silence waiting for her to walk in. We sat there as she walked in the room and waited for her to speak, she stood there staring at us sat as physically as far apart on opposite ends of the room, sure it was a civilised conversation, but I am certain neither of us felt safe at all. In any way shape or form. She didn’t speak. So I did, “I thought I’d stop by for a chat and to see JJ, but apparently he’s not been here for months.” She stood there for a minute realising her lies were exposed. She just said “Oh, yeah.”

Rather than speaking to her directly I asked if I could borrow some bags so I could take my things from the bin bags upstairs. Her *vomits in mouth* husband got up and took some carrier bags out of the cupboard under the stairs. I took the bags and I went upstairs and began to undo the top bag. I got into it and leafed through trying to find what I hadn’t wanted to be parted from. I found some of the family photos cramped into the bottom of one and took it out and began putting things into bags sorting through the stuff. It was stressful and it hurt me to do it. To have to work out what was salvageable and what I had to give up on. I had to give up on a lot. Luckily the things I wanted most I could rescue, just about, however bent and squashed they were I could take them. And I had no intention of leaving the things behind. Even though this was less than a quarter of what I had in my room when I had to leave. Whether it was the dust or how I felt about it making it hard to breathe I couldn’t tell. I guess that’s when that elephant of emotions found its homing beacon. It was painful and I wanted to break down and cry but now was not the time, I wasn’t in a safe place. Not yet.