SORROW WOODS, page 17
showing me. I catch sight of my bright red fingernails as I do so.
“That’s right,” laughs Hannah, “you’ve got the hang of it now.”
Angela just stands stock still and stares at me. I stop turning and look at her. “What’s the
matter? Don’t you like it?”
She shakes her head and then nods. “I love it, Serena. You’re just so stunning that I’m a little
bit shocked, that’s all. I knew you were beautiful and you were beautiful before you came in here, but now you’re absolutely, breathtakingly gorgeous.”
I grin at her. “Thank you for bringing me here and paying for this. It’s very kind of you.”
She laughs and rubs at her eyes. She pulls a tissue from out of her bag and dabs her cheek
with it. “Let’s go show your Father. I think he’ll be even more gobsmacked than I am.”
“What does ‘gobsmacked’ mean?” I ask.
She laughs. “It’s an old phrase I picked up from your grandmother. She used to live in
England and I believe they use it quite a lot. The word ‘gob’ is another word for mouth. It just means you’re speechless. Quite a strange phrase really, but it makes me smile and sometimes feels more
appropriate than anything else.”
We climb into the car. I have to tuck my dress underneath my backside when I climb in to
make sure I’m not sitting on my knickers. I feel like a real girl; like the ones in my books when they get ready to go to a party.
As we drive back along the coastal road, Angela’s phone rings. She plugs it into the unit in
the front of the car and then I hear Auden’s voice filter through the black squares on the door where the music comes from.
“Hello girls,” he says.
We both smile and say, “Hi.”
“I can’t wait to see you,” says Auden. “I’m sure I won’t recognise you.”
“You won’t,” says Angela. “She looks stunning.”
“I’m sure she does.” I can hear him smiling as he talks.
“I know you’re driving so I’ll speak to you when you get back, but I just wanted to tell you
that we have a visitor.”
“He’s there?” asks Angela, sounding surprised.
“He’s here with me now. We’re in the kitchen,” he responds.
“Keep him there. I want to talk to him.”
Kaiden
I was supposed to be telling them the reasons why I haven’t responded to their letters or why I
haven’t called. I wasn’t supposed to drive to their house and walk into their kitchen, and I certainly wasn’t supposed to agree to wait so that Angela can speak to me. I sit down at the breakfast bar and twirl my phone in my fingers, wondering why I’m being so stupid.
“Angela will want you to take it. You know that right?” asks Auden.
I shrug. “I don’t want it. I didn’t do it for that.”
Auden smiles at me. He knows who I am and what sort of guy I am, and yet he’s still here
trying to shove this envelope into my hands.
The difference I see in him since the last time we were together shocked me when he first
opened the door. I knew that they were depressed since the disappearance of Ayla, but I guess I
hadn’t noticed just how much it had physically changed them. Seeing him standing bare foot in a
pair of jeans with a plain white t-shirt on, I can see why all the women in the street go all gooey-eyed when they talk to him. Even though I’m a guy, I can still appreciate an attractive man and Auden
Scott is the most attractive man I’ve ever met. He shouldn’t sit in his glass office all day at his desk; he should be in a catalogue or on a poster or something.
He sits down opposite me and pushes his hand through his light brown hair, looking refreshed.
I hadn’t noticed before just how tired the Scotts looked. I guess when you see someone looking the same way for so long, you just get used to it. But now that she’s back, he looks ten years younger.
“Has she settled in alright?” I ask.
He sighs. “It’s difficult and awkward at times. We’re strangers really, when you think about
it. Angela and I are adults and we’ve been prepped for this, so we know how to handle. But Ayla, I mean Serena, acts like she’s been snatched all over again. She doesn’t know us. She doesn’t know
how to act in this world and it’s confusing for her. It’s confusing for us. We’re worried that
everything we do is wrong and that everything we say to her is the wrong thing. But overall, she
seems to be handling it fairly well. She’s very strong.”
I nod. I remember the way she was when I spent those three days with her and how she was
a week ago when I last saw her.
“She’s the strongest person I’ve ever met,” I tell him truthfully.
He looks at me and nods. “Could I ask what was it like when you were with her for those few
days?”
I take a deep breath. “In a way, it was amazing. Imagine going back in time and living
without computers or televisions or the convenience of fast food and all of the stress that modern-day life brings with it. They were oblivious to anything bad happening in the world. They just lived. It was as simple as that. And it was amazing really to do whatever you wanted and not have to worry
about anything except surviving. It was an eye opener, that’s for sure. They should make naughty
kids at school go and live like that for a few weeks. They would soon be begging to come back home with promises of good behaviour.”
Auden smiles.
“It changed me,” I confess. “She changed me.”
“What was she like?” he asks softly.
“Incredible,” I say quickly, remembering the hike that she forced me to go on and the
swimming we did in the lake. “She did all the chores, fixed their house, and washed their clothes by hand. She killed a chicken for their dinner and I watched as she plucked and chopped it. I can still remember the smell of the blood as it ran over her hands and arms. Also, she made me hike up this huge mountain and then swim about five miles and, even though I play all kind of sports and
consider myself to be fit, it nearly killed me. Serena and Elodie weren’t even out of breath. I even think they were going easy on me, so God only knows what they were like when they weren’t
slowing down to make sure someone was keeping up with them.”
“I guess it could have been much worse. All those horrible things I’ve thought about over the
years,” he says, shuddering. “I convinced myself she was dead because I couldn’t bear the thought of her being raped or beaten or sold in the drug trade or anything else equally as horrible.”
I look up at him and nod. I can’t even begin to imagine what it must have been like for them.
They must have put on such a brave face whenever people saw them. I’m surprised it didn’t kill
them.
Before I can say anything else, I hear the front door being opened. I stand up, bracing myself
as the sound of heels click across the floor. Angela Scott bursts into the kitchen and marches straight to me before I have a chance to explain myself or say sorry. I’m waiting for her to hurl abuse at me but instead, she starts to sob and throws her arms around my neck and kisses my cheeks.
“Thank you,” she says over and over again. “Thank you so much for what you did. You
brought our little girl back to us.” She pulls back and looks up at me with her red eyes. “I will never forget what you did and I’ll always be grateful.”
I don’t know what to say, so I bend my head down and hug her back. I was expecting anger
and an argument. I was expecting a slap across my face because I’d seen her in the café and not told her that I knew her daughter was alive.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, “for not telling you that day.”
She nods. She knows what I’m talking about. “You had your reasons, Kaiden. I respect how
you handled the situation and ultimately, I don’t really care how you did it, you got my daughter back.”
Angela pulls back from me, squeezing my arms with her hands and that’s when I see her
standing in the doorway watching us. For an instant, my heart stops beating. At least that’s what it feels like. The blood in my veins stops, my chest ceases rising and falling, and my limbs refuse to do what my brain is telling them.
I’ve thought about this moment a lot. I’ve thought about it until I couldn’t think about
anything else and felt like I was on the verge of going crazy. I haven’t dared to sleep in the same bed as Anastasia because I constantly dream about Serena and worry about calling out her name whilst I sleep.
Angela steps aside and grins at me.
“What have you done to her?” I hear myself whisper.
“Do you like it?” asks Angela, stepping aside and grinning at me. “Serena wanted to go to the
salon and have her hair done and get her nails painted and stuff, so that’s what we did.”
I blink. Is that it? How have they turned that pretty, wild girl into this stunningly attractive
woman with just a haircut and a lick of colour on her nails? I shake my head. They must have done something else. I walk towards her and have to fight my eyes from staring at the cleavage that her dress has created. Her legs are silky smooth. Must have been waxed, I think, and I briefly wonder if they’ve waxed anywhere else.
I look down and notice the nails on her toes that are painted bright yellow. The white of her
dress makes the green of her eyes look brighter and her tanned skin look even more flawless. As I near her and smell the coconut-scented shampoo that they’ve used, I realise I’m in big trouble.
“Hello, Serena,” I say, as smoothly and calmly as I can.
She blinks at me and smiles shyly. “I’m sorry I hit you the other day.”
I nod. “It’s fine. I get it.”
“What?” asks Auden. “She hit you?”
I nod. “She’s got quite a right hook on her.”
“Serena,” says Auden, “you shouldn’t hit people.”
She rolls her eyes. “I know, Kaiden told me the same thing. I won’t hit him again.”
“Why did you hit him in the first place?” he asks, still looking shocked.
She raises her hand and pushes her hair behind her ear, and that’s when I notice she’s
wearing the bracelet I got her. “I was angry with him.”
“Why were you angry with him?” he persists.
“Because he’s the reason I’m here,” she says bluntly.
Angela steps forward, frowning. “Do you not want to be here?”
Serena looks up and blinks. “I want my Mother and my Sister,” she says, dead pan.
I freeze. Angela is speechless. Auden is the only one that seems to have the strength to keep
calm and respond to her.
“I know you can’t see it now, Serena, but that woman destroyed your life and ours. You
could have had all of this,” he waves his hand around, indicating the house. “You’d have had lots of friends, gone to school, had boyfriends, probably had brothers and sisters, but she took all of that away from you and from us. She took something that wasn’t hers to take and led you to believe that she was your Mother.”
Serena starts to cry. Not the sobbing, shoulder-shuddering cries like Anastasia does, where
she sobs and screams like a child. I always think she looks ugly when she cries. Serena just lets two hot tears trickle down her cheek, making her look even more beautiful than she’s ever looked
before.
“Why didn’t you have any more children?” she finally whispers.
I’m itching to step closer to her and wipe those salty tears from off her cheek, but I remain
where I am. I don’t think she’s going to let me near her for a very long time.
Auden takes a deep breath. “I wanted more, but your Mother wouldn’t. She said it would
seem like we were giving up on you.”
Serena nods, accepting his answer.
“It’s been hard, Serena, I won’t lie to you. And it’s still hard now, even though you’re back
with us. We love you, but you don’t know us. We’re trying our best here. We’ve spent every single day wondering where you were and what you were doing or even if you were alive. We’ve grieved
for you over and over again. No parent should ever lose a child, whether it’s on a permanent basis or a temporary one. It broke us, Serena. It literally tore us in two. Our marriage only just survived in the early days because the grief and hurt of losing you destroyed us to the point that we didn’t recognise each other anymore. We feel like we owe this boy our lives. We can’t begin to explain to you the
gratitude we feel towards him right now. He’s saved us. He saved you.”
Serena and Angela just stand and stare at Auden. I shuffle on my feet, feeling awkward. I
don’t feel like this is something I should be witnessing. I can’t believe that’s how Angela and Auden feel about me. It’s a little overwhelming and something that I wasn’t prepared for. I can feel my mouth hanging open as I just stare at them.
“Kaiden did what any other person would have done,” Auden continues, “if they would have
seen you and recognised you. He acted on instinct. You can’t punish him for that. He’s human.” He steps forward and places his hands on both of her arms. “I know you love Elodie and she loves you; I can understand that. So just think about how you would feel if Elodie had been stolen from you. If every single day you cried, you screamed, and you searched for her. Then after fourteen years, you were able to see her again. At that point, she didn’t recognise you and didn’t love you, but held feelings instead for whoever it was that took her away from you. You’d know in your heart that she didn’t belong with them. She was your sister. What would you do? What would you do, Serena, if
you came upon her and saw her living a life that wasn’t really hers?”
She looks up into his eyes as another tear trickles down her face. She stares at him for what
feels like an hour before she finally says, “I would go in there and get her. I would have searched for her every single day until I had found her.” She swallows and looks over to me. “I would have done what Kaiden did.”
His head droops down but Serena doesn’t take her eyes off him. “I’m sorry,” she sniffs. “I’m
sorry, Dad.”
Auden snaps his head up. He begins to cry and wraps his arms around her tightly, pulling her
close to him. Angela is also crying, but she doesn’t interrupt the two of them. She looks over at me and smiles. I’m assuming that was the first time Serena has ever called him Dad.
When Auden finally lets her go, Serena turns around and hugs Angela. “I’m sorry,” she
whispers.
Angela puts her hands on either side of Serena’s face and kisses her forehead. “You don’t
have to be sorry for anything, sweetheart.”
I step back and lean against the counter. Serena turns and smiles shyly at me. She takes a
step forward and then runs straight into my arms.
I squeeze her tight before releasing her. I want to say something, but I don’t trust my voice
enough to speak. Now I am being a wimpy boy.
“I’m sorry for hitting you and for being mean to you.” She blinks away another fresh tear
before looking up at me and smiling. “Thank you for the bracelet.”
She bites her lip and looks up at me through her lashes. I have to look away. I can’t watch
her doing that without wanting to grab her and kiss her until I can’t breathe. I nod to let her know that it’s okay.
“Can I see my bedroom now please?” she suddenly asks, looking at Auden.
He looks as if he might weep again. I still can’t quite believe that I’ve just watched hunky Mr.
Scott, who could probably bench press me in one go, crumble and cry like that. He nods and clears his throat.
“I’ve only just finished it. The paint might still be wet so I’ve opened your doors to let the
breeze in and hopefully it will dry quicker.”
Serena nods and grabs my hand. “Come on, Kaiden,” she says with a smile. “Come and see my
bedroom.”
Serena
I drag him up the stairs and into my bedroom. Instead of looking at the pink painted wall and the shelves that have been built, I just stop and slump down against the door.
“What’s the matter?” he asks, bending down in front of me. I look at him. I’d almost
forgotten just how handsome he is. When I watched him hug Angela, I couldn’t take my eyes off the way his face creased up when he smiled or how different he looks now that he’s styled his hair and shaved his face. As I stood in the doorway watching him, a strange feeling started to wriggle in my belly, kind of like thousands of tiny butterflies were flapping around in there. I recognised the feeling, not because I’d ever experienced it before, but I’d read lots of books where the heroine felt these same butterflies and they were always caused by a boy.
