Summer Clarity

The change in the season could be felt in the breeze blowing through the window.

Rebecca’s gaze dropped from the ceiling, where she had been studying a spider precariously dangling from a thread, to the slightly ajar window where the curtain gently moved in the breeze.

Rebecca had always loved this bedroom, her place of refuge since a child. To be here for a full week was a treat she had not enjoyed for many years.

The rising sun always filled her room which had helped lift her mood whatever life had thrown at her. Disappointment having not been selected for her first school play, overwhelming feelings of that first school crush immortalized in her diary, fear as she closed her bedroom door on the day she left for university and grief experienced for the first time when her beloved grandmother passed away.

This room had been witness to so many chapters in Rebecca’s life both good and bad but had always been the place where, alone and uninterrupted, she had made sense of it all.

Slowly Rebecca turned her head towards the wardrobe which she had, in all honesty, been avoiding and studied the cream chiffon which hung on a frankly ostentatious coat hanger. All padding and small tiny pearls. Every girl’s dream so she had been told.

What dreams had she had when whiling away hours in this room her whole life in front of her? Travel, working abroad. She had once planned to move to Paris, so not so far away from home, living in a French apartment with ceiling to floor windows, sipping wine watching people pass by. So many dreams long since forgotten.

Her parents had always said she could be whatever she wanted to be. Perhaps every parent tells their child this but Rebecca believed them so her dreams, every last one of them, were always a possibility.

However life had instead taken a more conventional route after university. A move to London, renting with friends while starting a career which would supposedly fill the rest of her life broken only by the expected break for maternity leave or if she was lucky enough, according to her numerous thirty something friends, breaks plural for maternity leave.

But there it is… the problem. The difference between what people expect your life to be and what you actually want your life to be. To Rebecca the sense of opportunities lost and a sense of regret were all embodied by this one dress hanging expectantly.

Hearing a car door slam Rebecca looks at the clock, 11 a.m. Two hours had passed since she awoke. That will be her father leaving as planned in order to make last minute checks to the car situation. A vintage Bentley is what everyone finally decided upon. She had not really had an opinion having no interest in cars whatever their intended use.

She could not delay this any longer. This will be painful for all concerned. Luke really did not deserve this but did he deserve her resentment?

Just seven days is all it has taken to realise that she does not want to go to where powerful life currents are dragging her. This is not what she wants at all.

Pulling her dressing gown tight around her she opens the door and calls out to her mother.

“Mum have you got a minute we really need to talk”.