Stolen

Nicole Skipper

'Why have they stolen her?' is all I can think as I stare up at the streetlights glowing through the living room window, vaguely aware of them beginning to blur as my eyes fill with tears. There are four of us sat in the room, but it's completely silent. I assume that they too are staring at something, their minds racing and yet trying their hardest not to think of anything. I don't know for sure, I can't look at any of them, let alone speak. I've been home for five minutes, but it feels like hours, and in that time my whole world seems to have changed. I'm still waiting for one of them to say it's not true, but as the streetlights slowly grow brighter, the realisation sets in that that's not going to happen. This is really happening.

Five minutes earlier I'd walked through the door, dropped my bag and shouted "hello". I'd had an easy enough day at school, spent the bus journey home laughing with my best friend; we were only a few weeks into the new year and so far 1999 was shaping up to be the same as all the rest. Then Dad walked out of the living room looking serious, and he told me, Nanny had died earlier, and I thought what a strange joke it was, while praying that it really was a joke, it had to be. 'Any minute now he's going to tell me it's not true,' I thought to myself. 'There's no way he's being serious.'

I walked into the living room and saw Mum sat on the settee, she shouldn't be home from work yet. Then she turned and looked at me through swollen eyes, I could see her face was stained with tears, and it was like someone had punched me.

I walked silently to the armchair and sat staring out of the window. I could feel the last few minutes being etched into my memory, every tiny detail. I studied the patterns of the net curtain, desperate to keep the tears out of my eyes, if I didn't cry, then it couldn't be real. I could feel that being carved into my mind as well. I knew that I would remember all of this forever, no matter how much I didn't want to.

The sky is almost completely dark now and the streetlights are a bright yellow. I'm still staring out of the window, the room is still silent, I have no idea how long we've been sat like this. The cold hard grip of realisation is growing tighter, this is actually happening, she's really gone. Lost, people call it. That's crap. She's not lost, she's been taken from us, snatched away, stolen. She wasn't ill, she's never been ill. I don't know who 'they' are, but they've stolen her from us, from me. And they've stolen my chances of ever talking to her again, of showing her how much I care, cared. I'm frantically searching my brain now for any memory I have where I let her know how much she meant to me, how much I loved her. I can't find any. All I can find are chances I had to talk to her, to call her, to see her, but then finding something better to do. I took those chances away, and now any chances I would have had have been taken too.

Finally the tears manage to escape from my eyes, I've given in, it's real, it's happened. The streetlights blur completely as the flow intensifies. I hear my mother call me, she's on the other side of the room, but it sounds like she's miles away, under water maybe. I get up from the chair and walk mutely across the room, where I sink into her arms.

We try to comfort each other, silently, but in our own ways. The victims of theft, looking for an impossible solution.