FicWad

Prologue

My earliest clear memory is looking out my bedroom window, watching my oldest brother Gerard get on his motorbike and drive away. I don't remember feeling scared for those first few minutes. If anything, I was kind of happy. I got out of bed, went downstairs into the kitchen, grabbed a handful of biscuits from the cupboard and took them upstairs to hide under my pillow. I was only five years old and I loved biscuits.

I ate two of the biscuits before I felt kind of sick and couldn't eat anymore. That's when I started to feel scared. What if something bad happened while Gerard was gone? How long would he be gone? I'd never been left alone before.

Technically, I wasn't home alone. My other older brother Mikey was asleep in the next room but I knew he'd be useless in an emergency. He was autistic. He couldn't talk to any of us properly, couldn't even get up to go to the bathroom unless Mom asked if he needed to go. I loved my older brother but I knew if he kicked off, I wouldn't be able to do anything. Whenever he was in a bad mood he'd get aggressive. He'd shove me over since I was an easy target. But I knew it wasn't his fault.

I knew I had to go and tell someone I was home alone. We had trustworthy next door neighbours. Mom talked to them all the time. They were an elderly couple who always smiled at me if I was in the back garden. I knew that I could trust them.

But when I got down the stairs and tried the door, I realised it was locked. That really made me panic. I sat at the bottom of the stairs running my fingers through my hair, wondering what to do when there was a knock at the door and the next door neighbours from the other house (the younger couple) said through the letter box "Just come round to our house if there's any problems Abbie. Okay?"

"Okay." I replied. As they walked away, I dared to call out "But the door's locked!" I was too late though. They were already gone. But it was okay. I knew what to do now.

I'd never used the house phone but I'd seen Mom use it and sometimes Gerard would use it to phone his girlfriends. So I pulled the phone book out, looked for the number and dialled it into the phone. It was quite late but my Nan was still awake and once she heard I was home alone with only Mikey she promised that she'd be straight over. I told her that the door was locked but she re-assured me that she had a spare key in case of emergencies.

So I sat at the bottom of the stairs waiting for her. Every saturday me, Mom and Mikey would go over to Nan's house for a roast dinner and I knew it took a good ten minutes to get to her house. I waited those ten minutes and Nan pulled up outside the house at the exact same time that Gerard came home.

He was mad at me for calling Nan. Gerard insisted that he'd only been gone two minutes. Nan knew he was lying though obviously. And as she pointed out at the time "Whether it was two minutes or two hours, you were trusted to look after your siblings and you let them down."



Now that I'm fifteen, Mom's told me that that wasn't the only time Gerard had left me and Mikey home alone. Mom told me that she once phoned him up to make sure we were okay and some girl answered and told her that Gerard had just popped out and had left a group of random girls to look after me and Mikey. She was furious. Especially when she got home and found that one of the girls had been knicking some of her jewellery.

Gerard never apologised to me for that. Never even mentions it now-a-days. I don't suppose he remembers it. Whereas I'll never completely trust him ever again.