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Prologue

“Mum,” I murmured. My eyes fluttered before closing entirely, the effort of keeping them open too much.

“Mum?” I repeated, the creasing of my brows sending a sharp pain through my already sore head.

The fog masked my thoughts, a heavy exhaustion weighing me down.

How was she here? She couldn’t be, right? It was impossible.

If I could just reach out, I could press my hand to her cheek one more time, feel the way her face pulled as she smiled against my touch. But my limbs were too heavy, tingly nerve endings fighting the tides of nausea washing through me.

“Our sunflower,” she cooed, just beyond my reach, pulling free a lonely tear from beneath my still closed lids.

“ Mum ?” I pleaded this time, uncertain where she was – where I was – but knowing my time with her was limited.

The force of the strike wasn’t enough to render me unconscious, but for the briefest moment I pretended it had. The cacophony of the last 18 months pressing firmly around my skull like hands in the dark searching for a light.

I wanted it to stop. Needed it to stop and feigning a comatose state allowed me a minute of reprieve. It was the only thing that did.

“Today is the day,” the softness of her voice overshadowed by the certainty in her words. She reached down, pressing the tips of her fingers to my skin and lifted my chin.

“Today is the day,” she said, more firmly this time.

A reminder of the mother who tied my shoelaces when I hadn’t yet learnt how. Who sat in the sun with me for hours while we painted ceramic pots which would later host an array of brightly coloured flowers. The sunflowers always taking the salient position on the dining table as my passion and favouritism became more apparent as the years passed.

The mother who held my hand at the dentist because the fear of needles brought me to my knees. The mother who I could always feel, always sense when I needed her most. The mother I lost, alongside my father, to a vicious car accident a year prior.

I tried to reach for her but the resulting pain soaring from my wrist to elbow told me what I already knew – a break.

“Today is the day, my sunflower. Find your strength,” she repeated as she retreated, her kind smile lingering in the same way it always had.

“Don’t leave,” I pleaded to a space now much colder with her presence no longer there.

“You don’t tell me what to do, bitch,” the acidity in his harsh words startled me, my eyes opening to Lucas standing above me, a scowl coupled with clenched fists. “I’m going for more beer. Clean this shit up before I get back.” I followed the sweep of his hand across the kitchen where I sat leaning against a cupboard. Smashed glass littered the floor, the tap still running, fighting to be heard over the heavy rain thrashing against the windows.

“I think my wrist is broken,” I responded weakly. But the room was already empty, the sound of the front door slamming the only reply I would receive.

My head lolled to the side, the television still on in the adjacent room, shards of what was once a beer bottle surrounding my feet. Discarded dishes filled the sink, thankfully not broken this time and the paperwork which had been sorted into piles, haphazardly scattered on the floor.

As I sat motionless, I couldn’t escape the suffocating feeling that he was everywhere. He was in the mess I would now have to clean. In the tears on my cheeks and the throbbing pain in my wrist. It was intentional. Leave remnants of himself everywhere I looked, if for no other reason than to remind me this was his house.

Even the photographs lining the walls belonged to him. There was nothing to show I lived here.

Had this place ever been my home? Ever felt like home?

His behaviour was getting worse, his drinking more frequent and his hands heavier every time they touched me.

Would someone know if something ever happened to me? Was there anyone left who would care?

Today is the day. Today is the day. Today is the day .

My mother’s words repeated into the void.

He would be gone for thirty minutes and it would take me that long to clean this place, more now I only had one arm. Pressing to my feet I reached for the bench with my left hand, steadying myself against the nausea whirling through my stomach.

Today is the day, my sunflower. Find your strength .

I could clean the mess. Wrap my injured hand. Have a fresh beer ready for when he returned. Apologise – because it was always my fault.

He would beg for my forgiveness as he always did.

And it would be okay.

It was okay.

Wasn’t it?

It could be worse.

Couldn’t it?

Find your strength.

Fuck.

My heart began a steady beat, increasing as my eyes darted around the dishevelled room. My mind fighting against a decision my heart had already made.

Like a deep tissue massage working the tension from my neck the realisation settled across my skin and bled through to my soul.

I was ready and it was time. This was not who I was. Not someone I was proud to be and I couldn’t survive another week, month, or year living this life, if I made it that long. Whether he wanted to or not, he was going to go too far one day.

This wasn’t love. I wasn’t sure it ever had been.

He’d taken so many things from me and I’d excused them all. Until even the excuses were pitiful.

I had no one left. No one who wasn’t someone he also knew and could manipulate.

I’d pushed everyone away with excuses, ignored messages, unanswered calls and lies. Always lies. Anything to cover the shame of the life I was living.

But there was one person. One person who still reached out even when most of her messages went unanswered or were deleted before I had the chance to even read what they said. Someone who would fight for me. Someone who would search for me if anything ever happened. Who would remember me. Someone who could and would help because she always had.

If I had any hope of finding myself, it would be with her by my side.

She would be my strength.

Until I found my own.

Today was the day.