Hope

by Angharad J Davies

  Hope

  Angharad J Davies

  Copyright © 2014 Angharad J Davies

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1494709449

  ISBN-13: 978-1494709440

  “My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and to try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.”

  Maya Angelou

  “Not all who wander are lost.”

  J R R Tolkien

  1

  The first thing I am aware of is the cold; I can’t feel my fingers or my feet. As my eyes open, they adjust slowly to the darkness surrounding me. Glaring spots of iridescent orange slowly make their way into my consciousness, and I am half aware that they are standard street lights, illuminating the tragic scene below.

  I feel a warm, sticky trickle of blood roll slowly down my forehead and drip onto my cheek. I wince with pain as I move to brush it away with my one free hand. I can feel the rounded bump on my forehead where I must have hit the dashboard, or was it the windscreen? Couldn’t remember.

  The rain beats down upon the car window, now tilted upwards following the impact of the crash. There must be broken glass somewhere as I can feel rain-water run down my chest, soaking my already blood-stained sweater.

  I vaguely wonder if anyone has seen the crash, has called for help. Panic begins to set in and I can feel my heart pounding against my bruised and battered ribcage.

  I carefully adjust my body, trying to find a more comfortable position, but I am pinned down by a tense, unforgiving strap. My seat belt activated during the crash and will now not let me easily change positions. I struggle anyway, and manage to move just enough so I can check the condition of the driver of the car.

  No-one hears my silent scream as I see the small, still body of my mother in the seat next to me, the seeping blood matting her perfectly coiffed blonde hair, from the deep gash on the side of her head. Her lifeless blue eyes are wide open and vacant; all energy, all love, all hate, now gone. In spite of the pain, in spite of the shock and grief I can’t look away; I just scream.

  “Sarah! Sarah! Wake up! You’ve having another nightmare love.” My Aunty Blod gently cradles me awake, desperately trying to calm my shuddering body and to stifle my racking sobs. She rocks me slowly, as if I am still a child, patiently waiting for my tears to subside. In time I’m able to stem the tide and lie limp and exhausted in Blod’s arms; my now fully conscious and frustrated self, realising that I’d just had another bloody nightmare.

  2

  Blod stirs three big spoons of sugar into a mug of strong tea, and places it in front of me on the large farmhouse table in her kitchen.

  “I thought you told me that the nightmares were better these days?” Her softly spoken question came with a mild accusation.

  “They have been,” I promise. “I’m not sure why it happened again last night. They have been better, Blod, honestly.” I feel like a teenager again, sat in my pyjamas, having a very early breakfast in Blod’s warm, country kitchen.

  “The bereavement therapy sessions not working then?” She questions carefully, passing me a plate full of hot, buttered toast and a jar of homemade orange marmalade.

  My silence is an answer in itself.

  “You’ve stopped going, haven’t you?”

  My guilt shows clearly on my face.

  “Oh, Sarah!”

  “I’m sorry Blod, but I didn’t feel like they were helping. I’m not really sure what would.” My resigned tone clearly showing how much I’d given up on the idea of actually getting over the death of my mother.

  I look over at the large oak dresser, where a nearly eight decades of family photographs look back at me. I focus on one in particular, my mum and Blod at my university graduation. Mum, perfectly groomed and dressed in a black and cream Jaegar suit, and Blod all erratic and windswept in a full length boho skirt and long, colourful silk scarf.

  My mum and Blod couldn’t have been more different. Mum was a born society wife; with immaculate dress sense and perfect manners, she’d fit right in to the tennis club set. Blod on the other hand had been an adventurer, a boundary-pushing broadsheet journalist more at home in conflict zones and with political corruption than with a Pimms and patent court shoes.

  Hope and I used to joke that my mum had been switched at birth. I wince at the second painful recollection already that day, and catch Blod watching me carefully. There’s a distinct tightening in my chest; I don’t think I would have made it through the last few years with my sanity intact if it wasn’t for Blod.

  She squeezes my shoulder as she refills my tea cup.

  “Eat something love. It’ll make you feel better.”

  “Blod, how did mum end up so different from you, Nain and Taid?” It’s the first time I think to ask the question directly. It always seemed a bit too cheeky before.

  Blod pauses, searching for a suitably tactful response.

  “I think it was a form of rebellion, love. Nain and Taid were very liberal thinkers and I simply followed in their footsteps. I think your mum felt like she needed to be different, and meeting your father helped her to do that.”

  “But dad was nowhere near as conservative as mum,” I argue.

  “No, but I think she thought he was because of his family background. Coming from an upper middle class family in the way he did, it appealed to the snob and the traditionalist in her.”

  That made some sense. Whenever mum felt threatened, she’d always retreated into Dad’s family history and successes. I think back to all of the battles with mum when I was growing up; over clothing, make-up, my friends, my extra-curricular activities in school - basketball was so not the sport a nice young lady should be playing. She was somewhat mollified when I joined the school hockey team, but she might not have felt quite so smug if she knew that my first ever kiss had been with the girl who played on the right wing. The thought makes me smile and I see Blod watching me, an amused look on her face.

  “Are you telling yourself jokes again, Sarah?” She chuckles to herself. “It’s nice to see you smile though, love. You don’t do it anywhere near often enough.”

  Blod then moves to the dresser with all of the photographs and takes out a large envelope from the middle drawer. She turns back to me with a high wattage grin on her face.

  “Anyway, we’re forgetting something hugely important. Happy thirtieth birthday, Sarah!”

  “Oh Blod, you really shouldn’t have done anything you know. I’d have been more than happy to see this one pass me by.” My face flushes and I feel my eyes start to tear. As dear as Blod was to me, this was really not how I wanted to be spending my thirtieth birthday. Blod once again applies that reassuring hand to my shoulder and wisely chooses not to respond.

  I chastise myself for being ungrateful and then tear open the envelope in front of me. Two smaller envelopes fall out. The first contains a card; a cute one featuring two well-known chubby teddy bears; Blod’s beautifully scrawled handwriting sends me love and best wishes from inside.

  “Open the other one,” she says excitedly. I look at the envelope, expecting a gift voucher of some kind, but thinking Blod wouldn’t get this excited over a twenty quid iTunes gift card.

  I tear open the top of the envelope and an A4 piece of paper falls out. An A4 piece of paper detailing an itinerary for a trip; a three week scuba diving trip to the island of Ko Tao in Thailand. I snatch at a breath. This was one of my ‘see it before I die’ destinations.

  I look up at my beaming Aunt.

  “I really can’t accept this, Blod. It’s far too generous. And anyway, there’s no way I can take time off work at the moment.”

  “Now that’s where you’re wrong,” she retorts. “I contacted work a couple of weeks ago and told them of my plan. Simon
agreed with me that you need the break. He said that the project you are working on at the moment is almost finished and that they can easily cope without you.”

  “You’ve been busy.” I observe with a smidge of my usual sarcasm, and then smile to soften my tone.

  “Look love, I know you don’t usually like things being decided for you, but you haven’t been away in so long and you haven’t been diving in ages.” She pauses, knowing the reason for my hesitancy. “You used to go all the time when you were with Hope.”

  I wince for the second time that morning at the thought of the woman that I had once loved. Ever observant, Blod squeezes my hand and smiles her attempt at reassurance.

  “You’ll have a great time! For once please just be spontaneous and live your life. You deserve to.”

  She once again passes me a plate of freshly prepared toast. I pick up a slice, and smile hesitantly before crunching down on the thick, hot buttery bread. I think sadly of how safe and predictable my life had become recently; Hope would have been so disappointed in me. The thought of sun and a beach just seemed far too good to pass up. Looking up at Blod’s lovely, hopeful little face, a broad smile spreads itself across mine. I give my Aunty Blod a cheeky wink, as if to reassure her that the old Sarah was not entirely lost.

  “You know, you might just have a point.”

  3

  I stare in mild panic at the contents of my wardrobe. Not having been on holiday for some time, I seem to have a complete lack of appropriate clothing. I close the doors in dismay. I think a shopping trip might have to be in order, although with only two days left before my flight, I really didn’t have much time to organise myself.

  Then abruptly I raise my head. A lightbulb switches itself on; I see a vision of an old tan rucksack in the loft with some old swimsuits and shorts from some previous holidays. Spurred on by the thought of not having to battle with Saturday shoppers, I bounce to the upstairs landing and pull down the ladder from the loft hatch.

  Carefully ascending the steep, narrow risers, I reach the top and put on the loft light. Lord, I really do need to sort out the rubbish up here, I think to myself, spying the rucksack in the far corner. I retrieve the aging baggage, and breathe a sigh of relief when I realise that it’s full to the brim with holiday stuff.

  Back in my bedroom I begin wading through the assorted summer clothing; shorts, t-shirts, even sandals and flip-flops. Fantastic! No immediate shopping required, and anything that I did need I could probably get at the airport or when I arrived in Thailand.

  My preparations take a pause as I spot a particularly familiar piece of swimwear at the bottom of the bag. Eyes wide with recognition, I slowly lift out the item of clothing; a beautiful string bikini in a vibrant crimson red.

  I sit slowly on the bed, clutching to my breast the recently retrieved fabric, threatening to be completely and utterly overwhelmed. Unusually, I give Hope permission to peek through my consciousness and allow myself to indulge in the images of the bikini so deeply engraved on my memory.

  “Come on, Sarah. Hurry up! Have you seen that beach?” Hope’s excited voice comes drifting in from the decked veranda of our bungalow.

  “Two minutes,” I beg, rifling quickly through my new large, tan rucksack. “I can’t find my swimsuit.”

  Hope comes in from the veranda, clearly frustrated at my tardiness. I stand open-mouthed at the vision that greets me. She has donned the red string bikini, so recently found in the loft, with a pair of denim cut-offs, cut so short that I can hear the enticing lower curve of her buttocks begging me to reach out and stroke them. The bikini top sensually cups her full, round breasts and I know that it would take about two seconds for me to get that top on the floor. I look up at the beautiful pixie-like features framed by her signature cropped dark hair, glare mischievously into her cat-like green eyes and step purposefully forward.

  Hope senses the obvious change in my mood, and puts her hand out in defence of her honour.

  “Don’t even think about it!” she laughs. “Beach first, sex later.”

  Despondently, I return to the search for my somewhat more modest two piece tankini, finally finding it hidden in a pair of shorts. I quickly get changed, all the while making firm plans in my head for ‘later’.

  We spend the rest of the day on the beautiful expanse of beach, swimming and snorkelling in the turquoise-blue waters of the Caribbean Sea. Hope had surprised me for my twenty-fifth birthday with a two week trip to Antigua. She had been an avid scuba diver since her parents had taken her on holiday to the Red Sea in her late teens, and had encouraged me to take it up as soon as we became a couple.

  It was the first real holiday we had ever taken together. Prior to that it had been cheap camping holidays and weekends away in a friend’s battered blue Volkswagen campervan. Great, great times, but this holiday felt different, felt grown up somehow. It was as if we’d shifted gear in some way; no longer the itinerant students we had been, but adults, with adult lives and adult responsibilities.

  Lying on a lounger on the hotel’s private beach, cold drink in hand, I watch Hope as she wades through the surf, thinking that I had never been happier. As a teenager I’d always been hugely independent, but since meeting Hope I felt like I’d found a part of me that I didn’t even realise was missing; the joyous, fun-loving, extroverted, cheeky part of me that only she managed to bring out. I couldn’t put my love for her into words and I certainly couldn’t imagine my life without her. Little did I realise that I would soon have to.

  Later that evening, after a late supper, we walk hand in hand along the beach, stupidly sun kissed and happy. We slowly make our way back to our wooden bungalow, on the hilltop above the beach, stealing quick kisses as we go. By the time we reach the front door we’re both more than ready for what lies ahead.

  I lock the door to the room and switch on the overhead ceiling fan, our only weapon against the stiflingly hot night air. She stands in front of me, by the bed, coyly slipping the thin straps of her vest top down her arms, exposing her naked breasts to the dark, still night. By then we had been together for nearly six years, but the sight of her softly rounded flesh still left me breathless. And experience told me not to make my move yet, to wait, that she was only just getting started.

  Hope liked to tease, and I had to confess I liked her teasing me. I walk slowly to the bed, past her luscious semi-naked body and position myself at best advantage to watch her, recumbent against high, propped-up pillows. She smiles slyly to herself. She knew exactly what I was doing, the game I was playing, and loved the feeling of control that it gave her.

  She continues with her quiet striptease, slowly shifting the vest top over her hips and down her long, lithe legs. She kicks the fabric away, leaving just her short denim skirt. She takes her time over the button and zip, knowing that the waiting would drive me slowly insane.

  Finally she gently wiggles her hips and the skirt falls to the floor, leaving only her tiny, black silk panties. She climbs slowly on to the bed, crawling to me on all fours, giving me an incredible view of those ample round breasts, with their now taut, hard, rose-pink nipples. I don’t need to see these to know that she is as excited as me. She gets off on the teasing, on the titillation, and I don’t have to touch her to know by now how wet she is for me.

  I slide down the bed to meet her, and she gently brushes her breasts across mine. I know she likes the feeling of her naked skin against my clothed body, and I gently grip her by the waist and slowly roll her over onto her back.

  Finally, I get to touch and taste my girl.

  I work my way slowly down her soft, sun blushed body, stopping off at all those points I know she likes; the point just below her collar bone that makes her shudder, the soft underside of her breast, the indentation that follows to her waist and the prominent hip bone, where I know that stroking softly will make her writhe with desire.

  I go very, very slowly, knowing that we have all night, thinking that we have the rest of our lives, and that this wo
ndrous act of lovemaking would be repeated often in the future.

  Hope breathes heavily, and I sense that her patience for foreplay is starting to wear thin, and that her need to be fucked would soon take over the pleasure of the tease. I move to hover over her, one arm planted firmly to her side. She opens her eyes wide and makes her request. By now desperate for her, I am happy to comply.

  I slide quickly down the bed, roughly removing the final silk barrier as I go. I position my head between her thighs, breathing softly onto her swollen, pink vaginal lips. She squirms with impatience and holds my head in her hands, pushing a mute instruction to begin. I quickly flick out my tongue, lashing the hardened pink clit and she gasps loudly. I continue with my tongue, slowly working her into a frenzy, tasting the heavenly sweet-scented musk of her. I grip her hips hard, stopping them in their reflexive movement upwards, and she moans in frustration.

  I gently use the tips of my fingers to sweep across her wet, open lips and the movement drives her wild with desire.

  “Fuck me baby. Please fuck me,” she softly whispers.

  I move upwards, neglecting the now highly sensitive nub, and Hope cries out in frustration.

  “In good time baby,” I shush, “all in good time.”

  I gingerly stroke the soft skin on the inside of her thigh, all the while tugging at her hardened nipple with my teeth. I know that the slight tugging and gentle pain has the power to make her come all on its own, and recognising her impending orgasm, she puts her hand to my mouth, silently begging me to stop. This is not how she wants to come; she wants, she needs me inside her and I’m tired with teasing.

  I position myself directly above her and look deeply into her shining, jade green eyes. I run my hand quickly down her body, over the slight, soft mound of her stomach, over the soft, springy hair to her soft, wet cunt. I roughly slide three fingers into her, knowing what she needs and confident that she can take it. I work her roughly, supporting my weight with my knees and free hand. Her skin has a slight sheen, is moist with sweat. As I continue to feel her, to stroke the wet, sensitive ridges inside her, I see her legs begin to tense, and feel her muscles start to contract. I know she is close to orgasm as she has become silent, locked in a private, erotic battle with every one of her senses. I take pity, and gently brush her clitoris with my free thumb and it is enough; she explodes, gripping the nearest pillow, chewing it to avoid her loud cries being heard by other hotel guests. I am beyond caring, watching the woman I love carried away on a sea of pleasure and sensation. I look at her on the bed, pooled onto the sheets in liquid bliss, and I smile.