Broken Inside

Ronnie lay in bed, her blue eyes wide open and blankly looking into the darkness that enveloped her. She closed her eyes for a fraction of a second before snapping them open once again. This was how she had spent every night since her little girl had been killed; closing her eyes for the smallest amount of time before frantically opening them so that she didn't have to see the look of shock on her baby's face as a car ploughed into her petite body.

Every night she would haunted by those few seconds, her mind reliving it in slow motion, her body paralysed by the same shock and terror that had gripped her almost five months ago. It's meant to get better. Ronnie thought to herself, her eyes still searching through the darkness, looking for answers that it could never give. That's what they say, isn't it? 'Time helps, it heals you'. What a load of crap – it's been five months and it may as well have been five minutes ago. Time doesn't help, it doesn't heal, it does nothing.

Inwardly, she let out a deep sigh, unconsciously hoping that with each breath she exhaled, the gut wrenching pain would lessen. Pulling back the covers, Ronnie slipped out of the king sized bed and made her way over to the window – she couldn't stand just lying there for any longer, so she did what had become routine for her, she lifted back the curtain and looked out into the darkened Square.

The streets were silent and so incredibly still, not even a gentle Autumn breeze rippled through the air. It was just quiet. But to Ronnie, the silence was deafening. Sometimes, she craved the silence, even sought it out, but other times she ran away from it; it was as though she needed the noise to drown out her own thoughts. Tonight . . . tonight, she just wanted to be. She wanted to be . . . but not to feel.

Ronnie pressed her fingertips against the glass pane of the window, the coolness slithering through her hand and soothing her burning body. She leaned forward, the side of her forehead now touching the glass. The orange glow of the streetlights dimly lit Albert Square, and the moon hung low in the midnight blue sky. It was almost picturesque. Almost.

If it hadn't been for the road where her daughter's body was flung into the air before landing with a thud on the concrete ground.

She gasped as she remembered the sound; the sound of flesh colliding with the road. But that wasn't even the worst of it. That sound was nothing compared to the one that would rip at Ronnie's skin every moment of every day. That wasn't the sound that rung in her ears every time silence descended upon her mind. No, the sound of her daughter's last breath, the rattling wheeze as she called her 'mum' for the first time was the sound that stopped Ronnie's heart from beating and made her want to fall through the glass and into the darkness that had swallowed her little girl. That sound was the one that haunted her every minute that she was awake and every minute she tried to sleep.

She would hear it everywhere, that one word spoken with a final breath – in the shouts of children playing, on the television, in the voices of the market stall holders as she walked past them. Everywhere she went, everywhere she ran to, she would hear her daughter's voice.

Ronnie felt the pain building in her once again, building so much she felt as though she would drown in it. It comes in waves. That's what Dot had said as she had tried to comfort the grieving mother. "But that's a lie," she whispered to herself; her warm breath making a small part of the window mist over. "It's not waves, it's always. It's just . . . always."

Feeling a slight draught, Ronnie turned around to find out it's cause. Her face instantly flooded with love as she looked upon the person that sat at the foot of her bed. "You came back," she said, the smile lighting up her entire being.

The young girl nodded, an identical smile adorning her own face. "I said I would, didn't I?" She said, her lips still set in a smile. "You never do believe me when I say that, do you mum?"