I wish I could say something...
Grace Owen ran her pretty-blue eyes back over what she had just written, and then crossed it out with a flourish.
She sighed, looking out of her window onto the sandy beach and turquoise lace-topped water. Everything that had happened in the last year had happened so quickly, so feverishly - so wonderfully! - that she found herself, suddenly, in the middle of the night, wishing that she could tell someone – anyone – what she was going through.
The water glowed in the sunset, a burnt orange flame that streaked across the sky, reminding her how much she loved the place she lived in, how grateful she was for the chance to have a loving home in the middle of such a wonderful setting. The scenes around her were like those from a wonderful book or movie, something arty, all angles and magnificent views.
She sighed as she thought about her favourite place in the world; the beach. And then her mind flicked to him, and stopped dead in its tracks as a warm blush coloured her cheeks. Grace shook her head, he was the last person who could know what she was going through.
With a determined sigh, Grace picked up her pencil and in neat loopy handwriting began again…
In the summer I was fifteen my parents changed my life forever.
At the time it upset me, I was angry with them for taking me away from my home, my friends and a city I loved. I was a teenager – the world was against me…but lately, as I see my parents getting older and sicker, I begin to feel sorry for all the bad things I said back then – things I don't even remember now.
We moved here, to the beach, mum, dad, Sara and I, to a pretty little house on the shore, and over the long, hot summer that followed I couldn't help but fall in love with The Little Valley just as my parents said I would.
I tried to fight it at first, made regular trips back to the city to see my friends and locked myself in my room and away from the glorious surroundings. The only problem with this was that being so far away from my old gang, made me see just how little we all had in common, they were selfish and conceited and if I was perfectly honest with myself, none of them were real friends to me.
After this starkly honest realisation Grace pulled back from the leather-bound diary and furrowed her brow in concentration, struggling to conjure up the memory.
But it was lost.
I don't even remember how I know that they weren't my real friends, it was just one of those feelings, a deep down voice which told me I wasn't fitting in anymore – moving away from the city opened my eyes.
The pencil hovered above the pages for a brief moment, long enough for a re-reading of that paragraph.
Jay was one of those guys that you look at and think 'wow' even at fifteen. When we first met I couldn't take my eyes off him…and when he looked at me with warm eyes and smiled shivers ran icy fingers up and down my spine.
Grace blushed at what she had written and was half-tempted to cross it out, but the urge to continue writing was stronger than she had anticipated and took over.
It was autumn when we first met, and I remember thinking that there would be no way on this Earth that the gorgeous boy from the beach with the bleached-blond hair would ever want anything to do with me.
I was fifteen, a girl and shy…innocent…untouched…by anything or anyone…
That morning I remember having one of those wonderful dreams, where you are weightless, and everything is made of chocolate and marshmallows, when my mother's voice swam into my thoughts…
"Grace?" She was tapping lightly on my bedroom door, urging me awake. "Gracey sweetie – it's time to get up…"
"Mmmm.." I turned over and pulled the warm duvet back over my head. "Five more minutes." I whispered softly. "Just five more minutes…"
The tapping came again though and louder. "Grace, you've had five more minutes –" Her tone wasn't angry, just firm "I'm off to work in two, and Sara's playing downstairs, I don't want her left on her own."
The concern dripping from my mother's voice pulled me out of bed and forced me to get ready.
Sara was my younger sister and for her age she seemed unaffected by the move. Sara liked it as much as any of us, as far as we could tell - she didn't say much but still I saw the happiness deep in her eyes when she looked at the waves crashing on the sand. She was four and a sickly child, she'd been in and out of hospital about a million times – more times in two months than I'd been in my whole life - but no one really knew what was wrong with her…or if they did they never said.
I feared that she was getting sicker every day; she seemed to drain of colour with every moment that passed. I knew my mother thought living by the seaside would help her to somehow get through it and I hoped with all my heart that she was right because I loved Sara more than anything.