Prologue

There are many beautiful places in the world, but often is said that a place can be made even more special just by it being a place you spend time with the ones that you care about. Such as home can be a word associated with any thing from a caravan, to a tree house, to a kennel for a dog. And a place doesn't have to be beautiful to mean some thing. Like a person, if you love them enough, you see them as perfect. Because, even though no one is, you learn to look past the imperfections and accept them for what they are. Every one makes mistakes after all.

Chapter one – Moving away

It was that cross over between autumn and summer, where the trees leaves were drying up and crunching beneath hasty feet on their way home, but the grass was still green enough to compliment the gnarled tree trunks that lined the street. It was still warm enough to walk around without a scarf but, every now and then a gust of wind would curl around the shoulders, making passers by shudder and encourage themselves to get a larger coat, soon.

It was on such a day, that a Miss. Christine Daae was helping to load boxes of her things in to the beaten up blue Corsa that belonged to her Aunt Moira Giry. "Christine, could you do me a favour and go and get the last of the stuff from the living room?" Moira's voice was muffled as she leaned in to the small car boot, using her shoulder to push the boxes back to allow more space for the new ones. "Yes Aunty!" Christine's shrill voice called back, as she stretched her arms forward, aching from the weight of full boxes, and rushed back in to the small three bedroom house on Mezzo Avenue.

Looking around the old house, it was hard to believe she had lived here for all fifteen years of her life up until this point. If she was honest, she thought she would at least turn 16 in that house a few months later, but it appeared she would not be so lucky. This place was her home, it was one of those fairytale places you dream of growing up in, but only ever see in films. All of her old school friends had felt welcome in the sanctuary of this place when they visited from school.

The walls were not black and white as in most modern house holds, they were instead a pale honeysuckle colour, with hand carved shelves that her father had made and hung up with the help of her mother when Christine was still too young to remember things, but just old enough to toddle around and make trouble by lifting up a paint brush covered in superglue, and nearly eat it because she didn't know what it was.

The walls used to be covered with photographs, days out at the sea side, trips to the local fair, all of the holidays and the numerous embarrassing school pictures from across the years. At least Christine thought they were embarrassing, her parents had always told her she shone like the sun in their lives and led the way for them. But now, it appeared she was leaving them behind.

She walked in to the next room; the dining room, that used to have the large oak table in the middle with 12 chairs in total because, she always had friends over. As a creature of habit, they were often the same friends, but her parents were always inviting over relatives she never even knew she had, people from work too. In the corner, that was where they kept the cheap second hand piano that her mother loved so to play, some of the markings in the carpet were still there, the only proof that that piano had ever been there at all.

The dining room was divided in half, as it was a very large room, the other half made its use as a kitchen and stored the standard equipment and utensils alongside a small glass cupboard, where the family stored baked goods. Each of them loved to bake, mainly they just liked the fact that they were one of the few families they knew that still ate home made food at a table. No frozen any thing could ever be found. Unless you counted ice cream.

Down the small hall way, where visitors left shoes, coats and hats, up the creaky old stair case with its faded lilac carpet, there were only four doors. One was a coat closet, that stored only three pairs of hiking boots, a bin bag of old clothes for the charity shop and a worn patch work quilt that her parents had in their room in the winter. Opposite that door at the other end of the landing, was the bathroom, which pretty much fit the average description of bathrooms.

The other two doors sat side by side in the longest wall that was set, right in between the two other doors facing one another. The one nearest the coat closet, belonged to Christine's parents. She didn't enter now, for fear of what it would look like. She didn't visit it often, only when she wanted to wake her parents up early, such as Christmas day or their birthdays. From what she could remember, there were two wardrobes with a dressing table in between, and a balanced amount of her parents belongings were spread across every thing as, they didn't believe in keeping secrets, whether they be objects or vocal.

The only other objects she remembered being in the room was a comfortable double bed, with three shelves above it, containing the Daae library, as her father used to joke. Though the only books the library contained were her fathers music scores and science fiction novels and her mothers fairytale book and romance novels.

Lastly, was her room, the largest room upstairs that her parents were so kind as to sacrifice for her and her dance practice. She turned the door handle and the door swung open softly, not making a sound as it turned over the soft carpet, a sea green colour it was and so soft beneath bare feet. But she only knew that from memory, now her feet were covered in plain black lace up shoes and all she could feel was the uncomfortable feeling that came with old shoes that you were growing out of.

She sniffled, a tear rolling down her face. This wasn't her room any more. Her room had been covered in trophies, photos of every thing from her favourite theatre performances, to the last picture taken with her grandmother. Where had the bookshelf gone? And her small bed by the window that always seemed to glow as she rose each day? But it was the window that brought her to her knees, her face in her hands, sobs bursting from her lungs as she gasped for air.

The window had been a gift from her father on her very first birthday. It was a stained glass window, depicting an angel, playing the violin.

"When I am gone soon-" "Father don't talk like that, you're going to be fine," she had stroked his pale face softly with her hands, ignoring the tubes attached to his nose, to his mouth, to every where, to keep him breathing. There were so many wires attached to him, he looked like a pin cushion.

"No, Christine," a cough shook his frail body, "Listen, please, listen," his eyes flickered. "I'm listening father," she sobbed, clutching his hand with both of hers. "When I am gone, you will be protected by an angel," cough, cough, a deep breath, "an angel of music. And he will watch over you, and as long as he does, I will never," cough, "be faraway."

"Christine, have you found the last of those boxes, ouch," Moira's voice snapped Christine out of her flash back, and she startled to her feet, looking back once at the window that was already imprinted in to her mind forever, scarring her heart with its story. She turned out of the room, closing the door, before fleeing down the stairs and stumbling in to the living room. Despite being so emotionally unstable, she picked up the last box without a single tear. A great feet considering that, the last box contained her father's precious Stradivarius violin, wrapped, alongside its bow, in the beaten leather case it inhabited. Even holding it in a great cardboard box and hard leather case didn't feel like enough protection for it.

The sun stung her eyes as she stepped out side, closed the front door made of pine with the number 81 printed on it in bronze and posted the keys through the front letter box, whilst balancing the box cautiously between her free arm and her hip. The front garden was alive in the evening sun set, the trees leaves whispering to her in the breeze, calling her name. The pansies faces gazed up at her, their faces wet with rain, they looked like they had been crying.

Running now, to the car, she didn't look back, as she handed the box to her aunty. "Ok Kiddo' climb in the front, I'll be around in a second," Christine smiled appreciatively and walked around to the front of the car, suppressing the urge to both laugh and cry at her aunty trying to close the car boot.

The driver's door closed with a metallic slam, as Moira climbed in to sit before the steering wheel. She pulled the sunglasses resting on the top of her head down to cover her eyes. "Let's go!" she beamed warmly, but sadness and guilt heavy in her eyes, because she had no idea what her niece was going through, none at all.

As the car revved unsurely to life and took off, away from the neat avenue with its tall blossom trees, it houses sleeping lazily next to one another; the sky was on fire as the sun descended further into shadow. The last thing that Christine saw of all she knew, was her next door neighbours cat jumping down from the fence and climbing up the Daae apple tree, in an attempt to catch a sparrow.

Christine stared straight ahead, her eye lids lazy but, she felt wide awake, as she turned away without a choice, from every thing she knew as it was. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is where our story begins.