This is only a short one, so I'm posting it earlier. The next chapter should be up on Sunday I should think :). The chapter's are not a consistent length, some a very short, like this one, other's a rather longer.
I hope you like it :) and thank you to everyone who's favourited, followed and reviewed this story
Bittersweet Bones
Chapter 2
by missrebecca
The train station was packed tight with Londoners wanting to leave the city. Spring had starting peaking it's gaze on the city and those who could afford it were boarding trains for the coast. Isabella was jostled this way and that, and almost lost her balance more than once before she reached her carriage.
She'd managed to get booked in to a compartment all by herself, it being so early on a morning. She'd left her flat with a letter to the landlord, and dropped a letter for Wilf through the door of the bar. Over the years she'd become adept at cutting all ties with a place. But she'd become complacent in London, it was a place she enjoyed being, she hadn't expected to be there only two years.
As the train pulled out of the station, Isabella pulled a battered copy of Frankenstein out of her suitcase, and spent the next two hours immersed in Shelley's often horrifying world.
After arriving at Bristol Temple Meads, she ignored the porters and walked swiftly out to catch a taxi, and asked the driver to take her to the Palace Hotel. As they drove, Isabella saw first hand the devastation that was so readily reported through the papers. Bristol had been hit hard during the war, but the council there had started work early on restoring the town, so while there were still the occasional bomb site, it was nothing like the place she had just left.
Once she'd paid the driver, Isabella collected her one suitcase and entered the Palace's lobby. It was furnished well, for a hotel that didn't see the use it was expecting, and a room was quickly made available for Isabella's use. Moving to a new place was always difficult at first, and she hoped she'd find somewhere to live soon, preferably somewhere a little more hospitable than the flat she'd lived in last. She dropped her bags in her room, and refreshed her hair and makeup in the bathroom. After making sure her seams were straight and her lipstick unsmudged, she set off into the strange Bristol streets, looking for work.
There wasn't an awful lot a woman like her could do. She had no references and no real home, but the war had left a lot of people out of a home, and some employers took that into account. She found work in a café, where she was told she would be manning the counter, as the previous girl had run off with some ex-soldier she'd met in Bath. Isabella smiled and nodded though she couldn't give a damn about some flighty girl, and shook the owners hand with a smile. She would start bright and early at six the following morning.
The previous night had been spent in turmoil, and the few hours of sleep that she'd managed hadn't been particularly restful, so she headed straight back to the hotel to sleep through 'til dinner.
Under the soft covers, with the sound of Bristol outside, she could almost pretend that the previous night hadn't happened. She could pretend that her heart still didn't jump when she heard something unexpected, and could pretend that she had everything under control. The fact was she didn't, and she probably never would until she was finally caught. However, until that day she was determined to continue her life, to travel and see as much of the world as she could, before it inevitably destroyed itself.
Let me know what you think :)
