Every morning she goes for a run.

At first she would really have to push herself out of bed, to wake the body clock, despite its protests. She would do it before breakfast, when the air was still crisp with the night air, and the sun's rays were warming the quiet roads, the songs of the blackbirds drifting throughout the streets.

She felt uncomfortable, at first. Old, baggy sweatpants, rolled up to her knees, to run in. Her somewhat stringy, greasy hair tied back in a ponytail. Swish, swish, swish it went behind her head as she pounded down her driveway, towards the pavement. She did a little loop around the area, and by the time she was coming back, more traffic lined the streets.

People glanced at her, curiously, out of habit. She felt uncomfortable still jogging on the spot as she tried to cross the busy road. She felt her cheeks sting crimson with the exercise. Her lungs were struggling. She ended up walking the rest of the way home, wanting to escape back to the dark recesses of her bed.

That was how it started. Her plan to get better. To do better, to feel better. To wake up clean with a good purpose, although it was difficult, although she felt like lying in her bed all day, like she used to.

She had a room that was white-walled and bright in the sunlight. She did not have much in her room. She had a large bed, with white covers, a mattress that sat on a risen wooden podium.

One little leather chair with a printed Aztec pattern cushion sat in the corner. Beside it, a large chest of drawers, decorated with art utensils on the top. The main attraction of the room was a large framed photograph of a buffalo, taken side on. The room was white and brown.

Simple. But unused, it was lacking in something. It reeked slightly of incense. The remainders of it were the ash that was caked round a little glass vial, that once held the stick.

She kept jogging, every morning, except for the weekends, where she would lie in late, very late, until midday. Her mother was never pleased with that. Jostling her awake, on a Sunday.

Time for church. Always time for bloody church. At the present moment, she lived off her jogs and her occasional painting, which was not as good as it used to be. Her parents' house was a detached house in Surrey. Plain, clean, very minimalistic, like her bedroom, but that was not her mother's choice, as with the rest of the rooms in the house. She just did not bother with it, although her bed was forever unmade. Her painting used to be brilliant, full of bright colours before she had succumbed.

She had thrown most of her stuff out a few years ago, not wanting to have memories.

She saw her parents' house come slowly into view, as she kept jogging, even if her thighs were burning, and her face felt as red as a beetroot. The strands of her hair were plastered around her face, stuck to her forehead.

The Youngbloods was playing on her music player, over and over again, as she had run for half an hour. Anything to just get out of the house, away from her mother and father. She pondered on the subject of her friends, the ones she had at university and how they had never spoken since she had graduated. Not one of them had bothered to pick up the phone, or tap something into the computer.

She had tried, at first, and left it.

Sometimes she had been invited out for a drink further into town, but with little money and little energy for anything except her jogging she had refused many times. That was when they had finally lost interest. She turned up the volume on her music player louder, so that The Youngbloods were booming in her ears, their soft melodious voices soothing her, as she tried to forget the pathetic social life she now did not have.

They were her favourite band. There was a poster of them on her wall, above her bed, their 60s smart tailored suits a sharp contrast to those messy, relaxed hairstyles. The only other picture in her room beside the buffalo. And a framed photograph of her Scottish grandmother on her wooden bedside table.

It had all been fun and games at university, so they say. So they think.

It was supposed to be the time of your life, the golden years, where you met your future lover and friends that would last forever. You would grow up there.

Well, she sure as hell did grow up. But everything else had been constructed, socially, like constructing sandcastles in the air. She had succumbed to the need to fit in, the fear of being ostracised if she did not. She had always been the little chameleon, the one who moulded their personality to hop on the bandwagon. The only time she was herself, properly, was when she was painting.

Until her third year at university, the drugs had forced her to an ultimatum and she grew up. She had at least one relationship; that fizzled and died. She had slept with three other men, one who wasn't even a student. None of them that good-looking. One that wanted something. The other two looked at her in slight shock and told her to get out. Her parents knew absolutely nothing about her and what she had done.

Her parents were Catholic. They were strict. They thought she was somebody when she was not. She had spent the last five years pretending to be two people at once; the quiet, studious, creative girl to her parents, and the funny, laid-back druggie girl to her 'friends' at university. The thing was no one cared about her truly enough; they all wanted her to be something she wasn't.

She drank until she woke up with various cuts, bruises on her body, until she had lost her phone and woke up in an unfamiliar bedroom. She smoked variously, until her pockets were stuffed with empty filter packets, and her purse was empty. She injected heroin until the veins in her right arm died and she missed her exams in the second year. She had to pay fifty pounds to re-sit it.

She painted a screaming woman; one with dead limbs for a body. She was dead. Her personality did not exist and her life did not exist.

She tried various stages.

She went cold turkey at several points. She had to get help after a while, and served some time in a rehabilitation centre. It had been the worse three years of her life. She had managed to scrape a 2:1.

How she did it, she did not know. Perhaps it was the horror of her addiction and the downfall of her behaviour which was presented in her art. The lecturer told her she was exceptional….original. If only he had known.

She stopped in front of her house, sighing loudly. Her house was on a quiet little avenue. In a perfect little Conservative neighbourhood, with perfect people who led perfect little lives. They all thought she was a bright student, although weren't very keen on her particular chosen university and her chosen degree. It was that kind of neighbourhood where you were not quite good enough for anybody.

She stopped The Youngbloods, gazing at her house, both loving it and hating it simultaneously. She had to tell them of her actions. She would miss out the public vandalism, the various drunken one-night stands and the fact that she missed an exam because she was lying on her bathroom floor, being sick until her body was empty. All they knew she had her heart broken and that sometimes she phoned up in tears because she was 'stressed' and 'lonely.' Her mother would only ask her to be strong, and tell her she was beautiful and that she had lots of friends. To get a grip and stop worrying about 'what's-his-name.'

That's not it, it's not him, he's a catalyst to it all, she wanted to yell down the phone.

There was little old Mrs. Nesbit, walking her dog, a knitted hat on top of her head. She had a large gold brooch on the lapel of her woollen coat.

"Mornin' Gracie," she said, and continued to walk on.

The girl didn't have much of a liking for the old bat and only hesitantly replied, forcing a smile which never came out in the end. She felt the woman could x-ray her with her eyes, see all her secrets. She turned back to her large detached house, with her land rover parked outside the front. She would tell them today. She would have to. Before she went away again; for she was going to study for a Masters degree in Fine Art.

She would go back up north, where this university was, near York, where she originally lived until she was seventeen. She'd never been happy in Surrey; her accent was out of place. It was lucky for her mother, she had originally come from Surrey and that's why they moved.

Closer to her mother's family, and her father was happy to comply, his new job being stationed in London. Her mother didn't work. She helped mostly out at the local church. The girl slipped the earphones out of her ears as she walked up to the front door of the house. She pushed the door open, which her mother kept on the latch for her. She was instantly greeted by the smell of fresh bread as she entered the hallway that was spotless. There was unsavoury china plates lined up on the wall in the large hallway that hardly contained anything in it. There was an umbrella stand and a coat rack, with shoes neatly arranged under.

A pair of Hunter wellington boots, a pair of brogues, and a pair of converses.

Hers. Her mother hated them. They were baby pink and were covered with mud. The girl walked through the hallway towards the kitchen. It was an old-fashioned kitchen with an old stove, and copper pans hanging over the sink. Blue delft tiles decorated the kitchen. Her mother had her back turned, and she was kneading some dough. The girl's eyes drifted towards the already baking piece of bread in the oven. Her palms were sweaty, clammy, and a large knot formed in her stomach.

"Good run, dear?" her mother spoke, having heard the door around five minutes ago.

Her daughter was oddly silent; every time she came back from a jog she was usually, and quite terribly, out of breath. She nearly jumped in fright when the dog burst through the back door, tongue hanging out, and golden fur soaking. The mother's eyes drifted above her kneading to outside; it had begun to rain, very hard, and her washing was outside.

She sighed, slapping her hands together, the flour puffing into the air.

"Help me get the washing in?"

The girl liked to think she had a good relationship with her mother, but now she was going to completely and utterly ruin it, which brought tears to her eyes. The back of her throat burned with her unshed tears; she hadn't had a good cry in about three years.

Her mother could have a look of a fifties housewife, except she wore a checked shirt over ripped jeans, along with printed wellies on her feet. Her mother, as much as she could be unbearable and overly fanatic with her clean house and faith, the girl felt a huge sweep of affection for her mother. Her mother always wore her dyed blonde-ish hair in victory rolls. Her mother frowned a little, seeing her daughter hesitate, and waver, her eyes brimming with tears.

"You alright, pet?"

The girl burst into tears. Her mother was so shocked she stood there gaping for half a minute. Last time she saw her own daughter cry was around five years ago, before she left for university. She told them she wasn't confident enough and hated education really. T

hey just brushed these feelings away with 'Come, come, now, don't be silly.'

"Gracie?"

"I'm NOT okay! And don't you dare tell me I'm silly," her daughter suddenly sobbed.

Her mother felt a little embarrassed. Her twenty-four year old who had been coping with herself away from home was crying like a four year old in front of her.

She didn't move forward to embrace her, confused, a little frightened.

"I'm moving up to Feston to study postgraduate art…" she trembled.

"Well, that's good, isn't it? A bit late to be telling me, but that – that is…good…"

Her mother was frowning deeply, her lips pressed together, looking as if she was sucking a lemon. She had the feeling that what she was going to hear now would not please her in the slightest. Was she pregnant?

Her daughter ran a hand through her lanky, greasy hair, and she clutched at her music player tightly, for dear life, nearly praying for courage.

"I scraped through university because I was a heroin addict, Mum. That was why I was always so tired and so skinny and why I never showed my arms on holiday in Italy…"

She hated to be reminded of that painful holiday which had been cut painfully short. Her mother's face was unfathomable, perhaps indescribable. Her mother was agape and her crossed arms tightened. There was a pin-drop silence; there was only the sound of the oven whirring. The dog ran through the room after staring at its bowl after a quiet, forlorn five minutes, brushing past the girl, who had tears running down her cheeks. They splashed onto her little blue vest top, little dark blue splodges making patterns. Her mother suddenly put a hand to her mother, when her daughter held up both her arms, walking closer to her, showing the little pin pricks that covered all the inside of her arms. Her mother's eyes wavered, and she began to cry. But her daughter didn't expect her mother to turn back around, and start to knead the dough again.

The girl stood there in shock, her lip quivering, repeating 'Mum' over again, waiting desperately for a response. She had finished university three years ago, and she had been a cleaner ever since. For the past year or two, she had drifted away from her friends who were not really friends at all. The people she had got to know who were also addicts, had been cut out of her life even before her graduation. But the rest, who she thought she could trust, had drifted away, like a loner on plywood at sea.

They were not really bothered; they were all self-indulgent, just like they had been at university. That was her only opinion. Self-indulgent, never pondering once that she might have just been the same. The trouble was she was ever so lonely. She was no longer that girl who fitted in with everyone else, who never had a best friend, who always hung around in groups, cracking the odd joke, but mostly ignored. She touched her mother's shoulder, which was shaking slightly.

"Mum?"

"The sooner you go away to do your postgraduate the better," her mother sniffled, but she sounded like she was about to breathe fire.

"I coped all by myself, and now I'm better. Wouldn't you rather know now?" Her mother span back around, her eyes flaming.

"That's not the point! The point is the fact that you are not the girl I've known for twenty-four years! What else do you need to tell me? That you're addicted to nicotine and alcohol as well? You've had sex with a dozen boys? You are every bit of a self-indulgent brat!"

The girl turned her head away, becoming angry, but her face reddened. She had done exactly all those things, although three one-night stands was not 'a dozen boys.'

"So because I had an addiction, you think automatically I would be addicted to everything?" Her mother spluttered sarcastically, slapping her hands together, the flour flying out in clumps in the air. The girl let more tears run down her face, feeling utterly helpless.

Her mother murmured she would be telling her husband when he came back from work, as if Grace had just wet the bed again. The girl wiped her tears away angrily with the back of her hand, sniffing harshly. She suddenly hated the back of her mother's head; that dyed hair that looked like straw from all the wear and tear throughout the years. She hated to think of her straight-laced father, who would come home, with his bloody shiny briefcase, smiling brightly, moustache bristling.

How her mother would tell him, crying, how he would come thundering up the stairs.

"I never expected you to understand, but you have to know…" the girl wept.

Her mother was kneading the bread very hard now, she in fact she had kneaded it too much, and it was becoming unusable.

"Please leave. Don't come back until church."

It was the custom on Fridays to go. The girl walked over to the door of the kitchen.

"I'm not going, Mum." Her mother sighed loudly, and span back around.

"I don't need this!" she yelled at the top of her lungs. "Don't do this Grace!" Grace whipped the door open, finally loosing her temper, something which happened more often these days.

"I don't need this bullshit. I'm not going. Where was it when I was going through hell? Face it, Mum, you cannot ever look at the truth in the eye. You need your bloody church to make it all nice for you. Well life isn't like that!"

She found she had been shouting, the tears now gone. Her mother just stood there, astounded with her own daughter. It was as if she had lost the young girl she had loved so much overnight. But the girl, oddly enough was right. And she wasn't a girl; she was a young woman now. She realised she had no clue, whatsoever, about her daughter. She didn't know about this woman at all.

Only that everything had gone smoothly from school through university, and that she was just a normal, average girl, who fitted into society well, despite her creative ways. The mother's eyes glanced up, hearing the sound of the door closing. Why was Frank here?

He took off his raincoat and hung it up, frowning at the racket that had just commenced. He saw both his wife and daughter in tears, their faces red. His body sagged in reaction. His wife was clenching the dough tightly, while his daughter was clutching the door frame. He had come early. Being one of the top heads in his department, who ran half the company, he wasn't often needed on a Friday.

"What is going on here?" he demanded, raising his voice unnecessarily. He always had to do that at the wrong moments, because all he cared for was peace and order.

His daughter didn't even look at him, as she brushed past him, and ran through the hallway, towards the staircase on the far right, her feet banging on the steps. He called for her name angrily, but he was astounded when she did not reply like she did normally.

She was always so compliant, but this was not the Grace he knew. She locked herself in her room for the rest of the day, and refused dinner and her father's requests to talk to her. He began talking to her outside the door; what had happened, why had she upset her mother, why was she acting so ….out of sorts? He didn't like disorder, or chaos that ruptured his daily life. Most of all, he didn't understand emotion, and probably never would or would want to. He had been brought up by parents whom he hardly saw.

He went to work when he was eighteen, and that was the end of it. He didn't even know where they lived now. Somewhere up in Yorkshire, rotting away. He had spent most of his time in boarding schools, where emotion was not allowed, where he had to suck it up and blend in. He thought emotion was a waste of time, and didn't understand his wife or daughter. He kept knocking on her door, until she flung open the door and she nearly yelled the entire story to him. She told him he didn't know who the hell she was.

He was aghast, he was in shock, and nearly dropped the mug of tea he brought up for her. This act of kindness by her father reduced her to tears and she almost felt guilty. No, she was guilty.

Every inch of her soul was soaked with guilt. Her father, who slightly resembled actor Jerry Orbach, just stood there, his greying hair catching the light, and for the first time she had ever seen, his lip trembled.

"I….Gracie I don't believe it…."

But he didn't go up to her and hug her just like he wanted to, or looked like he was going to.

She closed her door once she had seen he wasn't going to talk to her anymore, and sat back on the bed. It was predictable. Her suitcase was packed, all ready to go. It was a couple of weeks before the semester started. She had handed her notice in at work.

She hated being a cleaner; she had hated her miserable life for the past three years. It only consisted of cleaning, the odd drink with the odd acquaintance, which was rare in any case and mostly sitting in her room. Sketching, painting or reading. Or looking at the internet which presented people, her old friends who disappointed her, that were having a successful life.

What they wanted to portray anyway. They could have their own problems. But she was unable to see that. She took out a box full of Ritz crackers and began munching on them. She sensed her father left the mug outside her door, and she opened it to find it there, steaming. It was a cup of redbush tea, her favourite.

It was lukewarm, and she sipped it. She changed into her pyjamas and got into bed. Even if it was six o' clock in the evening.

She would sleep and sleep until these two weeks passed by.