Ok, this is the second story that I'm posting, it's on a completely different track to the first and I have no idea how it's going to go or where. (Well I have a little idea, but it's all a bit up in the air at the moment, I just wanted to see how it was received.)

I'm sure it's been done before but hopefully not in the same way but I guess you'll let me know if you've written it already!

The basic idea is…

Abby's still with Richard, they have a daughter, Holly, who can either be the kid she aborted or another one, it's up to you…but she's eleven.

Abby finds her daughters diary and discovers she knows about a few things Abby thought she'd kept pretty well hidden.

Abby walked along the hallway and past Holly's bedroom door, it was wide open, Holly was due back later this afternoon, she'd been to an overnight campout in Jake's back yard, they'd decided that they wanted to do it yesterday afternoon and Holly had phoned from Emma's house sounding quite excited about the whole thing, so Abby had agreed. She laughed slightly as she thought about it, Holly was a funny kid, she was great, and she held Abby's heart completely, but she was her fathers daughter, she was a Daddy's girl, a part of her was happy that her daughter was so committed to her father but at the same time she felt like she was pushed to the boundaries slightly. She and Holly were getting more distant, she didn't want it to happen but it definitely was, maybe Holly was beginning to see through her. They never really spoke any more, she'd been pretty angry for the last couple of months, and Holly got the brunt of that a lot of the time.

Things with Richard were at rock bottom, they'd been heading down hill for longer than she cared to remember but they were definitely worse than they'd ever been before. She knew he was sleeping with someone else, which at the moment was fine; she had absolutely no desire to have him anywhere near her. She'd never thought that she'd be able to put up with a cheating husband but at the moment, for Holly's sake it was fine, just as long as they kept the pretence up for Holly it would be fine. There had been a lot of shouting going on recently, and a hell of a lot of forced arguments but she'd started trying to change that so that Holly wouldn't cotton on to it, she could live like this, with this because the other option was to walk away from her daughter and that, she wasn't prepared to do.

She sat on her daughter's bed and looked around, pulling the teddy that Holly had had since she was three off her pillow, hugging it to her chest as she looked around the room. Holly was definitely disorganized, there were hundreds of pieces of paper and photos and tokens and ticket stubs and post-its stuck to the notice board above her desk, and blue tacked haphazardly to the walls, her desk had piles of paper and pens scattered all over it and an array of dirty clothes were heaped on the floor, the number of times she'd asked her to tidy this stuff up. She smiled and shook her head slightly, it was hard to make Holly do things she didn't want to, but it was probably about time to let it lie, she could be messy if she wanted to be, she was a great kid, an exceptionally clever kid, if she wanted to be messy then she could be. The trait was one of many contradictions she could see in Holly, she had the most organized mind of any eleven year old Abby had ever come across and the most disorganized manner, if you looked at Holly's appearance or spoke to her even, you'd just assume she was tidy, organized, methodical because that's she way she looked, the way she thought, but there was no doubt that she lived in her own little world of squalor.

She pulled a photo off the wall next to the bed, it was of Holly and her best friend Emma, Abby had gotten to know Emma pretty well over the last four years along with Holly's other best friend Jake, it seemed like the three of them lived in each others pockets. She knew a lot more about Emma than she did Jake, but Holly was exceptionally close with both of them, Emma was the smiliest kid Abby had ever met, she had very red hair and freckles all over her face and was grinning, pulling a stupid face in the picture, apparently Emma was the class clown, Holly's cheek was pressed against Emma's as she beamed at the camera, her eyes twinkling happily, she had Abby's eyes, the same shape, slightly lighter maybe but they were definitely her mother's, Holly's skin was slightly tanned and she had a light smattering of freckles over the bridge of her nose and across the top of her cheeks, clumps of chestnut hair were falling around her face, she had big dimples in her cheeks as she grinned at the camera, she was beautiful Abby thought.

Abby stood up surveying Holly's domain one last time, Susan was coming for coffee soon, she should probably get her act together before she arrived, she went to put Alfie back on Holly's pillow knocking it as she did, she reached under the pillow pulling out a thick black hardback book, she frowned slightly as she looked at it, she knew about pretty much everything Holly owned, most of it was left lying around the house most of the time, but she'd never seen this before. She flipped it over in her hands and opened it, reading the first lines.

I decided to start a diary; it's not really anything that speical but just some stuff I thought that maybe if I wrote down might be easier to work out, that's all.

Abby smiled slightly at her daughters words, they were astonishingly wise and innocent at the same time, her eleven year old downplayed everything, she never really got dramatic about things, she felt sad about the fact Holly thought that it wasn't really all that special, but she smiled at it at the same time, she was so simple and yet unbelievably complex, her entire being was a contrast, maybe it was indicative of something else, but she hadn't seen anything to suggest it in Holly yet, she was far too reasonable.

She sat back down on the bed as she flipped to the next page, which had been stuck in haphazardly, and Holly's neat scrawl had her hooked.

My name is Holly Lockhart, and I'm eleven almost twelve, I'm not entirely sure why I'm telling you this because I know who I am, but I think that there are a few people who don't. People who I think should know who I am that don't, actually really just two. If you look at my life, and my family you wouldn't know it I don't think, and I've been doing that for a long time, looking at them, at the three of us, and for a long time I thought that it was just the way families worked, I thought that everyone lived the way we do, but actually now I know they don't. The three of us live in a completely different way to pretty much everyone else I've seen.

We live in a really nice house in the suburbs, both of my parents are Doctors; if you look at my family, me and my Mom and my Dad then I think probably that most people would say that we were really lucky, or that I was at least; both of my parents are hard working professionals, and as far as I can tell they both like there jobs. Whenever there are people in our house, or when all three of us are at the same place at the same time then I think that from the outside we all pull off the whole happy family unit thing pretty well; but that's not how it really is. There are a lot of people who live in houses like ours, and on the surface live lives like ours, but I don't think that they live the way we really do.

For a while I was a pretty average junior high student, now though I'm an above average student, not that it makes much of a difference, I'm captain of the under 12's swim team, I'm vice captain of the debate team and the soccer team, I'm on the math team and I'm in the starting line up of the softball team. In my last report card I got straight A's pretty much apart from History.

Neither of my parents have been to any sports meets or games this year and neither have been to any debate or Math tournaments, I've never told them about any of it and they've never asked. They haven't been to any parent-teacher meetings and I've written letters from them for every single one this year, no one's ever questioned it and I don't think they ever would.

The reason I'm writing all of this now is because I'm giving up, not any of the stuff I do or anything like that, but I'm giving up on writing this. I started this journal at the beginning of the school year, and it's now reaching the end, so that's almost nine months of writing this. When I started this journal I thought that writing down the way everything worked, and how everything was going would make it easier to understand, but now I think that it was pretty stupid because writing it down doesn't change any of it, it doesn't change the way we live and it doesn't change the fact that all three of us hate our lives but just don't tell each other.

My Dad is having an affair and has been for a while, my Mom knows about it and has chosen either not to acknowledge it or just ignore it, I'm not sure which, and my Dad has become an expert in being two people, the Dad he is when my Mom's there and the Dad he is when she's not. I've met the woman he's having an affair with a couple of times now, my Mom thinks that I have no idea about any of this and my Dad thinks that it's fine to take me with him when he goes to meet her and then pretend that she's just his 'friend' and tell me to lie to Mom about where we've been and what we've done. Both of my parents' quite clearly think that I'm an unobservant idiot, and in all fairness I feel the same way about them.

For almost a year now my Mom has been working almost solidly to get away from the house and for almost a year I've felt like I've lost my Mom, and my Dad's enjoyed that because he sees it as getting me on side, he's helped it happen and I feel like he wants it to and she lets it, and I think probably I let it as well. It's easier that way maybe, I don't want it to be that way, in fact that's what I want least but it takes the least energy and I think that maybe it's what she wants, it's maybe what would make her happy if she knew that she could leave and that I'd be ok, I wouldn't be but if she thought I would be then maybe she'd be ok, and she could be happy.

The time I spend alone with my Mom used to be the best time I had, now though it scares me because I don't know what to say or do around her and I don't think she knows what to say or do around me. I don't know, but I don't think that other people feel that way about their mothers, where every time you see them you want to cry because you know that they're there somewhere but you cant find them.

All of this is the reason I'm going to stop doing this now; I don't want to do it anymore. I want to sink into the background and not be involved in any of it anymore.

My Mom thinks I'm a Daddy's girl and my Dad thinks I don't really exist so I'm going to stop. At home at least. I don't want to be involved with them anymore than they do with me so I'm going to try to become invisible, until one of them blows the top off this stupid fake life that we all live, until then I'm going to disappear.

The truth is that we all live in our own little worlds where no one talks to anyone else my parents never talk to each other unless it's to piss each other off or yell at each other, and they don't talk to me unless I've done something wrong, which I spend my life trying not to do so they don't really talk to me at all now, or my Mom doesn't really, unless she's yelling about my room or the laundry. And my Dad talks to me, and is stupidly over 'Dadish' with me when Mom's there, if she's not he doesn't open his mouth. Neither of my parents ever as far as I've seen or heard have ever told each other anything about how they actually feel and I certainly haven't told either of them about what I think, or do most of the time and I don't want to.

Two days ago I had a dream where I was trapped in a box, I've had the same dream loads of times now, but last night was the first time I tried shouting, it goes like this. It's completely black, when I turn around it's completely light, I can hear my Mom yelling my name from the black end and my Dad yelling from the bright end, I'm trying to get out of the dark end but I can't, I never can, I try getting out of the light end, where I can see my Dad and it's easy to get out, but every time I get closer to him he walks away, just out of my reach and laughs at me, then when I turn around to get to my Mom again I can't get there, I can hear her voice but I can't see her. Last night I woke up just after I started yelling for her and she was standing in my doorway, she asked if I was ok and left.

That's why I'm stopping this journal, I don't want to carry on dreaming that dream, it's not like I know what it means or anything but I think I can make a pretty good guess. I don't want to have it anymore and so by stopping this diary and stopping thinking about it I think that it might stop. I've had enough now.

Holly

July 11th 2004

Abby's eyes traced Holly's words over and over again as she stayed stuck on the second page.

'I don't think that other people feel that way about their mothers, where every time you see them you want to cry because you know that they're there somewhere but you cant find them.'

Abby felt the unfamiliar lump form and stick in her throat, she took a deep breath and swallowed hard, trying to remove it. She frowned involuntarily as her hand wavered around the words and her chest felt suddenly heavy. She swallowed again, scanning the same passage, her eyes becoming fuzzy, her jaw tightening as she did.

'they're there somewhere but you cant find them.'

If you have the time give me a shout.