CHAPTER 5
She was terrified, frozen as she clutched the legs of the table. The shouts and screams swirled around her, they seemed to shatter her insides, and she'd never heard anything like that. She could peek at the legs walking too and fro from the slit under the table cloth, there was a mans polished shoes and voice booming, "…so the legal guardians are dead" it pronounced, she was only three and didn't know what a legal guardian was, but she shuddered at the sound of it. Next to the mans shoes was a woman's pointed, scraggly looking ones, a pinched voice screeched, "Of course not, and they hardly had anything to pay off their burial costs either, so caught up in their own little world, no planning for the future whatsoever, and now they leave two scrawny urchins…" The man's voice boomed again, "So they left nothing", "That's what I told you!" the woman's snapped.
She drew back, as far as she could go, she wanted to run away from these voices, into the lap of mummy, or the hands of dad. "Not a scrapping…" the woman's voice continued "So what's to be one with them Reverend?" "I'm afraid, there's no room for them at the orphanage, well the would be one if we scrimp a little, but you wouldn't want to separate twins Madame, would you?" "I don't see why not," screeched the voice again.
She couldn't bare it, she had to get out, get away, she wanted warmth, and this was cold. She spotted the door, it was slightly open, she cold squeeze through. She crawled towards it as the voice argued more, "so what's to be done? I ask again…" The air pushed her in the face as she went through the door, it wrapped around her, cutting her to the bones, but she ran, she ran to get away, away from the scary woman, who looked like the witches in the books father read to her, her wee legs stumbled through the paddock. They went on and on through the paddock, until she bumped into the barbed fence which dug into her arm. She cried, all her agony spilling out. She didn't know where to go, nowhere else to run….
Rose woke up, the sweat chilling her as it ran down her forehead. It wasn't the first time she had that nightmare, but every time it brought her a new horror. She gasped for breath, trying to breathe, eventually she could drift off again, and dream of the red haired girl – Anne
Thank you to my reviewers – rubygillis and Cyrl, I'd just snuck in to check them at the end of my Computers class at school, and when I read them, I kind of squealed with delight, everyone turning around to look at me!
Sorry, but for the story, I had to change the age Anne was when her parents died to three years old, because babies cannot run away.