by Lily Garner

Created on: July 14, 2009

"Are you sure you don't want to come to church with me, Andrea?" My mother said, peering her head around my bedroom door for the fifth time this morning. I knew moving home was a bad idea. "Everyone will be there!"

"No, thank you, mum. Maybe next week." Church wasn't really the right place for me. Besides, I didn't want to see "everyone". I knew what they were all thinking. I didn't want to see the pity twisted on their faces, I didn't want to hear the hushed voices as I walked past. The dreaded words that seemed to follow me around everywhere. Divorce. Failed marriage. Over.

I shouldn't have come back home. I hated it here when I was younger; why should now be any different? The sleepy village of Sandyhill was traditional and conventional in every way possible; anything that was slightly out of place was swept under the carpet and never talked about again. Except, of course, when it came up in the frequent gossip sessions, when women in knee length skirts and perms would tut over it, taking a secret pleasure in the downfall of others. Yes; I hated this town and everything that came with it.

Perhaps that was why I had married Charlie in the first place. I needed an excuse to leave, and he offered just that. His tempting smile, the sparkling eyes that could offer the world to you...it was lust at first sight. But I was foolish, mistaking that lust for love. I was too busy trying to escape one world that I didn't consider the world I was stumbling into.

His eyes lost the spark, his smile turned cruel. The excitement disintegrated and I realised nothing was left. So did he, and he looked for it elsewhere. One night stands, alcohol, drugs. Yet it was so hard to leave him. It took me years to muster up the strength, and once I did it took every ounce I had. Now, I had nothing left. No strength, no love. Love; I wasn't even sure it existed.

When I returned to Sandyhill, I was so different. I was nineteen when I left; a nave teenager, now I was older, wiser, more cynical. Sandyhill had never changed, though. The shops were the same, the people as dull and interfering as always. Stepping back into Sandyhill was like walking into a time loop, where nothing could ever change.

I heard my parents leave for church, and I thought how many times that had happened as a teenager. They would urge me to come, I would refuse, and eventually they would give up and go without me. Then I would be glad to have an hour to myself to spend in the house, just like I was now. Often

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