New Story - With new ideas and directions to hand. I'm writing this and posting it straight onto Steemit - You can not get more exclusive than that! 47

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Please remember this story is being written and posted 'live' every day. I am writing today's episode and posting it here without benefit of a read-through, let alone an edit. I don't usually work this way and this experiment is exciting and different for me, not my normal work-ethic at all. To that end, please forgive me any typos, grammar errors and anything that you may think should have been picked up in an edit - it WILL be picked up in the edit.

I've already spoken with a publisher about getting this story published - possibly after Christmas, we'll see how it goes.

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Images from Google (licenced for reuse) and Pixabay

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Ash went upstairs while Justin made the call. She didn’t want to hear what was being said and she didn’t want the chance of overhearing her parents’ replies to Justin’s request.

“Ash!” Robin called from the bottom of the stairs.

She came down, a little worried, her head down, not wanting to see Justin’s expression.

“Well, that could have gone a lot better than it did,” Justin said.

Ash looked up. Justin’s face spoke volumes. He was angry – furious, but calm. She could tell his anger was in no way directed at her.

“They said no, then?” she said.

“No, kid, they said yes.”

Ash brightened up and winced as her black eye reminded her not to move her face too much.

“Not gonna be quite so straight-forward as you think, I’m afraid,” Justin said.

“No? Why not? I thought they’d just give your number to the school and the doctor and then that’d be it.”

“You don’t know?” Justin said.

“Know what?” Ash said.

“Fuck me! What a fucking mess!” Justin leaned his head back on the chair and placed his hand over his eyes and then swiped it down his face in the vain hope of clearing the shit away.

“Ash, you were adopted.”

“I… what?”

Justin watched her face. Her expression went through miles of empty, barren landscape across her face. Lonely, desolate landscapes, with an oasis of happiness dotted infrequently, swamped by more wretchedness.

He could see memories bouncing around behind her eyes, making them glisten with unshed tears. Tears she’d taught herself to keep back, never allowing herself a release because she knew she’d get no sympathy.

“So…” she started to speak but her voice cracked with emotion and she swallowed, looked up to the ceiling, wiped her eyes with the heel of her hands and started again. “So that explains why I always felt like an outsider. They thought of me as an outsider. They resented my being there?”

“Yeah, that’s what it looks like to me, kid.”

“OK,” she said. “Fuck em.”

“Well yeah… I suppose so. Fuck em. But where does that leave you?”

“It leaves me to do my own thing, go where I want and be free of those paedophile-peddling fuckwits and their piss-bed kid.”

“No, I mean… where are you gonna live?” Justin said.

Ash looked at him as though he’d sprouted wings and was about to sit on the table and lay an egg. “Here… aren’t I?”

Justin shook his head, his mouth turned down and his lips pursed. “I suppose that’s settled then,” he said and grinned.

“You BASTARD! I thought you were going to tell me to sling my fucking hook!” Ash yelled and ran at Justin’s chair. She got-up quite a turn of speed in the short space of floor and she hit the chair at full-pelt, flinging her arms around Justin.

Then she leaned back. “But how will it work? All they have to do is tell the authorities and I can be removed from their care, meaning your care, and taken back to wherever it was I came from.”

“Kid, you underestimate me. I’m wounded at your lack of faith.” Justin placed his hand over his heart to show exactly where she’d wounded him.

“I have more than Mr Fitz-Stanley that owes me a favour or two you know. I’ll get a couple of big lads to nip round and have a word. Make them realise that they’re being watched by some pretty nasty people and they should worry more about keeping their arms and legs from getting broken than about where you’re living and what you’re getting up to.”

“Justin, you may be a weak and feeble old bastard, but you are scary as fuck!”

“I’m scary? Fuck, kid, you scare me every time you look at me,” he said. “One thing, though, kid.”

“Yeah? What?”

“Grow your fucking hair. You look like a little boy!”

The End?