The Girl Who Cried Wolf by Bella James

Author:Bella James
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: The Girl Who Cried Wolf
ISBN: 9781786151742
Publisher: Accent Press
Published: 2016-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven:

Beauty and the Beasts

I had not seen my Great Grandmother for almost five years but I knew the figure standing in front of the pretty cottage immediately. She only came clearly into focus as I ran further down the lane, and became flooded with memories of running towards her as young girl.

I stop abruptly as I look properly at her, remembering that for the last few years of her life she had fought bravely with my own nemesis. When I had kissed her cheek for the last time as she lay dying, her skin had been ghostly white and red rings circled her lined eyes. The body of the woman, who had once lifted us high into the air, could not have lifted a feather. She had been skeletal, a shell whose inhabitant had abandoned her long ago.

‘Grandma?’ I ask uncertainly, as the woman before me does not look old at all.

‘Darling, come here!’ She laughs joyfully and I fall into her arms, assured once more it is her. I step back and see she looks about forty, an age I don’t remember knowing her, and she is completely lovely. Bethany’s hair is chestnut like Izzy’s and long past her shoulders. She looks very similar to my mother with cat-like eyes in a heart-shaped face. They light and twinkle with laughter, as I recall they always had, and they look as though someone has taken Lillian’s eyes and turned the dimmer switch up to its brightest.

‘Let me look at you,’ she tells me, and smiles as she holds my face in her hands. ‘Anna, you are just the same.’

‘I thought I would never see you again.’ I remember how much I had cried after her passing, knowing she had gone for ever.

‘You knew you would see me one day, darling, you just didn’t know that you knew!’

She laughs her tinkling laugh again and beckons me to follow her into the cottage.

Although my heart is filled with joy, I shudder with apprehension as I do not see the dark wolf but I feel his ominous presence nearby.

***

I walk into a room and call out to my Great Grandmother, but she does not respond and unaware of me, continues to carry her tray into the living room. I once again become an unwitting observer to the scene.

A girl of perhaps twelve is crying softly, holding her head in her hands as she sits in a comfortable-looking armchair adorned with crocheted blankets. She is stroking a shaggy dog who sits contentedly in her lap.

‘Lillian, my dear. I’m pleased to see you after all this time, but I’ll have to tell your parents you’re here. They called this morning, and I hope they call again so I can put an end to their worrying. Why on earth have you run away this time?’

‘Why have I run away? A thousand reasons! How about because we’re moving again? I’ve only just made friends and wanted to go to their school, I never learn anything in that stupid caravan.

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