Page 1 of Where the Dark Knelt
I talk… a lot, but I am not that great at expressing my gratitude to those who are important to me in words, but I hope my actions show this to them every day.
I would thank my husband, Peter for his patience and support in my crazy new venture. He has indulged me to take time out of my hectic life to keep going with my journey into creative writing. Thank you, Pete, for picking up the slack at home, for your patience, allowing me to torture you by listening to the many ‘sound bites’ during the writing of this. I don’t think you need many words to tell you how I feel about you. I think you know already.
I would also like to thank Russ Cleary for his support and encouragement to keep going with my ideas, for being a sounding board, and for allowing me to torture him with the raw content of the book before it was completed. It was his idea that I share Alfie and Lily’s story with other readers.
Also, I would like to dedicate this to any one of the readers of this book, who wishes they had the confidence to put themselves out there, no matter what others think.
If you think that you can, you will, if you think that you can’t… it will never happen. This book came to fruition on one of my ‘I think I can’ days.
“It is never too late to be what you might have become.” -George Eliot
Chapter One
NEW LIFE
Nerves twisted my stomach in knots when a rush of adrenalinecoursed through me, while I punched out a number I’d called hundreds of times before. Those times could hardly compare to the excitement zapping through my veins in that moment.
My northern European body had let me down as I had begun to perspire when the searing heat from the sweltering sun had made me feel like I’d been about to melt. The Miami weather felt like a furnace from hell.
Iheld my breath as I tried to control my racing heartbeat, so that I could concentrate on listening to my call. I heard a click, and the unfamiliar tone that let me know I was connected to the cell number I had just called.
Theringing tone wasn’t the one I expected to hear, because everything was different across the pond. Even though we speak the same language, there are subtle differences between us.
“Woohoo! Lily, you’re here!”Saffyand Holly yelled, hollering down the line. I heard the noisy roar of traffic whizzing around them, and I guessed they had the soft top down on Saffy’s car. I had finally landed in Florida, and my roommates wereonly three hours away from joining me. Once they eventually arrived, I knew we’d finally be able to start the next chapter of our lives without the Atlantic Ocean between us.
“Ican’t wait for you to get here. It feels incredible standing here at South Beach.”Holly whooped a bit more.
“Get some sleep, you’re going to need it. We’re going out tonight,” Saffy shouted over the top of the noise. She started to say something else but became distracted and began shrieking profanities to some car driver that had apparently almost driven into her. I quickly ended the call because I needed them to arrive in one piece.As I hit the end button on my cell, I hugged it to my chest,
I turned to face the Atlantic Ocean on the beachfront and glanced up at the cloudless blue blanket of sky. I couldn’t help but notice how stark the contrast was to the dark gray, rain-filled sky I’d left behind in London the day before.Leaning my elbows on the barrier of the boardwalk, I focused my gaze out to the horizon.
My gaze slowly panned over the uninterrupted view of the ocean and soft, white sand. I became aware I was bouncing on my toes from pent-up nervous energy, so I put my heels and soles firmly down on the ground to still my restless legs.
Being un-acclimatized, my T-shirt had begun to stick to the hollow of my back. Sweat had erupted and tiny wet beads of perspiration trickled down my back from the humid air around me.
Pulling the hem of my T-shirt free from my jeans, I began to waft the cotton material as I tried to catch some air underneath, but it did nothing to cool me down.If anything, it had made me feel even hotter.
It wasstill early in the morning, but a swimmer had already made it out there in the ocean. I pushed my oversized, brown Gucci shades further up my nose, and scooped back my long, carefully straightened, dark brown hair. At the start of my journey, the style had been poker straight. Since then, it had kinked due to the humidity and clung to the back of my neck. I twirledmy hair up and tucked it under my wide sun hat to help cool myself down.
Glancingover my glasses, to test their effectiveness against the sun’s rays, almost blinded me. The glare from the sun catching the ripples on the water, made me wince as my eyes reacted and snapped shut, the bright light still visible behind my eyelids. The sunglasses had been doing their job.
Turning, I held my sunhat in place and tilted my head backward as I surveyed the building that was going to be my home. A wide smile played on my lips before I pushed the door to the building open. A waft of icy-cold air hit me as I headed for the large cherrywood reception desk across from the entrance.
Tom, the doorman, greeted me. He was a middle aged, well-groomed, official looking man in a grey uniform. “Hello, Miss Parnell. Good journey?” I felt flattered he had remembered me from four months before, when my friends and I had viewed the apartment we’d subsequently rented together.
Patiently he took histime explaining everything I needed to learn to access the services the landlord had offered. Smiling genuinely, I thanked him, then headed for the elevator. The ride up to our apartment only increased the butterflies in my stomach, as the anticipation of finally beginning the next chapter of my life’s journey got underway.
Driving myself in a little rental car from the airport through Miami, my nerves had been in tatters by the time I had crawled off the highway, even though my journey was made easier by the satellite navigation that led me to my new home. I felt quite impressed with myself for having the guts to do the journey under my own steam, rather than grab a cab.
Ihad made myself a promise from the moment I’d left home, I wasn’t going to cut corners and revert to behaving like a ‘tourist’ like I had been on previous on visits to Florida. This time felt different because I figured I’d be a resident in Miami during the time I spent there at college.
Theplanning that went into making this happen hadbeen done with military precision. At first, my parents had freaked out when I had chosen to study in Miami. I’d made this choice because my friendSaffystudied there and maybe because the American music scene in Miami seemed a little more laid-back than that in London, although, no less talented.
Iwasn’t interested in becoming famous or living the highlife. My parents had money, and I was wealthy in my own right, thanks to a large inheritance left by my grandparents. All I wanted was to learn my craft and meet some like-minded people without any false egos. I hadn’t wanted to feel pressured to do things with my music that conformed to whatever happened to be the trend at the time. Above all, I wanted to learn about myself and become a more confident and self-assured person.
Eventually, Iwore my parents down by taking some decisions that they were much more scared about. I challenged their middle-class values by travelling to the Punjab to work in a children’s orphanage for the previous summer.
My mother had been beside herself with stories of how basic the facilities were. As if that would be the most testing aspect of working with parentless children in a third world country.
