It's time for a change ….

It's time. And a change was happening. The girl said, "I'm a 'friend' of your son!" But Belle was closer than that to Andrew! And she needs help ..... from his mum.

An AP-500 story.

“You certainly don’t look like my son. You look really …(long long pause) um, pretty. Are you gay or whatever the modern word is? Speak to me. Don’t’ sit there like a stupid g... boy. Speak to me.”

“Mum. No, sorry, I’d better introduce myself. Hello, Mrs Antrobus, my name’s Belle. I’m a very close friend of your son, Andrew. Very close.”

“Huh.”

“I’m sorry. Perhaps I need to make myself clear. Andrew has gone away for a while. He wanted you to meet me. Get to know me. And, if you were willing ……er,….. um, um, help me.”

“Help you!”

“That’s exactly it. I need help. I’m trying to. No, I don’t have the words. I need Andrew to help me. He’s better with words but he needs me to feel, erm, whole.

“Sweetie. Are you trying to tell me that you’ve always been here. That you, you and Andrew, are - , um, sorry. I’ll try again. I’ll take a moment. I need to think. This really isn’t a problem that I’ve ever planned on dealing with.”

There was a pause. I sat on the chair opposite, carefully sweeping my skirt to one side as I’d practised. I sat as demurely as I could, knees together, ankles together. I saw mum glance at me.

Eventually.

“So. I heard what you said – about Andrew having ‘gone away’. Would I be right in saying that you’re wanting to take his place. Do I assume that Andrew is not, strictly speaking, my son any longer but that you wish to be my, um, daughter.”

I hadn’t known what reaction I was going to get.

“You need to tell me everything. Everything that’s led to this point. And where you’re going from here. And perhaps where you want US to be going? If it’s a journey that my son is taking, then I won’t let him take it alone. You may be close – but from some of what you say, you’re fresh out of the egg, so to speak. With no quality understanding of the real world. Let alone how to protect yourself. And what sort of mother would I be to cast my child into the hurricane, alone?"

“I promise you, mum, there’s enough out there who can do it – and believe that they are completely smugly right to do it. People who can and do reject their child for being ‘just too different’ than they are able to cope with. It makes you wonder if the 2,000 years of Love thy Neighbour as Thyself has every really gotten into the average semi-Christian soul. You really don’t want to read some of the stories about what happens to some like me.”

Fumblingly the story began to come out. As it did so, and as events were re-told from Belle’s perspective, so Vicky (Mrs Antrobus) saw with a new insight that she too had seen those events and seen the girl – and drawn a veil over so that the girl stayed hidden.

An AP-500 story (ie 500 words of basic text) for any other author to take and build on.