The Girl Beyond the Gate

by Becca Day

Of course, I do, but they don’t need to know that. My plan is already in motion. Everything is resting on what happens over the next twenty-four hours. I can’t afford to make a single mistake.

She's Got something to hide oooh

I feel like a child, playing with a doll’s house, creating a backstory from scratch for each of the little dolls.

She’s infantilising herself

Perhaps their ghosts are glowering invisibly by the tea table, dripping ectoplasm over the scones.

We love her sarcasm

Instead, they all turn in sync to scrutinise

As if they are in a trance

just smile whilst scanning me up and down.

Judgy much

My fingers drift along the photo frames inside, as if they’re greeting old friends with the caution that comes from time apart. Moments of perfection captured for eternity that cling to me like a coat fashioned from shattered glass. The tighter I pull it around myself the more it cuts into me. All it takes is seeing these pictures one more time, to see your face that I miss so much, to realise that I almost enjoy the sting of the glass shards. It reminds me how much I loved you. How much I still do.

see if I can decipher which it is.

Norah seems strange

I can’t have a repeat of last time.

They both have something to hide

the photo of you that serves as my wallpaper staring back at me, judging me.

Maybe its a child she's lost, thats why she's afraid of getting attached to Lacey

Lacey nearly exposed our secret.

Oooh

I think she may already know.

Gareth Wilson is Lacey’s dad.