Paper Chains
About the Book
India smiled. ‘Everything is fixable, Hannah . . . ’
Hannah and India are new best friends. Although true friendship means always telling each other the truth, doesn’t it?
Hannah, you see, is running from her life back in Sydney. Now in London, she’s trying to put the past behind her, and finding this amazing new friend is a positive step forward. If only she could stop punishing herself for what she did.
India knows Hannah is hiding something big, and she’s determined to figure it out. Fast. Because India has a secret of her own . . . One that is currently sealed
in a love letter that’s making its journey across Europe in the most unconventional way.
Before it reaches its destination, can India help Hannah learn to forgive herself? And will Hannah wake up and realise that India needs rescuing too?
Paper Chains is a heartwarming story of love, friendship and forgiveness – and the crazy twists of fate that shape our lives . . .
For Diane and Bernie
(better known as Mum and Dad)
The elderly couple were a little apprehensive when she approached them at the train station. Gina generally didn’t trust anyone with piercings in their nose and George couldn’t really understand how her hair could be so blue. But her gigantic smile put them at ease. They listened as she explained what she wanted them to do and at first Gina was apologetic.
‘Oh, love, we would if we could, but I’m afraid we’re not going that way.’
But she reassured them that it didn’t matter, that it could be passed on to someone else and eventually it would find its way there – if it was meant to.
Gina was struck by the romance of it all, while George puzzled over how ridiculous it was. Either way, they accepted the envelope and promised to do their best. There was a moment after she left where Gina found herself wondering if she might be able to convince George to change their travel plans . . . but she knew that there was no chance of it; she would just have to find the right person, maybe someone on the train, or later, on their flight.
PART ONE
London in the spring
CHAPTER ONE
When Hannah first met India, she thought she was the most wonderfully extraordinary person she had ever encountered. Hannah was working behind the jewellery counter in the gift shop of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. This section of the store was her favourite, because most of the precious little stones had stories accompanying them, explaining their mystical powers or their ‘deeper meaning’. She had quickly learned these stories by heart and loved to discuss them with the customers. A brief chance for some human connection. This meant she was a fantastic sales person, as most people ended up buying the item just to shut her up.
She was carefully placing a silver necklace with a blue topaz stone into a paper bag when she heard a small child scream out in agonised tones, ‘But I
need
it!’ She handed the bag over to the customer and then moved down the counter to take a closer look at what was going on.
A toddler was tugging on his mother’s arm, leaning back with all his body weight and pointing at a beautifully carved wooden train set in the children’s section of the store. Hannah had seen other children demand that their parent buy them this very same item. But as the train set cost in excess of one hundred pounds, she didn’t often see many children granted their wish. This particular mother was looking slightly panicky as she attempted to subdue the toddler.
‘Oh, sweetheart, no, I’m sorry but Mummy can’t afford that. Come on, time to go.’
The child did not look as though he was willing to give in that easily. He continued to scream and pull at his mother’s arm and more and more customers stopped to watch the scene unfold. As the child’s screams rose and the mother’s demeanour became increasingly flustered, Hannah felt her own nerves start to build. Glancing down, she noticed that her hands were becoming sweaty, that her chest was beginning to rise and fall in quick succession. Just as Hannah was wondering if she should try and leave her counter and hide out in the staff room before anyone noticed her somewhat odd reaction to the unfolding drama, she saw another woman step purposefully towards the mother. Hannah paused to see what was about to happen. The woman looked to be perhaps Hannah’s age or younger, mid twenties she guessed. She had short, spiky, platinum blonde hair, a huge, wide smile and ridiculously long eyelashes. She was wearing a silk wrap-around skirt over the top of army green cords, and a purple T-shirt with a faded peace sign on the front. Over one shoulder was slung a brown leather satchel with rainbow coloured tassels. She was one of those people that Hannah had always envied for being able to pull off any outfit while still looking unself-consciously cool. This was India.
India gave the upset-looking mother a quick wink and then grinned down at the screaming boy. ‘Hey, that’s a fabulous tantrum you’ve got under way. Can I give you some tips though?’ she asked loudly over his yells. The boy dropped his mother’s hand – who rubbed her arm in relief – and continued to scream, ‘I WANT THAT TRAIN!’
‘Yep, that’s great. Now I always like to stamp my feet, so can you do that with me? Just like this.’ And India began to join in on the yelling, so the two of them were chorusing together, ‘
I want that train!
’ and stamping their feet in time. Several customers were now gathering to watch; the mother was standing slightly back from the two of them, her eyes wide with alarm.
‘Okay, next let’s say “It’s not fair!” Come on, really let it out!’ As India continued to stamp her feet and yell, the small boy started to look unsure. ‘It’s not fair,’ he said, his voice beginning to falter.
‘Now we sit down on the floor and we stick our legs out like this and we bang our fists and we yell, “I’m not moving till I get my train!”’
Customers watched, stunned, as this grown woman plonked herself down on the ground and began to pummel the floor. The small boy stood and watched too.
India stopped and looked up at him. ‘Oh, are we all finished with our tantrum?’ she asked innocently. He nodded silently. ‘And do you feel much better?’ she asked as she began to get up from the floor. He nodded again.
‘Wonderful! Let’s take Mum for a coffee then, shall we?’ And India led the bewildered looking mother and her subdued toddler from the shop. As they passed the jewellery counter, Hannah tried desperately to compose her face and give the mother a supportive smile, reminding herself that it was not her but the mother who had just been involved in a highly stressful situation and it would be weird if she looked upset by it too. But the mother didn’t notice her. India did though; she shrugged her shoulders at Hannah and gave her a ‘what are you gonna do?’ kind of a look from behind the mother and Hannah attempted to give her a knowing look in return.
Later that night, when Hannah was back in her tiny flat, heating up a frozen pizza for dinner, she thought again about how impressive that girl had been today. All afternoon she had been running different scenarios, trying to figure out how
she
might have been the one to have helped that mother, rather than freezing up for no good reason. Well okay, so she knew why she had been affected by the situation, but still – it was silly, and melodramatic.
This had always been Hannah’s problem. She obsessed too much about things, playing scenes over and over in her mind, trying to figure out how she might have dealt with a situation better. Once in high school, she was telling a friend on the bus that Ben from her drama class had asked her out. She couldn’t believe she was going to have her first ever boyfriend. A boy from the year above her overheard the conversation and leaned forward from the seat behind them to whisper cruelly in her ear, ‘How could someone ask
you
out? You’re too ugly to have a boyfriend.’ The skin on the back of her neck had turned cold, the chill spreading itself down her arms and up across her face. Of course he was right. What was she thinking? And she had fought to keep the tears from spilling over until she was off the bus, when she then sobbed all the way down her driveway. The next day she had arrived at school to see Ben standing by the front gates, a hopeful expression on his face as he awaited her answer. But she had taken a shaky breath and told him four simple words: ‘I’m sorry, but no.’
It wasn’t until much, much later that she realised what a fool she had been. How could she have let that nasty, fourteen-year-old boy take away her first ever chance to have a boyfriend? Imagine the first kiss she might have had. Perhaps it would have been in the back row of a movie theatre, with popcorn crunching under their feet. Maybe they would have just watched a romantic comedy together, probably something with Julia Roberts or Sandra Bullock in it, and he might have held her hand through the film, leaning in to kiss her just as the credits rolled up. And when the lights came on, they would have pulled apart, embarrassed, and laughed.
But instead her first kiss had been a very different experience. It had been at a seedy nightclub in the Western Sydney suburb of Penrith. She was sixteen and she and another friend had snuck in with fake IDs. Looking back, they probably needn’t have even bothered with the IDs; all the bouncer cared about was how short their skirts were, and apparently the amount of leg they were showing was sufficient for him to ignore their immature giggles as they tottered into the sticky floored, smoky club (this was back in the day when smokers still ruled the world). After too many Vodka Cruisers, she had let a much older guy with three-day-old stubble growth and a mouth that tasted of Cheezels and cigarettes pull her off the dance floor and out a back door into a dirty alleyway. This was where she experienced her first ever kiss – with one stiletto in a puddle of something that smelled suspiciously of urine mixed with vomit.
So, consequently, she constantly obsessed about what she could have done to have changed those circumstances. If only she had ignored the taunts from the boy on that school bus. If only she had turned around and responded with confidence, ‘Well I think I’m pretty, so who cares what you think?’ If only she had walked into school the next day and said to Ben, ‘Yes, yes, of course my answer is YES!’ Well, maybe that might have been a little over the top – after all, she wasn’t responding to a marriage proposal. But still, anything would have been better than spending the night before convincing herself that that boy was right, that of course she was too ugly to have a boyfriend. That Ben had been crazy to have asked her out and most likely he would soon realise his mistake. Perhaps he hadn’t even meant to ask? Maybe she had misunderstood him and he was already panicking, wondering how he was going to get out of it. She often misunderstood people, misread situations, forgot to concentrate on conversations. She decided she would save him the trouble.
As it turned out, Ben didn’t think she had done him a favour and he spent the next two years making her school life hell – until she moved to a fancy North Shore school when her parents divorced. But that was fair enough, she supposed.
Now, as she pulled open the clunky, protesting oven door and checked on her ham and pineapple pizza she thought to herself,
I bet that girl from today wouldn’t have let some pimple faced high school kid ruin her only chance at a magical first kiss. I bet she would have punched him in the nose – or something equally cool like that.
And she sighed as she thought about how different her life might have been if she’d been that type of person, or even if she’d just had a friend like that.
Maybe she wouldn’t be where she was right now. Here in this tiny flat in London, working in a museum gift shop – her law degree wasted, and of course not to mention . . . best not to think about that. But still, a friend like that, maybe she would have stopped her, before it was too late.
Stop it! Stop obsessing about things you can’t do anything about. You can’t go back and you can’t change what you’ve done. It’s too late and it can’t be fixed and if you start thinking about it, it will hurt too much and you’ll start crying and you know how sick you are of crying all the time. It’s self-indulgent and it’s pointless. Remember, it’s better for everyone this way.
So she took her pizza out of the oven, slid it onto the green plastic plate she had waiting and then sat on one of the rickety chairs she had set up in front of the oldest TV in London and watched reruns of
Charmed
on Channel 4. For some strange reason, watching American television shows made her feel more at home than watching Australian programs; whenever
Neighbours
or
Home and Away
came on, she felt slightly sick and had to change the channel. The pizza turned out to be still frozen in the middle, but she ate it anyway. Sometimes she liked to do small things like that, to punish herself.
You deserve to eat frozen pizza
, she thought as she crunched through the icy pieces of ham. And then she laughed. ‘As if that comes even close to making up for what you’ve done,’ she said out loud. She threw the remaining pizza against the wall instead. ‘You don’t deserve to eat at all,’ she whispered quietly.
But at 3 am she woke up hungry and ate her way through three Snickers bars anyway. So tomorrow, she would have to find a new way of punishing herself. She supposed cleaning up the pizza that was all over the walls might be a good start.
The next day was Thursday – her one day off a week. Annoyingly, she didn’t realise this until she was halfway through her shower.
Dammit, I could still be in bed, sleeping in. I could have been drinking wine last night.
But then she reminded herself that she didn’t deserve a sleep-in, so it didn’t matter anyway. When she had started her job at the museum, just under a month ago, she had offered to take on all the shifts available; she was prepared to work seven days a week if possible. But her boss Helen had insisted that she have at least one day off and she had had to begrudgingly accept. ‘Go and see the sights. Isn’t that why you’re here?’ Helen had exclaimed. ‘Hardly,’ Hannah had murmured to herself.
She turned off the shower and stepped carefully out of the bath tub and immediately thought,
Why are you being so careful? You deserve to slip and fall. If you were to crack your skull open on the edge of the tub, you could watch your blood seep down the drain through slowly blurring vision as you take your last breath.