Hi everyone,

As promised, now that Uprising has passed 80%, I'm now posting one more exclusive short story as a thank you to those who have brought the finale this close to life. And this time, Shannon won the vote so this story is about her.

A few important things.

1) This story is NOT FOR CHILDREN. Seriously.

2) This story comes with multiple trigger warnings: suicide, attempts at suicide/self-harm, alcohol misuse, and very direct references to sexual content.

3) Although there are spoilers for the first Underdogs book in the title alone, there are no spoilers for Tooth and Nail or Acceleration - but the story is richer if you've read them.

4) As always with prequel stories, I've needed to respect the fact that the characters hadn't had their growth yet. (e.g. In Ewan's story, he was a 14-year-old excluded teenager rather than a war hero, so he couldn't act like a war hero.) In this story, you have the same Shannon we know and love - except she's still building herself as a totally lost young person who hasn't discovered her heroism yet.

Honestly though- with all the above said, I really like this story, darkness and all. Just don't read it while eating.

 

-

 

Shannon Grant Tries Three Times

 

Some years ago, Shannon had been told by a drunken grandfather that turning sixteen was all about three things: drugs, sex and alcohol. The man had been so confident when he had said it, as if it were a hard and fast rule that his own life – and by extension everyone else’s – was supposed to follow by default. And maybe all three of those things had been legal when Granddad had turned sixteen.

Francis Grant hadn’t had lived the healthiest life, and was possibly the reason why his only son Nicholas had become a habitual drinker himself. It had been almost offensive that Granddad had outlived Shannon’s mother by a good five years.

But now she was sixteen herself, Mum and Grandad were both in the ground somewhere, leaving Nicholas Grant and his daughter as the last two survivors of the Grant dynasty.

By the end of the night, perhaps there’d only be one. Shannon wasn’t bothered, really.

The pills were in her hand, but she still wasn’t entirely sure what she wanted. One thing was for sure though: any result was likely to be an improvement on her current situation. There was nothing worse than an existence which had no meaning, a brain which felt no joy, and a life lived without love.

Whatever happened, though, Dad would probably take a day or two to notice. The bathroom was at the opposite end of the house to his office.

Shannon gazed into her quivering hand. The internet made this kind of thing look all too easy. But she wasn’t a pharmacist, and had no idea what a handful of hayfever antihistamine would do, combined with half a dozen paracetamol. But it was all she could find in the house at the time, and it clearly counted as an overdose according to the packaging. Whether it was deadly enough to end everything, or harmful enough to persuade her father that something needed to change, it didn’t much matter.

She swallowed them all. Together. Or at least, as close to together as she could manage, without a glass of water which she thought would dilute their impact. All she got was a powdery mess in her mouth that took a dozen gulps to half-swallow, and a bitter taste that engulfed her whole mouth, which only got worse when she crunched the pills to make them smaller and easier to swallow.

By the time the last of the little pieces went down her throat, her body was already rejecting them. Or maybe her nerves were. Either way, she ambled to the toilet bowl and wretched.

After a long, graphic gasp that couldn’t possibly have been heard from her father’s office, Shannon looked down at the mess of little white chunks mixed with the black fizzy drink and crisps she’d had for lunch.

Not even close.

Worse than that. Not bad enough for any measurable consequence. Not bad enough for any damage that would pull her father away from that bloody computer and make him realise that something needed to change. Something. Anything.

Shannon wiped her mouth on the hand towel next to the sink, and left the bathroom, a normal sixteen-year-old young woman again.

 

-

 

Two weeks later, the whole event had never happened.

More importantly, her father was paying attention to her. For unrelated reasons, of course, and for one night only.

They were within a metre of each other, in the back of the limousine. Her father was dressed in his finest tailored suit, black and silver like the Marshall-Pearce logo; a colour scheme that Shannon could have admired if she’d found anything about him to be admirable.

‘We’re almost there, right?’ she asked, just loud enough to be heard over the rumbling sounds outside the vehicle.

‘Say again, sorry?’ he replied.

Oh grow up, Dad. You obviously heard me.

‘We’re almost there, right?’ she said, firmer and more controlled.

‘That’s better. Always go for confidence when you speak with important people. And yes, we’re in Kensington-’

‘-I thought I was an important person?’

‘You know what I mean.’

Dad, I never know what you mean. You just want me to automatically understand.

She looked down at the outfit her father had chosen for her, a solid red dress with black buttons and a black elastic belt that matched her hair perfectly – but only because her hair had been dyed blacker for the occasion. She had wanted to wear Mum’s necklace, but white hadn’t matched the rest of her outfit, and nor did it match the prestige of the event. According to Dad, of course, whose opinion mattered. She looked sensible but regal, also according to Dad. Except for the odd socks, which she’d been able to get away with. Some part of her authenticity had to survive the dressing up, after all.

The Walden Prince Hotel appeared through the tinted window, and before Shannon had time to prepare herself properly, she had been whisked out of the limousine and escorted through the entrance. She put on the face she had practiced: after all, it wasn’t so much a celebration as much as her fulfilling her social duties, the fancy sidecar to her father’s motorbike. The good-quality daughter that characterised her father’s reputation for success, whatever it was he was succeeding at. As far as Shannon knew, Marshall-Pearce was something to do with providing security for the government. It was named after two real people, if she remembered right.

There was a lot that Shannon didn’t know about her father’s work, so valuable to him that it occupied most of the hours that other men would have spent parenting. Naturally, she blamed her own ignorance and inattentiveness for not knowing the details, just as her father would have wanted.

I don’t need to know the details tonight, she thought to herself. I’m not here to answer questions. Just look the part, and get the small talk right. The important stuff is down to him.

Shannon looked around the foyer of men in suits, and women dressed nearly but not quite as well as she was. She instinctively looked at their socks in search of fellow rebels; for little gasps of realness.

She found none. Because of course not.

I wonder how many other people here swallowed a load of pills two weeks ago?

Probably none of them. Anyone important enough to be invited here would be clever enough to get it right.

‘Ah, Nathaniel,’ came her father’s enthusiastic voice from behind her. ‘Glad to see we dragged you out the lab for the night.’

‘Wouldn’t have missed it for the world,’ came the man’s plastic reply. ‘Is this your daughter?’

Well, duh.

‘Yes, this is Shannon. Shannon, this is Nathaniel Pearce, my Chief of Scientific Research.’

Shannon turned around and saw him, this leering grinning man. Everything about him looked unnatural, right down to the way he was holding his brandy (or even the fact that he was drinking brandy, which was an after-dinner drink rather than a casual drink according to Dad). As if he seemed more at home with his laboratory equipment than around most of humanity.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ came the man’s stock sentence.

‘You too,’ came her own, as genuinely as she could fake.

‘What about Iain?’ asked her father. ‘Did you come together?’

‘No.’

Shannon didn’t know who Iain was, but she could tell how little Nathaniel Pearce liked him. As unskilled as she may have been with most things, she had social detection skills that her father seemed to lack.

And those same detection skills advised her to stay far away from Nathaniel Pearce.

Iain Marshall appeared from somewhere twenty minutes later, flanked by two younger people – neither of whom showed any family resemblance to him. They were people he seemed to value at that moment more than his wife and daughters, all of whom were in the background sat in the foyer armchairs talking only to each other. The people next to him were not his sons, but important to him nonetheless.

The smaller of the two was a ginger lad a few years younger than Shannon, wearing a white shirt and a semi-done black tie that he seemed to wear reluctantly. At least there was one way in which Shannon wasn’t alone, although nothing about the boy made her feel safe or understood by him. The bigger guy was a handsome man with a friendly smile, who gave off an aura of naivety and good intentions. Shannon made sure to memorise his name when Iain introduced him.

‘Anthony,’ said Iain, handing him a small glass of some posh-looking drink, ‘this is Shannon, Nick’s daughter. Shannon, this is Lieutenant Anthony Lambourne, one of our coding advisors. Freshly joined us from the armed forces, actually. A man of many talents.’

Shannon looked at Anthony Lambourne, and saw in him the same kind of boyish charm she should have expected from the teenager in the white shirt. Old enough to be a university student, he seemed to have this friendly innocence and pleasantness; the type that time and adolescence took away from most people. A part of Shannon’s instincts told her that Anthony was a safe person to be around, yet another part of her instructed her to be jealous of him. There was no way Anthony’s mum could have died when he was seven. He was too smiley and well-adjusted for that.

‘So… why do they need coding advisors in Pearce-Marshall?’ Shannon asked him.

‘Marshall-Pearce,’ replied Iain, with a disgusted snarl in his voice that might have been deeper had her father not been stood among them.

‘Cyber-security,’ Anthony answered. ‘Military life is more than picking up guns and shooting people, you know!’

‘Wouldn’t be the same without it though,’ chirped the other lad. Next to him, Iain subtly bit his lip.

‘Iain,’ her father interjected, taking a step into the middle of the crowd as if trying to control who was permitted to talk to whom, ‘why don’t you introduce Oliver to Keith?’

‘He’s in the bathroom, Nick.’

‘Oh, that guy?’ said the ginger lad. ‘Yeah, he was taking a little vial of ricin out of his pocket when he went in. Or some kind of white powder, anyway.’

There was a shark-like grin on his face, as if he’d said something clever.

‘Then I guess you’d better persuade him to put it back in his pocket,’ said her father, nodding towards the male toilets. ‘Anthony, tell my daughter more about coding. You’re the first person she’s shown any genuine interest in since we arrived.’

By the time Shannon had got over the surprise of her father’s comment – the audacity of it, combined with the fact that apparently he could decipher her moods – Iain and the boy had vanished.

‘So…’ started Anthony, wearing a keen but nervous smile, ‘do you know much about coding?’

‘No. Are you gonna teach me?’

‘I mean, it’s hardly great party discussion, but if you want…’

The great Nicholas Grant lifted his arms, and slapped one hand on Anthony’s shoulders and the other on his daughter’s. When he laughed, Shannon caught the first scent of whisky on his breath.

He wasn’t drunk just yet. She could only detect one type of alcohol for now.

‘I’m going to have to leave you to it,’ he gasped, drowsy and excited, ‘a new colonel of mine just walked through the doors. And he’s just jumped ship to us from the army, just like you actually Anthony, so I’d best make him feel welcome.’

He had turned to walk before Shannon or Anthony could respond, but took a moment to turn around again and deliver a second departing line.

‘Look after her for me, Anthony. But not too well. I’m sure you know what I mean.’

‘She’s safe with me, sir, don’t worry.’

‘Make sure she is,’ he finished, turning back to a surprised-looking fat man next to the entrance. ‘If you run off with my daughter I’ll have you killed!’

Shannon looked everywhere around the room except into the eyes of other people. Her father’s years of ignoring her from the other side of the house were preferable to him talking about her like she wasn’t right there listening.

‘So…’ started Anthony, ‘what are we supposed to talk about?’

‘You don’t know either? I thought everyone here’s just supposed to know how these things go.’

‘Maybe they’ve got a script that we haven’t.’

Shannon found herself looking back at Anthony Lambourne: a young man who displayed authenticity without needing to show it in his socks.

‘Look at them,’ Anthony said with a laugh, with a subtle nod towards two men in business dress two steps away from the bar. ‘Those two, over there. Each of them speaking louder than the other. Trying to establish social dominance, all while pretending it’s a casual discussion over a beer. Sad, really.’

‘What are they talking about?’ asked Shannon, taking care not to look for herself.

‘Who knows, who cares? It’s not really what their exchange is for anyway. It’s a power struggle with smiles attached. Give it five seconds before one of them explodes into laughter, loud enough f-’

The laughter explosion happened right then, forcing Shannon to visibly leap in shock.

‘I, er,’ she began, before Anthony could comment on her reaction, ‘I guess I was asking if they know what this evening is about?’

‘You don’t know?’

‘I just… came along with Dad.’

‘Makes sense,’ said Anthony as he took a sip of his drink, some kind of fruity cider. ‘This is the anniversary of your dad buying out Marshall-Pearce. A night to celebrate however many years of new direction, Nicholas Grant-driven progress, and so on. Employees from all over the country came here for it.’

‘They’re not driving home, I hope?’

‘No, a bunch of us are staying in the hotel. I’ve got a train in the morning.’

She saw her chance, and took it.

‘You’re staying over?’ she asked. ‘That means you’ve got a room here, right?’

Shannon knew halfway through her sentence how immensely stupid the question was, but she finished it anyway.

‘Yeah?’

‘Good. I just…’

She leaned in closely, and whispered into Anthony’s ear.

‘Sorry to ask, but… I really need the loo, and I don’t trust the toilets down here. Especially if my dad’s staff are doing cocaine and stuff. Can I use your bathroom?’

She stepped back, looking as nervous as she could. Anthony Lambourne seemed like a decent and trustworthy young man. Someone she could afford to be nervous in front of.

‘Sure,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Come this way.’

 

-

 

‘I hope your dad doesn’t see this as something it’s not,’ said Anthony with a laugh as he opened his hotel room door.

Shannon didn’t answer, and rushed straight into his bathroom.

She did not use the toilet, but flushed loudly after counting to one hundred. For the time in between, she just stared into the mirror and thought about how little she belonged. In this hotel. In that dress. In her cold, perfunctory two-person family.

That was the root of the problem, she came to realise, as she flushed and turned on the taps to pretend she was washing her hands. There was no sense of belonging in her life. She had a house, but not a home. A father, but not a dad. An existence, but not a life.

She had once heard that people with no connections in their lives sought them one way or another, safely or otherwise. And there was a safe-looking guy outside that door who seemed nicer to her than her father had ever been. A sense of belonging would be a stretch, but surely there’d be something.

She unlocked the door and walked back into Anthony Lambourne’s bedroom, standing in his way before he could walk to the door and let her out.

‘Thanks,’ she said, ‘I really appreciate it.’

She wrapped her arms around him, and hugged like someone who meant it. Anthony hugged back, several seconds later, with cautious hands.

When Shannon stepped back, she looked at him in the eyes. Naively hoping that he would be overjoyed at such random affection, Anthony had a face like someone who felt like they were in danger.

‘Hey… you alright?’ she asked, softly.

‘Yeah?’

‘I mean… you don’t have a girlfriend, do you?’

‘No, but…’

‘Would you like one?’

She had asked as gently as she could, with a hand brushing against his own. She didn’t know how asking people out even worked, but she thought people responded well to gentle words.

Nonetheless, Anthony Lambourne seemed awkward. The kindness was gone from his pleasant face, replaced with apprehension.

‘Shannon… I’m twenty.’

‘And I’m sixteen. We’re both old enough.’

‘If this was America I’d be arrested.’

‘Good job we’re British then.’

Anthony looked to his side, and huffed.

Oh come on, please accept me. I’ve been through a lot.

‘I really shouldn’t,’ he said shyly, in a way that kind of made him more appealing.

‘One kiss?’ she asked. ‘I’ve never had one before, and honestly you’re like the nicest person I’ve been around for years. It’ll help me a lot, honestly.’

Anthony opened his mouth, then closed it again. Then opened it, and spoke.

‘Once,’ he said, as firmly as he knew how to. ‘Just to get it out of your system.’

Shannon needed no more words, and jumped into her first kiss with suitable enthusiasm. As her lips touched Anthony’s she was met with a sense of safety that she hadn’t felt since her mother was around. It wasn’t even about the kiss… sort of, anyway.

There was more than safety in Anthony Lambourne’s kiss. There was an entertaining level of risk. There was life in it.

Was this what Granddad used to talk about? Drugs, sex and alcohol and all that?

Well the drugs were pointless, so let’s try the next on the list.

Shannon pulled away, but only to speak.

‘Thanks. That meant a lot too.’

‘You’re… welcome. Do you want to go downstairs now?’

‘What, we’re finishing it now?’

She held his hand. It was now or never. Time to go all in.

‘Come on, you’re a software guy. Plug in your USB stick.’

Anthony looked halfway between shocked and terrified. No surprise – it was a pretty big step. No wonder he didn’t have any words.

‘Don’t worry,’ Shannon continued, ‘I won’t mind if it takes you three tries.’

Anthony didn’t laugh. A shame, because the joke was pretty clever.

‘Shannon,’ he finally spoke, little more than a whisper. ‘Is this really… who you are? You seemed like a different person downstairs.’

What makes you think you know what kind of person I am? Even I’m still working it out.

‘Yeah, but then I found you. Come on, my dad will hate it.’

Anthony took a step back. An actual, real step backwards.

‘Is that what this is about?’ he asked. ‘Making your dad angry?’

Shannon opened her mouth to cry out ‘no’, but her honesty stopped her.

She took a step towards Anthony, not because of attraction but in search of comfort. But the damage was done, and Anthony took a second step back.

‘Please…’ Shannon whispered.

‘Answer me honestly, Shannon,’ Anthony said. ‘If your dad approved of this, would you still want me?’

Shannon stood in place, shaking her head with her jaw half open. In her mind, she had hoped to be half-naked by now. Instead she was getting a mental analysis from a guy she trusted even though he didn’t know her. But somehow, he understood her better than Dad did. It was all too much to wrestle with.

‘I… don’t know what I want,’ she said. ‘I don’t know who I really am. I was hoping you could help…’

‘Oh, I could help,’ said Anthony, for once sounding like a real lieutenant, ‘but not like this. I can help you with who you are, but not with your daddy issues. And it sounds like you’re more focused on what your dad would think than what you want as an actual person.’

There were tears forming in Shannon’s eyes. But for the first time in far too long, she was in front of someone she wasn’t afraid of seeing them.

‘I’m… I’m still wondering what I want.’

‘Then take some time to work it out for yourself. Don’t rely on your dad for it. If your personality is based around what your dad wants, you’ll never find out who the real Shannon is. You’ll never find out what makes her truly happy.’

Shannon had run out of words. Run out of ideas, and run out of motivation. She wanted to avoid the downstairs gathering of pretentious pricks and the invisible judgement that must have seeped from every orifice of Nathaniel and Iain and whoever the hell everyone else was. But she needed to get out of the room. There needed to be somewhere she could weep for the loss of her identity, away from those who would not recognise that she had lost anything.

She reached for the door, and Anthony called out in desperation.

‘Will your dad find out?’

Shannon paused.

‘I… doubt it?’

‘He said he’d have me killed. I know he was joking, but he’s my boss’ boss and I quit the British army to work for him, and kissing the daughter of-’

‘Fine. He won’t.’

Those words signified Shannon’s surrender. The drugs had been ineffective. Sex with a random nice guy would have pissed off her father, but she wasn’t willing for Anthony to suffer for the sake of her own quest for Dad’s attention.

‘Not gonna lie,’ said Anthony, ‘I’m afraid now. Like, really afraid.’

Shannon looked into his face. Where she had hoped to see attraction five minutes earlier, there truly was fear.

I’ve brought down a good man in my desperation to say something to Nicholas Grant. He deserved better than that. Better than me.

Lieutenant Anthony Lambourne’s fear was so, so visible. One word from Shannon Grant would ruin his life. And Shannon had so little experience (and so little desire) of being seen as a threat. The last thing she wanted was someone she cared about being afraid of her.

And yet, he was. And not only did that drive a stake through Shannon’s conscience: it also stopped her from using this whole experience to score points against her father. Just like the pills, her misbehaviour tonight would be buried deep below her outward appearance, and not even odd socks would give it away.

She needed to draw her father’s attention – somehow – to just how messed up her mind was. But she would not endanger a kind man to do so. Whatever she was and whoever she was, she was better than that.

‘I like you, Anthony,’ she said. ‘You make me feel safe. And nothing that happened here will find its way back to D… my father. I promise.’

She was hurt when the expression on Anthony’s face didn’t change. But she understood. She felt the same perennial anxiety, the same unceasing terror about even the smallest things that might displease the great Nicholas Grant – a man who had achieved little besides inheriting her grandfather’s fortune and buying a private security company with it, but a man who seemed formidably powerful anyway. The kind of man who seemed beyond insult, beyond question, beyond parody…

Bloody hell… even when I’m thinking about Anthony, my thoughts always lead back to the untouchable glory of Nicholas Grant.

No more words were spoken between Shannon Grant and Anthony Lambourne. Not that night. Not for several days, before she found him on social media and pleaded with him to not be afraid of her. Despite the unmitigated disaster of the evening, Shannon still saw something in Anthony that could become a genuine friendship. And, going by his kind reply to her, he still saw her as someone worth being friends with. He was very forgiving, especially by army standards.

But there was no intention in Shannon’s mind to forge a long-term friendship with Anthony Lambourne. She just wanted him to have closure before the week was over. Just so he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that what happened next had nothing to do with his rejection. The following events would be solely about her father, like everything else in her short life.

 

-

 

It had been several days. Long enough for Anthony to not blame himself. The first two of Granddad’s Holy Trinity hadn’t done anything for her, but there was one more avenue for Shannon to try. She would draw her father’s attention, or she would die trying. And frankly, there were worse ways to go than alcohol poisoning.

Just like the pills, Shannon was limited to what could be found inside the house. But unlike the pills, this time supply was no problem. She was utterly spoiled for choice. In the end, she analysed the whole drinks cabinet (unafraid of being caught by her father, three rooms away and doing something Marshall-Pearcey), and looked for the bottle with the highest percentage score.

It was the vodka.

And the runner-up Irish whiskey too, just to be sure.

She took a pint glass from the kitchen cupboard, sat down at the dining room table, and began her quest for visibility.

No, she thought as the first of the vodka slipped down her throat, tasteless but overpowering. I’ve never been invisible to him. He’s always acknowledged my existence, but he’s never valued it. And that’s different.

She coughed wildly, having had no perception before that moment of how strong spirits were. It only took her a second to learn that you couldn’t drink vodka like fruit juice, but nonetheless she tried.

By the time her pint glass was half-empty, she was forcing herself; drinking against her own will, almost. Close to tears of panic, but under the instruction of the parts of her brain that mattered most.

It felt like her brain was drowning. Her body was giving her warning signals, like those engine lights that lit up on a faulty car’s dashboard. Nonetheless, the gulps continued. She couldn’t afford to back out. Something had to change.

Her memory of the next thirty minutes was hazy. But something resembling a memory settled into her mind, of her bursting into tears, picking up the Irish whiskey and running to Dad for help. And then the explosion of bitter vomit splashing over the carpet in his precious computer room.

Everything beyond that, she blocked out.

 

-

 

The next time she was capable of conscious thought, she was in her bedroom. Covers half-on, half-off. Fully clothed. A foul taste in her mouth, and an empty sick bucket on the floor.

And her father, sat in the chair at her desk, gazing at her.

This is it. Time to see how I did.

Nicholas Grant said nothing. For fifteen minutes, he kept silent. It took most of those minutes for Shannon to realise he waiting for her to play the first move.

‘I’m sorry about your carpet,’ she said.

Great. My opening line in the most important conversation I’ve ever had, and it was a lie.

Her father didn’t lean forward, nor did his body language change. He didn’t seem to move anything except his jaw.

‘You know, when your Uncle Clive killed himself, nobody saw it coming. He was sad most days of course – he never truly recovered from your mum’s death – but nobody around him thought that within a few years he’d follow his sister into the grave. It was a stupid thing to do, honestly. He could have called the Samaritans, or someone trained in dealing with problem brains. Instead, he did what you were trying to do. Thankfully, you failed where he succeeded. If you can call it success.’

‘Uncle Clive killed himself?!’

It couldn’t possibly have been a shout, but it was loud to Shannon’s ears. The news had jolted her back to her senses. Uncle Clive, who had apparently died following an accident in his garage when she was eleven, had been so nice to her. That day – assuming it was still daytime – her father was talking about Clive’s suicide as if she already knew about it. Perhaps he thought she did, and just assumed that in the five years since Clive died, somebody other than him had taken the time to explain the truth to her.

‘It was a long time ago now,’ her father continued with casual dismissal. ‘But we have a similar problem here right now, don’t we? You should have told me that something was wrong.’

‘Yeah, ‘cause you’re a really easy person to talk to with loads of free time on your hands, Dad.’

She stared into his eyes, and noticed the emotion in them. She couldn’t decipher which emotion – whether it was sorrow, or guilt, or offence – but it was some kind of emotive reaction to her, which was rare for him.

‘I’ve always been there for you, Shannon,’ he replied, his voice soft and sincere. ‘You could have walked through my office door at any point and asked for help. You didn’t need to do it drunk and terrified. I’ve always been right there for whenever you’ve wanted to talk.’

He truly believes what he’s saying. He actually thinks that sitting in an office all day, only coming out to microwave a ready meal for two, counts as being an accessible parent just because he’s physically in the same house.

In his world, maybe it does count. And I’m the one at fault for not knowing it.

To him, I must be the most selfish person in the world, ignoring him at every turn and complaining when I don’t get the attention I want anyway.

Shannon opened her mouth, but stopped herself from apologising just in time. If she admitted herself to be at fault, nothing would change.

‘I need help, Dad,’ she said in the end.

He shifted the desk chair closer to her bed, and rested a hand on the mattress half a foot away from her.

‘I know you do,’ he answered. ‘And I’m doing my best to sort it.’

Shannon raised her eyebrows, and lifted her heavy head off the pillow. It seemed unfathomable that her father was already going to an effort for her wellbeing, but he had sounded like he meant it.

‘Who’s going to help me?’ she asked. ‘Did you call someone?’

‘Call someone? Oh, no. No, no. You don’t want to get involved with hospitals and social services and things like that. They’d only be an inconvenience.’

Shannon’s jaw dropped.

‘I’ve got something much better in mind,’ her father continued. ‘A long-term solution that will solve everything in your life from the ground up. It’ll take you away from everything that’s causing you grief, and help you start afresh.’

‘Will I get to see a professional?’ she asked, weakly.

‘Well like I said, there’ll be no need. And to be honest, with you being under eighteen, if you look into you they’ll look into me, which would be an unwelcome obstacle – especially this close to me solving the problem myself anyway. I’m taking enough risks letting the authorities believe you’re on a Marshall-Pearce apprenticeship, so they don’t come knocking and asking why you’re not in college. With my project being where it is, there’s no point in involving-’

‘-But you literally just said Clive should have called the Samaritans!’ Shannon gasped at him, taking a moment to process afresh that Uncle Clive was dead from suicide and had been for five years.

‘That was different. If you’d needed help back then, it would have been different for you too.’

But I did need help…

‘Now though,’ her father continued, sitting himself upright again, ‘there’s little point in you getting therapy. Would you start a degree if you knew your university would be shut down halfway through your course? I can’t give you the details, but it’s kind of like that.’

Enough was enough. Even when paying her direct attention, he was still effectively ignoring her, and Shannon had endured and fought and suffered too hard for too long to be satisfied by an inept father telling her to just trust him.

She sat up in her bed, but one deep breath later her hands gave way and she collapsed again.

‘You need rest, Shannon.’

‘Please just tell me what’s happening…’

There was a full minute of silence before her father spoke. For most of it, Shannon had just assumed she was being ignored.

‘In less than two months, we’re moving into London Research Centre. You’ll have everything you need there. It’ll be a different environment, away from all the stresses you’re feeling in the world we live in now.’

Not away from all of them, Daddy.

‘What do you mean, moving in?’ she asked. ‘We’re living in your offices?’

‘Oh,’ her father chuckled, ‘I think you’ll find they’re more than offices. They’re everything you’ll ever need. Everything humanity needs. But I’ve spoken about it as openly as I can. I’m only telling you this much because you’re my daughter, and I probably shouldn’t even have told you that. Now, give yourself time to rest. Half a year from now, the world will be a far better place for you, and you’ll look back on your current worries and wonder why they bothered you.’

Yeah, right. Most of my worries will follow me right into London Research Centre.

As her father stood up from the desk chair and headed for her door, Shannon noticed how well she was taking the news that they were soon to be moving out of her childhood home. Then again, the world she inhabited was hardly meeting her needs at that moment anyway. Perhaps a new home would be the step up that her father was claiming.

‘Trust me, Shannon,’ he said as he left. ‘Better days are coming.’

Shannon rested her head back onto her pillow, with nowhere to go and a lot of thinking to do.

She had learned a lot during her brief encounters with drugs, sex and alcohol. Most of the lessons she hadn’t yet pinned down, but she knew there was lessons in there that she would one day be able to interpret.

But one lesson already stood out to her, clear as day. That if someone refused her attention, she shouldn’t walk into harm’s way in order to get it. Even if it worked, their attention probably wouldn’t be helpful attention.

Seeking help from other people may have been the best option, but only if it was an option. And Shannon had tried too hard to find support from a man who seemed to be a problematic blend of unaware, unbothered, and misguided. Her father had proven himself to be the wrong person to approach, and she had spent too long persuading herself that he was the only one who could help her.

Maybe others were out there, but if her father was to be believed, they wouldn’t be accessible after they’d moved. Anthony Lambourne was sure to jump at the chance of helping one day, but perhaps it was best to give him some time. The more she thought about it, the more she realised: the only consistent figure in Shannon’s life was Shannon herself.

Whatever changes need to happen in my life, they have to be made by me.

A moment after that realisation, Shannon found herself able to prop herself upright. She took deep, alcohol-polluted breaths, and held herself in place. It was as if her body were following the commands of her brain, and embracing the resilience and defiance that was growing inside her.

Better days were coming. But only if Shannon made them. Because nobody else was going to solve her problems. Least of all Nicholas Grant.

It was time for her to fight for herself.

 

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Copyright © Chris Bonnello 2022