Friday 30th October, 1992

Becca could feel her uncle's beady eyes peering at her from over the top of his newspaper, as she attempted to spread a thin layer of unsalted butter across the surface of the slice of toast.

"I'll be back late tonight, so you'll have to fix supper yourself. I will be visiting with Mrs Reynolds. She is in great need of my spiritual intervention."

Becca forced down a smile. Mrs Reynolds was definitely in need of something but Becca was pretty sure the woman's needs were more on the physical side.

"There are four eggs in the fridge. One each for tomorrow and Sunday. Do not eat them all in one omelette again," he instructed.

Becca bit down heavily on the toast. Who made omelettes with only one egg? Her uncle, that was who. That small egg-related infraction had resulted in an hour-long lecture on wastefulness, greed and world-wide food inequality.

She took another bite with a little less gusto and chewed, slowly. Damn, she missed white bread! The stuff her uncle insisted on baking had the texture of plywood and looked like he'd used the scrapings from the bottom of a rabbit hutch instead of flour.

Her uncle cleared his throat and began, very precisely, folding up his newspaper, placing it on the table beside him.

"Uncle," she said, tentatively. "Would it be okay if I used the telephone to call Natasha this evening?"

She watched as he began to puff up, inhaling a little faster through his nose. Her uncle had made it abundantly clear he thought Tash was a bad influence.

"I left two textbooks at her house and I'll need them later this half-term. I wouldn't want to waste money buying them again."

It was like she'd gently removed a pin from a balloon as he deflated slowly, via pursed lips. She was finally beginning to learn how to handle him.

"I will allow that Rebecca, but no more than five minutes and make sure you put ten pence in the tin."

"Thank you, uncle."

Pleased with her small victory, she watched as he took his spoon and sliced into the luke-warm, gelatinous porridge; a dish as austere and unsweetened as himself. Becca cast her eyes down to the local newspaper he had been reading. His red ink of hate was scrawled liberally over the front story with annotations and underlining, contrasting sharply with the black and white print. The headline read, 'Arrests made at illegal rave'. The rest of the story had been obscured by the fold of the paper. He caught her looking at it.

"Rebecca, always remember, idle minds are the devil's playground."

She wished she'd never looked at it.

"I despair of what is to become of young people today," he continued. "Attending those godforsaken raves, not realising that they have been enticed there by the devil himself. All of them, high on his invocation, high on his drugs and high on his wickedness."

As his rant continued, his face reddened and a vein began to bulge on the side of his neck. Becca began to switch off. This was not the first time she had heard this breakfast table sermon. Stifling a yawn, she wished she was back in her bed, making up for the sleep she'd lost that previous night. The dream, her usual dream, had replayed itself three times over, each time waking her up and leaving her feeling...sad and empty- her new normal.

"Must you show such ill-manners at the table, child?"

"Sorry, uncle, I'm having problems sleeping."

"Is there any wonder when you pollute your ears with that unholy cacophony you call music."

He pushed his bowl away, half-eaten. Becca suppressed the urge to defend her musical preferences, or to question why it seemed acceptable for him to waste food and not her. Instead she chose to escape.

"I'd better go and get that bus, or I'll be late."

"Indeed, the sluggard does not plow in the autumn; he will seek at harvest and have nothing."

"Yes, well... see you tonight."

He dismissed her with a wave of his hand, picked up his red pen and set about the rest of the newspaper.

"Thanks, so much for that, you're a life saver," whispered Lauren, the girl seated next to her, at the rear of the classroom, who'd spent the entire lesson copying Becca's homework. She was now expertly applying lipstick without a mirror. The deep-plum colour complimented her skin tone and what with her glossy hair and her on-trend black and white skater dress, Lauren looked like she'd just walked off the cover of Just Seventeen magazine. Becca on the other hand, did not.

"No problem." Becca smiled, shyly. This was probably the longest conversation Becca had had with anyone under the age of fifty since she'd arrived.

Packing away her things slowly, Becca hoped the class would leave the room before she did so she could stay back and ask Mr Hill for some extra homework. Lacking in any kind of social life and living with such restriction, Becca found herself at a loss for what to do most evenings. Homework was always a good distraction, albeit a boring one.

"Do you want to come to the canteen with us for lunch? I'm meeting some mates there," asked Lauren, who had moved on from doing her makeup and was now liberally dousing herself with the sweet, cloying scent of the Bodyshop Dewberry perfume.

"Err..."

"Come on, you're always sat by yourself. At least let me buy you a portion of cheesy chips to thank you for getting me out of another Mr Hill lecture on my lack of effort this year."

Becca could almost hear her friend, Tash, screaming at her all the way from Manchester. Every phone call they had, Tash questioned her endlessly about whether she'd met any new friends, a boy... a stray cat at the very least. And a year ago, she'd have screamed at herself for being such a wimp, but a lot had happened in this last year and life just wasn't as easy anymore.

"I'd love to... thanks, ... but I really need to get to the library. Another time... maybe?"

Lauren raised her eyebrows. "Okay, if you're sure?

Becca picked up her bag, "Yeah, but thanks for asking. See you Monday."

As Becca watched Lauren rush off down the corridor, she felt a tinge of regret. She'd just blown the perfect opportunity to finally meet people and maybe make friends; after all, she wasn't going home to see her own anytime soon. The sadness that was always there in the background threatened to spill forwards. Becca shook herself, physically and mentally. She was not going to have a meltdown at the back of Mr Hill's classroom.

Monday, she told herself. I'll go with her on Monday. I'll start a fresh on Monday.

That evening, as Becca washed and dried her plate and began then wiping down the worktop, she couldn't help but remember the many times she had nagged her father to do the same? Now she longed for the happy, messy disorder that was their life together. Messy it may have been, but unhappy? Never.

She checked the time. It was just after eight, which meant Tash would just be home from her part-time job at the supermarket and getting ready to go out. Becca folded up the tea towel, draped it over the edge of the counter and then went into the dark, narrow hallway to use the wall-mounted phone.

"Tash, Becca's on the phone!" Mrs Turner yelled, a little too closely to the handset. "When are you going to come up and visit us honey, we miss you terribly." Without stopping to hear an answer, her best friend's mother continued... "How is that uncle of yours treating you? Hope he's cheered up since the day we dropped you off. Honestly, he had a face that would sour even the freshest milk. Sweetheart, if you need anything, and I mean anything, you just call. You're like a second daughter to me, Becca, and ..."

"For god's sake mum, can you just stop? You've not let her get a word-in. Now leave us alone, will you?"

Becca could almost hear Tash pulling the phone from her mother's hands. Poor Mrs Turner couldn't do right for wrong and Becca was always reminding Tash just how lucky she was to have a mum like that.

"All right, mate, how's you?" Tash asked, and Becca immediately felt better for hearing her friend's reliably northern accent.

"You need to be nicer to your mum."

"I know, I know, but uh... she is just so suffocating, like all the time. Anyways, what's life like, down south?"

"Good, I guess. You?" Becca replied, carefully stretching out the curly cable of the telephone and sitting down on the bottom step.

"Look, Becs, I love, truly I do, but if this is going to be one of those conversations where I ask questions and all you do is say okay or good, then ..."

"Alright, alright! You are such a nag. Life i guess is good...ish. A girl from my history class, asked me to join her and her friends for lunch today."

"Let me guess, you said no."

"Well, I had to go to the library and ..."

"Bloody hell, Becs! You can't just spend your life studying or cleaning up after Uncle Fester."

"Don't call him that," she giggled. "One day I might accidentally call him that to his face."

"Oh, I would pay good money to see that. How is the virtuous vicar any way?"

Becca glanced at the grandfather clock next to the stairs. She had less than three minutes of his time limit left to talk. "He's okay. I just try to keep out of his way as much as I can."

Becca heard her friend sigh. "Why did you have to go and stay down there? Mum said you were welcome to stay here."

"I know and it was kind of her to offer, but it was what my Dad wanted. He said I would be safe down here and he made me promise him. I couldn't go against his last wishes, Tash."

They both fell silent. This wasn't the first time they'd had this discussion.

"So, tell me...," Becca said, desperate to change the subject, "what's going on with you up there?"

Becca waited for a good hour after she'd heard him go to bed, before she dared to creep across her room to turn on her small, black and white television set. Her uncle had made it very clear that he didn't approve of televisions in bedrooms, but even he seemed to comprehend that taking it from her was one step too far. The screen buzzed into bright white light and black lines flickered across it. Becca wiggled the portable aerial that rested on top of the box until the lines disappeared and the grainy image cleared. She turned up the volume, just enough so that only she could hear it. If he knew she was watching, The Word- a music program a little too anarchic for his sensibilities- the TV was sure to go.

Her favourite band, Suede were headlining the show that night. As the lead singer, Brett Anderson appeared on the screen, a guitar started playing a slow, melodic tune and Becca recognised the song the band were covering, almost immediately. A huge lump formed in her throat and as she settled back on the floor to watch the performance, she wrapped her arms tightly around her knees and began silently singing along to their version of the old Pretenders' track, Brass in Pocket.

Very soon, tears began to roll down her face as she was transported back to an evening - she must have been barely six - when, not being able to sleep, she'd crept back downstairs and peeked into the living room. Two candles flickered on the mantelpiece, while two half-filled glasses of wine rested on the coffee table as her mum in a figure-hugging red dress, and her dad in a smart dark suit- his face buried in his wife's shiny hair- were dancing together to the original version of that very song. Hands clasped, their bodies pressed tightly against each other, they swayed together, intimately, oblivious to the small child watching them from the door. They moved so fluidly, so naturally together. Her mother had never looked more beautiful.

"I'm special, so special..."

Becca could take no more and leaned forward, switching off the TV and leaving the room pitch black; the light from the full moon barely able to penetrate the gloom. Never had she felt so alone, so desolate. She tried to swallow it away, but the unending sadness that had been her constant companion for as long as she could remember, overwhelmed her. As she hugged her knees tight to her chest again, she felt her skin begin to prickle as if ice cubes were being slid across it. Yet, at the same time she could feel her temperature rising, the increasing heat, radiating out from her core. When her pulse began to race and skip beats, she almost hoped she recognised the symptoms

"Calm, be calm," she willed herself, no stranger to panic attacks.

But this, she instinctively knew, was no panic attack, as a pressure began to build inside her chest. Very quickly, it felt as if her vital organs had begun to swell up and were threatening to burst through her rib cage. She clawed at her pyjama top for release, as her shallow breaths came rapidly, each one more difficult that the last.

Dizzy from hyperventilating, she mustered what little strength she had remaining and struggled up on to her feet, staggering forward. She attempted to call for her uncle, but her cries amounted to barely audible wheezes. As she reached for the handle of the door, a pain exploded from her chest making her feel as if she was being ribbed apart, from the inside, out. She fell backwards onto the rough, short-pile carpet.

Unable to move, sight her only remaining sense, the room grew even darker around her. Then, a small, crackling spark shot out from her chest. In a brilliant golden flash, it exploded midair and then faded away, like the embers of dying firework, disappearing into the black. A second spark then rose up almost immediately, followed by another, then another, until showers of sparks were being emitted.

Somehow, she knew deep down, every spark leaving her body was taking something from her, each one, leaving her less whole.

Time no longer had any meaning, and while the physical pain had gone, the flashes of light continued, over and over, till her mind and body could endure no more loss.

In her last conscious moments, she thought she saw her parents beckoning to her from the corner of the room.

Help me, she pleaded, I'm breaking apart.