Daughter Departed

Preface

You Can Run

I glanced up as my train pulled into the station and contemplated the rest of my journey home.

Home.

England.

So different from South Coast.

There, I was a big fish in a small barrel. Everyone knew who I was, who my father was, and who my brother was. There, I was Mayor Arthur Saber’s daughter. I was the sister of the East Tigers’ star football player, Samuel Saber.

Here, I’m just Amelia.

Mia.

Not Millie, as Sam used to call me before he moved and everything changed. He and I had been close, we had been a team, and the world felt smaller and lonelier without him. It was tough being a family in the public eye, and Sam had always looked after me in the way my father should have. However, Arthur Saber was too busy looking after the city.

Then, Sammy left.

In a way, I was happy for him for getting out of South Coast because he and our father had never gotten along. In fact, on more than one occasion, the great Arthur Saber had used his misguided son as a scapegoat to ensure that his record remained untarnished. It had all backfired the last time – the time that Arthur had made Sam look like a drunk when a pregnancy scandal with a girl called Regan broke. Arthur came off looking worse than before but, then, much like a cat with nine lives, he came out on top when the pregnancy proved to be a lie that Regan had fabricated to get a payout. I suppose rumours like that happen when you’re wealthy and easily tarnished. Those willing to implicate you often get what they want to stop the mud from being thrown in the first place. From a young age, I’d learnt that mud sticks in politics regardless of whether there was any truth in it.

Sam had left South Coast almost six years ago, in the year that I finished high school at South Coast High. I then completed a double degree in politics and journalism and theatre studies at South Coast University. My father approved of the first major, but he only let me keep the second one begrudgingly. I’d always loved the performing arts, but he didn’t acknowledge acting as a respectable career option, much like Sam and his football.

After I graduated, I’d started working for my father’s public relations group. It was a great job, a respectable job, but I felt like a caged tiger. It wasn’t a foreign feeling for me, but at least in the past, I had Samuel here to help me break free.

I was alone in the castle, but not in the world. For almost five years after Sam had left, there was a ray of sunlight in my darkness. Sam’s best friend and my first boyfriend, Marcus Saxon.

Marcus.

Sax.

He was my everything, so much so that I began to lose touch with the few friends I had left from school and uni. So, when Marcus and I broke up, my world fell apart again.

I was alone in a way that I had never felt before. I tried to integrate myself back into social circles. But, it was hard when people had already formed an opinion about me from the media. April McKenzie was the only one that had accepted me back. Mainly because we’d only been part-time friends since our brothers had played football together for the Iris Cove Suns. Friendship is easier to build, and trust is easier to establish when it hadn’t previously been broken down. April had been my rock since Marcus left.

But now she was gone too.

The train I was on stopped at my station, and I hauled myself up, weaving my way through the bodies to the door, as the announcer told me to ‘mind the gap’.

I broke onto the platform and exhaled as it sped away and sent a gust of breeze through me. It was autumn in England, but it felt more like winter to me. South Coast was like a sauna compared to here. Even our winters weren’t as rainy as the English summers.

It wasn’t better or worse. It was just different.

Different.

I felt it everywhere because I couldn’t escape who I was inside. No matter where I ran to, I was the same Amelia Saber I had been in South Coast. It was just that fewer people knew who that was in England. It had started to feel like home to me, but I couldn’t quite remember what it felt like to be home. People kept saying there was no place like it, but what does home really mean? Is it security we seek? Is it a place where we can be ourselves and not feel judged? Is it just shelter, or is it the people around that make it home? Is it heart? Whatever it was, it should be a place where you felt like you belonged, but I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere anymore. Not really. South Coast hadn’t felt the same to me since Sam left, but there were always moments when I felt like I didn’t belong here either. If the home was the heart, I wasn’t sure where mine was.

I scanned my Oyster Card out of the station and climbed the stairs to the fresh autumn air. I pulled my jacket closer around me and rounded the corner, nearly walking head-on into someone who was suddenly in front of me. I stumbled back.

“Sorry,” I breathed.

“Hey,” he replied. I knew that voice.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

He smiled weakly. “Sight-seeing.”

I looked down and tried to tell my feet to step around him, but they were cemented to the concrete.

He cleared his throat. “Actually, I was heading to the tube to look for you. Nicole said you’d be there.”

“Why?”

“Well, she said that you’d be on your way back to hers, but—”

I sighed. “No, I mean, why were you looking for me? Why are you really here?”

He shook his head. “I’m here because I made a mistake when I let you leave.”

“Which time?”

He looked down. “Millie, please. I’m trying.”

“Only Sam calls me Millie. It’s Amelia to you.”

“Amelia.” He exhaled. “I’m sorry, okay?”

“For what?”

“Everything.”

I nodded. “Yeah, me too, I guess.”

“Not for you and me. Well, sort of for you and me. For the me part of that anyway,” he said.

He wasn’t making sense, but he rarely did when he spoke about things he didn’t know. I guess I was one of those now.

“Amelia, I wasn’t ready for anything before, but I’m ready now.”

“Yeah, well, it’s a little too late now.”

“That’s not fair,” he replied. “I didn’t think that my not being ready would mean that you would leave. I never wanted you to leave, I—”

I rubbed my head. “I didn’t leave because of you.”

“You didn’t?” he asked. “Well, I guess I was wrong then.”

“I guess so.”

He nodded. “Okay, so why did you leave?”

I turned away from him. “Because I couldn’t stay.”

I

A Friend in Need

I stepped off to the side at the airport gate and tried to read my newly printed boarding pass through a glaze of tears. I glanced at my phone and switched it off flight mode, then hit the Wi-Fi button for it to search for a network.

My SIM card wouldn’t work here, but the internet would.

I put in my details, and a message popped up on my screen notifying me that I’d receive a text with the passcode within two minutes. I waited and then realised that the text message wouldn’t come.

No network, Amelia. No text, no calls.

I walked over to an information desk at Singapore Changi Airport and waited for the lady behind it to be free.

“Can I help you?” she finally asked.

“Hi, yes, I, um, my SIM card doesn’t work, and my flight was changed. I mean, my connecting flight closed the gate early, so they had to put me on another one, and now I’m stuck here for a few hours. I need to contact my friend to tell her that I’m not on my flight, but I can’t get into the Wi-Fi because they sent me a text, but my SIM card doesn’t work here. Can you help?”

The lady blinked. “I need your passport.”

“My passport?” I frowned. I fumbled for it and handed it over.

“Just Wi-Fi for your phone?”

“Just my phone, yes.”

She nodded and handed me back the passport with a small piece of paper.

“Thank you,” I sighed.

I hastened to find somewhere to sit and then followed the instructions. It connected instantly, and I opened ‘WhatsApp’ on my phone.

“Nic, I missed my connecting flight since we were delayed on the tarmac in South Coast. I’ll send a pic of my new boarding pass for flight number and times. I hope you can still come and get me. So sorry for the inconvenience. Amelia x”

I took a photo, hit sent, and then scrolled down my other contacts listed on recent messages. Some weren’t so recent, but I couldn’t bring myself to delete them. I skimmed over one name that hurt my heart and another that stopped it, then pressed my thumb on my brother’s name.

“Sammy, I missed my flight. The stupid airline closed the gate early, so I have to wait for the next one. I’m so disappointed. I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing. Maybe it’s a sign that I shouldn’t have left. What should I do?”

The tears started falling then, and I couldn’t make them stop. I was a fountain. A pathetic, splotchy fountain.

A message popped up on WhatsApp.

“Hey, Amelia. No worries, I can still pick you up. Can’t wait to see you. Travel safe. Nic x”

I hit reply.

“Thanks so much, Nic. I’m so sorry that I’m messing you around. I almost couldn’t get onto the internet since my SIM only works at home. Thank goodness for free Wi-Fi. Anyway, thanks heaps, see you in a bit. A x”

I sniffled and brushed the tears aside, and my fingers made smudge marks on my glasses. I still wasn’t used to wearing them since I’d only started needing to wear spectacles towards the end of high school. But by the end of university, after being too lazy to take them off between lectures, they became a full-time requirement. It had been a couple of years since then, though, and since I usually wear contacts when I could, I wasn’t really used to them.

I pulled a tissue out from my coat pocket and blew my nose.

My phone chimed again. Sammy.

“Millie, are you all right? Just relax, okay. It’s not a sign of anything but the airline messed up. Do you want me to call you?”

I sniffled and hit reply. “You can’t, Sammy. My SIM doesn’t work out of South Coast. I had to get a code from the information to get internet. I’m okay, just disappointed, really. I just want to be there, but being stuck here makes me think I should have stayed in South Coast even if I didn’t want to be there anymore. I know I wanted to go, but this is all new to me. I’m clearly just tired and emotional. It’s only a few hours to wait, and they gave me a meal voucher, so I’ll just get something to eat and wander around. It’ll be fine. I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me. A x.”

I blew my nose again and wiped my wet cheek. A group of people walked past me who had just come off the shuttle to transfer the terminals. Changi Airport was a huge airport, and I’d been here before, but I wasn’t alone then. I’d been with my parents and Sam when we’d all gone on a rare family holiday. I would have been about eleven.

That was the last memory I had of the Sabers being a happy family – or at least a functional one. After that, my dad, the mayor of South Coast, didn’t really have time for family things. I understood his responsibilities, I guess, but it didn’t mean that it sucked any less. My brother probably took it harder than me, though. I guess it was harder for a boy not to have a male figure to look up to. My mother, Angela, had been there, though. We were as close as best friends and had been up until I decided to leave. I was sad to leave her, but I couldn’t stay just because of her.

I looked back down at my new ticket and read where I could use the free meal voucher that the airline had supplied. I got up and headed for a fast food place since it was reliable for something greasy and unhealthy. Despite the fact I didn’t usually eat that kind of food, I decided to make an exception.

At Saber manor, we had a live-in cook and house cleaner, so everything that had been prepared for me was nutritionally balanced. I tried not to think of the irony that my first meal out on my own had more fat in it than my entire weeks’ worth. This was definitely going to be a once-off.

I ordered a tray of food to fill the voucher requirements and found a table to sit. The last time I’d eaten a burger and fries was at a diner called Lunar near where I went to university at SCU. I was with Marcus since it was his favourite place to eat. The staff at Lunar even knew him there, and his usual – a burger with chips and a chocolate milkshake. Although he was four years older than I was and the same age as my brother Sam, he was young at heart.

He treated me right, though. He was a gentleman, even if sometimes he was a little misguided. We had fun together, and we were there for each other. I went to his football games, and he came to my plays. That was until I graduated, and my father decided that I needed to grow up.

I think that was when things started to change for us. He was worried that I was being pushed into a future that I wasn’t happy with. He wanted to save me from it but, at the time, I didn’t want saving because I didn’t think that I needed it. My father’s approval was something that I’d always strived for, and I kept striving for until I realised that he would never be pleased. I started to feel like I was suffocating.

That day in Lunar with Marcus had been our last together, unbeknownst to me. It was only about a year ago, but so much had happened between then and now. For one, I hadn’t gone back to the little café since, and for another, I had lost the version of myself that I had been. I never wanted to feel that way again. Heartbroken, or broken in general. It’s amazing what you can endure and still survive. Heartache is one of those things. Even hindsight doesn’t help when people are always telling you to love like you’ve never been hurt. So, I tried to move on. I tried, but moving on is never easy, especially when your heart still remembers.

I tried dating a guy called Brandon Hadley and then his friend, Jesse Mistry. I felt like I could actually fall for Jesse, but the timing was all wrong. I may have been prepared to take the chance, but he was still living through his own heartbreak.

When things fell apart with Jesse, it felt like a double dose of heartache. Like Marcus, I hadn’t seen the end coming for Jesse and me, so I had no control over it when it did. I hadn’t noticed any problems between us, and at least in one of the cases, there wasn’t even an issue to cause the severing of ties. Not being prepared for a breakup not only made dealing with it hurt a lot more, but it also made me more cautious. It forced me to shy away from love, even if I knew that love, knowing love, and having someone to love was one of life’s great pleasures. But losing it was one of the hardest things that anyone would ever experience and live through.

Maybe leaving South Coast was a cowardly act, but I looked upon it more as an act of self-preservation.

*

The flight to England was a long one, and the whole way, I wrestled with my better judgement. Should I have left? Did leaving change anything? What was I going to do once I got there? I would need to get a job, but I had no idea where to start looking. I was beginning to question my decision-making, which wouldn’t really change the fact that I would be in another country soon with no prospects. At least I had saved a decent amount of money from working for my father and still living at home, but I’d never had to rely on myself before. I didn’t know where to start.

My only saving grace was my friend Nicole Nero, who was picking me up from Heathrow when I landed. I’d met Nicole when I turned eighteen and started hanging out at Crescent, a local pub in town. Her boyfriend, Elijah West, was in a band with his two brothers that had regularly played there. I knew them as Damage Control, but when Phantom Records signed them, they became known to the world as West. They had toured locally and nationally for a year, then began travelling the world.