Grandma smiled. “Yes, Margaret Thatcher. When Mrs. Thatcher closed the mines, your daddy no longer had any work and it made him very unhappy. Daddy tried for a very long time to make money and buy us a better house, but he’d only ever worked in the mines and didn’t know how to do anything else.” Her eyes squeezed shut. “Today Daddy died, sweetie. He’s gone to heaven and he’s not coming back to us.”
My lip began to tremble and I felt tears sting my eyes. “But I don’t want him to go! Can we ask God to bring him back? What will we do without him?” A heavy feeling spread in my chest and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I reached for my Grandma’s hand, and my voice went all croaky. “There’s no one but us now, is there, Grandma? You’re all I have left. What if he takes you too? I don’t want to be on my own. I’m scared, Grandma.” A loud scream ripped from my throat. “I don’t want to be on my own!”
“Molly—” Grandma whispered as she cuddled me close and we dropped to the floor, crying in front of the fireplace.
My daddy was gone.
My daddy was in heaven.
He was never, ever coming back.
1
The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, United States of America
Present day…
I was so bloody late!
I puffed out short, ragged breaths as I ran across the sprawling University of Alabama campus, trying my hardest not to fall flat on my face.
My hands were full to the brim with printouts of the philosophy course syllabus I’d been ordered to copy over an hour ago—the first task of my TA duties.
Class was literally about start, but my seemingly endless run of bad luck ensured that the printer in the staff reprographics room decided to break down halfway through my order with a melodic swan song of a pathetic high-pitched wheeze and a stuttering poof of mechanical smoke.
The print room was on the other side of the college, which led me to my current predicament—rushing across the humongous quad in my non-athletic-worthy orange Crocs in the blistering Tuscaloosa sauna from hell—or as it more commonly known, a typically hot summer’s day.
I caught a brief glimpse of myself in the reflection of a glass door.
Not good. Not good at all.
My brown hair resembled the frizzy coat of a miniature poodle, the sweat on my nose was currently encouraging my wide, black-framed standard-issue British national healthcare glasses to kamikaze bomb off my face, and my short denim dungarees and white T-shirt felt like a boiler suit.
England’s constant overcast skies were pretty appealing right now.
Nothing today seemed to be going right—the defective printer being the second of my mounting misfortunes, my crazy friends’ harassment of me this morning being the first.
* * *
“Toga, toga, toga…!” Lexi chanted loudly as she and Cass sat on my bed, laughing at me despairing in my makeshift toga, pumping their arms in the air to each word, whooping afterwards.
“I look horrendous,” I complained, attempting to adjust the sheet in numerous positions to cover my usually private areas.
“You look hot! Your tits are unreal, all perfect and round…” Cass tried to complement, hands out pretending to squeeze my br**sts. “I’m tellin’ ya, Molls, I’m not usually a pu**y taster, but I could make an exception for you in that getup! Shit, you got some delicious curves, girl!”
“Cass!” I reprimanded harshly, rolling my eyes. “Do you have to say things like that?”
“Ah, turn it down a notch, would ya, darlin’? You look great. You’re coming tonight, no backing out. Don’t make me drag you there… because I will… if I have to.”
“But—”
“But, shit! We promised you a fun college life, not a repeat of the f**kin’ wack one you had back in England. The full experience starts tonight.”
“Oxford wasn’t that bad! And how does this so-called ‘experience’ go? First, I have to join a bloody sorority, then what—drug cocktails, falling out of clubs trashed off my face?”
“That could be arranged, but it mainly just involves lots of men, sex, orgies, orgasms… oh, and G-spot experimentation. You know, the stuff you really go to college for,” Cass said with complete sincerity.
“I came to college to study, Cass, not to whore myself out to drunken frat boys!”
She guffawed. “Whatever, darlin’, you won’t be thinking of studying when your ankles are wrapped ‘round some stud’s neck as he wears you like a necklace, tickling your belly button from the inside!”
Knowing Cass would just wave off any response, even if I could think of one to that, I walked to my brown reclining chair and slumped into the soft cushion, head in my hands. “What the hell have I let myself in for with you two?”
“You’ve let yourself in for the time of your life,” Lexi said sagely.
Lifting my head, I peered through my hands at my two smug friends, who were watching me with amusement. “You’re going to make me go to this sodding party tonight, aren’t you?”
Lexi climbed off the bed and jumped on my lap, throwing her skinny arms around my neck. “Of course we are, honey. You’re one of us now!”
I cracked a reluctant smile. “So it seems.”
Cass joined us on the chair, crushing me until I squealed under their combined weight. “Get that toga off so I can stitch it together for you, go to class, and when you get back, we can let the fun begin…”
* * *
They say bad things happen to you in threes.
I’d had two already.
Only one to go.
I kept up my dizzying pace, almost to the point of passing out, through the double doors of the Humanities block, beelining for the lecture halls, and headed straight for Professor Ross’s classroom, my mind relentlessly teasing me with visions of dodgy dancing togas parading before my eyes.
Too lost in my fluster, I didn’t notice the small group of students that was heading around the corner. But, alas, that soon changed when the ultra-glossed redhead at the front smacked straight into me—seemingly on purpose—my stack of papers falling from my hands and scattering all over the white tiled floor.
“Oops! Watch where you’re goin’, honey!” she sang bitchily. “Maybe you need stronger glasses or somethin’?”
And there’s the third stroke of bad luck.