The garden is quiet and still, the dry leaves rustle as the wind blows softly in the bright moon-lit light. It’s the perfect night when you feel nothing can go wrong and you just feel life is such a good place after all. But that isn’t the case of Jeanne, it is a lovely night but Jeanne’s life is about to change forever. She watches from her window as her father drives his car into the drive way and stops it. He comes down and opens the other door for a pretty red-head tall lady comes out. She wears a cloying smile and has attitude. Jeanne’s head droops as she sees this woman. She wraps beanie – her rag doll tighter to her chests as she fights the tears coming out of her eyes. She stares at the innumerable stars in the sky. Remember how she used to gaze at the stars with her mum. But that was a long time ago now. Well it actually was just three months her mother died but seemed like ten years already.

Jeanne stares intently on the lady as she approaches the hose. She’s the lady that her Dad had said was coming to “take over mommy’s place”.
Nobody will ever take mommy’s place.
Jeanne closes her curtain and goes to her bed; she buries herself in the mass of blanket on her bed and pretends to be asleep.
I don’t want to see that lady.
She knows what happened that her Mother died she knows who’s responsible and she’ll never forgive her Dad for killing her mother.
O! Yes I know that Dad killed mum. I know and I will get him for it someday
She remembers that night as though it were happening again. Her Dad thinks she has no idea. But he is wrong. She does.
I saw him from the window I was standing in the dark at night and I saw him as he lifted his hand to strike mum across the chest I saw as Mother struggled helplessly with him and he overpowered her. I still feel the tears as they rolled down my face. I remember him telling how that she was getting into is business and that he had to do it. He told mummy not to worry that he’d take care of me, that a pretty lady was coming to stay with him and she’d love me. Mummy screamed as he finished up with her. And no one knew because he sent her to the morgue almost immediately and required no autopsy be done on her. He ordered that she should be cremated. He never let me even see the ashes. I looked at him pitifully as I watched him make up that act of crying when people came to greet. I felt like running away.

And that’s what she decides to do now.
I’m running… running away …running away from here, from this life, from this strange woman
She gets off her bed and dresses up. She picks her bag pack, packs her things and moves to her window. She throws a stash of rope over the window and ties one end to the stand of her bed. Along with her rag doll and her bag pack strapped to her back she climbs down the rope.
With no trace or a letter left behind. A little twelve year old blonde – head girl runs away from her father and his strange woman…forever, In a cold breezy, moon – lit, night.