Circling Carousels (11 page)

Sienna went to school by herself, and the walk seemed infinitely longer than usual. She was used to having her twin’s company. When she got to school, everyone thought it strange that the usually inseparable sisters were only one sister today. Their teacher asked about Crystal, and she told her she was just at her aunties’ for a little while. This was okay as long as the teacher received a letter from their parents, and Sienna told Marcus so the next morning. He chose not to do anything about it, as he said it wouldn’t be for long enough for them to worry about.
Fair enough
, thought Sienna, and she went off to school alone for the second day in a row.

Days and weeks went by, and Crystal didn’t come home. Marcus was behaving oddly towards her and Sienna knew it.

There was nothing usual about the way he had started to touch her. She felt it. The tingles gave away the truth. This was no ordinary thing. Whenever they passed each other, he would tap her lightly on the bottom. Whenever they were alone in a room, he would touch her hair, her cheek, or her arm. Electricity would flow through Sienna in a way she wished it wouldn’t. He had also started to discuss things with her, confide in her, and treat her as an adult. She no longer felt like a child, and she supposed
it was true; she was now close to thirteen, so she was nearly a teenager. Her reaction to Marcus’s touch was the reaction of a teenager, not that of a little girl. She both liked it and hated it at the same time.

These were the days of girls at school meeting secretly and talking about the birds and the bees, the new feelings they were having, and boys and the way that all of a sudden they didn’t seem as bad as they used to. These were the days of talking about monthly cycles, of bras and shaving your legs, and keeping secret writings in a locked diary, so no one could ever see. Sienna, now without her sister to talk to and all her concerns about this, and the feelings both physical and emotional she was feeling for a man way nearly three times her age, began to write in a journal. It helped her feel a little more in control of her emotions to get it out there in writing and make sense of the odd sizzling feeling in her body every time she was near this man who really belonged to her mother.

Dear Diary, I don’t really know what’s happening. This man is in my thoughts and dreams, and he is all at once frightening, but delicious, and I feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside when he touches me. I long for when he gets home now. I just wish I could understand why. I like it, but I hate ,it, too, because it must be wrong to feel this way! My heart beats fast and I feel like I love him . . . and then I don’t . . . and I’m so very confused! I trust him because he’s almost my father, but I fear him because he’s acting so weird and I don’t know what it all means. He touches me, different to how he did before, and he looks at me like he wants to eat me or something.

The person I love the most in the world is gone, and I can’t talk with her anymore. I so need someone to talk to. I miss you, Crystal! Maybe you would be able to tell me why I feel so excited by Marcus. He’s our mother’s boyfriend, and it just can’t be right! I want to understand it, but my heart keeps telling me that I want him, love him, and need him.

I think I really do love him!

It was about this time that Marcus planned a trip away, for work and for pleasure, to the beautiful tropical Greek islands.

He
did
have contacts to meet and paperwork to sign over there, but for the most part, he wanted to take a holiday, and in a spontaneous request, he asked Sienna if she would like to go with him. It
was
school holidays and how she would love to go somewhere so beautiful! Despite the temptation, she wasn’t sure she should. She was still concerned about her mother and her sister, and she couldn’t seem to get any straight answers about why Crystal was gone for so long. She was worried in so many ways, but the desire to go somewhere as wonderful as the islands was too much. Eventually, she agreed to go.

Marcus promised her that her mother would be fine and that he had asked a friend of his to look after her while they were away. With this, he also agreed that when they returned, he would talk with the aunties and see if Sienna could go see them, if she still wanted to after their holiday.

Elsie, too, would be having time off for the two weeks they were away, and she was pleased that all was set so that she could go. It had been a long time since she’d had a holiday, and Marcus paid her well so that she could enjoy her time. If Sienna had decided to stay, Elsie would have had to stay, too, so feeling comfortable with the arrangement, Elsie was happy to go. She wasn’t aware of the growing interest Marcus was having for the young teenager, and she certainly didn’t know that Sienna was beginning to fall under his spell.

Marcus’s friend was a man who wasn’t particularly trustworthy, and he really didn’t care about the creature in the bed that was usually in a comatose state. He began in the first week coming to check on Candice, but by the second week, he only came twice. To be able to leave her for so long, he decided to leave her a good amount of food, water, and the powder she so craved and let her look after herself. He didn’t return. She was too much of a bother anyway.

Chapter 17

S
ienna and Marcus were having a lovely time in the Grecian Isles. Nothing was too much for her to ask, and he outfitted her in a whole wardrobe full of tropical resort clothing. Every night, she was treated to beautiful meals and spa baths, swims in the moonlit ocean, and Marcus’s smiling face and softly touch- ing hands. Until now, Marcus had spoiled her with gifts and tan- gible things, a keyboard and music system to write and record her own special signature music, a treadmill so that she could exercise, and a garden in the backyard, so she could grow the things she wanted to grow—flowers and vegetables that would grace the table and Elsie’s cooking. All these things made her feel
special and loved as she had never felt before.

Now things were quite different. This was a different kind of giving and receiving of gifts, and Sienna felt good, really good. Her body felt alive with unmet desire, which she had never felt before. It was a whole new world for her, and here in this secret place, it just seemed so natural that she and her secret man- friend should fall in love. Sienna felt that this was truly love, and she revelled in the way he made her feel. She would never forget
the first time he touched her in an intimate way, and although it was probably completely wrong, it felt so right. She gave herself over to the feeling. He did, too, and they spent their days getting to know one another without the usual constraints and the odd looks at their age difference. Sienna was tall and with her wavy long blonde hair and her new love for makeup, she looked older than her mere thirteen years. Marcus with his clean-shaven boyish looks looked younger than he was, so somewhere they met in the middle and no one looked at them strangely at all.

When Marcus went to take care of his business deals, he booked Sienna in for an all-day spa treatment, and she thoroughly enjoyed every second. This was the last day of their holiday, and although he was supposed to meet with his contacts earlier, he left it until this day because his growing relationship with Sienna took up all his attention. Going home was bound to be hard. While they were away, Sienna was a woman; when they went home, she would return to the teenage schoolgirl, and she really didn’t want it to be so.

Marcus was very aware of the changes that would occur when they went back. He had considered how he was going to approach Elsie with the truth of his relationship with her sweet young charge and whether he could offer her more money to tolerate it. Either that or he would just keep it secret from her. And what was he to do about Candice? This woman, although completely unable to function as such, was his new lover’s mother. How would this look to anyone who saw? So far, they had lived a secret life, created a secret love, and kept it in a world all of their own. How would they continue once they returned? How much trouble would he be in if anyone found out?

With these thoughts in both their minds, they caught the plane home and arrived back in the early part of the evening to a blackened house with no lights on and in complete silence. They stood just inside the doorway and held one another, both of them feeling the very same concerns. Neither of them was able to ignore the obvious knowledge that their relationship would be wrong in everyone else’s eyes. They savoured the moment in the foyer, kissed, and promised that somehow, they would make this work.

For Sienna, this emotion was as real as anything she had ever felt, but she was young and vulnerable. Marcus had been her world and her secret life for many years now. He was all she had once her mother ceased to be able to be a mother anymore, and now that she was at an age when her emotions and hormones controlled her, she was right there and ripe for him to claim.

In the case of Marcus, it was hard to know. Sienna chose to believe he actually loved her, but was Marcus only making an easy kill? Was what he was saying to her the truth or was he just using her? Would she end up hurt and destroyed by her wildly raging feelings of first love?

Dear Diary, what a wonderful week we’ve just had! He loves me. He truly does, and it’s so wonderful, so fantastic! I feel like a princess and he is my prince charming.

He gives me anything I want. He took me out swimming, and we made love like in the movies. He treats me like a grown up, not like a teenager! I feel as though a million butterflies were flying around in my belly. I’m so happy I could burst.

But, what if this doesn’t last? What if he only wants me for a little while? What if he doesn’t really love me, like I love him? What if he hurts me and breaks my heart? I couldn’t stand it! I love him so much!

Sienna continued to write in her diary words of love, stories of tenderness, and the wonder of newness, but tonight, she would also have a new type of writing to do. Tonight a terrible thing would await Marcus and Sienna and an equally terrible thing would have to be done to keep them safe and out of trouble. Tonight, Sienna would lose something she knew one day she would. Tonight everything would change.

Marcus went upstairs after he had held Sienna close for a long time to check on Candice and how well she had been looked after by his friend, Geoff. He wanted to make sure she was all right because although he trusted the man, Candice was not exactly interactive anymore and he hoped he hadn’t just left her to her own devices, thinking Marcus would be none the wiser. He also had a growing fear that Geoff may have felt it better for Marcus if this woman were dead, because Marcus had
admitted as such many times. Candice had become a thorn in his side, an unimaginably huge pain for him, and a dead weight around his otherwise forward-moving life. Geoff was the only other person who knew of the relationship with Sienna, and he may very well have thought it wouldn’t matter so much if he left Candice to die. It was true that Candice was now useless to him, but he wasn’t sure that Sienna wouldn’t blame him if she were gone.

When he walked in the room, Marcus was hit by a sight and odour he had not expected. It was clear from what he saw on the bedside table that Geoff had deliberately left Candice with everything she needed to take care of her own needs. The only problem was that she couldn’t be trusted to be careful with her wants. He looked on in horror and saw the evidence of heroin in too large an amount left for her, and he smelt the odour of a life ended. Candice had either accidentally overdosed or deliberately decided to finish things and had been left with the perfect tools to do it. Marcus sighed with a sadness that wasn’t like him. He would usually have just written off a woman such as Candice as expendable, but this was going to hurt Sienna more than he could stand.

He called out down the stairs, and hearing the panicked tone in his voice, Sienna ran up the stairs two at a time, already fearing the worst. The worst was exactly what she was faced with, and as she cried great wracking sobs into Marcus’s chest, he tried to work out what they should do.

Again, like so many times in the last few months, Marcus treated Sienna like an equal, discussing what they must do to absolve themselves of any wrongdoing. Although Sienna was grieving dreadfully, she realised that it would look incredibly bad should they get the police involved now. As abhorrent as the plan sounded to both of them, they decided they had no choice but to take action to put this incident as far away from them as they could.