Free Behind the Locked Door by Lisa Procter

 
    I was given the name Goldilocks when I was a little girl because
my hair fell in long waves of golden threads down to my waist. Coupled with
bright blue eyes and a permanent blush on my otherwise pale face, I made quite
the impression.
    Of course that soon got very tiresome, constantly
being told how sweet and angelic you look isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. When
I was fourteen, I took my mother’s sewing scissors and chopped it all off. I
ended up with uneven lengths and ratted ends. But as I looked at myself in the
mirror, I couldn’t help the smile that spread across my face.
    I looked a mess, but I couldn’t give a shit.
    Of course, when my mother found me still sat in
front of the mirror, the fallen strands of my hair surrounding me, she went
ballistic. I was marched to the hairdresser, who struggled to right my hair while
keeping it as long as possible – as per my mother’s request. What was
considered my best feature was gone and man was she pissed, but I was only
getting started.
    About a year later, my hair hadn’t gained much
length. I would never admit I was secretly trimming it - that would just cause
more trouble than it was worth. Mother swore that I had cursed myself and I
found myself tuning out when she went on her rants. When I came home from
school on my sixteenth birthday with freshly dyed black hair with pink and blue
highlights I had gone too far. From that moment on, my relationship with my
mother deteriorated to the point that we barely spoke.
    All because of hair!
    Of course she told all her friends I was a wild
child, that I couldn’t be controlled – the ultimate teenage rebel, but the
truth was I just hated a nickname given to me as a child. But I digress.
    It was around this point the Bere’s moved in to the village. And that is where my story really begins.
    They had caused quite the stir, The Bere’s . There were three of them. A middle aged couple and
a kid. My age I think but with twelve year olds looking like adults these days,
there really was no telling. It was privacy that caused the air of mystery
about them. We live in a small village, everyone knew everyone else’s business
– the Wisteria Lane of Britain. The Bere’s had
shunned every single offer of hospitality that the mother hens had offered.
    They were pretty pissed.
    I on the other hand found it quite amusing. So they
liked privacy. The way the gossip was spreading though you’d think they were
keeping a deep dark secret, something terrible, something nightmares were made of. But that was just the environment I lived in.
    I had only seen a glimpse of them - the older man
retrieving the paper in the morning, the son mowing the lawn, the woman
arranging the flowers in the window. They seemed like a normal family, reserved
maybe, but respectable enough. To be honest, they seemed like they had it
together, more so than most of the families in the village.
    My own family for example – from the outside looking
in, we represented the perfect family, aside from my own wild streak of course.
No one would know from my parents gentle kisses as they bid each other farewell
each morning that their marriage was a sham and my father was screwing a girl a
little older than me. No one would realise from his bright smile and straight
A’s that my brother was actually out dealing drugs during his pizza delivery
job. No one would guess that with her gentle laughter and sickening kindness
that my sister was actually an evil bitch.
    But that’s appearances for you and I’m getting side
tracked again. The point is, their privacy wasn’t an issue and to me, they
posed no threat.
    But I have been wrong before.
    Now let me fast forward to the main story. It had
happened on what would have otherwise been a normal day, but isn’t that always
the case? Mother and father made their daily show of affection and then got in
their separate cars, leaving for work.
    Only five minutes previously, my mother was calling
me out for wearing