Part 1.

 

My story starts like a lot of other stories... with a parents' funeral, the prospect of being an orphan and rain. It was cold, it was wet, and I hated it! To begin with, I stepped in a large muddy puddle soaking my black high-healed boots through to my stockings. Secondly, we were in Scotland...enough said. Everyone who lived in Scotland either annoyed me or hated me. Thirdly, I had to stand around (in the rain, with wet boots, in SCOTLAND) and watch my self-absorbed deadbeat “mother” be buried. I hated her guts and felt no remorse or sadness at her death. Why would I sense she hated me?! She hated me first and that's the end of it!

 

Everyone seemed to be crying! It was driving me insane, my withered old grandmother (my grandfather had passed away of old age and grandmother must be close!), my aunts and uncles. My father? No, I didn't know who my father was. My mother had “supposedly” gotten drunk one night, and poof, there I was. She tried to make up for her actions and take care of me, but by the time I turned three she couldn't handle me anymore. She attempted to send me to an orphanage, but they wouldn't except me because they were already full. So my mother called the DHR and they called my family, no one would take me in, so they took me away and put me in a foster home, I lived in that foster home till I was five. Then my mother was allowed to have me back, sense she had “cleaned up her act”. Well... she was “clean” for about a year and then I was taken back to foster care because of a neighbor who found drugs in my mom's cabinets and reported her. So she was put in jail and I was put in a child safe home again. My mother was aloud out when I was ten years old and I didn't hear of her again... until I just HAD to get the letter of my mothers death of drug over dose-or was it drunk driving?- And I was sent to Scotland and here I am! Standing in wet stockings, an umbrella over my head and a frown on my face, feeling bored, angry and miserable. I had dreamed of slapping my mother one day, now it would never happen, unless I dug her body out like that creepy guy from that Wuthering Heights book by Emily Bronte... what was his name? Who cares?!

 

I noticed some one watching me through red eyes and I glared back at them with all the hatred I could muster. It was my stupid, uptight Godmother! Who has Godmother's now a days? She hated me as much as I hated her and maybe even more then my mother hated me. She made her way over to me, her wrinkly skin reminded me of Ms. Havisham in Charles Dickens Great Expectations.

 

“You are a disgrace to your mothers memory!” She said in her thick, annoying, Scottish accent without any warm greetings, go figures!

 

“She is the disgrace, I am not!” I answered hotly, “She's was the one taking drugs, smoking and going around having kids with random strangers who cross her path!”

 

Godmother Havisham glared at me even harder, “You insolent brat! Your mother cared for you the years she could, she didn't throw you out in the streets did she? I would have if I were her! You are a waste of space! You do not belong in this family!”

 

“Already knew that!” I snapped.

 

“Don't you talk back at me missy! Be grateful that you were not turned out from this funeral!”

 

“I wouldn't have cared! I hate this! I hate being here! I hate Scotland! I hate my mother! I hate my family and I especially hate you!” I said, feeling hatred boil like tar in my stomach, heavy, thick and sticky.

 

“Why you brat!” She said softly.

 

Some one put a gentle hand on Godmother Havisham's frail shoulder.

 

It was my mothers sister, who was kind to everyone, shy at most times but always calmed fights. I hated her too.

 

“Calm down Lachlania!” She said as soft as her touch.

 

“Your right Caroline,” Godmother Lachlania sighed, patting Caroline's hand and walked away, shaking her head with more tears going down her cheeks.

 

Caroline looked down her nose at me then left hurriedly, as if being seen with me would be like being seen with Satan!

 

A man in a very black suite walked up to me, I couldn't make out his face, so I guessed I had never met him before.

 

“Hello,” He said, thankfully he seemed to be the only one without a Scottish accent, instead it sounded British, “I'm John Benson, I am sorry for your loss.”

 

“Its not that big of a loss,” I muttered, shaking his gloved hand, wishing I had gloves.

 

He looked surprised for a moment then reached into his suite jacket, “Well...” He passed me a yellow envelope, “Can we speak privately?”

 

I cocked an eyebrow, “Privately?”

 

“Yes,” He said in a low voice, “It is a matter of guardianship.”

 

I sighed, knowing that I would not be able to go back to my foster mother again, “Alright...”

 

“How about we go inside?” He asked, indicating to the large sad church.

 

I nodded.

 

We climbed up the hill and when we got inside I sat in one of the pews, taking off my boots and trying to dump whatever I could out of them. It dripped water on the ground and I started to take off my black coat but John Benson waved a hand at me not to, so I growled and kept my coat on.

 

I opened the yellow envelope and pulled out printed sheets that looked very impressive and I couldn't understand anything, “What is this saying?” I asked.

 

“Sense your mothers death, you have no legal guardian, unless one of your family members step up and take you in. Well... this slip of paper states that you will in fact be having a guardian, a member of your family as stepped up to take care of you...”

 

I waited for the name, wondering if it might, just might be my father?

 

“I'm not sure if you know him... his name is Barnaby Boyd, he is on your mothers side of the family.”

 

All shining hope of meeting my father vanished and I was left with an image of an old, grumpy, Scottish man, “Who?”

 

“He is your mothers... cousin, he is the offspring of your grandfathers daughter Hazel-”

 

“Oh, her!” I had to say as I thought of the aunt, she was an aging woman who looked like she was in her sixties, so her son couldn't be that old!

 

“Yes... well... he's offered you a home with him on the outskirts of Bambugh,” Said John Benson, like this was a well known place and everyone should know it.

 

I frowned, “Bamburgh?”

 

“You know... where Bamburgh castle is... you'll see it later!” He said dismissively.

 

He talked a bit more about things I didn't understand and things I didn't care about, sense I was wet, cold and now dreading to meet this new relative and guardian “Barnaby.”