19th September 1996 

I sat on my train to Whitby, thinking about the future. I used to live there when I was younger. My parents had to move down to London when I was around five and obviously, I had to go with them. ‘Work-related stuff’, they’d always say. My mother worked in modeling and my father was an aspiring author. When I was seven my father died from a heart attack. He never showed any signs of heart or health problems in his life but one night he climbed into the warm bed next to my mother and the morning after she woke up to find him pale and stone cold next to her. 

The train began to pull into a station. I looked out of the window; the station was empty except for a few people who sat alone on benches. As the train halted and the doors opened a bitter evening wind blew through the carriage. I saw a girl running up the platform towards the train. The doors beeped as they began to close and she just managed to make it in. She wore a grey beanie over her messy blonde hair and a blue denim jacket over a striped shirt. My carriage was almost full, all but two seats. One next to me and one next to a dodgy-looking man in the corner. She scanned around the carriage and looked worried for a second, thinking she might have to sit next to the nonce in the corner. She saw the seat next to me and quickly approached.

"Is this seat free?" She asked, sounding unsurprisingly out of breath. 

“Yeah.” She popped herself down next to me. We both sat in awkward silence for a few seconds until she started speaking. 

“Where are you off to then?” She looked at me, her eyes glistening in the sun. 

"Whitby, I’m moving back here with my mother," I told her. 

"You're moving back, when did you leave? She asks curiously. 

"Eleven years ago. My mother’s coming later with all our stuff. I’m meeting a friend at the station." 

"Oh cool, I came here a few years ago with my parents too." 

I stared out the window towards the sunset, the golden hues of the sun blended seamlessly into the indicolite waves of the sea. I sat there quietly for the rest of the journey, lost in thought. I wondered whether my old friend Axel would be waiting at the station as I'd planned. God, it had been so long since I'd last seen him, would he even be the same as when I left? 

The blonde girl reached into her backpack and pulled out a book. I glanced over at the cover; ‘The Few Left Behind’. It was a book my father had written before I moved. The local bookshop always used to stock up on copies and keep them on a bestsellers table by the door. I thought about telling her about the author of her novel when my thoughts were interrupted. 

“Ding!”

A bell rang overhead to signal our journey was ending. The girl picked up her backpack and put her book on the tray table in front of her. The train slowed to a halt and the doors opened, she got up to head out. She turned to me before leaving. 

“Hey, I'll see you around.”

She walked out of the carriage and down the platform. 

I noticed her book was left on the now empty seat and picked it up. I left the train a few moments later and looked around for her. She was gone. I looked around for Axel, hoping the girl goes to my school so I can give her the book back, and saw someone leaning against a pillar about ten feet away. 

"Axel?" I asked, really hoping I’d got the right person. 

He turned to me; he had messy light brown hair a white jumper with blue denim dungarees over the top. 

"Katie?" He asks, probably wishing the same. 

"Oh my god, it’s you. You look so good, honestly." I’d doubted whether he'd have come seeing as you hadn't seen each other since you were five. 

I'm gonna sound like someone’s aunt here but I haven’t seen you since you were like, erm, this tall." He says while reaching down towards his knee. 

I laugh at his joke and start walking. 

After a few minutes of walking he asked me: 

“So, where's your house again?” "It's at..." I stopped to pull a folded piece of paper out of my bag, it was a note my mother gave me before she set off. Taped to it was a small house key. "...Crescent Avenue." 

"Ooh someone’s got money, which house," Axel exclaimed. "Very nice houses up there." 

'"Fifteen" 

"Oh, the murder house?" He grinned.

"What?" I ask, confused. 

“Right so basically the previous owner of that place went insane and killed his wife and baby with an axe and hung himself in the kitchen. The place has been haunted ever since apparently." He tells me. 

"And you believe that?" I asked, hoping it wasn’t true. 

We walked for a few minutes, catching up on things. I found out he was in a band with some girl called Amber and a guy named Owen. He'd moved house to a place a block away from mine. 

I reached my new house. Axel offered to walk me to school tomorrow, which I politely agreed to. We said our goodbyes and I watched him from my doorstep as he wandered down my street.

The key for the front door was a bit fiddly to get in but I knew I’d have to get used to it. As I entered my house into a reasonably large living room, I spotted a few bits of mail on the floor. Two of these were for the old owners and one was a leaflet for a local pizza restaurant. Only a few pieces of furniture were left in that room with a faint smell of copper in the air.  

To my right was a staircase leading upstairs and across the room was an arched doorway leading into the kitchen and dining room. I decided to go through the arched doorway into the kitchen. That room is around the same size as the last, with cabinets and counters lining two of the walls and an island in the middle. To my right was the back door. I strolled upstairs to find a long short hall with a right turn at the end. There were two doors on my right and one on the left. I peeked into both rooms, one was a bathroom and one a small study. 

I approached the end of the hall and turned the corner. There were two more rooms on the right and one on the left. 

I looked into a room on the right, a large bedroom with a closet built into the wall. On the other side of the room, the ceiling slanted down where the roof was. There were two windows in the slanted ceiling to form a skylight of sorts.     

I heard an engine switch off followed by a car door shutting outside. I ran down to the living room and opened the front door. I noticed a van outside labelled "Large Moving". 

My mother was walking up the drive towards me, her hair messily blowing in the wind. She was wearing a pair of blue jeans, a white button-up shirt, and a poncho. Ponchos were always her favorite item to wear. Colours didn't matter to her, as long as it was a knitted poncho she’d be happy. Unlike me, her hair was blonde. (Dyed) She’d always be down at a fancy salon when we were in London getting it coloured. Most days it was tied up in a messy bun of sorts so it was quite unusual to see her with it down in public. 

A few hours had passed since we’d arrived and by then we’d got most of the furniture in. There was still the lingering smell of copper on the ground floor but it grew bearable after a few hours.

I sat on the floor of the living room on our new rug, feeling the soft fibers run between my toes, reading the book the girl from the train left behind. My mother called through to me from the kitchen. 

"Katie!" 

"Yes" 

"The oven's not working!" 

"Should we order a pizza or-?" 

"Sure." 

I got up to find that old leaflet from earlier to call and place our order. 

After about twenty minutes I heard a knock at the door. 

I opened the door and went to take the pizza from the delivery boy. I looked up to hand him the money. 

"Axel?" 

"Yep." 

“You're a pizza boy.” 

"Yep." 

Axel was wearing a typical red shirt and cap with a pair of black trousers. On both the shirt and cap there was a small embroidered logo of the restaurant. He flashed an awkward grin my way before he opened his mouth to speak.  Before he could, however,  my mother shouted through to me.

"Katie what are you doing, you're letting all the heat out, shut the door!" 

"See ya' tomorrow, Katie." 

"See you tomorrow." 

After I shut the door I just stood there trying to process the situation. Axel’s a pizza boy. Not a massive deal. But why the hell was that so awkward? And what was that grin for? I tried to push it to the back of my mind and focus on the pizzas.

After the meal, it was getting late so we decided to call it quits for the night and get ready for bed. After getting ready for bed I crawled into bed onto the uncomfortable boxspring mattress that was already in my room. I had taken the room with the slanted ceiling and skylights, which I was honestly quite happy about. As I lay there, I wondered about that first day at school, if I’d ever find that girl again and if Axel and I could ever recover from the disaster of a conversation earlier that evening. But most importantly, what was life going to be like now.