Chapter 7
Thursdays are my favourite day of the week. Not because it’s the day that my current favourite work-in-progress Dramione fan-fiction chapters get released (although this is a definite highlight), but because I get to spend the day at Hope House with some of my favourite people in the world.
I started volunteering at Hope House two weeks after I left Daniel.
As fate would have it, I was seated at a cafe with my face buried in my kindle, when I couldn’t help but overhear the conversation the man at the table next to me was having on his phone.
He was running his fingers through his wild mess of orange curls, complaining to someone on the other end that they just didn’t have enough volunteers to help at the women’s shelter and they would need to do something about it or risk having to limit their intake numbers further.
My interest was immediately piqued. There I was feeling overwhelmed by the drastic turn my life had taken, standing on a figurative precipice looking out toward endless days with nothing to fill them, when the opportunity to do something meaningful with my time fell straight into my lap.
I approached the man and offered my services (not even knowing what it would entail, but keen all the same).
I didn’t realise then that Hope House would become my own little safe haven, where the women there would inadvertently be helping me as much as I was helping them.
The Thursday after my run-in with Daniel at family lunch, I breeze inside the front door of the nondescript, suburban white cottage bright and early, carrying freshly baked scones for Emma under my arm and a pink rose I snagged from someone’s front garden in my other hand for Alice.
The house carries the constant quiet murmur that comes with roughly seven women and at times a handful of children living together at once.
You think it would be louder, but the women here are always respectful, and more often than not, carrying significant trauma that usually diminishes any overly boisterous activity.
This morning is no different. Sometimes I’ll arrive to an unnatural silence settled over the house, and that’s always the first tell that there’s been a new arrival at Hope House.
It’s hard to know what to expect every Thursday morning, and since I started volunteering I have truly seen the worst that society has to offer.
What some of these women have gone through at the hands of a man is terrifying.
One time I spent the whole day just cradling and rocking a young woman who had fled her house with her kids after her husband had used her as his punching bag.
Thankfully that’s not the case this morning, however, as I can hear the familiar sounds of Lily humming away in the laundry and the squeals of delight coming from Beth’s toddlers in the living room as I head towards Sam’s study to dump my belongings.
When I emerge, Sam’s the first one to spot me from the kitchen where he’s making what’s probably his third coffee of the day even thought it’s barely eight a.m.
“Ah, Gianna, you’re here. I got your message that you have to leave early today and I was hoping while you were here this morning you could have a chat with Olivia then watch Beth’s little squirts while she attends her psychiatric appointment.”
Sam always greets me with a list of things to do the second I walk in the door, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
His passion for Hope House and the women sheltering here is his number one priority, and I absolutely love that about him.
He’s only a few years older than me, but he started Hope House five years ago after working as a social worker for years and feeling like he could never make a real difference to the lives of women who needed it most. I’m sure he has a personal story, like most of us do, that really drives his passion for this place.
I’ve never been game enough to ask him about it, though.
“Sure thing,” I reply, joining him at the coffee machine.
“Here, have this one.” He passes me the cup he just made and starts on another. I nod in thanks.
“Where’s Olivia?”
“In her room. She’s upset after a phone call with her mum.” He sighs while spooning in his sugar. “I think her mum told her to go home again.”
My heart sinks. Olivia’s husband is emotionally and financially abusive, but her mum is a devout Christian who won’t take her in because she doesn’t believe in divorce, essentially leaving Olivia homeless and with no access to funds.
Her situation hits a little too close to home for me, if I’m being perfectly honest.
“I’ll go find her.” I turn to leave the kitchen.
“Wait,” Sam calls, and I glance over my shoulder. He runs a hand through his unruly orange hair and its only now I notice the dark circles under his eyes and the unnatural paleness of his face that makes his freckles stand out more than usual. “Thanks, Gia. You know I appreciate you, yeah?”
“Yeah, I do, Sam,” I say with a soft smile, then turn and head out the kitchen.
On my way to Olivia’s room I pass and greet Isabelle and Donna, the two social workers that come to check-in on the girls twice a week, and Cassie, our full-time counsellor who I catch on her way to the kitchen to make tea.
“Cassie, what’s up with Sam? He’s looking more stressed than usual today.”
“Oh, right,” she answers, rubbing a hand over her brow, her short black bob brushing the top of her exposed collarbones. “They’ve just cut government funding again. He’s worried about the cost of living expenses.”
My stomach twists at the news. Sam was already re-working the budget last week due to a lack of funds, so I can only imagine how much this new development has him reeling.
“Shit, I wish there was something I could do.” I bite down on my lower lip and I feel my brows pull together as an errant thought passes through my mind.
“Me, too,” Cassie sighs. We smile grimly at each other then I continue down the hall to find Olivia, popping my head into Alice’s room on the way to deliver her flower, which she accepts with a radiant beam.
Two hours later I’m simultaneously playing duck, duck, goose out in the backyard with Beth’s three-year-old twins Hudson and Hattie and discussing the latest scandal from a famous pop group with Emma while she rocks gently on the tree swing.
“I just can’t believe he would cheat on Candice Star!” Emma exclaims, licking the jam off the top of a scone. “She’s a supermodel!”
I jump up when Hattie knocks my head and says ‘Goose!’ And start chasing the giggling toddler around the garden.
“I can,” I say, pretending to catch Hattie.
She races to sit her little bottom down on the grass next to her brother, both of them falling into a fit of laughter at my theatric breathing.
“He’s a famous rock-star, and a man. A man who has women throwing themselves at him everywhere he goes. Of course he’s not saying no to that.”
I know I sound jaded, but that’s only because I am.
My husband might not be an A-grade celebrity, but he’s pretty famous in the sporting world and there was never a shortage of women trying to catch his eye.
I was just too naive to realise he was shoving his dick into most of them.
Well, my eyes are too wide open to close them again now.
“I don’t believe that every man is like that,” Emma muses in her own sweet way, brushing her strawberry blonde bangs out of her eyes.
At only eighteen and having experienced the worst of what some men are capable of, she still manages to look at the world through a lens tinted with youthful hope.
I don’t know whether to envy or pity her, my sweet Emma.
“Well, I do, and you should too,” I say as I walk circles around the twins, patting them softly on the head. They giggle in anticipation.
“These are your best scones yet, Gia,” Emma says. She finally bites into one, pushing her big toe into the ground to keep the swing moving gently. “Can you teach me how to make them soon? Then I’ll definitely find a man to love me.”
I sigh internally, deciding I’ll give Emma a pass to the ‘you’re a strong independent woman who doesn’t need a man’ speech that I’ve already given her ten times already. I don’t have time today.
“Sure. Maybe next week, Em,” I say instead, referring to both the scones and my lecture, before exclaiming ‘Goose!’ and running away as Hudson comes barrelling after me.
When he’s caught me and both the twins have knocked me to the ground, tickling me into submission, I hear my alarm sound from my phone in my back pocket.
Fuck, time to go.
My stomach twists and turns over the appointment I’ve been dreading all week.
“I’m here to see David O’Leary.”
My voice shakes as I force the blaspheming words past my throat towards the platinum blonde receptionist, who’s staring at me from behind her marble desk like I’m something the gutter-rat-loving cat dragged in.
Granted I could have dressed a bit nicer for my appointment today, but I didn’t really think it mattered what I wore to meet the man who would help me finally rid myself of Daniel for good.
It’s not a job interview, for christ sake.
Besides, it would have been hard to play on the grass with the twins wearing a pencil skirt and heels.