Above: Toddler Louis. He wears a surgical mask instead of plasters when he goes out in public.

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With love, Lucy.

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Louis sat by his locker, his legs wrapped around his bag, and his nose and mouth pushed forward in concentration while he read his book. It was 'Peter Rabbit' by Beatrix Potter. He'd have liked to read something for older children, he certainly had the intelligence to read whole novels but he couldn't afford to buy himself presents. There was the school library, of course, but he had once been severely bullied in there during his first year by some older girls, and he'd not returned since, despite the fact that those girls had all grown up and were probably living their own separate lives now.

"What are you reading, Dipshit?" Shawn asked, casting a shadow over Louis' book until he couldn't read it any longer. He looked up, and Shawn crouched down. They looked at each other for a moment, and then Shawn took the book from Louis and peered at the cover. "Aren't you a little old for Peter Rabbit?" he asked, holding the book between his index and thumb as if it had been dropped down the toilet.

"No." Louis said, grabbing it back. "It's my favourite."

Shawn shrugged, "Alright then. My favourite is 'Jane Eyre' by Emily Brontë, in case you were wondering."

Louis hadn't been wondering, but now he was. He was wondering if Shawn was making fun of him for reading, and then, upon realising that it was an honest statement, Louis wondered why he was so surprised to learn that this boy knew how to read in the first place.

"That's a rude thing to think." Shawn said, "I can see it in your eyes, you're underestimating me. This is a school full of fucked up kids with fucked up lives, but I'm not illiterate, despite of everything. I read all of the time when I'm at mum's house. At dad's, too. I used to be given books as anger therapy, they really help."

Louis looked down at his book. He could hear Shawn's friends in the background, wolf-whistling and making weird animal noises as all teenage boys seemed to do as a form of entertainment. "When did your parents get divorced?" He asked, hoping that his question wouldn't come across as insensitive.

Shawn sat down properly then, "I was ten." He said, picking at a loose string on Louis' shorts. "But it's okay because they didn't get along very well. Dad was going on and on about rugby all of the time, and mum doesn't like rugby. He was the kind of person to invite her out to dinner and then, when she'd ask 'where?', he'd say 'you decide'. Relationships like that are hard to keep."

"Do you have a new mum or dad? At parents' evening last year, you were with two people."

Shawn nodded, "That must have my dad's missus. He married her last spring. She's incredible and lets me eat the stash of chocolate biscuits that dad hides from me and my little brother. I have a little brother, by the way. Step-brother actually. His name is Josh, but he calls himself Layla."

"I had a bug named Layla once. I squished it by accident." Louis said, and then Shawn snapped the loose string and made him flinch back.

"Woah, calm down." the boy said, surprised to see Louis jump like that. "Where were your parents on parents' evening. I've never seen anyone besides that rich sugar daddy of yours."

"He's not my sugar daddy!" Louis said, appallingly, "His name is Zayn. He's my driver, I've known him since primary school. No one came to parents' evening, that's why you saw no one with me. I only stayed the afternoon because Zayn was too busy to collect me at lunch time."

"Oh, I see. Then.. where are your parents? Are you an orphan?"

Louis looked down, "I don't think so. I'm really.. not sure.." He paused for a moment. Even though he had a mother, he felt alone, and he'd always feel without. "I live with Mother, I've never had a dad."

"What's she like? I've never met your mum."

Louis laughed stiffly, "She doesn't really favour social interaction. She's sort of.." He didn't know how to finish his sentence, as too many terrible memories flooded his mind. He remembered her pushing him down the stairs, slapping him across the face, kicking him with her stiletto heels.. but he remembered the way that she held the cigarette away from his skin, the way that she'd stroked his forehead and placed a kiss there, the way that she call out to him with a voice so sweet that Louis had heard love, but he didn't not understand what love was anymore. Was it pain? Misery? Despair? Was it the blood that hung from her fingertips or the tears that ran down her face? Was love the tingles that drifted through his body when he touched her hand, or was it the relief of letting it go? He didn't understand what love was anymore, and perhaps, because Shawn also hurt him.. Perhaps that he loved Louis, too.

"Sort of what?" Shawn asked,

Louis snapped out of his thoughts and looked at him. "What?" he asked,

"You said that your mum was sort of something, but you never said what."

Louis looked back at his closed book, "Ah, she's sort of over-passionate. She gets just a little too absorbed in the things that she loves. She locks them up in the house and won't let anyone touch them. She'll close the curtains so that no one sees the things that she loves. She won't let those things go for anything. She calls them the pretty things that live in the house. Mother would die for what her pretty thing in the house, but the love that she has for it is destructive."

"The things that she loves.. It's you, isn't it? You're the pretty thing that lives in the house." Shawn said.

He'd finally understood why Louis was covered in plasters from head to toe. He understood why the boy was so child-like, why he cowered back at the slightest quick movement or loud noise. There was a lot of proof that he was owned by his mother, that he was just her possession and something for her to keep her mind at bay. After all of this time, Louis had not been weak, but he was owned.

"Can't you get out of there? Why have you not run away?" Shawn asked.

"I have nowhere to go. I can't leave her." Louis said, "If I do, she'll die."

"But if you carry on, then you'll die, and I don't want you to die."

"I don't want to die, either." Louis said, "I want to live on forever. I want to grow up and move in with Harry and have a puppy. When I grow older, I'm going to be an astronaut and fly to the moon. You need to be very clever for that but the teacher said that I can do whatever I dream of doing. She said that if I keep working hard, then I can go wherever I want. I'm already top of the class in a lot of subjects."

"Well, it's true. You are astonishingly clever." Shawn agreed, "I'll grant you that." He paused, frowned, and said, "Who's Harry?"

"Oh, Harry is a butterfly." Louis replied, "The butterfly with a torn wing."

*

Spoons clinked against chipped bowls. Soup spilled down the side of the table and dripped on the cracked tiles of the kitchen floor. It had pooled up on the ground, slipped between each tile and Louis' stomach rumbled when he looked down at it out of the corner of his eye. His bowl was now empty.

"Mother?" Louis said, still holding the spoon in his hand. "Can.. Can I have some of your soup? I couldn't t make any to leave over.."

Mother looked up from her soup, her owlish eyes shifting down to the empty bowl that rolled on its side, and then she pushed her helping towards her son.

Louis grabbed it from her and began to drink the soup with his spoon, but then starvation took over him, and he picked the bowl up and chugged his food as if he'd not eaten in years. When he put it down, he met Mother's eyes.

"Why is your soup on the floor?" She asked. Her own stomach rumbled, but when Louis pushed the bowl back to her, she refused it and insisted, with a flick of her finger, that Louis should have it.

"Mother, you put the soup on the floor. You pushed it away, yourself." Louis said. "The clock on the wall rang eight in the evening, and it frightened you, so you pushed my soup away. You mistook the clock for the doorbell. You thought that the police were at the door to take me away, that is why you were scared. This happened five minutes ago."

"Is that so?" Mother asked, rather sad, picking at her acrylic nails. "Still, you will not leave me, will you? You would never leave dear Mother, I know it. What kind of child would that make you?"

"I would be a wicked child. I would be a a bad and wicked child who did not love his mother. Children who leave their parents go to hell. I must love my family. Children must love their parents."

Louis repeated the words like clockwork. They were not his own, they were not true, but they were the ones that he'd said so many times that he'd come to believe them.

Mother leant over the table, Louis leant back, and then she grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled her son towards her. Her grip was tight, and when she'd placed both hands on Louis' shoulders, the nails that punctured his skin suddenly cracked with the pressure. She cried out, ever so close to Louis that the child froze from fear. Mother retreated to her own side of the table again, looking at her broken acrylics, and ignored how petrified Louis was.

There were really no words to describe the cold flush that ran through Louis' bloodstream, the wide and alert look in his blue eyes, and the trembling of his whole body when he sat on that rickety kitchen chair.

Mother grimaced, and her eyes fell from her fingers to the soup on the floor. "You did that?" she asked accusingly, in a tone of surprise as if she'd only just seen the large puddle by her feet. "I take all of this time to cook a meal for you, and you throw it on the floor?" She looked at Louis. Her fingertips were bleeding-her own nails had torn off as well. Louis stared into her eyes, he really had no other choice, and there was arson in her gaze. No, she was not sane any longer, but she had been once.

The sun was setting outside the Tomlinson cottage, the flowers in the flowerbeds-holding their bright colours so well-trembled in the warm breeze. A starling fluttered down to rest on a cherry tree branch before bursting into song. It was a calm evening in that small village.

All was well.

But behind the curtains of the cottage windows, there was movement in the Tomlinson residence. A woman, in the room, towering over a child. The child screamed so loudly that his voice never even left his lips. He cried, when the shadows loomed over him and the fists, heels, teeth, and every other weapon came to greet him; he just sat there, like he'd just sat there since he could remember, and he asked himself, 'Will I see the pretty sun rise in the morning?'

And his answer, it was clear this time, was 'no'. If he were to sit there, crying, screaming, waiting for some Prince charming to save him, he'd die in his little castle where he was locked away. Louis had always loved fairy tales. He'd always loved the happy ending where the damsel in distress would get rescued from the wicked witch. Perhaps, in the end, that was why he'd waited in his castle for so long. He had been waiting for the right person to come along and take his hand, yet no one had been there, and as Mother struck him across the cheek again and he fell to the ground, mind blurring out, he realised that the reason why no one had come was because he was not a damsel in distress. He had to be his own Prince, because no matter how beautiful those fairy tales were, they were not real, and Louis was not a quitter like those princesses had been.

He kicked his mother in the stomach.

She shouted, although it was mostly out of shock, and fell back until she banged her back on the counter. Her spine cracked horribly loud, Louis-who was still cowering on the ground-could almost see every bone in Mother's body shatter. He was a wicked child for smiling. He was a wicked child for feeling his heart race when Mother fell to the floor. He was a wicked child for scrambling to his feet and backing away to the front door. But most of all, he was a wicked child for opening it and leaving her to scream out his name from within.

*

It was dark, now. Barn owls flew in the sky, and it was only after seeing one land in a nearby tree that Louis realised how they were in fact barn owls, and not angels. A fox ran across the road and made him jump, and a breeze caught him but this time, it was cold. Louis had no shoes on his feet, nor did he have anything to keep him warm besides his oversized shirt and little pair of shorts. He'd been walking for a long time, and his head was throbbing so much that he wavered from side to side on the deserted pavements. His cheek was bleeding, his lower lip stung when he glided his tongue across it, and his shirt clung to him with cold sweat. He could have gone to Granny's house. He could have gone to Zayn's.. There were many places that he could have gone to escape the monster locked in the house, but out of all of those places, the safest was where he wandered.

He tumbled down a steep driveway, crumbling to the ground out of exhaustion and pain, and banged his fist on the white garage door. He heard no one for while, and he banged again and again and again, glancing back up at the road in fear that Mother would come crawling down the driveway. He beat the door with his fist, calling out, until his world turned black.

*

Above: Toddler Harry and his first pair of Ballet shoes

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Written with my Love, Lucy.