Todays randomly generated word for the A-Z Challenge is…

Dance…

Dana looked at the digital clock display on the cooker, twenty past three. It was unusual for Sophie to be out so late, she was normally in by two when she went clubbing, especially as she had got home from work that night saying she was tired. Terry said Dana was mad, waiting up for the kids. “They’re adults now love.” He often pointed out as he rolled his eyes at her. But Dana couldn’t sleep when Sophie or her brother Joe were out, so there wasn’t much point in going to bed.

Terry had headed upstairs at midnight leaving Dana alone with her tea, the remains of which were now sitting cold in a mug on the kitchen table. The ashtray next to it overflowing with cigarette butts and ash. Dana thought about her own young adulthood. She had loved to dance, and Sophie had inherited that gene.

She flicked, uninterested, through one of Sophie’s celebrity magazines that she’d left on the table. Her eyes stung with tiredness, unable to focus on the words. She felt uneasy, a feeling of dread had begun to well in her stomach. She checked her mobile phone. Should she text her daughter? Or would that only make her worry more if there was no reply?

Stuart Miles @ FreeDigitalPhotos

She paced the terracotta tiles. Sophie had joked once that one day she would come home to discover her mother had worn a groove into the floor and replayed their last conversation in her head.
“Have you got everything? Phone? Keys?”
“Yes mum.”
“And make sure you have enough money left over for a taxi.”
“Ok mum, I’m not a child, I’m 22!”
But what Sophie didn’t understand was that to Dana, she was a child, her child, and no matter how old she was, Dana would still worry about her.

The knock at the door made Dana jump, and it took her a moment to realise what the noise was. Confused, she fastened her dressing gown and made her way down the hallway, turning on the light. Hadn’t Sophie said she took her keys?

The sight of two police officers standing on the doorstep was something Dana would never forget, but it was the screams, her screams, that would haunt her for the rest of her life…

Sorry, a bit morbid that one. I hate it when my kids go out at night 😦 Think I’ve been watching too much CI lol

**All fiction that appears on this blog during April has been written LIVE and is in first draft form. No editing (apologies, my grammar is appalling lol), spell checks (unless WordPress has come up with an error), research or rewrites have been done.