It was a Saturday morning, I didn't have work and so it was a shock when I looked at my phone to see 17 voicemails from an anonymous number. Not messages. Not emails. Someone had tried to call me 17 times while I slept. The chances were slim, but the tiny voice in my head couldn't help but scream Oliver Westley.


.....


Life starts before you're born. I know that. But the memories don't stick until later. And even then, they're blurry and unfinished. There wasn't much for me to remember anyway. I was a foster kid from 16 months old. I know I had been placed in a few different homes, but I don't have memories of them. Not until Jenette and Levi Hennessy.


I was 6 years old when I was placed with Jenette and Levi. I remember being so nervous when my social worker told me that I had to be on my best behaviour so that one day, they might adopt. I didn't really understand the process. All I knew was that I had to be good. So, I was.


It wasn't hard though. Jenny and Levi were the kindest people I had ever met. I wanted to stay with them forever. They were both in their mid-thirties and while Jenny worked part time from home designing and assembling charcuterie boards for a friend's small business, Levi worked 9-5 as a bookkeeper for a big law firm.


I was happy with them. They taught me how to love and showed me how it felt to be loved. For the first time in my life, I felt safe. For that I will be forever grateful to my foster parents.


That's when my life really began. I had a bedroom and my own toys. I had two loving parental figures. And I even made a friend in the young boy next door. Oliver Westley.


Oliver, the boy with bright orange hair, round wire glasses and freckles splattered across his nose. The boy who tripped over his feet far too often, and whose giggle was more infectious than the chicken pox. The boy with the slightest lisp and who pronounced his Rs as Ws. He was my first friend, and he was my bestest friend.


Oliver Westley liked to ride his bike up and down the cul-de-sac where we lived. Everyone on the street knew him just like, after a while, they knew me. We became so close in the first 8 months of me living on Keeruwi Place, by the end of my first year, all the Neighbours were calling us the twouble twins.


At the time we didn't think anything of it. A cute nickname that we had been given. Now, looking back, I can't help but feel the tiniest hint of anger to those who make fun of Oliver's speech impediment like that. Unfortunately, they weren't the only ones.


I started going to school with Oliver at the beginning of the following year. We were both so excited, granted he was in the year above me.


Oliver had been telling me all about school. Preparing me for what to come. It wasn't what I had been expecting, though. I found it a lot easier to make friends than Oliver had and I could never understand it. I could never understand how the other kids didn't love him like I did. He was funny and smart and brave. But kids were mean and no matter how hard I tried, no one wanted to be friends with Oliver, they just wanted to be mean.


I didn't care what the other children thought. Oliver was my best friend and that didn't change for four whole years. Until I got taken away.


It was the worst day of my life. I was sitting at the breakfast table, eating my pancakes with honey when someone knocked on our door. A man with dark skin and a tidy beard stood at the threshold when Jenny opened the door. He looked kind enough. Smiled as he introduced himself as Martin Young, a social worker, come to collect Miss Clara Louise Tate.


I suddenly didn't feel like pancakes anymore.