Chapter 12 Twelve

It was Alicia’s twenty-fifth birthday, she had been contemplating whether to have a party for it or not and last week, Margaret convinced her to have it, telling her that she needed the groove, after all, it was not every day everyone turns twenty-five. And so, here she was, guiding the planners and telling them how she wanted everywhere to look. The war has been ongoing for three years and four months now, however, there was word that the barbarians were already retreating. She didn’t hear from Leo, of course, Noah was the one who told her. Since the day that she received a letter from Leo, accusing her of slapping his mother, their relationship has become estranged. Leo hardly writes to her and even when she does, he takes weeks to reply, whereas, she often sees Mary and Joy communicating with him and they never try to hide it from her. They were constantly leaving his letters to them lying around so that she would see them. It’s not helping if Nala was feeling the lack of affection too and she found herself wondering if this was what Margaret was going through. Every day she tried to act cool, carrying on with her duties, but at night, she had to force herself to sleep and sometimes, she had to cry herself to sleep.