Strong • W2S

XLIII

Chapter Forty-Three

Two days had past and Ronnie was simply denying everything. I'd attempted to speak to my Dad but as always he kept avoiding the question which instantly worried me even more than I already was. Whatever it was they were hiding from me was definitely serious and it was beyond stressing me out. None of us had heard from Dylan so we had absolutely no idea what had happened to him after he got arrested and taken to the police station, for all we knew he could've been kept in the cells or god forbid actually been sentenced. Despite us not getting on right now I was still incredibly worried about him, after all he was my daughter's father.
I'd tried calling the police station but every time I was simply denied the answers I was looking for, the only person they were able to give any information to was a family member— I didn't really understand that since I was practically the only family he had left, Angela still wasn't aware that her son was actually alive since he refused to call her and wasn't able to return back to Glasgow any time soon in fear that he'd really be killed. For the past eight or nine hours I'd seriously been contemplating on calling Angela and telling her the truth just so she'd be able to get me answers but then again with a big thing like this, it would be better coming from Dylan— that way he'd be able to her the whole truth if he chose to do that. The poor woman didn't even know that she was a grandmother and that's what broke my heart a little bit more, Olivia had both my mother and father— her grandparents but ever since we were young, Angela begged for Dylan and I to get together, work things out and then eventually grow up, get married and have children. We did grow up, had a child but there were absolutely no romantic feelings from my side anyway.

Whilst Harry filmed a sidemen video with the boys, I paced around the living room with my phone on the coffee table, Angela's contact details on the screen. If I did call her I wouldn't even know what to say, do I tell her that Dylan's alive and well... well I guess he's kind of locked up right now so I assumed he wasn't very well. I peaked my head into Olivia's moses basket, she was awake but sooking her dummy contently. Her eye's were slowly closing as if she was fighting sleep which didn't surprise me one bit because she always seemed to fight sleep. When I knew that she was fine, I rushed towards my phone and began calling Angela.
It rung a few times and each time I seriously almost ended the call but I didn't, instead she answered on the fourth ring.

"Hello? Erin, is everything alright?" I heard her voice come through the speakers on my phone, my heart was pounding.
"Angie! I'm so sorry for randomly calling you but I have some news." I heard rustling from her side, it was silent other than that. Again I looked at Olivia and saw that she was pretty much asleep, Angela responded what felt like hours later.
"Is this about Dylan? Did you know?" I could swear my heart stopped, my throat dried up in seconds and my hands were shaking.
"I—I, what do you mean?" Was all I managed to get out, I knew exactly what she meant though.
"I've just received a call from the police station down in London, they told me that they had Dylan in custody and that his bail's been set. What's going on Erin, is this some kind of joke?"
"Oh Angie, I'm so sorry but no it isn't a joke. Are you sitting down? You should definitely be sitting down for this."

It took almost forty minutes for me to explain everything to Angela, she was angry, confused, extremely upset and had a ton of questions which I didn't know the answers to but she was also glad that her son wasn't really deceased. It took me five minutes to spit the words out that Dylan had faked his death even though he was completely unaware of it. At first she was silent, then the tears came. My heart broke for her, for the past few months she had been grieving her son and now I'd just told her that he'd been alive all this time and that he'd been in hiding in London.
"Why is he in police custody then?" I hadn't told her about the Jackson's, I figured that Dylan should be the one to tell her that since he knew the full story whether's I was convinced I only knew half.
"I urm, this is why I phoned you in the first place actually. Do you remember when I visited about a year ago, it was August time and we all went for that meal for my birthday?" I paused and waited for her to hopefully remember the night I was talking about and thankfully she did.
"Of course, it was a great night but what's that got to do with why Dylan's in jail?"
"Well I didn't know at the time, actually I didn't know until a month ago now that I'd actually fallen pregnant that night with urm— with Dylan's baby." The phone call went silent, she was in shock and I was panicking now so I just continued on speaking.
"I was on holiday at the time I'd went into labour, a lot of chaotic stuff happened so Ronnie, his girlfriend and me got onto the next plane back to London. When we got off the plane I was rushed into hospital, I seriously thought that my appendix had burst and I was dying or something but apparently I was almost fully dilated and was rushed up to labour and delivery. I didn't even have the time to process anything before she was born, it's called a cryptic pregnancy— are you still there Ange?" I paused what I was saying just to make sure she hadn't passed out from the shock.
"Yeah, yeah I'm still here. I'm just trying to process things, continue." She eventually spoke, I let out a sigh of relief before I continued on with the rest of the story.
"Like I said a lot of stuff was going on at the time, Harry— you remember Harry right? Well we'd just broken up and I didn't even know he existed at the time I fell pregnant, the only person I was with at that time was Dylan so I instantly knew that the baby was his. Thankfully he made it in time to see Olivia being born, I was kept in hospital for a few days and at first Dylan was there and wanting to be involved in Olivia's life but unfortunately when we were discharged and got home, he'd— well to put it lightly, he'd done absolutely nothing." I stopped for a breath as I peaked my head into the basket once again to check on Olivia, this time she was fast asleep.