Trying Not To Love You

Part One

A/N Thanks so much for all your wonderful support and comments in Even After All. I love that people like it SO much and appreciate every vote and comment!
This work is my biggest story yet and feels like part of me it was so absorbing when I was writing that it literally took over my life for a while.
Hope you enjoy, it's a long one, hold on for the ride! :)

Martha felt the phone almost fall from her hand at the words uttered by her aunt, she'd not gone home enough, she didn't call enough, and now her Dad was ill. Really ill. There had been so much distance between them for so long, for SO many reasons. She thought of the man her father was, the man she loved SO much, the tall burly figure who would throw her up on to his a shoulder and stride across fields as though she weighed nothing even when she was in her teens. He was the strongest man she knew, getting up before dawn to manage his farm land before heading to the restaurant he ran, and sitting up until late helping her with her homework. He was invincible, immortal, the strongest hulk that she knew, wasn't he?

She hung up on her Aunt and called the hospital, the Stroke Unit.

"He's settled, its early days, and he's been very ill, but he's making steady progress."

She bit her lip, not wanting to cry, "will you tell him I called? I'll be there in the morning."

And so knew there was nothing for it but to head home.

Home.

Not a place she'd thought of too often, since she'd left five years ago she'd restricted herself to occasional visits, around Christmas, maybe birthdays...not much else. Not through choice, but through necessity and duty. With bile rising in her throat and pain in her heart she got back to the house as quickly as she could. Stephanie, her godmother and ultimately her saviour, was as serene as ever, glamorous to the letter, stood in her perfect cashmere twinset and pressed trousers and the heels she was never seen without, cooking dinner without a single splash on her perfect attire. Not that she cooked very often. When she stepped in to the room the older woman sensed her presence and looked up from the stove to smile, then immediately she sensed Martha's anxiety.

"Are you ok?"

Martha nodded, "was everything ok today?"

Stephanie laid down the spoon she was using to stir the pot of soup in front of her, "we're fine. Why? What's happened?"

"Aunt Lucy called. My father's had a stroke."

Stephanie looked like she'd been slapped; the fear on her goddaughter's behalf was palpable, "really? Oh shit. I'm so sorry. Are you going?"

Martha nodded, not remembering hearing Stephanie using a profanity in the past, even one as mild as shit. "I just need to get some things ready."

"I'll pack you something to eat."

Martha couldn't thank this woman enough, in her hour of need she'd stepped in and supported her, for five years had been like a mother to her, and when something happened like this, she just took the responsibility without complaining. "This will be really hard for you."

Stephanie smiled, "it's fine. I can cope. You NEED to be home with Carl. Ok? Give him my love."

Martha was still in a daze as she got in her car and waved goodbye to her home, then started the journey back to the place that had been home for twenty three years.

As the motorway headed away from London, the roads changed from well maintained carriageways, to narrower single lane roads, and then lanes. She'd been born in the house on Carrowbrook Farm twenty eight years earlier, in those days the village of Denbrooke had been just that, a large village. A few houses, the pub, the church, then the couple of dozen farms that flanked that, and the restaurant her parents had cultivated from nothing. Over the last twenty years more and more of the east side of the area had been sold to property developers, and now, the village was more like a town, and a suburb of the nearest city, large estates of social housing had changed the demographics of the area greatly, but Martha didn't realise quite how much until she finally drove along those roads and truly saw them for the first time in years. All her previous visits had been rushed and excited, she hadn't really seen where she was driving, now with too much time, too much silence it was all she could do, think and see.