Three Years On

Chapter Four

Upload! This one's dedicated to MikaelaKirk for always leaving wonderful comments :) The song on the side is In Another Life by The Veronicas, possibly my all time favourite song, and kind of appropriate for this story I guess :) Also, check out the cool banner, made by yours truely, I'm pretty proud of it :D Hope you enjoy and COMMENT.

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     Michael didn’t know what to think as he followed Debby up the path through her front garden, towards her pink house. He knew her mum would be there, and possibly her older brother Robert- seeing as the term at Oxford University would already be over- but he didn’t know about her dad.

     Before the summer he’d spent with her, Debby had an awful relationship with her mother. Her father was a successful travel writer and spent the majority of his time travelling, and her mother had been his secretary and gone with him. Rob had been Debby’s legal guardian from the moment he turned sixteen.

     Michael had thought this situation was awful and had forced Debby to have a proper talk with her mother when she came home from one of her many trips, a talk that had resulted in the truth finally being told. It turned out that when her mother had decided to abandon them eight years earlier, it was in hope of saving her sinking marriage, without success. After their talk, she had decided to come back home. There was no hope left for her marriage, whereas things with her daughter might have still been salvageable.

     He knew from what Dee had said the night before that the situation with Debby and her mother was now good, but he didn’t know anything about her father. Debby had worshipped her father, then she found out that all the time she had spent being mad at her mum for deciding to leave, the decision had only been made because her dad had been having an affair. Her parents hadn’t been planning on a divorce when Michael left at the end of the summer, they had just decided to be separate- her father away for his work and her mother at home.

     Would that still be the case? Michael was kicking himself for not asking her about it when they had been in the car, but it was too late. He bumped into her gently when she stopped in front of the door to get her keys out.

     ‘Oh, sorry,’ he said, putting his hands on her shoulders to stabilise her. ‘I wasn’t concentrating.’ The contact felt good, but that only made them feel more uncomfortable.

      She didn’t say anything, just clenched the key in her hand and tried to get it in the door. Once she had it open she yelled ‘Mum, I’m home! And I’ve got a surprise!’

     They moved into the hallway together and her mother appeared in the doorway from the sitting room. She was a woman in her early fifties, and she had changed considerably in the three years since Michael had seen her. She was still skinny, but she had lost the fake tan and the dyed hair.

     Her jaw dropped when she saw Michael, recognising him straight away. ‘Michael? What are you doing here?’

     He laughed a little at her reaction. ‘Good to see you too, Mrs Martin,’ he said. ‘I just found myself coming here before I could stop it. I needed to see St. David’s again, I needed to see Beth again, but really I needed to see your daughter again.’

     Mrs Martin smiled- she always had a soft spot for him. ‘It’s lovely to see you again after so long, it really is,’ she told him. ‘Would you like something to eat?’

     ‘Oh no, I’m fine, I had lunch not too long ago,’ he declined.

     ‘Mum,’ Debby moaned. ‘Let him be.’