Okay, this chapter has a lot of angst in it, and I'm sorry if the content offends or upsets anyone! Thanks Emma, Laura, Liz and Sophie - without you four I'd be lost!
xxxxx

Chapter 26:

Come Thursday, two days later, Kate's mind was still buzzing around. Was it love? If it was, why couldn't she just admit it? Why was it so hard to say if that's what she felt? She never was good at showing her emotions. Tom always told her that she was too hidden. Jack never told her that though - he knew what she was feeling.

For the past few days, Jack watched as Kate distanced herself from everyone. She didn't completely blank them out, but it was enough for Jack to notice, even if the others didn't say anything. When he could bear it no longer, whilst they sat together in English, he scribbled a note down on a piece of paper, and slid it across the table to her.

Are you okay? Jack xxx

She gave him a smile, and wrote back to him.

Yeah, I'm fine. xxx

He eyed the message suspiciously before picking up his pen again.

Fine fine, or "Fine" fine? xxx

Jack, I appreciate your concern, but I'm okay, you don't need to worry about me. xxx

I do worry about you. You've been really quiet the past couple of days. Are you sure everything's okay? xxx

Everything's fine. I've just had some things to think about.

Well, if you want to talk about anything, I'm right here.

Thanks Jack, I can't, but thanks anyway

How come?

Reason #1...We're going to get yelled at by Mr Hollingbury if we talk. Reason #2...I can't talk to you about it until I've figured it out.

Jack realised what she was talking about.

Oh, that sort of stuff.

Yeah.

Well, whenever you're ready.

Thanks xxx

No problem.

Can I ask you something?

Sure

If you knew something that I didn't know, would you tell me?

As long as it wasn't a present for you or something, of course I would. Why do you ask?

What's the answer to question 4?

Jack let out a laugh quietly, so that the teacher didn't hear, and slid his exercise book across the table to her.

Later that evening, Kate sat in the bathroom upstairs by herself. She put the lid down on the toilet so that she could use it for a seat, and ran the shower so that no one would come in whilst she was in there. She just needed to be alone for a while, things were getting too much for her.

For the first time since the funeral, she was starting to feel the pain of her mother dying again. Ever since she had been at Jack's, that pain had been gone. On her first day there, he and the rest of her friends spent the whole day making her laugh. He made her breakfast, she made him wear a dress. They watched her favourite movie, even though she had seen it a thousand times. He said he'd bring her the sun to make her smile. He sang to her on karaoke. He comforted her when she broke up with Tom. He had assured her that everything would be all right, and she had believed him.

But now, she couldn't believe that anymore.

More than ever, she needed to talk to her mother. She missed being able to come home from school, wander into the kitchen, and see Diane standing there, halfway through cooking dinner, or sitting at the table reading a magazine, and they would talk for hours about so many little things that Kate wished she could talk about again.

She wanted to tell her mother what had happened with Tom, how he had betrayed her. She needed to hear her say that Tom wasn't worth it, and that she should find someone else. They probably would have spent the whole next day together watching movies and eating chocolate.

She wanted to go dress shopping with her mother, instead of with Shannon and Claire. Diane had always helped her to choose what to wear to the dances, even if they couldn't always afford the latest fashions, they would always spend like mad on those days. Somehow, she would have felt more at ease that day wandering the shops with Diane than with Shannon and Claire.

She wanted to have taken that doll home on the Monday afternoon, told her mother about the project, and have her show her different things that she always thought she would learn from her. She should have learnt how to take care of a baby, not just a sick mother.

She wanted to tell her how kind Margo and Christian had been in taking her in. She wanted to tell her how concerned everyone at school had been for her. She wanted to tell her all about the End of Summer thing that she had always come home madly chatting about for years. She wanted to tell her that Sam was coming home after all this time.

But most of all, she wanted to tell her about Jack. She wanted to tell her about the night in the park, about their fake kiss followed by the real kiss, how he had asked her to the dance, how he had held her in his arms at night, how he had been the first one at her side when she needed someone. Diane had always said that her and Jack would be something special one day. She had always suspected that her daughter cared for him more than friendship, and Kate wanted to tell her how right she had been.

But she couldn't.

Because she wasn't here.

She was never going to be here again.

She went over to the shower, turning it off. The water wasn't soothing her, so there was no point wasting it.

She had been warned that keeping everything inside would mean that eventually her emotions would overflow and explode out of her. She hadn't thought it would apply to her. It wasn't that she was keeping her emotions locked away, it was more that she was trying her best to be happy. She was carrying on with her life as best as she could, like Diane had told her to. So she still went out at weekends with her friends, she went to the movies, went bowling, and went shopping. She ate all her meals, she kept her healthy diet, and still exercised. It was like people expected her to become withdrawn from everything and everyone, not eating, not sleeping, not socialising. She could understand how most people would react like that, but her mind worked differently.

She hadn't ignored what had happened, she had just put everything else before it, and now it was working its way back up to the top.

She was finally coming to realise that her mother wasn't going to be there on all those days that she thought she might be. Diane had survived with the help of treatments for so long, that Kate began to take them for granted. She knew, in the back of her mind, that eventually, they wouldn't be able to help her, but when she only became seriously ill every few months, all the time between seemed like nothing was wrong. Or maybe it was always wrong, and she had never picked up on it.

Diane was never going to be there on the night of her prom. She wouldn't be there when she graduated, or when she went to the dance next week even. She was never going to be there when Kate moved in with someone, got married, had children, had grandchildren. She wasn't ever going to meet her grandchildren. In fact, when she had died, Kate was still insisting that she was never going to have children. Now, she was planning to move in with Jack at the end of the school year when he headed off to college.

So much had changed in the past month, that she didn't feel like the daughter her mother had known anymore.

She leaned her elbows on her knees, and placed her head in her hands, letting out a deep sigh. The sound of the shower running reminded her of the rain, and its constant rhythm helped to relax her a little, but it didn't do anything for what was going on in her head. She needed a release. She needed something to stop it all. She needed her Mom back.

An overwhelming grief knotted in her stomach, and pulled at the heart that was as confused as she was. Luckily, she was already in the bathroom, so when the bile rose in her throat, she merely turned to kneel on the floor, re-lifting the lid on the toilet. Throwing up brought back the memories of the day that her mother had died.

She had woken up that morning the the sound of a knock at the front door. She checked the clock as she sat up. It was only 6.15 in the morning, long before she would have usually woken up. It was also too early in the morning for Wayne to be back from the bar, especially on the weekend. Her mother was in the hospice, so who else could have been at the door this early?

As she walked through the house, she looked around her, ashamed. The house had become a bomb-site since Diane had gone into the hospice. Kate tried her best to clear the house up when she could, but Wayne always trashed it up again. When she had opened the door, she came face to face with Fiona, a woman she knew well. A woman who was her mother's nurse at the hospice.

As soon as she saw her, without her usual bright smile that she had for Kate, she knew. She knew, but she also didn't want to know. She wasn't ready.

"Hello, Katherine." She said with a smile.

"Hi." She had replied, still quiet from tiredness.

"Can I come in?"

Kate nodded, and stood back to let Fiona into the room. She sat down on the couch, and beckoning to Kate to sit next to her, and she did, cautiously looking around her, even though Fiona didn't notice the mess. Neither did Kate, she just wanted something to distract herself, something stall her from what she knew she was about her hear.

"I'm sorry, Katherine," She began, and the butterflies that had been zooming around Kate's body slammed heavily down into her stomach. "Your mother passed away during the night."

First of all, Kate could say nothing. No tears came, no words, no sobs. She was surprised that first of those, came the words. "Bu-but...she looked all right yesterday." She said weakly, knowing that the sobs would come soon because of the lump in her throat.

"She was very ill, sweetie, you know that." Fiona reminded her.

"But she looked better yesterday." Kate insisted. "She said that she felt better." She had even said that she thought that the hospice would allow her to come home soon, becuase she was getting better.

"Diane looked better, true enough," Fiona agreed, "But she had been deteriorating for a long time. We were surprised that the treatments kept her alive for this long."

It just didn't make sense. Yesterday, before she had come home to go to bed, Kate had sat at Diane's beside watching television in her room with her. They'd been laughing, and having fun, like normal.

"Was she- she wasn't on her own, was she?" Kate asked, looking at Fiona desperately. She couldn't stand the thought that her mother had died on her own. "Mom didn't di- go alone?" She couldn't say the word.

Fiona shook her head. "No, I was with her. She said to tell you goodbye, and that she loved you."

"I said I'd be with her." Kate murmered, remembering the promise she had made to her mother not three weeks ago.

"She didn't want you to see her like that." Fiona told her. "She knew that last night would have been her last, thats why she did everything she could with you last night. She didn't want to spoil the last memory youhad of her laughing and joking by you having to watch her pass away. She wanted you to remember the good times."

She wished she had known that it would have been the last day. She would have kissed her another time, hugged her for longer, told her how much she had loved her again and again. She hadn't even looked back out of the room as she left. She took for granted that she would have seen her one final time.

Fiona looked at her tenderly. "You've had a terrible shock, sweetheart, is your father home?"

Kate looked at her. No, Wayne wasn't home. He was probably passed out underneath a bar table somewhere. "No, he's out visiting a friend." She lied.

"Is there anyone else I can call for you, someone who will come and sit with you?"

Her immediate thought went to Jack. Not the family who lived in the next town, but her best friend. She shook her head though. "No, I'm okay." She nodded, and stood up. Her knees failed her however, and her just sat on the ground before the couch, crying.

It started out as a small amount of pain, but it grew and grew until she was choking on it. Diane was gone. The first wave of tears came because she had been left alone. Her mother was gone, and she was all alone. The next tears came because there was so many things that hadn't been said, and the final tears had come because Diane had been alone when she had gone, whilst Kate was upstairs sleeping innocently.

She wasn't aware of saying goodbye to Fiona, but she remembered it vaugely, closing the door after her, and then heading back upstairs to her room, where she sat on her bed, and after a long time, she called him.

She called Jack.

As tears pricked the corners of her eyes, she drew in a shaky breath, biting her lip to stop herself from crying. She swallowed the lump in her throat, and looked down at her hands, not quite sure what she expected to see on them. As she raised her hands, the sleeves on her gypsy style top slipped down her forearms, landing at her elbows, and her wrist caught her attention. She started at the two identical lines, symmetrical shapes that were nothing more than pink scars now.

She traced them with her finger, remembering the comforting pain that had come with the marks. Sure, it had bled, but with that blood came the release that she needed. She had managed the pain, and when she found it unable to cope with what was going on around her, she fell back into control with the appearance of those two scars. Twin scars. One for the loss of her mother. One for the fear of the future.

She could do it again, she thought, as her eyes fell upon the razors in the cup on the sink. One Jack's, one his father's. It was within her reach. She could even end it all...

She took a razor from the cup, she didn't know whose it was, and held it precariously, studying it for a moment. How easy it would be to press it against her skin and end everything terrified her, but it also intriuged her, showing her how much control she really had. She looked between the blade and the two scars that were already there. She was no stranger to pain, she knew she would go through it again. Maybe it would be easier to put up with knowing that it would be the last time she would feel pain.

As her weakness increased, the blade fell nearer and nearer to her wrist. She bit her lip as she closed her eyes, and was about to touch it against her skin when someone knocked on the door.

"Kate?"

It was Jack. She gasped at the shock, and dropped the blade on the floor.

"Kate, are you in there still? You've been up here for an hour. Is everything okay?"

She silent placed the blade back in the cup, flushed the toilet, and went over to the door. She opened it, coming face to face with Jack, who looked at her worriedly.

"Oh my God, Kate what's wrong?" He asked her, his hands coming to rest on her upper arms gently.

She bit her lip. "I got sick." She told him weakly, looking over at the toilet where the lid was still up.

He looked over her shoulder, and then back at her face. Her pale skin was covered in dried tears, but that didn't surprise him. He had seen her get sick before, and she had cried when she did. She hated being sick. What made him nervous, however, was the haunted look in her eyes. It was so scary to see such weakness, such pain, in her lovely eyes, that he wondered whether this was really Kate infront of him.

He put his arm around her shoulder, leading her out of the bathroom. "Come on, let's get you some water." He said.

Kate allowed herself to be lead away, not looking at Jack incase everything suddenly spilled out of her mouth.

Did he have any idea that he might have just saved her life?

Next chapter: Kate tells Jack.
Coming up: Georgia goes back in the box...Kate leaves with Sam, but before or after feelings are revealed?...Time to get the dancing shoes on! I promise you a dance within the next five chapters! I promise a thousand times - Jater promise!
In fact, everyone wants to see the dance so much, that I'm starting to get worried that you're all going to think it's terrible. Okay my fantastic four - I'm going to need a lot of proof reading on this one for the amount of times I'll most likely re-write it.