Chapter 6...is anyone actually reading? I hope so!

Emily

She woke with a start, almost sitting straight up, but something heavy was preventing her from moving. Her mouth felt bone dry and tasted of something stale. Her brow wrinkled at the insistent thumping which started immediately in her head. Slowly, despite this competition to overwhelm her, some senses returned and Emily stared up at the ceiling, waiting for motor function to return. It took several seconds before her brain recognised what she was looking at up there.

Not her ceiling then.

Not the familiar room she'd shared with Katie until she was 17...or the one in the new, smaller parental house she occasionally went to when she was home at weekends. Nor, actually, the one in the student bedsit room she had in Bath. The one she'd almost completely abandoned, because she spent most of her leisure time back in the familiar, if unsettling surroundings of Bristol city centre.

No...this was...fuck, she whispered to herself. That ceiling.

The one she'd stared up at many times in the past. Sometimes like this, with a hangover crouching, ready to strike, sometimes in blissful ecstasy with a very significant other making her moan and cry out in joy. The one with the centre light fitting with an old and tasselled pink shade. The ceiling with a small crack in the plaster near the window bay, there for years, since Naomi had irritably thrown one of Emily's discarded green shoes at a persistent wasp, buzzing at the glass ineffectively, while they lay drowsily, sated and exhausted from a whole afternoons love making….

Fuck...Naomi?

The events of yesterday burst into her head like an approaching express train coming out of a dark tunnel. The funeral.. not being able to read the eulogy she had painstakingly written out longhand at home, while Katie had paced the room, reminding her every thirty seconds that they were gonna be fucking late.

Arriving late anyway, like extras from Four Weddings, barely making it before the poker faced ushers slowly paced in with the simple coffin on their shoulders. A small coffin...it was strange, Gina had always seemed larger than life, but her final resting place, before the flames consumed her, looked almost child sized.

Then spotting Naomi in the front row on the right, standing next to a strangely formal Kieran. When she turned and their eyes met, it felt just like the first time, all over again. Those luminous, ice blue eyes, staring straight back at her. For a second, Emily had frozen on the spot. It was like a whole 50,000 word script was being conveyed between them. Everyone and everything, including her sister and the plain wicker coffin being carried up the aisle, faded into the background. It was probably less than 3 seconds, but it felt like a whole lifetime.

"She's so fucking beautiful" Emily thought randomly, then mentally kicked herself for being so crass. Not that she wasn't beautiful...she always had been, even in the 'wear anything at all, so long as it doesn't match' days at college. But as reality seeped into Emily's overheated brain, this was hardly the time and place to casually lust after your ex, was it?

Not that anything to do with Naomi Campbell was ever casual.

But that was as good as it got for a while. Naomi turned back to the front as the coffin was placed on a bier and the official began the humanist service. Emily tuned him out, Katie keeping her more or less upright as she silently wept for the other Campbell woman she had loved and lost.

There were a couple of segments of music...one she vaguely recognised, the other a mystery, something classical anyhow. Then for some unaccountable reason, Katie was tugging her forward, down the aisle, towards the plain bier where the coffin lay...towards the girl who had broken her heart so badly, she still believed it might never be whole again. Emily started to protest...why was she..?

Then the folded piece of paper in her coat pocket bumped against her fingers. Oh...she thought...oh yeah, that.

But five steps further along, she stopped walking again. Katie hissed at her to get with the fucking program, or something equally lame, mined from one of the horrible American day time shows her twin enjoyed way too much. But Emily literally dug her heels in. The carpet was thin, but her shoes refused to budge.

"I can't Kay...I really can't. I thought I could but..." she stared miserably at the back of Naomi's head, willing her not to turn round. One more look into those deep eyes and she would lose all motor function.

For once in her life, Katie showed some actual empathy. Instead of trying to pull her along, she sighed and gestured to Emilys hand, in the pocket of her overcoat.

"Give me the fucking note. People are looking, Ems...someone has to do something now?"

Dumbly, Emily held out the creased white paper. But Katie wasn't done with taking charge...predictably. Grabbing the eulogy from her in her left hand, she pulled Emily forward with the other until they were level with Naomi and Kieran. Emily's heart pounded in her chest as Naomi turned towards them with a questioning look. Emily heard Katie say something to her ex in a low voice, while people whispered around them, but it was only when she was propelled forward again, into the row, that she really felt lost. Kieran, bless him, reached across and pulled the unresisting twin so that she was standing between him and Naomi.

Shockingly, she felt Naomi's cool hand take hold of hers. Her skin was chilled and clammy. But then, so was Emily's. Without thinking, Emily squeezed back. And Naomi squeezed again. Emily's heart continued to pound as she looked up at Naomi's face, gratitude written all over her own. Kieran put his arm round her and gently hugged too. In the midst of all this grief and melancholy, it was enough to make her feel a tiny bit better.

But it was after the mercifully brief service that things got even weirder. She didn't get the chance to have any sort of meaningful conversation with Naomi, other than the usual dumb platitudes, but she noticed, as they pulled up to the yellow fronted house...something else that made her heart lurch...that Naomi had got out of the car in front, clutching the piece of paper Katie had read from. She'd kept it.

Emily had no real idea why they'd even travelled back with the cortège. Her original plan had been to make an appearance, say a few genuinely warm words about Gina and then fade into the background waiting for an opportune moment to slip away. The pain in her heart over Gina's death was only ever magnified by the presence of her beautiful ex.

But it didn't work out that way. It wasn't as if she intended the words she'd written to mean more than they did. It wasn't a direct plea to get back with Naomi. They'd moved on hadn't they?...both of them. Different Uni's, different cities. They weren't the gauche schoolgirls they had been, were they? First love is overwhelming, but the facts were still the same. Naomi had cheated...and she couldn't bring herself to forgive her. End of…

Or so she thought.

An hour later, confidence boosted by a succession of overgenerous neat whiskeys (Kieran had waxed on way too much about the spelling difference between the Scotch stuff and the family sized bottle of Irish Jameson's he was filling everyone's glasses with), Emily didn't even notice that her sister had somehow left her alone there. If she'd been sober she might have detected a plan somewhere there...but she wasn't, so when she found herself in a corner of the kitchen, wedged up against Naomi as Gina's daughter fielded an endless succession of mourners anxious to offer yet more trite comments or anecdotes about her mum.

And she definitely wouldn't have agreed to 'can we get the fuck out of here?" that Naomi'd whispered in her ear as a lucky gap in the crowd presented itself.

'Out of here' turned out to be the very bedroom she had just woken up in. Going in, she'd told herself fiercely that it was just for a short while...just long enough to allow Naomi a few moments relief from the well meaning crowd of losers downstairs. A last look around a room which had given her intense pleasure and just as intense pain.

A few minutes that turned into an hour...then another one.

They ended up sitting, side by side, against the head rail, on the bed Emily thought she'd never see again, let alone sit on. The bed that had been their sanctuary through that heavenly, then hellish summer.

But while Emily was trying to keep some sort of grip on her feelings, trying too to limit the amount of neat vodka, Naomi kept pouring from the bottle into a tooth mug. (They hadn't dared go back downstairs...which made Naomi tearful all over again about leaving Kieran to deal with the mourners, but not enough to actually relieve him), it wasn't a very successful rearguard action. Torn between just being there for her ex, in her worst moments and the inevitable tug that this house, and bedroom had on her mind...Emily cuddled a weeping Naomi to her, listened to her misery and drank dutifully...just to keep her company.

She should have realised it was dangerous, mortally so. But vodka and pity are seductive playmates. They reminisced...they talked about old friends and Gina...they talked about everything but the fact that two estranged lovers were sitting on a bed which had seen the consummation of their teenage romance on many occasions...and

...and they fell asleep. Emily didn't know when, but the house was quiet downstairs, it was dark outside and Katie had found some way of slipping away, leaving them to it. If she had been sober… if she'd been more aware of just how dangerous this was. Emily would have made an excuse and left.

But waking up this morning with a champion hangover and Naomi's arm across her chest...the folly was all too evident. The only saving grace was that they were both still fully clothed. They hadn't actually done anything.

Even while she was thinking that, the echo of her awkward morning conversation with a certain 'friend' called Mandy came to her. No...even on that occasion, nothing had actually 'happened'. But Mandy's words about Emily wanting too but just being too pissed to go through with it, were way too close to this morning's events.

Carefully, Emily peeled Naomi's arm from over her. The blonde grumbled a bit, but was still right out of it. Small mercies, Emily thought grimly.

She inched her way off the bed, swaying as she tried unsuccessfully to stand up. Her head swam for a moment and her stomach gave definite signals about ejecting the neat spirit she had swallowed last night. But luckily, her Fitch constitution and a high capacity for alcohol saved her. Within a few seconds, she was able to stand and scour the bedroom floor for her shoes. Another bit of deja vu stabbed at her. But no standing at cold bus stops with Thomas for a saviour was going to help this morning. Dully, she slipped her black flats on and stood for a moment, looking down at the sleeping Naomi.

Still way too beautiful, she thought almost bitterly. Beautiful enough to hypnotise her all over again. She shook her head, hissing as the movement made her hangover thump harder. Not this time, she muttered to herself.

Looking around the room, she saw a small yellow pad on the dresser, together with a few coloured pencils. Knowing that what she was about to do was a perversion of what she'd done almost a year ago...nevertheless, she carefully scribbled on a page, tearing it off quietly and placing it gently on the pillow she had slept on last night. Then, silently she slipped out of the room, tiptoed downstairs and let herself out of the silent house. Gritting her teeth she told herself that this was for the best. It was just the sadness of the funeral, the alcohol, the proximity of a girl who had loved her fiercely but not quite enough to stop her cheating...this was the right thing to do..

An hour later a hungover and groggy Naomi opened her eyes The first thing she saw was the small yellow note. She almost smiled. Until she read it.

In Emily's absurdly childish script, there was just one word.

'Sorry'

XXX

More soon...and please stick with it if you can, it WILL get better?