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Rachel saw him long before he saw her. He was walking up the driveway, as fast as he could with his head down, bag slung over his shoulder. She had her arms crossed, leant by the steps which meant he was almost on top of her when he realised someone was standing in front of him and hastily looked up, blanching when he saw her waiting. "Hi Rach?"

"Hi. Miss your alarm this morning?"

Phillip looked sheepish. "Something like that..."

She didn't smile, moving closer to him. "This is the third day this week you've been late, and it's Wednesday. What's going on?"

He shoved his hand in his pockets, looking at the floor as he shrugged.

"Phillip." She waited for him to look at her. "It's just me. What's going on?"

"Nothing."

"I don't believe that for a moment."

He remained silent, but so did she and as she watched, he began to shift uncomfortably, glancing at her and then quickly looking away. She didn't give in, and her persistence won out.

"It's Mum," Phillip blurted, and she had to resist the urge to groan. Of course it was. "She just... she can't cope in the mornings."

"What do you mean?"

He scuffed his toe against the playground, looking for all the world like a little boy. "She can't manage to look after Lacey and do all of her meds, and she doesn't feel great first thing anyway which makes it even harder."

She frowned, not understanding. "That's why she has Maria."

"She says she doesn't want Maria to take care of Lacey all the time. Says it'll affect her attachments and bonding."

"Because she's the expert," Rachel muttered, shaking her head in disbelief. "Regardless, this can't carry on. Lacey isn't your responsibility."

"She's my sister!"

"That's exactly my point." She pinned him with a look. "You have a breaktime detention for being late."

"But Rach-!"

She held up a hand to stop him before his protest could go further. "I can't bend the rules because you're my nephew. I will talk to your mother as her sister, but Phillip you're in sixth form now, you have to take some responsibility. You need to come to school on time. Everyone else manages it."

He looked unhappy, a scowl settling over his face and she sighed. "Alright, headteacher bit over. Get to class."

He walked off without a word, face set into unhappy lines and she resisted the urge to sigh again. Her first instinct was to call her sister and tear into her, but the logical part of her brain told her that probably wouldn't end well while she was this riled up. Instead, she headed to her office and made herself a drink, hoping to calm herself down enough that she wouldn't say something she might end up regretting.

"Did you give him detention?"

She turned to look at Max, stood in the doorway of the office. "I beg your pardon?"

"Phillip Ryan. Did you give him detention?"

Her confusion must have shown on her face.

"I saw you intercept him. This is the third time this week he's been late."

She really didn't like that he knew that. "Yes," she answered stiffly. "Since when do you care about the kids being late?"

He simply raised an eyebrow at her, and vanished back into the office.

Rachel's teeth ground together as she took a deep breath and resisted the urge to throw the cup she was holding at Max's head.

W.R.

Rachel had tried over and over to call Melissa, and every time the phone had rung for what seemed like an age before going to voicemail. So finally, she resigned herself to visiting in person, a worried Phillip letting her into the house with an anxious glance in her direction. "I'm home! And Rachel's with me!"

She quirked an amused eyebrow at him, just as Melissa appeared in the doorway of the living room, Lacey in her arms. "Rach! What are you doing here?"

"I needed to talk to you. Maria not here?"

"She nipped out to grab some formula- I knocked the last tin off the side by accident. Do you want tea?" This was called over her shoulder as she retreated further into the room to put Lacey down, and Rachel shook her head slightly in disbelief. It was just like Melissa to act as if nothing had happened.

"No, thanks." She followed her into the room as her nephew quickly ran upstairs. "Mel, we need to talk about Phillip."

"Phil? He's fine."

"No, he isn't." She crossed her arms. "He's been late to school every day this week. He was late twice last week- it would have been three if his form tutor hadn't done the register at the end of form time."

Melissa rolled her eyes. "So he's a few minutes late? It's not as if he's missing entire days."

"No, but he is missing parts of his lessons! He turned up in the middle of first period yesterday, that's almost an hour late!"

"You're so stressy, Rach. Phillip's fine."

"Melissa!" Now, the blonde finally looked at her. "You cannot use Phillip as your live-in help in the mornings. He needs to come to school on time, to go to his lessons. It's not good for him to start the day stressed about whether he'll be on time or not! He's already had one detention- if he keeps being late it'll get worse."

"Phillip's a big boy, why haven't you spoken to him?"

Her jaw dropped. "I have! But you keep using him to help with Lacey!"

"Oh, it's always my fault. You are so determined to make me out to be the bad guy, aren't you?" Melissa's eyes flashed, her arms crossing defensively.

"You are the bad guy here! You're his mother! Phillip is sixteen, he should not be responsible for your baby!"

"You do not get to tell me how to parent my children!"

"Then maybe you start doing it properly!" Rachel snapped. "For God's sake, Mel, he's still a child himself! You are the adult, start acting like it!"

"Because little-miss-perfect knows everything!"

She ground her teeth together, breathing deeply. "You know what? I'm not perfect. Just about the opposite, in fact. But at least I've never purposefully hurt my family. I've never committed bigamy, or abandoned my child. If we're playing the blame game, Melissa I'm going to win. So shall we skip it?"

"I never hurt you!"

She scoffed, and rose to her feet. "Alright, I'm done."

"Rachel!"

"Mel, if you can't even admit that you hurt me, we can't have this conversation and I've said my piece about Phil."

Melissa looked wide eyed, flushing red. "I didn't mean to hurt you," she offered timidly.

"No? Then answer me one question- why did you come to the school that day before summer?"

She looked confused. "I don't understand."

"Why did you come to the school in the middle of the day?" Rachel repeated. "You could have come to one of our houses, you could have come before school or after. Instead you chose to come to Waterloo Road in the middle of the day, not even in class time. Why?"

"I... I don't..."

"Because you wanted to cause the maximum damage," Rachel finished coldly. "You wanted everyone to know you were pregnant and with Eddie's baby. Whether you were aware Eddie and I were together or not, you knew that would hurt me and you knew it would be staffroom gossip for months!"

A range of emotions flashed across Melissa's face. "I didn't think..."

She threw her a spiteful look. "Now there's a shocker."

Melissa flinched, and immediately guilt washed over her. But she shoved it down, refusing to cede as she had so often before. "You've made it perfectly clear how you feel about me, Mel," she said tiredly. "I don't know what the hell I did to make you hate me so much, but I can't do this with you anymore. It's breaking my heart."

She swung her bag to her shoulder, but hadn't even made it to the door before Melissa called out her name. She didn't turn back, merely paused. "Stop using Phillip as your grunt worker, Mel. Apart from anything else, things have changed at school. I might not be able to protect him."

By the time Melissa had managed to scramble after her, she was already in her car and pulling away, and so managed to hide her tears. She was supposed to be going to Eddie's that night, had excitedly planned dinner with him days ago but she didn't even think of it- she went straight home, falling onto the sofa and losing her fight against the full-blown sobs that she'd barely been managing to hold back.

W.R.

It was almost two hours later when Eddie let himself in, small lines of concern set into his face. Rachel had supposed to have been coming to his- she hadn't showed up, wasn't answering her phone and he was more than a little worried. It wasn't like her. She was painstakingly organised, almost to the point of ridiculousness on occasion so he didn't believe for a moment that she'd merely forgotten and he couldn't think of a single reason that she would have been held up for this long and unable to even send him a text. Which left only a few options on why she hadn't arrived, and none of them were particularly good.

The worry abated only slightly when he caught sight of her bag dropped to the floor in front of the stairs. At least he knew she was in the house, though it didn't rule out an injury or something. The lights downstairs were all off, casting the entire floor into darkness and so he was about to head straight upstairs, when he glanced into the living room and just happened to catch sight of Rachel's feet curled over the sofa.

She was asleep, far from peaceful looking. With tear tracks visible on her cheeks and her brow slightly furrowed, it was obvious that something was wrong and Eddie felt his stomach drop as he wondered what could have happened now. But since she didn't seem physically hurt, he didn't wake her. Instead, there was a throw on the back of the other sofa and he grabbed it, intending to cover Rachel with the soft material only before he could, his eye was caught by the object she was holding loosely in her hand. A photo frame, he saw, with a picture of her and Melissa in it.

He supposed that answered one question. Carefully, he eased it out of her grip and placed it on the side before unfolding the blanket over her. She barely stirred. It was easy enough to back out of the room without making a sound and quietly close the door behind him, leaving Rachel to sleep while he wandered to the kitchen. He could only hope that whatever Melissa had done now wouldn't set her sister back too far, he thought as he poured himself a glass of wine before beginning to look for dinner ideas.

Rachel had been shopping at the weekend, so thankfully there was plenty in the fridge for him to hunt through, finding the ingredients for a simple curry that he threw his entire concentration behind making, to avoid going to the house of a certain blonde and ripping her apart. He didn't even notice when one glass of wine became three as he cooked.

When Rachel woke a little while later, it was to a silent house, dimly lit and almost echoing as she wandered out of the living room, unsure why she was so positive she wasn't alone. "Eddie?"

There was no answer. The kitchen was bare, no noises in the house as she walked through, bare feet chilled by the cool floors. "Eddie?" she called again, listening intently. She turned, intending to look upstairs but instead gasped when she found a little girl in front of her. For a long moment, they stared at each other.

"Lacey?" Rachel probed tentatively, recognising the chocolate eyes. But the dress she was wearing… she remembered that dress. It had been Melissa's, she'd grown out of it and Rachel had sold it in a bag of other clothes to a woman down the road. Melissa had been so angry, she refused to speak to Rachel for days and 'accidentally' spilt juice all over her schoolbooks. The little girl gazed back at Rachel, whose mouth had gone dry, heart pounding in her chest. "Why are you here?"

The girl tilted her head, and then smiled. But it was the kind of smile that should never have appeared on a child's face- it was cruel and calculating, her eyes hardening and as her mouth opened, black spilled out.

Rachel didn't have a word for it. The colour of oil, but like smoke, not quite a liquid that spilled down her chin, her throat, soaking into that blue dress and encompassing the little girl. "Lacey?" As soon as it touched the floor, it seemed to melt and Lacey along with it, vanishing into the ground as Rachel let out a startled cry and stumbled backwards.

But the ground fell away beneath her feet and she turned, puzzled, to see what was going on behind her. She was met by the sight of a wall of that same blackness. That same instant, she was enveloped in it, unable to even draw breath to scream as it paralysed her.

She thrashed, fighting it only to feel a sharp pain across her shoulder that had her gasping in a gulp of air, eyes opening as she stared in bewilderment around her, heart racing in her ears. Her own living room looked back at her, and she could smell curry from somewhere. She shifted, winced as the wooden support of the sofa dug deeper into her shoulder, and manage to break one arm out of the constricting blanket, throwing it off as quickly as she could.

Hang on… blanket? She looked at it blankly, knowing she hadn't pulled it onto herself. It took her a minute, and the sight of the closed door, but she quickly realised what must have happened. She muffled a groan, quickly rising to her feet and following the smell of food to the kitchen.

"I'm so sorry. I missed dinner."

From his place by the hob, Eddie turned in surprise at her voice. "Don't be silly. We just have a different dinner than planned."

She came forward, slid her arms around him and held on tightly. "I'm sorry."

"Didn't I just say not to be?" He gave her a grin, which was only weakly returned. She was being a fairly awful girlfriend at the moment, and he had put up with a lot more than most men would have. He pressed a kiss to her head before resting his cheek against her. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Warmth curled in her chest, settled there as she closed her eyes for a moment. "No," she murmured. "I don't even want to think right now."

She stretched up, captured his lips with hers. He tasted strongly of the red wine he'd obviously been drinking, and she pulled back with a small frown, finding her gaze drawn to the bottle on the side despite herself. "How much have you had?"

He followed her eyes, and flushed. "Not much," he defended weakly. "It's only wine after all."

When she turned to look at him, there was no judgement in her expression, only tiredness and resignation. "Look what she does to us," she murmured, upset. "She doesn't even have to have contact with you to drive you to drink."

"Seeing what she does to you is enough."

She cupped his cheek for a single beat, before tipping her head up and kissing him again. It was just a little too hard, a little too desperate and when he attempted to soften it, she responded by kissing even harder, "Please?" she whispered, nipping at his bottom lip. "Please, Eddie…"

He walked them backwards, fumbled with the knobs of the hob to turn off the heat, his other hand pressed against the small of her back to hold her to him. As soon as he'd managed it, her fingers were tugging at his shirt, undoing the buttons and simultaneously pulling him closer, tilting her hips against him.

He scooped her up onto the side and her legs wrapped around his waist, ensuring there wasn't even an inch of space between the two of them. Almost painfully tightly, and he barely managed to tear his mouth from hers, cup her face to force her to look at him. "I don't want to hurt you…"

"You won't," she promised desperately, hand around the back of his neck to try to move him closer. "Please, Eddie. I don't want to think anymore. I don't with you. Please."

He didn't know whether it was her pleading words, the despair in her tone or his own inability to deny her something she so wanted, but he couldn't say no. And so his lips found hers again, hands sliding to the hem of her top as her nails scraped down his back and they toppled together into blazing flames.