Chapter 2: A bumpy Ride
This chapter is a bit longer and is basically in canon. It follows the Sid/Cassie relationship through to Cassie's exile in Scotland. It also records the parallel happenings in the Tony/Michelle and Chris/Angie relationships.
The evening of the 'date' between Sid and Cassie was approaching. However, Sid had a problem. He was very much behind in his History course work, and an essay about Lech Walesa and the Polish Solidarity movement was more than somewhat overdue. The History tutor called Sid's parents in for a meeting about their son's work. A deadline was set for the completion of the essay, and Sid's father grounded him until it was finished. What Mark Jenkins didn't realise was that this would prevent Sid from going on his proposed first proper date with his sweet Cassie. Later that day, he met Her in college and told her about the situation. She accepted, and said she might call on Sid that evening anyway. Another factor was the hold Tony had over Sid, who he still regarded as his somewhat dumb sidekick. That evening, Tony was to sing at a choir concert at the private girls' school over the green from Roundview. In fact, he would be singing a duet with Abigail Stock. Michelle would also be at the concert.
Tony was intending to spend the latter part of the evening, and possibly the night with Abigail, whom he found physically attractive. Obviously, he would want Michelle to be out of the way. This is why he called on Sid and 'twisted his arm' to go to the choir concert with him. Sid was not getting very far with his assignment, and felt that a break might do him some good. What he didn't know was Tony's real reason for wanting him there, which was to 'pick up the pieces' after the inevitable staged row he was going to have with Michelle.
The duet between Tony and Abigail happened just before the interval. Michelle, understandably became very jealous, and stormed into Tony's dressing room, followed by Sid and Chris. When she burst into the dressing room, she found Tony and Abigail in a state of partial undress, with Tony's hand apparently caressing Abigail's bare midriff. Tony made an excuse about checking Abigail's diaphragm contractions. Michelle exploded with rage. Abigail responded with a tirade of obscene insults, which surprised everyone. Sid even commented "Good swearing!". One of the insults was to call Michelle a 'horse-fucker'. Michelle made an angry exit, storming right out of the hall. On his way out, following Michelle, Sid mentioned to Abigail, as he passed her, that Michelle would never fuck a horse.
On her way home, Michelle, who was striding along with her arms folded looking angry, encountered a gang of drunken girls who were looking for trouble. They refused to let her pass. By the time Sid arrived, they were beating her up. He intervened, letting Michelle escape, but he was beaten up himself, and lost consciousness. He was brought back to the land of the living by a vagrant urinating on him. He got up and went home. Some evening that was! However, his troubles were not yet over.
He limped back to his house and opened the front door. He tried to go upstairs silently, but stumbled, alerting his father, who was very angry because he had still gone out despite being grounded. This triggered a blazing row between his parents, Sid went upstairs to find a very agitated Cassie in his bedroom. She asked what the smell was. He explained that it was someone else's piss. He also said that he was out. When Cassie asked him "Who with?", he gave the worst possible answer: "Michelle.". Cassie now felt hurt and betrayed. After pointing out to Sid that whatever happened was his choice, she stormed out, slamming the door. It seemed that by doing his best friend, Tony a favour, he had lost his beautiful potential girlfriend, and alienated both his parents. Things could not get worse, he thought.
Oh yes, they could! The next morning, Sid's mother drove him to college, and explained that she was leaving his father. She implored Sid to try to get on with him. When he reached the college, he arrived in the history class and was told off, not only for his delayed coursework, but also for wearing sunglasses in class. Removing them revealed that he had a black eye, and earned him another reprimand for fighting. He also realised that Michelle had not come to college.
What followed next was a particularly unfortunate sequence of events. Tony persuaded Sid to phone Michelle to see if she was alright. Once he had calmed her down, he arranged to meet her at lunchtime in Ronnie Fazer's bar. Cassie was standing at the end of a line of lockers, and overheard Sid's half of the conversation. She drew her own conclusions, that Sid had betrayed her with Michelle, and that she no longer had any future with him - or with anyone. Her heart was shattered. She walked away.
Sid met Michelle, as arranged, and they got talking, settling their differences. After a while, one of Michelle's favourite tracks came up on the music system and the couple danced to it. This might have been okay, but for the arrival of Tony, who reclaimed Michelle, leaving Sid on his own. Could things get any worse for Sid?
Yes! They could - and did. While Tony was making it up with Michelle over his actions during the previous twenty-four hours, Sid tried to phone Cassie, only to have the call answered by Jal, from an ambulance.
Cassie had gathered together as many pills as she could muster, added a bottle of vodka, and gone up to one of her favourite benches on Brandon Hill. For some time, she contemplated the view of Bristol from this vantage point, while preparing herself for death. She took the pills, washing them down with the vodka, which she squirted into her mouth using Sid's little water pistol. When she had swallowed all the pills, a melancholy waltz came into her head. She got up onto the bench, and danced round and round to it, until she lost consciousness. But for Jal's chance arrival shortly afterwards, she could have died of her overdose. Jal called an ambulance and travelled with the comatose Cassie to hospital. It was on this journey that Cassie's phone rang. Jal answered it and explained the situation. Sid went to the hospital, but was soon ordered out as he was not a family member. Jal had lied that she was Cassie's sister.
Sid was now in the worst situation that he could envisage. He felt he had blown his potential relationship with the most beautiful girl he was ever likely to meet. He was no longer on good terms with Michelle and no longer trusted Tony. He did the only thing within his power to improve things. While he was powerless to do anything about his social life and his relationships, he could, at least do something about his History coursework. He worked through the night on his Lech Walesa essay, so that he could present it in the morning.
A couple of days later, Jal was sitting at Cassie's hospital bedside. She was standing in for Marcus, Cassie's father as he was in London arranging the sale of a painting, Margherita was at home, looking after little Reuben. Cassie regained consciousness and wanted to know where she was. Jal explained what had happened and persuaded Cassie that the goings-on involving Michelle and Sid at the choir concert, were the result of a situation deliberately set up by Tony, so he could spend the night with Abigail. She did also persuade Cassie that Sid still loved her, and that the events of the previous week had broken his heart as well. Cassie realised that she could not do much to restore the situation as she was almost certain to have to spend several weeks in the clinic before she she could sort things out with Sid.
Sid, meanwhile was throwing himself into his college work, in order to divert his thoughts from the state of his relationship with Cassie. One major diversion was a field trip to Russia to see what life was like in that country. This excursion proved significant for a number of reasons. A conspiracy he entered into with Anwar to seduce a young Russian girl called Anka did, at least, serve to keep his mind occupied for a lot of the time. Another successful foray into the bed department was Chris, finally managing to seduce the psychology tutor, Angie. The trip was also the last straw in Michelle's relationship with Tony, as she witnessed him performing a gay sex act with a naked Maxxie. Tony had assumed that she was 'out for the count' after a somewhat drunken evening in a local bar, but she was conscious enough to realise what was happening. On their return from Russia, Michelle threatened to dump Tony, unless he declared that he totally loved her, hopefully to the exclusion of anyone else, particularly Abigail. Tony was not able to commit himself, so it appeared that his intense and long-standing relationship with Michelle was over.
Michelle decided that, having dumped Tony, her future might lie with Sid. He did, after all, love her, and had had a crush on her for nearly as long as she had known Tony. She called on him, only to find that his heart was now with Cassie, who at the time was incarcerated in the Restoration Clinic. She took him to visit the clinic, only to find that Cassie was now apparently in a relationship with a young lad called Simon, one of the other patients. While Sid was talking to Cassie, Michelle arranged a date with Josh, the son of the clinic's proprietor, and Abigail's brother. They were to meet one lunchtime at Mud Dock, an upstairs café by the Floating Harbour.
By coincidence, Tony was in the café at the time, and saw Michelle leaving with Josh, obviously going somewhere where they could be intimate with each other. Tony decided to take some somewhat ill-advised action. He persuaded Abigail to strip naked, and took some photographs of her body on the pretext that he was doing a project concerning the human body. He then arranged to have Josh's mobile phone stolen, and used it to send some of these pictures to all Josh's contacts, including Michelle. While this worked with Michelle up to a point, in that it did have the intended effect of turning her against Josh. However, Josh did not take this lying down. He arranged for Tony's sister Effy to be abducted, and lured Tony to the Ston Eaton Sports club where he was to try to get Tony to rape his own sister while she was drugged unconscious. Before this, however, Tony had been driving around Bristol with Sid desperately looking for his missing sister. While he was searching, Sid kept on catching sight of Cassie, but she disappeared as soon as she sensed that he'd seen her. Tony received a message from Effy's abductors luring him to Cumberland Basin. When Sid and Tony got there, there was no-one around. He taunted Sid about having a girlfriend who tried to kill herself. Sid saw red, had a fight with Tony and stormed off, leaving Him stranded.
Sid, feeling lonely, having now lost both his girlfriend and his best friend, went to an all-night café to calm down. At this point, he had his only good idea of the night. He phoned Cassie. After a while, she arrived at the café and Sid started to try to set things right between them. They embraced and kissed, and started to make up their differences. Unfortunately, their potential reconciliation was interrupted by a phone call from Michelle. It's a pity the saying 'Two pairs of eyes are better than one.' didn't occur to Sid. Michelle wanted him to find Tony, who was in some sort of trouble. Despite the fight, and his fractured relationship with his best friend, Sid said "I've got to go", and went off to help Tony, leaving Cassie in tears in the café, nursing a broken heart once again. She was beginning to feel that Sid, despite his apparent feelings for her, was just cruelly 'playing' with her emotions.
For the next week or two, nobody was happy. Tony was being avoided by his friends, who saw him as the guilty party in the spat with Michelle. Michelle herself was refusing to have anything to do with her now former boyfriend. Sid felt he had totally lost his Cassie with no chance of a second reconciliation. Cassie was the only person having at least a tolerable time. She was an in-patient in the restoration clinic, and was forming a very strong friendship with her clinic roommate, Katie. She had found a soulmate in Katie and the two girls appeared to understand each other.
The day of Anwar's seventeenth birthday was to prove eventful, even fateful. As soon as Cassie was awake, she set out to write a letter to Sid, finally breaking off their relationship and explaining that she was being taken by her parents to Elgin in Scotland. At the same time, Sid was writing a note to his sweet Cassie declaring his total love for her. In total desperation, and wearing Bermuda shorts, his 'Megadog' t-shirt and ill matched shoes, he went out of his house without his keys or the note, and ran all the way to the Restoration Clinic. Meanwhile, Cassie was absconding from the clinic for the day with her new best friend to have a last look round Bristol and deliver the letter to Sid's home. She felt she couldn't face him in person as she would break down in tears. When he arrived, Sid had missed her by about two seconds. He was dishevelled, with some leaves in his beanie, and almost incoherent. He tried, breathlessly to explain that he desperately wanted to see someone, triggering the 'megadog' t-shirt's barking nose when he put his hand over his heart, as he tried to describe his problem. He was locked in a padded cell 'for his own safety' until it was decided what to do with him.
While Cassie was having her 'last' look at Bristol with her new best friend Katie, she was asked in an indirect way what she would miss most. She admitted that despite her cold relationship with him at the present time, the person she would miss most was Sid. In the depths of her gentle heart, she still loved him.
Another relationship about to be broken up was that between Chris and Angie. This was because Angie's absent fiancé, Merve, had suddenly turned up out of the blue from Australia.
Everything came to a head in the evening at Anwar's seventeenth birthday party. Tony had collected Sid from the clinic, got him to change into some more suitable clothes and delivered him to the party venue, with the request to 'Go and find Cassie.'. Just after he entered, Cassie arrived outside the hall, with Katie. She explained that she didn't want to see Sid in person. Tony gave her Sid's note. He had already given Cassie's letter to Sid when he collected her from the clinic. Tony couldn't go in to the party as he was 'keeping an eye' on Effy, who was now no longer trusted to go out on her own because of the drug incident with Josh.
Shortly after Tony, Cassie and Katie left the party venue, Merve, Angie's fiancé turned up at the club accompanied by two of his thugs with the intention of dealing with Chris once and for all. When he approached Angie, she let him know in no uncertain terms that the engagement was off. This enraged Merve so much that he punched Chris, knocking him down. This gave the two 'heavies' the only excuse they needed to beat up everyone in sight.
In the mayhem that followed, Sid managed to retreat to a toilet and read Cassie's letter, which broke his heart. She didn't know why, but Cassie made her way to Brandon Hill, after leaving Katie back at the clinic. When Sid left the club, something also impelled him to go to Brandon Hill. He found Cassie there, sitting on one of the benches, reading his note. They said tearful farewells to each other and declared their love. Sid promised to keep in touch with his Cassie in the hope that that they might get together again at some time in the not too distant future.
Meanwhile, Tony had driven to a quiet side street and was using his mobile phone to try to talk to Michelle. Once he had persuaded her to listen to him, he told her that she was the only one for him, and that he loved her. He was in a poor signal area, so he had moved out into middle of the road, to get a better mobile signal. He was wearing dark clothes, so he wasn't very visible. Within a second of him declaring his love for Michelle, he was hit by a bus, and knocked unconscious.
At the end of this eventful day, Cassie was on her way to Scotland with her parents. Sid was already beginning to miss her and feeling lonely. Michelle knew that Tony did, after all, love her, but was wondering what had happened to cause the phone conversation she was having with him to end so suddenly. Tony, meanwhile was taken to hospital with a suspected subarachnoid haemorrhage and would take some time to recover. The only relationship within the 'gang' now was the new friendship between Jal and Chris.
Sid was prevented from dwelling too deeply on the loss of Cassie, by spending hours at a time by the comatose Tony's bedside talking to him and waiting for him to regain consciousness. Michelle did keep him company from time to time, as she was just as worried about Tony as Sid. Cassie was as good as her word and frequently contacted Sid via email, frequently attaching videos showing her enjoying herself in Elgin. One factor that worried Sid was that she seemed to be getting very friendly with two very good-looking Young Scotsmen. What he did not know was that they were a gay couple, and would have no physical interest in Cassie. Sid felt powerless, as he was unable to do anything about the apparent situation from five hundred miles away.