Thanks, as always, for the reviews. I see that a lot of people hate Marcus now, (who can blame you? I created him and I hate his guts!) but I have had some questions regarding to why he doesn't want to take Ryan in himself, but doesn't want Abigail to take him. It will be revealed in a later chapter, but just to clear things up, I will say now that something happened in their childhood that caused Marcus too lose all trust in Abigail, even though she was only very young, and he has always treated her badly because of it.

Also, there is mention of an Aunt Marion in this chapter. She is very much on the same side as Marcus when it comes to Abigail. Abigail has done some rather unfortunate things to her, mentioned in this chapter, which were actually things I did to my own aunt when I was younger, and I just thought it would be good to see Abigail having a rather rebellious and reckless side when she was a child.

Sam

xx

It was no suprise to any of them that Abigail refused to eat dinner that night. She didn't want to be anywhere near Marcus. It was like they were five years old and had been arguing over their favourite toy, but on a much greater scale. Everytime Marcus came into the room, Abigail would leave, and when he tried to apologize later that evening as Elsa prepared dinner, she refused to listen to a word he said, telling him that what he said was unforgivable. She had sat watching Ben play a games console with Ryan which they had retrieved that afternoon from their parent's house, occassionally, Michael would play the winner of a match on the racing game, but it was nearly always Ryan who won, seeing as it took Ben at least an hour just to figure out which buttons to press to go forward, and Michael just let Ryan win for the sake of it.

Marcus had stayed out in the garden most of the time, speaking with Danny whilst he did some gardening, much to Abigail's happiness after everything he said to her. When Ben tried to comfort her she ignored him, as she did to Michael as well, insisting she was fine, even though they both knew what 'fine' meant to Abigail; and it wasn't good.

Abigail sat on the couch with Ryan, who was reading aloud from his Egyptian book which he had brought from the airport. She occassionally had to correct him on the pronounciation of a word, particularly the names, but other than that, he was showing a capability of reading that was more advanced than hers at that age, if that were possible. She could remember Marcus berating her for her reading, saying that it wasn't good for women to have an imagination. He's a sexist pig really, she thought.

Marcus walked through the room with Danny, but before Abigail even made her move to get up, he disappeared into the kitchen, so she simply avoided his gaze when he looked at her, and continued listening to Ryan. She could smell the food coming from the kitchen now; spaghetti bolognase, one of her favourite meals, and her aunt's cooking was near legendary; but Abigail wasn't hungry, at least, not hungry enough to sit with Marcus and eat. Elsa appeared in the doorway with a tea-towel in her hands, drying them off as she called them in.

"Your tea's ready you guys." Elsa said kindly.

"Do you mind if I eat later, Elsa, I'm not hungry right now?" Abigail asked her aunt.

"Of course not, hon, I understand." Michael had told her what Marcus had said to her, and she was as disgusted with her nephew right now as the rest of them were. "I'll put a plate aside for you to make sure this husband of yours doesn't eat it all." She said with a sweet smile.

"But your cooking is just too good, Elsa." Ben smiled as he stood from the chair opposite Abigail.

"Come on, Ryan, hon." Elsa encouraged.

"I'm not hungry either." He told Elsa, wanting to stay with his sister and read, but Abigail shook her head.

"No, sweetie, you've got to eat your dinner. It's your favourite."

Ryan moaned. "Abi.."

"No buts." Abigail said, not a tone of harshness in her voice. "You need to eat to make you big and strong." She told him. Reluctantly, he climbed off the sofa and went into the kitchen with Elsa.

As she closed his book, Abigail watched Ben sitting on the arm of the chair and looking down on her. "Abigail," He said softly, making sure that no one but her could hear them, "You need to eat."

"I will do," She assured him with a weak smile, but as before, it wasn't convincing. "But I'm not hungry right now." As if on cue, her stomach growled, and Ben fixed her with a meaningful stare. "I can't stand to be around him right now, I'm going to lay down for a while. I'll eat later on."

With the promise of eating at some point, Ben nodded, and stood from the chair. Abigail went upstairs as her husband disappeared into the kitchen.

Ben sat down at the large kitchen table beside Michael, and opposite Ryan. Marcus looked at the empty seat at the 8-seater table, then around the room. "Where's Abigail?" He asked.

"Like you care." Michael growled quietly.

"Of course I care, she's my sister too!" Marcus said harshly.

"Maybe you should have remembered that earlier when you treated her like trash!" Michael pointed out.

Ben didn't trust himself to get involved in this arguement. What Marcus had said about Abigail's ability to raise children had quite possibly hurt him as much as it had hurt her. Had it been someone who wasn't related to her, he wouldn't have thought twice about hitting him hard enough to knock him out for a few hours, but seeing as it was her brother, regardless of whether or not she liked him at that moment in time, he held back his urges to cause him considerable pain.

"Boys!" Elsa scolded. It was the most order-like Ben had heard her speak so far. "Not at the table!" She ordered, which with her sideways glance at her youngest nephew, Ben knew meant 'not infront of Ryan'. Ben completely agreed with Michael though.

Ryan laughed through the mealtime as Ben taught him how to slurp up the spaghetti peices one strand at a time, which Elsa was glad for. Ben seemed to be helping the young boy a lot by playing with him and she smiled herself whenever she saw Ryan laughing away with his brother-in-law. Michael and Marcus seemed to be shooting daggers at each other the whole time. If looks could kill, there would have been a mass murder.

Having finished his own meal quickly, Ben saw the plate upon the stove being kept warm for Abigail. With a glance at Elsa, started to clear up his plate. "I'm going to make sure that Abigail gets her dinner, if that's alright." Elsa nodded.

"Of course, Ben, I know for a fact that she has no intention of eating today, and she had hardley anything all day." Elsa told him, which made Ben all the more determined to take her the plate. Taking a cup of water in his other hand, he left the room to go upstairs.

When he entered their bedroom, he found Abigail lying flat on her back on the bed with her eyes closed. He would have thought her to be asleep if her hand hadn't been rubbing small circles on her lower stomach. He set the glass down on the bedside table, but ran the plate of spaghetti bolognase close to her face. Her nose twitched as the aroma of her favourite meal floated around her, and she slowly opened one eye. "This had better not be a compromise to get me downstairs." She warned him.

"Not at all." He told her, and she pushed herself up on her elbows, her hand still lain over her stomach.

She didn't take the plate off him as he offered it out to her, complete with cutlery, but instead she looked up at him with a pleading look. "Ben, what Marcus said earlier...you don't think it's true, do you?" She asked him worriedly.

Ben looked at her lovingly and put the spaghetti aside so he could lean down and kiss her. It was a long kiss, and Abigail took a few moments to catch her breath afterwards. As she opened her eyes once again, she found Ben still looking at her with unconditional love for her. "I don't think it's not true, I know it's not true." He assured her.

"He didn't know about the one we lost.." She told him. "He doesn't even care..."

"I'm sure he cares." Ben assured her. "Don't worry, everything's going to work out fine. Don't listen to anything he said today."

"But-"

"No buts." He said, repeating her words from earlier. "You are going to look after Ryan wonderfully, and you will be the best mother in the world."

Though his words meant a lot to her, Marcus had got to her a lot more than she'd intended to let him; but then again, she hadn't counted on him saying what he had said. "Maybe it isn't all that simple though," She wondered aloud.

"Maybe not." Ben agreed. "But it doesn't change anything. Who are you going to trust? Him, or everyone else?"

"You," She said with a firm nod. "I trust you."

"Now, I risked letting your brother's kill each other to bring you this food, are you going to eat it or leave it to go cold?" He asked.

"OK, OK, I'll eat it." She surrendered, sitting up properly and taking the plate from Ben as he offered it to her again.

"And remember you can always have double now seeing as you're eating for two now." Ben reminded her.

"Double? You want me to give birth to something that will be the same size as me?" She asked daringly. "I hear that a normal sized baby is painful enough."

"Good point." Ben said after some thought.

Abigail started eating, but after a few mouthfuls she stopped. Ben was lying back on the bed relaxing beside her. "So are Michael and Marcus still..."

"Trying to kill each other? Yeah." Ben said.

"Looks like tomorrow will be fun." Abigail said sarcastically. "I think Elsa said something about Aunt Marion coming round as well."

"Which one is Marion again?" Ben asked, not able to remember all of her aunts off the top of his head. Both her parents had had a lot of siblings, which in some ways was good, but in others was bad; particularly when they were talking to you for half an hour about something that they presumed you knew about.

"The one who doesn't like me." Abigail reminded. Oh yes, Ben remembered her, she hadn't thought very much of him either. The words imbecile, along with traitor to the country had been overheard in a few conversations at their wedding, along with desperate a few times in mention to Abigail. He supposed he wasn't very fond of her either, but he had smiled forcedly when he was introduced by Abigail's father to his eldest sister. "She did have a reason for it, but she should have go over it by now."

"Abigail, you spilt red wine over her white carpet," He pointed out.

"I was three!" She said defensively.

"And bent her ornamental spoons!"

"What sort of stupid person collects spoons?"

"And the cat?"

"The cat..." She tried to find a word suitable to describe what had happened to Marion's cat. "...was Michael's fault."

"Even though it was you who chased it out of the house?"

"Yes."

"And over the wall?"

"Yes."

"And straight under the wheel of a car?"

She feigned a hurt look. "Who's side are you on?" She asked accusingly.

"Yours as always, my love." He told her convincingly.

She gave up on dinner about half way through the plateful. Ben gave her a look as if to question it, "Me and the baby are full." She told him. "Remember, the baby's only small still."

"Yeah, our tiny baby." Ben said, filled with awe. He rubbed her stomach again. "I think I'm going to become addicted to this." He told her.

"Well, I'm not complaining." She replied, putting the plate aside, and lying down beside Ben. "Is it too early to say I'm going to sleep?" She asked, closing her eyes.

"Its 5pm. Way too early." He told her.

She sighed. "I don't care." She moaned. "I don't want to be around any one else but you for the rest of the day." She announced, and Ben drew her into his arms.

"Funny, seems like we've both got the same plan."