Author's notes: Sorry, I should have mentioned that I wouldn't be able to up-date until today, I promised my very long suffering other half that I wouldn't go near the lap top over the weekend as we had a lot of family stuff planned.

The Day I Went Missing

"Sod off" Molly's greeting was straight to the point as he stood up from his perch on the grubby step outside their front door; she had a bottle of wine and a carrier bag swinging from the hand that wasn't clutching her housemate.

"Can I talk to you?"

"Nah, I'm going indoors with Matt here and I'm gonna drink some wine and then I'm gonna eat loads of chocolate and then I'm gonna drink some more wine, and I don't ever wanna talk to you ever again, never, ever again …. bye"

"I really am sorry, you know"

"Are you? Am I supposed to give a shit?" Molly shrugged as though she couldn't care less whether he was sorry or not, and Charles realised that she sounded as though she was drunk.

Matt took his key out of the pocket of his jeans and unlocked the small door next to the entrance to the shop and banged the timer button inside to turn the lights on over the stairs, all the time shooting Charles extremely dubious looks over his shoulder and trying to reassure himself that this was the bloke that he'd seen her talking to earlier in the evening. When she'd come back to their table and told him that she wanted to leave straight away, she hadn't mentioned him at all, but it was obvious now that they were definitely not strangers. Matt was hovering just inside the front door unsure of whether it was safe to leave her there on her own because it would seem that she had a real problem with him.

"You going to be alright Molls?"

"Yeah, he's just going" She appeared to Matt to be sobering up remarkably quickly and was no longer laughing or slurring her words and she also seemed to have forgotten that she'd been complaining bitterly about being desperate for a wee as they'd made their unsteady way back along the sea front.

"I should have listened to you shouldn't I? I didn't even start to listen, I didn't even try. I know I was a complete arse when I didn't stop and think and I didn't give you a proper chance to explain and I'm really, really sorry that I didn't"

"Is that it?"

"Yep, I don't know what else I can say"

"Okay, well if that's what you came here to say, you've said it now, so you can sod off" She pushed past Matt into the hallway and started to clamber up the stairs without looking back at Charles who was standing outside the front door as Matt dithered as to whether or not he should shut the door in his face "and I need a wee"

"I really wanted to ask you about your medal" Charles called up the stairs to her retreating back, he couldn't think of anything else to say that might stop her walking away from him for the second time that evening.

"How the fuck did you know about that, who told you?"

Molly had stopped dead half way up the stairs and turned round to face him, looking him in the face for the first time since she'd got home and found him waiting outside. She had an expression of pure horror on her face.

"No-one told me, I looked you up, it's all on-line"

"What else was there, what else did you find out about me?"

"Nothing" He stepped inside the doorway "Will you let me come up for a few minutes so that you can tell me what all this is about, I promise, just a few minutes and you can tell me and I'll just listen, then I'll go"

"I don't want you to come up; I want you to leave me alone"

"Okay, if you don't want me to come up we can have this conversation with you on the stairs needing a wee and me out in the street, where it's bloody freezing by the way"

"I'll get Matt to shut you out"

"Matt's not going to shut me out, and he's not going to throw me out either" He looked at Matt who was now stepping from one foot to the other, obviously wishing he wasn't involved in whatever was going on here. He'd had more than enough to drink for one night and he wanted to get his head down and anyway he didn't fancy his chances against someone who not only looked fit, but was at least ten inches taller than him and about twice as broad as his skinny frame.

"Leave me out of this, Molls"

"Oh, thanks a bloody bunch mate"

Molly pulled a face as she turned and started back up the stairs without saying anything else to Charles, she was aware he was following her but didn't know how to stop him or even if she wanted to any more. She knew that she was being really unfair blaming him for everything that had gone wrong between them, she was the one who'd deceived him not the other way round, and she was beginning to wish that she hadn't already drunk the best part of a bottle of cheap wine, she couldn't think straight, her head was muzzy and she was desperate for a wee.

-OG-

Matt had disappeared through one of the doors on the landing and closed it firmly behind him, leaving Charles on the landing leaning up against a very meagre work surface in the tiny kitchenette which was next to the door that Molly had vanished through, presumably the bathroom. The lights on the stairs had gone out, the timer had obviously switched them off and Charles couldn't see where the switch was in the dark, so he was left standing in the pitch black, wondering whether it actually was the bathroom she'd gone into and not her bedroom so that he'd be left standing on this cold and draughty landing all night.

The noise of the toilet flushing followed by water running came as a relief as she flung the door open, the light from the bathroom briefly illuminating the space where he stood, before Molly pulled the cord and switched it off, plunging them back into pitch blackness.

"You still here? I thought you was gonna sod off"

He didn't bother to answer as she opened the door next to Matt's room and went in, leaving the door open for him to follow as she turned the light on and went and closed the thin cotton curtains. He looked around and tried his best not to pull a face, to say the room was basic was flattering, it was small and grotty, scrupulously clean and tidy, but it struck cold, the faded wallpaper was starting to peel off under the window and it smelt very damp. He was used to small, basic rooms in barracks, but not like this, this was immensely depressing and he felt an overwhelming guilt that he was responsible for her living here and not at Royal Crescent. She put on a small electric fire which would struggle to fight off the damp chill of the room and then went and fed a meter from the small pile of coins on the window sill.

The room was dominated by a smallish double bed and there was nowhere else to sit, so she sat cross legged at the top and leaned back against the wall then looked at him as he sat on the foot of the bed with his head down, looked at his feet then turned his head sideways to look at her.

"What do you wanna know?"

"What happened, and why you didn't tell me you've got a bloody Military Cross and why you told me you hadn't served in Afghan?"

"I never, I never said I was there and I never said I wasn't, I never told you nothing about me, and I don't talk about getting a bleeding medal because it was the worst fucking thing that's ever happened to me, okay? and I really wanted to forget it, so, if that's it, you can sod off now"

"Why was it the worst thing that ever happened to you?" He again ignored what she'd said about him leaving.

"Because" she swallowed hard "as well as the bloody medal I got meself a bleeding stalker, and if you bust me I'll have to shift me arse and move somewhere else and start over and I don't want to, I like it here"

"How do you mean, bust you?"

"There's a" she shrugged and hesitated, then shrugged again "a sort of warrant out for me arrest"

"Shit, Molly, what the fuck for? I thought you said you hadn't done anything illegal" He thought for a minute then laughed a bit nervously "You didn't shoot him, did you?"

"Wish I had"

She'd opened her bottle of wine and was swigging it back out of a large coffee mug so that Charles started to worry about how pissed she was going to get if she kept on doing that for much longer.

"Is that a good idea?" He nodded at the bottle as she picked it up from the floor next to the bed and went to top up her mug again "You're going to feel horrible in the morning"

"Why, want some?" She waved the bottle in his direction, saying whoops as some wine slopped out of the bottle onto her dress and the duvet next to where she'd stretched her legs out.

"No thanks, I'm driving"

"Oh, are you going sod off now? … Bye"

"No I'm not" He got up from the end of the bed and went and sat next to her, taking the coffee mug of wine out of her hand and putting it on the floor next to his side of the bed, and then with just a brief struggle removed the wine in the same way as she'd started to swig it straight out of the bottle "Tell me what happened?"

"It's none of your fucking business"

"I know it's not, but I want to know what happened to you" He waved a hand round the room "Why is there a warrant?

"There was this subpoena thing for me to go to court and … I know I said I wasn't AWOL, but I might have been, just a little bit, sort of for a couple of days"

"Don't tell me you ignored a subpoena?"

"Okay"

"Okay what?"

"Okay, I won't tell you"

"Christ alive, how did someone who got a Military Cross end up ignoring a subpoena, going AWOL and living in a shit-hole like this?"

"What, apart from shagging some bleeding Rupert you mean?"

"I presume you're talking about me and not some other Rupert"

"Course I'm talking about you"

"Well then, yep, apart from that" He put his arm round her shoulders and squeezed "I know a lot of this is my fault, you living here, I mean, but when you got this stalker it was way before you met me, so why the fuck didn't you report it? Why didn't you get the army or even the civvie police to deal with him?"

"Because he is the army, dickhead, that's why"

"Before I got the bleeding medal I was happy, you know, loved what I was doing, well most of the time, and I never really thought I should have got it anyway, I were just doing me job, but after, well the first few weeks were magic, and then I got deployed back to Afghan and it was just like the first time to start with except me new boss was a bit of a perv. I didn't really know him, it was a different lot to the first time, because first go I was a battle casualty replacement, sort of temporary, but this was supposed to be permanent"

She took a deep breath and gave him a sideways glance to check on his expression as she bent her knees, putting her arms round them and resting her chin on top as she stared into space, remembering.

"The lads were okay, more than okay once they'd stopped taking the piss all the time, they were a good bunch and they seemed almost proud of me, or so they kept saying, mind they might have just been taking the piss, but the boss was a different ball bag, he gave me the bleeding creeps. He kept on saying stuff, all the time, about me and to me, and about me medal, cos he seemed a bit too, I dunno, impressed or something and he kept on praising me all the time, giving me loads of attention, which was well embarrassing. He was always looking at me and it was the way he watched me when I walked around, I could sort of feel his eyes following me about and the way he stood too close, kept touching me shoulder or me arm, and he seemed to always be behind me when I was queuing for food, far too close so that I could feel him breathing down me neck, and I weren't imagining it. After a bit, I began to think that someone had been going through me stuff, nothing ever seemed to be where I'd left it, so I started out feeling a bit, you know, uncomfortable and then it started to make me flesh creep"

"Then the lads were taking the piss again, about me being the boss's favourite this time, so as soon as we got home, I asked for a transfer. When the bloody paperwork hit his desk, he called me into his office and told me that he'd only sign off on it if I'd be a bit nicer to him when I weren't under his command, a sort of trade off which made me bloody furious when I realised what he was asking for, and I should have done something then, stood up to him or something, but I didn't. I thought I didn't need any help, that I could handle it because I'm hard as nails, me, so I sort of agreed, but I weren't gonna follow through, it was just that I'd have said anything to get away from him and I thought that would be an end of it"

"And it wasn't?" His voice was quiet as he prompted her to carry on.

"Nah, was it buggery. I was posted to Headley Court, sorry I never told you about that by the way, I was shit scared you'd mention me to someone there and they'd tell you they'd never heard of Maggie Dawkins or you'd see some photos or something and recognise me. I loved it there but instead of me getting away from him it felt like he was in me bleeding life all the time, everywhere I went in me time off, he was there, even if I just went out for a run, every time I turned round he was lurking somewhere, I think he was following me, well, that's what it bleeding felt like, and he'd try really hard to talk to me all the time, asking me about me love life 'n that, well me sex life really, and telling me that he cared about me, and I kept on asking him to leave me alone.

Then I began to think that me stuff was being moved about again, things weren't where I was bloody sure I'd left them, and I sort of felt like someone had been touching it, it felt like me knickers 'n that had been moved about. I couldn't think how he'd be able to get into somewhere that was locked, well unless he had a key of course, so I ended up putting a chair up against me door at night, just in case. I sort of got to be a bag of bleeding nerves, when I wasn't at work I spent all me time looking over me shoulder checking to see where he was"

Charles put his arm back round her shoulder, he desperately wanted to comfort her, but she shrugged it off.

"I couldn't report him, the boss I mean, I mean I would have needed some proof or something and there weren't any, he'd only deny it; say I was imagining it and who was going to believe me over him? He'd never texted nor did nothing I could prove, and never when there was witnesses, so going through channels or whatever, wasn't a goer, so I took the only way out and decided to quit"

"I'd already done me 4 and a bit so I was free to go at the end of me time at Headley, but a couple of days before it was over, I had to go to the office and they told me that there'd been what they called an 'incident' and that one of the patients had died unexpectedly, which I knew anyway. The boss said the death were 'unexplained and suspicious' and that there was a chance that he'd maybe got hold of some drugs, or hoarded his sedatives or something so there was gonna have to be an enquiry. As I was one of the last people to see him alive and I was supposed to have watched him take his sleeping pills, which I'm sure I did" even though she said she was sure, he thought that she sounded a bit doubtful "There was a subpoena for me to appear, he said that normally they wouldn't bother at this stage but because I was leaving, ….. and I had to sign for it, to show I'd got it. He told me that it didn't make no difference that I weren't gonna be in the army anymore, I had to show up in court and if I didn't there'd be a warrant for perverting the course of justice so that I'd end up in jail and that they'd got me old home address where they could find me once I was out, but if I moved I'd have to give them me new address"

"Me old boss had left me alone for a couple of weeks so I thought I was doing the right thing leaving, but I saw him later that day and the fucker told me that because of this enquiry thing, he'd be able to find me wherever I went, that I couldn't hide, and I knew he were right. He was threatening me, the way he was talking, the way he was looking at me, and he weren't gonna stop the shit or let me escape, he weren't gonna leave me alone whether I was in the army or not, so this was the only way to get away from him, to get away from it all"

"I ain't got a scoobie what happened at that enquiry, I still don't know how he died, whether I did anything wrong, I mean I don't think so, but….. " she shrugged "I kept trying to look it up on your dad's lap-top, but I couldn't find nothing and I don't know whether there's a warrant out for me or not, but I would think so. I never showed up for me last few days, so I'm most likely down as AWOL as well, and I've had no contact with anyone since that day, apart from me mum, and she had some visits from army looking for me, but not for a bit now"

"I spent the first few weeks hiding by sleeping on a mate's sofa, then I dyed me hair red, well, it weren't supposed to be like a bleeding traffic light" she giggled slightly "it was supposed to be auburn, and then I shifted to Bath to look after your mum and dad"

-OG-

Author's Notes: I spent quite some time researching the effects of stalking, what it is, how it starts and how victims are usually very strong and independent people, mostly women who wouldn't be seen as natural targets at all for this sort of thing. Being stalked takes away confidence so that victims end up doubting themselves and afraid that they're imagining things.

I hope you enjoyed it, if that's the right word, and thank you for all your feedback and support so far, the second half of this story is all about sorting things out and taking revenge.