3 years later

"Hey, look I'm glad you're all here." Michelle announces as she walks into the factory to find Johnny, Aidan and Kate sitting in the office.

"What's up?" Aidan asks her as they turn to face her.

"It's about Carla-" she starts but before she gets a chance to continue, she's cut off.

"Look Michelle, it breaks my heart to say it but I think we need to let her go." Johnny tells her as she looks at him in shock.

"Let her go? How can you say that? She's your daughter." Michelle says back.

"I know and I want to find her as much as you do. But, clearly she doesn't want to be found. She doesn't want to see us Michelle so maybe we should respect that." Johnny tells her as Kate and Aidan look down slightly, clearly uncomfortable by the topic of their missing sister.

"So what if we did that? What if we respected her staying away from us just for something to happen to her? It might not have been her body that we went to identity all those years ago but it could've been." Michelle tells them as they look back at her, unable to even bare the thought.

Michelle waits for a response, but upon not receiving one, continues.

"I think I might've found her. You know when I went down to the cottage that her and Nick bought in Devon to ask if they'd seen her and to keep a look out last year?" Michelle reminds them as they nod in response.

"Apparently, there's a cottage just nearby which has just had someone new moving in and they could've sworn that it was her by the picture I gave them." Michelle explains excitedly as she attempts to read the looks on their faces but struggles.

"What are you gonna do?" Kate eventually asks.

"Are you serious? I'm going down there so I can talk to her. Now come on, if we leave now hopefully we'll make it there before it's too dark." Michelle starts to run towards the door to leave but Aidan grabs her arm.

"I'm not sure about this." Aidan tells them, leaning against the filing cabinet behind him as he lets go of Michelle.

Michelle just looks at him in confusion.

"Not sure about what?" She asks.

"Michelle, she left." Aidan replies simply as Michelle just looks back at him with a slightly patronising glare for stating the obvious. "She left in the middle of the night without a word to any of us. We had no idea if she was alive or dead. I mean you and dad even went to identify a body."

"So?" Michelle says, clearly frustrated that they weren't all as anxious to see her as she is.

"Like Dad said, maybe we should respect that she just doesn't want to see us." Aidan tells her, sadly.

"You can't be serious." Michelle says, before looking across from Aidan towards Kate and Johnny just to see them with similar facial expressions. "Right then fine. If you don't want to come with me then I'll go alone, I don't care. I only care about Carla and making sure she's okay. More fool me for thinking you'd want the same." She says to them all before hastily leaving the factory and walking towards her car.

However, before she reaches it she hears the factory door swing open again as Johnny, Kate and Aidan all quickly step out of the factory.

"Thought you didn't wanna come?" Michelle asks, opening the door to the drivers sat of her car.

"Any chance we could get a ride now we've changed our minds?" Kate asks as Michelle smiles back and they all get into the car.

The car journey seeming much longer that it is in reality as they travel in silence, all of them desperately trying to think of just what they were going to say to Carla when they see her.

Little did they know that they are never going to get the chance.

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