Disclaimer: I own nothing but Emma.
A.N. Sorry for taking so long to update. I have had my niece over. I am going to update 3 times this week as I am going on holiday for a week. Thank you to all who have read my story and to those of you who have reviewed.
Italics means flashbacks.
Chapter 3: The past
Emma got a taxi from the precinct to her apartment in Brooklyn that night. She was not lying when she told Stella that she still had unpacking to do but that was because she kept putting the boxes that she still needed to unpack off because she knew that it would upset her. But she sat down and started to unpack. The first thing she came across was a photo of her when she was 19 and her dad, one of the last photos that he had ever had taken because he died later that year during an operation. She still remembered the day that she was told that she would never see her dad again like it was yesterday.
Emma sat outside the operating theatre with her big sisters, Kaye and Susie ,their partners Steven and Scott, Susie's little girl Holly and her dad's fiancé Donna. They all stood when the surgeon came out of the room but she knew as soon as she saw the look on his face that it was not good news. "I am sorry but we lost him on the operating table" she heard him say and she just collapsed.
Emma blinked and came back to the present. She was a total daddy's girl and no one could have changed that about her but she still wished her dad was there. He would never get to see his girls walk down the aisle, he would never see any of his other grandchildren apart from Holly. Holly would never know him. She would never have met Gavin if he had not come up to support Kaye and Steven after her dad died. She still remembered that day.
Emma lay on the spare bed at Kaye and Steven's crying her eyes out because her dad was gone. She didn't hear anyone else coming in the room until they started rubbing her back. She looked up, she knew of him but she didn't know him personally but she needed someone to be there for her so she flung her arms round him and cried.
Emma remembered that her and Gavin became friends after that. He even went to her dad's funeral to support her. Six months later she made the decision to apply to the Met and move to London permanently. She could not stay where her dad used to live. She just couldn't. She thought she was going mad because she kept seeing him out of the corner of her eye. She still remembered the fight her mum put up about her going to London. She was 20 now but her mum still saw her as her little girl. Her mum knew that Emma would not be happy there anymore. She was always a daddy's girl and losing him had not been easy on her.
Emma moved down to London from Central Scotland and never looked back. She stayed with Gavin for a while until she could get a place of her own and went to work at the Met. She still remembered the day six months after she had moved down to London that Gavin asked her out. He was so nervous, honestly thought she was going to say no but she didn't. They were dating for six months before they decided to move in together. But six months later when Emma was just about to turn 22, she was promoted to Detective Inspector of the Met, Gavin started picking fights for no reason and saying that she was having affairs because she needed to work long hours. It all culminated that night when she overheard him in bed with another woman.
Emma's family did not want her to move to New York but she was determined not to let Gavin run her life any longer especially when it came to her dreams.
Emma blinked and realised that she had unpacked the whole box and was holding a strip of photos of her and Gavin. She promptly tore them up and binned any reminders of him as she did not believe that he should be in her mementoes along with her family, her mum, her step dad, her sisters and their partners/families, her step brother and step sister and her deceased grandparents and dad as he had only caused her pain over the last six months. She was only 22 and she was jaded because of him and his put downs about her weight and her looks. Because of him she could not stand to look in the mirror and that was part of the reason that she didn't go out with the team tonight. Stella was a tall gorgeous Greek and Lindsay was short but she was extremely pretty and she had seen photos of Jessica Angell, she was a tall gorgeous brunette who should have been a model instead of a cop. She could not compete with any of them. She was 5 foot 4 inches, she barely came up to Flack's shoulder when she was wearing heels, she had long dirty blonde wavy hair which she always had to put up because it would get in her way. She had a curvy body and long legs though she hated showing them because she thought that they were fat. She had grey/blue eyes and glasses. She hated going out at night. She would much rather curl up on the sofa and read a good book and relax. Especially with her job.