Disclaimer: I don't own Skins, but Christmas is less than 3 months away... *nudge nudge*wink wink*

Summary: "Know you didn't bring me out here to drown, So why am I ten feet under and upside down, Barely surviving has become my purpose, Cause I'm so used to living underneath the surface." (Lyrics by Blyss/Lifehouse - Storm)

Thank you to those who reviewed the first chapter. I'm glad this story has so far gained positive feedback as without it there wouldn't be much point continuing. Enjoy the coming chapter. It's not the longest, but over the coming chapters I should be able to make them longer.

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Ten Feet Under

Chapter Two

Sometimes she had good days. Days when the future didn't feel like a joke and the past didn't feel like a stalker. Days when the present didn't rely on what went before, or what would come after. It was days like that which really mattered. Days when she could be a mother, or a wife and not worry that she was going to do something stupid, like jump off a car park roof while her child was in the car only feet away.

"I need to make a spaceship for school."

"A spaceship?" she asked her eldest child; Lucas.

"Yeah, for an art project, it's about aliens," he grinned.

"When do you need this done by?" she questioned.

"Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" she asked, her voice growing frustrated, "And you're telling me about this now? Lucas!"

"I'm sorry, I forgot."

Sometimes she wondered if her children knew something wasn't quite right with her. They say that children pick up on things. But they also say that children are a product of their environment and they only know what is around them. She wondered if it was normal to them, how she was. It didn't feel normal.

"That's blue mummy, I want green."

The spaceship project was a task she was willing to take up. On a bad day she'd have made some half-hearted attempt to pass it off to her husband, or get her son to work on it alone. On a good day she'd happily take up the challenge and spend the time enjoying the seven year old's company.

"Hang on a minute; do you remember what I told you? Blue and yellow makes…"

"Green!" he grinned, watching as she mixed in yellow paint with the blue and the colour he wanted appeared in front of them.

By the early evening a spaceship was drying in the utility room and Emily had begun to make dinner. She rarely made a proper dinner. Usually she'd put processed meals into the microwave and serve them on plates to pretend they were home cooked. Lucas and Charlotte knew no better, but it was obvious that Bobbie saw through her act.

"A real dinner? Is it Christmas?" he asked, wrapping his arms around her waist and kissing her neck.

Sometimes she'd laugh at his digs, sometimes she'd push him away and end up in the bathroom crying. Thankfully she found her lips curling and despite having no real passion for him on that particular day, she turned in his grasp and kissed him, letting him have a moment of fun with her body.

"I really should make sure I don't burn this," she finally spoke, pulling away and stirring the bubbling sauce in the pan.

"Spoil sport," he muttered, running his hands across her buttocks, squeezing them tightly.

"Oi," she squealed, hitting him with a tea towel.

It was the good days when she saw what other people did in their lives. The laughing, the cheeky looks or touches of a couple supposedly in love, the stolen kisses when the children weren't looking. Instead of capturing her attention as something she wanted more of, it made her wish she could feel happy at the moments that made other people's lives worthwhile.

"Phone," Bobbie called, entering the kitchen with the cordless and handing it to her.

She wanted to ask him who it was, she usually screened her calls in the hope of avoiding Katie when she was busy. But with the number of good things happening on that day, she didn't feel like blanking her overbearing sister.

"I'm making dinner Katie, this better be quick."

"It's not Katie," came a response that sent a shiver down Emily's spine.

"Naomi."

It hadn't escaped Emily's notice that she only really got calls from Katie. There was the odd call centre or bank call, but those things aside, her social life consisted of her sister forcing her way into her life and her husband. Hearing Naomi's voice was unexpected and unfortunately pulled the past into the present, causing what Emily called an eclipse of her good day, turning it dark.

"I was expecting you to call, it's been two weeks; I thought I'd look you up."

She didn't mean to not call Naomi. It was just that the thought of calling her would bring on a bad day and she tried to avoid purposefully creating them, when she had enough of them already.

"I've been busy," Emily lied.

"Are you still busy or do you have a spare couple of hours next week?"

It was hard to say. After all this time, after everything that had happened, Emily could still feel herself captivated by Naomi. She assumed that letting Naomi into her life would be the start of the apocalypse, the start of a life where bad days were all that she would have. She was scared to take the risk. But somehow she couldn't say no.

"I work everyday, on Tuesdays my husband picks the children up. I usually go to Katie's, but I can get out of it."

"Tuesday is good for me," Naomi replied, a thrill in her voice.

"Great," Emily sighed.

"Fantastic."

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The pie she had been making was in the oven. It had taken a lot of energy to finish making the dinner. The call had taken everything out of her and she could feel her mood slipping away.

"Smells good babe," Bobbie announced, sitting down at the table beside her, "Who was on the phone?"

"Nobody."

"Didn't sound like nobody," Bobbie muttered.

"Call centre," she tried.

"On a Sunday?"

Emily nodded, "Can you check on it in ten minutes? I need a shower," she asked, not waiting for an answer as she disappeared from the room.

She didn't need a shower, but she took one anyway. It was one of the only places she could be truly alone. The steaming hot water ran along her skin, soaking into her hair and drenching her body. She had Naomi on the brain. She hadn't even told her husband she'd ran into her, hadn't even told him that she'd been her girlfriend as a teenager. As far as he was aware he was her first boyfriend and that was how they lived their life. She always thought Katie would rat her out and tell him the truth, but she knew Katie and knew that she was too ashamed of her sister's sordid past to ever tell her brother-in-law.

"Dinners done!" came a shout from the outside the bathroom.

She was supposed to join them. Even on her bad days she had dinner with the family. She'd learnt to mask it well, hiding behind well rehearsed sentences that fell easily from her lips. On bad days she barely ate a thing. It was something else she battled with. Something else she didn't talk about. She dried off and joined her family.

"Mummy helped me make a spaceship for school," Lucas announced.

"Did she now? That's great," Bobbie replied, ruffling his son's hair.

There was a smile on her face. A smile that made her family think that everything was okay. She once read that forcing yourself to smile would make you happier. If she had ever been part of a study to prove that statement, she would have proved it wrong. She smiled often. But rarely did she actually mean it.

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"Kids are in bed," Bobbie announced, slipping a hand around her back.

"Dishes don't do themselves," she muttered, pushing him away.

"Forget about them, I'll do them in the morning."

"In the morning we'll have more."

She pushed him off, keeping him at bay long enough for him to grow frustrated and disappear into the bathroom for a stupidly long time. She wondered if he thought about her, or if he had some younger, prettier girl in mind. It was supposed to bother her that he was probably thinking about some young, hot supermodel. But it didn't. She eventually went to bed. It was barely nine in the evening. Somehow it felt later. The last thing she thought about as she lay in the dark was the call she'd had with Naomi. Tuesday was barely two days away; two days in which she could still go back to the top of the car park, two days in which she still had many hours to look down on the street below and decide that life just wasn't worth it.

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