AN: Thanks to everyone who has been waiting patiently for more and for the reviews on the last chapter. I was struggling to write the next chapter, but now I'm stuck because the end I was going to do I'm not so sure about. So feel free to make suggestions on where you want this story to go.

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Light filled the room as the curtains of the lounge were opened quickly. Emily moved her hands to her face, her head pounding as she woke from her slumber. Despite the headache, she was feeling better than she had the night before. She stared around the room to find her parents staring at her.

"Where have you been?" Jenna asked.

"Here, asleep," Emily replied, her words slightly slurred with sleep.

"Not now, last night."

"I was out."

"You left the hospital again, you left your sister when she needed you," Rob complained.

She didn't want to think about it. She had too much going on inside her brain. Katie was struggling to fight her cancer, Naomi was homeless and had been lying to her since college started and she'd taken heroin in the hope to escape. Her whole life was a joke. It was something she expected to see in Eastenders not her own life.

"I don't fucking care," Emily replied, staring at the walls, avoiding looking into her parent's eyes.

"Don't you dare talk to your father like that," Jenna snapped, staring at her.

"Just leave me alone."

There was a silence. The parents stood on one side of the room, united. Emily sat on the other, alone, confused and still suffering from the aftermaths of the drugs. She could feel the glands in her eyes kick into action and tears were flowing freely down her cheeks.

"We're not going to leave you alone until you start telling us why you won't hang around every time your sister needs you, we're a family Emily, we do everything as a family."

Jenna was right. They were a family. They were a perfectly, obscure excuse for a messed up family. She was sick of them acting like their life was perfect, like they were all so close to each other.

"Family?" Emily laughed, "You don't even have a fucking clue."

"Stop swearing," Rob reprimanded.

"I'll stop swearing when you start fucking listening to me," Emily screamed.

Her tears were streaming, her eyes swollen and red. She could feel her emotions breaking her in two, ripping away the mask she'd hidden behind, exposing her to her parents.

"Listen to what?" Rob asked, "You swearing at us? Complaining about your life?"

"Listen to me, just fucking listen to what I'm saying," Emily sobbed, stepping closer, staring her mother in the eyes.

They shared a moment, a point where Emily could tell things were changing. Her face was a mess and for the first time in front of her daughter, Jenna's face almost mirrored Emily's. The brown eyes the twins had inherited growing watery and shallow. A reunion of mother and daughter as Jenna's arms wrapped tightly around her, enveloping her in an emotion they both shared.

"I don't want it to be this way," Emily cried into her mother's shoulder, "If I could take her place, I would."

Words were almost obsolete, as Rob joined his girls, tied together in a grief they all felt for the Katie who wasn't sick, a sadness for her current state and a guilt they shared for not letting go sooner.

*

The night wouldn't let her rest. It was cold and dark and she could feel the wintry gusts hitting her bare skin. She wanted to sleep, her body exhausted from it's absence and the lack of food she'd eaten in days. But she couldn't sleep. She knew that if she slept, she would have trouble getting up in the morning. The coming months worried her, the days growing darker quicker, the weather growing harsher. There was an early forecast of snow over the Christmas period. An eventuality that Naomi feared. She didn't know much about snow, or weather, but she knew a night curled up with the white stuff, would be a difference between life and death. She wished she could find a way out of the cold, but she knew Bristol lacked homeless hostels and her friends were a distant thought in her mind. She was alone and confused and the one person she'd hoped would help her, had turned her back. As the daylight seeped into the sky above, Naomi discovered a note on the floor, a piece of luck in an almost completely crappy night. It was a twenty. She pondered the possibilities as she folded it carefully into her bra. She could have a slap up breakfast, a week of coffee, or she could buy a ticket somewhere, anywhere.

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The morning sun peeking through the curtain pulled Emily from her thoughts. She hadn't slept in the few hours since her parents woke her, spending half of the time in tears. Once she'd finally climbed into bed, she lay watching her sister sleeping before her attention turned to Naomi. It was a mistake sending her away, pushing her out into the cold when she had nowhere to go. Katie's bed was empty now, her sister having woken almost an hour ago. Emily pulled her mobile phone off the bedside table and dialled Naomi's number, letting the phone ring out continuously. She searched through her phonebook for a number she could use to contact Naomi's mum, but the only number she had seemed to be out of order. Eventually she climbed out of bed and joined her family in the kitchen.

"Good morning love," Rob greeted her, sliding a plate of toast across the table towards her.

"No thanks," she sighed, pushing the plate back, "I'm not hungry."

"Is this about that Naomi girl?" Jenna asked, "You need to forget about her and move on."

But she couldn't move on. Naomi had lied to her and though she knew she had a right to be pissed off, she also knew she'd done the wrong thing by turning her back.

"You don't understand," Emily tried, expecting the conversation to end, but her parents just stared at her, awaiting a response.

"When you don't talk to us, things like last night happen," Rob stated, calmly.

"I don't want to talk about it," Emily tried again, her guilt making her feel angry.

"We won't accept that Emily, you had better tell us what is going on."

"She's fucking homeless," she snapped, her anger boiling over. "Naomi has no home, she has been living God knows where and last night when I found out I fucking kicked her out."

Nobody said a thing as though it was easier to just not respond to Emily's outburst. Jenna's lips pressed together until they became almost a line and Emily wished she'd just say something, anything to fill the silence, to fill the space that only made her feel worse about what she did.

"Unless Naomi is here, there's nothing you can do," her mother finally spoke, her words of wisdom proving pointless.

Jenna's inability to accept that Naomi needed their help only spurred Emily forwards, pulling her out of her guilt and into another place.

"I need to find her, I need to fix things," she muttered, standing up and looking around the room for her keys or her jacket, or anything that would help her do what she needed.

"Oh Emily love, don't waste your time, if she really needs you she'll come to you."

"I can't do that," Emily sighed, running out of the room and up the stairs to her bedroom.

She didn't really know what she was going to do to find Naomi. Bristol was a big place. With her jacket in her hands and her keys in her pocket with a crumple of notes, Emily was about to leave when she noticed Naomi's jacket on the floor. At first she'd thought it a new one of Katie's, but it was a colour she hated and quite frankly, it was a style that Katie wouldn't be seen dead in. She fumbled through the pockets not really sure what she was looking for as she found a number of wrinkled pieces of paper. Most of them were bus tickets or ATM receipts, but one of them was a yellow post-it note that had an address on. It was a long shot, but it was all she could do.

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The building was ugly, something akin to a Lego house but on a larger scale. It was an area she didn't know and after noticing the amount of litter and dodgy looking people hanging around, she knew why. If her parents knew she was there, they'd probably go ballistic and send her to the doctors to get a HIV test. She found the address on the paper that was now almost torn in two because of how tightly she'd held onto it. There was no doorbell, so she knocked and waited. Eventually the door opened and the woman that looked surprisingly like her daughter opened it.

"Emily?" she gasped, almost as shocked to see her as Emily was to see Gina.

"Is Naomi here?"

"No," Gina muttered, "I don't know where she is. I thought she'd be with you."

"I've not seen her since last night."

"Oh."

"She told me that you don't have your house anymore," Emily began, feeling herself shake with guilt and the cold.

"Come on in," Gina offered, "It's freezing out there."

The inside wasn't any better than the outside, but at least it was warm. She accepted a cup of coffee though barely drank it after noticing something black floating on top of the liquid. They talked about the situation and Emily professed her worries for her girlfriend.

"There must be something we can do," Emily mumbled, staring at Gina with teary eyes.

"She made her feelings clear Emily, unless she wants to come home,"

"Home?" Emily scoffed, before turning silent.

Gina continued, a look of pain and guilt in her eyes, "Unless she comes home, I can't look after her."

It wasn't the way she'd hoped things would turn out. But she didn't know Gina well enough to know how to persuade her to act. Naomi barely spoke about her mother, except to complain about something or another. Emily swapped numbers with the woman in case either of them heard anything and left without another word. She didn't go home straight away, instead she wandered through the centre of town in the hope that hovering in public areas would be the most successful way of finding Naomi. But as the night drew in and the evening grew colder, Emily had to go home because there wasn't really much else she could do.

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AN: Should Naomi jump on a bus somewhere? Vote now to decide her fate...please review.