Thank you for the reviews.
Just so you sort of know what I was envisioning for the beginning part of this chapter, I was... envisioning the limbo-type place that Sarah Jane was in during the episode of the Sarah Jane Adventures called Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?. That is usually the first place my head goes to when I am thinking about those types of places...
Anyway, enjoy.
Chapter 2
They say that your life flashes before your eyes when you are close to death.
And that was the feeling that Rachel had as her earliest memories were played out in front of her.
She didn't know how she remembered the day that Melissa was brought home from the hospital after her birth but it was what was being played out in front of her as she watched her mum tell her that she always needed to look out and look after Melissa. It was probably the first time that Rachel realised that she had forgotten what her mum had looked like as there were only vague facial features. Which probably seemed right as she'd now had more years without her mum than with her.
Then it changed, to the first time her dad hit her and wondering whether this had been what her mum had meant. She could remember the black eye that it left and one of the teachers asking her about it the next day, her face looking so kind and trusting that Rachel almost found herself telling her. Maybe she should have done. Maybe it would have helped her.
She remembered the day she got offered the job that she did as an older teen. She remembered her first client and the way that she had cried after she realised what she was doing. She remembered telling herself that she needed to be stronger when one of her bosses slapped her around like her dad did before he used her as her clients did.
She remembered the day that she felt free from her past. She remembered the day that she entered a room as Amanda Fenshaw and left it as Rachel Mason. She remembered that feeling of being able to take on the world.
She remembered her first day teaching. The struggles that she had with both students and colleagues. She remembered the way that she gained the students' respect way before she gained her colleagues. Maybe that was due to the fact that she had shown quite a few of them up by being as observant as she was with some of the students.
She remembered how she rose up the ranks so fast that many questioned how she could be a good headteacher with so little experience in the classroom. She remembered feeling so chuffed with herself when she knew that she had proved them all wrong. That they were wrong to doubt that she couldn't do the job that she felt like she had been born to do.
She remembered the day she got the phone call from Ria. She remembered the way that Ria explained what had happened at Waterloo Road. She remembered her asking if she wanted the headship. And she remembered herself jumping at the opportunity.
She opened her eyes to white. Her brow creased in confusion as she sat up and that was all she could see other than herself.
It was just white.
"Hello." She called out to hear it echo around the… room? Area? Space?
It was quite indescribable where she was.
Or maybe it wasn't.
Maybe it was just nothing.
She was surrounded by nothingness.
She slowly stood up, making sure that she was okay enough to be on her feet as there wasn't anything for her to hold onto if she did fall over.
After all, the last memory she had was escaping a caravan that had been blown up because it had been full of gas and the owner had lit a lighter. Part of her wanted to feel sorry for Gary Vale but she found herself unable to. She could berate herself about the position she found herself in because she knew what she was getting herself into when she decided to follow Gary and Bianka and when she saw the cut tube to the gas canister.
Rachel was sure that anyone else in her shoes would have looked around and been extremely confused to where they were. And probably turned on the spot like she did a couple of times.
There was nothing there.
No hint of the way out.
No hint as to where she was.
With her last memory being what it was, she suspected that she was in limbo.
Not that she was religious at all.
Never had been and she was sure that she had already committed too many sins to even think about the pearly gates of heaven. But then, maybe she had done enough to keep herself out of hell.
But that didn't really help her with what was happening or how she could… well get out.
She thought about calling out again but she knew that was going to do much. Nor was spinning on the spot but Rachel found herself unable to stop it until she started to feel dizzy.
There was no way out of this.
For the second time that day, Rachel's thoughts turned to Philip and she knew that if this was the end for her, he would be the one who would be the most upset about her death. He didn't show many emotions but she knew that the fire had affected him. And maybe the digger as well. They hadn't spoken about the digger. Mainly because she would have to talk about the other thing that happened that day and Rachel had tried her hardest to forget about it.
But that would be another person who would be devastated by her death.
The man that she wanted to call when she was in the caravan, to tell him that she loved him and to hear that he still loved her.
Getting over Eddie Lawson was proving to be impossible.
And it was probably why she had made the mistake that she had done with Chris.
Those were two regrets that she'd had in the last six months.
Two more to add to the collection.
Rachel turned her head when she felt like she heard something. It was so faint that she did think that it was a figment of her imagination. That she had already gone mad in the small amount of time that she had been there.
But there was something. And it slowly got louder and louder until she could make out where it was being said.
"A life of regret. If you had a second chance, where would you start?"
It was an odd question. To Rachel.
Where would she want to start?
Her experiences had shaped her. She didn't think that she would be the teacher (or headteacher) that she was without them. She knew what to look for. She knew how they would act. She knew when someone was hiding something.
Admittingly, she would have preferred not to go through half the things that she had been through but she didn't have a choice. And she was sure that she would make the same choices if she did have a second chance. Most people would have assumed that it would have held her back. In fact, Rachel felt like the prostitution had opened up more doors for her and allowed her to move away from the area that trapped most people.
The voice was still there and Rachel found herself trying to follow it, even though she had no sense of direction. And it was strange. Because it felt like she had walked for ages but for not long at all. It seemed to take forever for her to see the door but once it was there, it was like she had always known it was there.
Wherever she was, she wanted to be out of there as soon as possible, with her jogging to the door to pull it open.
The familiarity hit her first.
She felt like she was home.
And in the yellow walls of her office, she supposed that she was home.
She had half-forgotten that they weren't the dark purple colour that they were now. The yellow now seemed too bright. The office seemed too bright. It seemed too cheerful. Especially for all the heartbreak that happened there.
"Well, what do you think?"
Rachel turned around and found Ria standing there and she was sure that she was going through the worst Deja vu ever. This was, obviously, her first day. At Waterloo Road. This was her memory being played out in front of her. And she was able to remember her original answer.
"It will do," Rachel said.
Like that day, Rachel was a little unsure about what she had talked about with Ria. It seemed like it was mindless chit-chat. The only difference now was that Rachel knew who would be coming through that door soon. And she was there, waiting in anticipation, to meet for the first time (again) the man who she knew that she would come to love so dearly, it would almost break her when they broke up.
After all, Eddie Lawson had and was about to become a number of different things to her.
He had and was always going to be her deputy.
He would become a dear and close friend. Her best friend even.
And as much as she tried not to let it happen, he would become both a boyfriend and an ex.
And when the man in question turned up, she knew the conversation that was going to play out and she knew, even more, that she could play on his offence. She knew the reasons why he was acting like a bit of a prat. And she couldn't really blame him. She was sure that she would have equally been as bad if it had been the other way around.
But when she went to leave her office, with Eddie in tow, to address the staff, she found herself walking out of the antechamber door to walk back into it. She turned around a couple of times to try and get herself to where she needed to be but knew, eventually, that this was where she needed to be.
And from the moment she heard the faint beeping and saw that the door of her office was closed, she knew what she was going to face. She even looked down at the clothes that she was wearing, knowing that she had worn the blue shirt and trouser suit that she was wearing that day.
She struggled to open the door as she had done that morning and her eyes landed instantly on the blue folder on her desk. There was no point in checking it. She already knew that it was empty.
She knew what this was going to bring and part of her wondered whether her subconscious (because it couldn't be anything other than her subconscious that would put her through the situations she had already been in) wouldn't bring him back into her life… her memories. She never wanted to see him ever again.
But then Eddie was there, surveying the mess with her.
And when they chatted about his time with Michael and Alison over the Christmas break, she felt happier and less surprised that he had spent some time with Alison. Mainly because she knew that this was only the beginning for them. And that their relationship would only grow again. They would never see their relationship as romantic again but it was platonic and amicable. With Michael always being put first.
She was sure that she knew back then what this was all about.
From seeing Tess Doyle to the trashed office.
She knew that, at some point, she would have to leave the office for the scene to change. She knew that she did leave the office, otherwise she wouldn't have gone on the prison trip and had that uncomfortable experience and relieved those memories.
It was all tied, wasn't it?
Everything was beginning to taunt her about her previous life.
Her life as Amanda.
Even the book Eddie had given her was a little too close to home.
A character who was a prostitute with an alcoholic father.
That was her childhood. Or her late teens.
She couldn't stay where she was forever.
Because she would be stuck in her memories forever.
But she didn't know what she was trying to tell herself.
Realistically, whatever was happening with her body didn't matter. Her mind was elsewhere. Her mind was in the memories. It could be the only way to get herself back. Not that any of this had happened after the fire.
Or maybe it had and she had just forgotten about it.
When she walked into the antechamber into the next memory, she came face to face with Stuart Hordley. It was their first meeting. She knew how this meeting was going to go. She knew the bits of paper that he had in his briefcase. She knew the tricks that he was going to pull.
And maybe that was where she could change things.
Everything had led here again.
And maybe she knew what she had to change.