Sunday, July 16th 1994

'This is something I don't miss about Chicago.' Madison twisted her hair up on top of her hair again, certain she could actually feel it tripling in size in the humidity. 'You really didn't fancy a Hollywood wedding?'

'Absolutely not.' Laura smiled across at her from the driver's seat. 'I will admit I'm a little jealous of that tan, though. I'm not sure I want you stood next to me on Sunday, you'll make me look ill.'

Madison glanced down at her tanned limbs. They weren't anything so special when set against the golden-coloured bodies she saw every day in California. In comparison with some of her friends, she was the pasty one. But a decade of sunshine and sea had left a very real imprint on her, and she knew, without being vain, that she looked good. Better than she had done the last time they'd driven downtown, anyway. Whilst a lot of her Cali friends had followed in the footsteps of Pamela Anderson over the past year or so, Madison felt she'd done her time with bleach and peroxide. Her hair had grown long, now a much more flattering honey-colour.

Today had a pretty packed agenda, especially for a Sunday. Number one was a final fitting of both bride and bridesmaid's dresses – or, in Madison's case, a first and final fitting. Her mother's hairdressing business had put her in touch with a whole range of wedding-related suppliers, all of whom had repaid a whole bunch of favours Laura had done them over the year in spades. Today, Annie was opening up her bridal parlour especially for them, and had blocked out the rest of the day to make any final adjustments they might need. Similar arrangements had been made all week. Madison was pleased Laura's inherent goodness was finally being rewarded.

Still, none of that made up for the fact it felt as if she were wading through treacle. Laura's car might be devoid of air-conditioning, but the movement had at least afforded a little breeze. Out on the sidewalk, there was nothing: just stale burning air.

'Here.' Laura thrust a hair tie at her daughter. 'Tie it up, Rapunzel. You're not in LA anymore.'

Madison poked her tongue out even as she obeyed her mother, feeling marginally better with her neck exposed.

'And lose the sunglasses; you're not Julia Roberts.'

Madison did so, only partially because they were heading indoors. Sunglasses were one of the very best things about LA, and an accessory she wished she'd fully embraced from birth. They sent a message to others to keep away, leave her alone, all with a flash of glamour. Apparently their virtues hadn't quite made it to suburban Chicago just yet.

The wedding parlour was precisely as she'd expected it to be. Cream, ivory and white dresses hung from every available space and what wasn't a shade of neutral was a rather sickly pink. In her denim cut-offs, flip-flops and white tank top, Madison felt very distinctly out of place.

But then Annie appeared, and she looked as far away from this princess palace as possible. Her brown curly hair was roughly bundled up with what looked like a pencil, and she was dressed no more smartly than Madison was. She was also one of the tiniest women Madison had ever seen, but that impression quickly faded in the face of Annie's energy.

'Come through, come through!' She hustled them towards the back of the parlour. 'It's all set up.'

'We said low-key,' Laura remarked, an amused smile crossing her face. 'A quick fitting, a stitch or two. Annie, you've got to have better things to do than... this.'

'This' was precisely the opposite of low-key. Madison blinked rapidly as she looked from the platter of snacks to the percolating coffee to the champagne and flutes. 'This' seemed to be precisely what Annie would offer to all her brides; the only difference was that Laura was paying nowhere near what those women did.

'Well, I had to mark the moment, didn't I?' Annie insisted, already pouring champagne and popping half a strawberry into her mouth. 'Not every day one of my friends gets married. And not every day I finally get to meet the chief bridesmaid! Your mom has told me so much about you!'

Annie seemed like the kind of person whose first instinct was to hug, and Madison guarded against it by keeping her arms firmly folded.

'Annie, really.' Laura took the offered champagne. 'We don't want to take up your whole day.'

Annie brushed it off, but a wave of more business-like behaviour swept over her. 'It's just a little something. Anyway, we better get these dresses on and see if all of our estimations have been right. We've got a whole week to make an adjustments; my sewing fingers are primed and ready. Who's first?'

'Mads?' Laura raised her eyebrows.

Madison shrugged, nodded, tried to convey some sense of enthusiasm. Whilst she'd seen pictures of her mother's vision for the wedding (Madison suspected now that 'vision' was an Annie-ism), this was the first time she was going to see the dress itself. It sounded quite straightforward: a spaghetti-strapped slip dress in a delicate primrose yellow. Truthfully, they were three things Madison herself would never have chosen in any dress, but they were at least things she had a concept of. And this was, after all, Laura's day. Madison's personal preferences didn't come into it.

So she nodded and followed Annie into the luxuriously spacious changing cubicle. The pink colour scheme ran on through here, but it was less that and more Annie's continued presence in what was traditionally a private space which bothered Madison. Yet there was hardly a second for her to voice any concerns about this menage a deux, and before she was sure what had happened, she'd stripped off her shorts and top and Annie was slipping the dress over her head.

And all the time, the parlour proprietor kept up a running commentary.

'So this is cut on the bias so you should get some nice movement through the gown throughout the day. I was a bit dubious about the colour, but my gosh, your mom has got a real eye for this. And your tan! God, what I wouldn't give for that tan. It zips up just here – we could perhaps just take in this seam a little, I think you overestimated your waist size. And... well, honey, this would sit better without the bra.'

Madison finally managed to choke out, 'Excuse me?' She met this acquaintance of ten minutes' eye and said, 'You... want me to go braless at my mom's wedding?'

Annie shrugged. 'It's pretty fashionable at the moment.'

Madison knew that. In fact, she hadn't exactly been averse to it herself, at particular times and circumstances. Her room-mate Jen was an increasing stranger to any form of structured undergarments, and Annie actually wasn't wrong: this was precisely the kind of dress which benefited from as little distraction as possible.

But... her mom's wedding?

'Just see what it looks like.'

Trying not to sigh or come across too prudish, Madison slipped her bra off underneath the dress and then turned to face Annie. 'Okay?'

Annie forcibly turned her towards the curtain. 'Ask your mom, not me.'

Madison took a step outside the cubicle, embarrassed by the flapping of her shoes, so that she kicked them off. The dress pooled slightly around her feet and she felt her hair slip from the hair band slightly, dropping down around her face. Awkwardly, she made her arms into some kind of exhibitionist shape.

'So what do you think?'

Laura turned round from where she'd been idly browsing veils and tiaras, two items she had made it repeatedly clear she had no interest in. For a second, she simply stared at Madison as if she were someone she'd never seen before. Then her face stretched into a broad smile.

'Oh Mads! You look... lovely. Doesn't she look lovely, Annie?'

The seamstress joined Laura with her own broad grin. 'Got to hand it to you, Laura: you were spot on. Not many girls can carry off a dress like that, but yours has.'

Madison glanced down at the dress. 'Is it okay?'

Annie pointed at the mirror on the wall. 'Take a look yourself.'

The image in the mirror took her somewhat by surprise. This was far from the kind of dress she'd ever have chosen herself. In LA, she spent most of her life in jeans or shorts depending upon work. Weekends saw her in beachwear. When she went to parties or events, dresses tended to be less revealing and more modest. This was a proper grown-up, glamorous dress. It was the most special thing she'd ever put on.

'It... looks quite nice,' she said eventually, in a small voice, unsure if she was saying quite the right thing.

'It looks gorgeous,' Annie confirmed, and she was the expert here, she ought to know. Now she began fussing again, pulling in bits of the dress, pinning in places, scribbling down notes on a pad with the pencil from her hair. The alterations seemed rather extensive to Madison and she wondered if they would take as little time as Annie claimed they would. When she was finally released, she wriggled out of the dress as swiftly as possible, thinking every second counted.

'So, Laura, your turn,' Annie said, flipping to a new page in her notebook. 'Or... do you want Madison to see it today?'

'Oh.' Laura hesitated, looking from friend to daughter. 'I... hadn't thought about it.'

The hesitation spoke volumes.

'Give me the list.' Madison held her hand out for the day's schedule. 'There's parcels to pick up, right? And groceries. And, for some reason, more decorations.' She waved her hand. 'I'll make myself scarce.'

Here was something Madison did know her way around. This minor shopping strip was little changed from the days when she'd mooch up and down it on her lunch breaks. No fancy coffee shops for this patch of suburbia. Instead, there were the same hardware stores, the same clothes stores selling last season's fashions. And the bookstore. Madison suspected that, if she were to push through the doors into her old workplace, she'd find it just as it had been in 1985, not a book out of place. It looked small now, like a relic from a bygone age. She wondered how long bookstores like this would last in the face of the big companies swallowing them up in New York, LA, inner-city Chicago.

The post office elicited a handful of awkwardly shaped, though light, parcels, and when she reached the grocery store, she was struck by her own lack of forward-planning. Forced into emptying her arms into a trolley, she resigned herself to a slower shop altogether, dodging other trolley-drivers and queueing around the store. All for some milk and eggs and bread and Coke and-

'Sorry,' she apologised automatically as she bumped into somebody else.

'Sorry... hey... Madison?'

Facially, she was lost. Anybody who knew her here would have aged ten years, and ten years in Chicago was quite different from ten years in California, where any amount of interventions could be called upon to slow that whole process. He was an average height, average weight, average looking average Joe. He looked somewhat over-excited to see her, which narrowed things down a little: she didn't expect there were many people who remembered her, let alone with such affection.

Then she looked down his body, took in the cheap polyester suit. There was only one person she knew who would be dressed like this on a Sunday morning, in the blazing heat.

'Brian?'

The enthusiasm was dialled up to ten. 'What are you doing here? I... I had no idea you were in town! It's been... it's been ages!'

Madison gave a thin-lipped smile. 'Yeah, it has.' She didn't think telling him precisely how long it was, down to the day, was particularly healthy. After all, it wasn't as if she'd counted the days since seeing him, per se.

'You look great.'

'You too.' She hoped it sounded more genuine than it was, because there was no way she could say he looked good in that suit. Unable to resist, she asked, 'Work on a Sunday?'

And there it was, that trademark Brian-flush, unchanged from his awkward teenage years. He pulled at his collar with a sheepish smile. 'No, um... church.' The eyebrow raise was familiar too, as he seemed to imply that, of course, it was church. Then, in a rush, 'It's with my in-laws. They're... church people.'

This time, Madison knew she didn't sound cool. 'You're... married?' They were in their mid-twenties, it was hardly unusual. But... this was little virgin Brian Johnson, married, to a woman, whose parents made him go to church.

'Three years.' The sheepish grin was tainted with something else now, something much stronger and mature. A kind of pride. Here was a man whose marriage was something to speak of warmly, something which made more of him. Madison was almost jealous.

She was also curious. Brian had almost as many reasonw as she did to have got the hell out and stayed out. He'd had the potential to go anywhere and do anything. Out of all them, Madison would have expected him to be long gone. But... 'And you... live round here?'

He nodded. 'Yeah. Carolyn's family are here. So are mine.' He shrugged. 'It seemed a decent enough place to move back after college. I've got a job in the city, she works at hospital. It's a nice place.'

Madison decided she had to believe him. He certainly sounded convinced, and it was hardly her place to persuade him otherwise. Maybe he was a better person than she was, able to forgive the city for the sins committed within its boundaries. Not everybody had to run to the other side of the country to find something like solace. She should be happy for him.

'But, what are you doing here?' This was why Madison usually refrained from too much curiosity: it tended to be reciprocated. She'd encroached upon Brian's space and, naturally, he was pushing back.

Before she could reply, he added, 'Oh! The reunion, right? Duh!'

Madison couldn't hold back to the frantic denial. 'No! God... no. It's... my mom's getting married. Again. To someone else, I mean, not my...' A deep breath. 'My mom's getting married.' Another tight smile. 'Not the reunion.' Then, remembering something, 'You're not going, are you? It's not your class.'

'No.' Brian shook his head, and she wasn't sure whether that was with relief or some longing. Perhaps it was precisely the kind of event this Brian would like to attend, wife on arm proving he was so much more than what Shermer High had seen in him. All power to him. Madison just had no interest.

'Andy and Allison are flying in for it, though. They're having dinner with us tonight.' Before Madison could find the words or even the thoughts to process that – were they still a couple? They were still friends with Brian? – Brian exclaimed, 'You should join us!'

Even as she scrambled for an excuse, Madison had to say that this was seriously on-brand for Brian. Words she thought she'd forgotten came back to her from all those years ago: I mean, I consider you guys my friends. I'm not wrong, am I? That single day together had been enough for him, enough to sustain a friendship for all of those years. Friendships which were spread across a distance and unreturned and unacknowledged. And here he was, extending his hand again. In one way, it was flattering.

But, 'Oh, I'm not sure I can make this evening.' She punctuated it with a smile.

'Oh. Got plans?'

That was the trouble with lies: they multiplied. It should be easy to come up with some prior engagement with only a week to go until her mother's wedding. Having been a bridesmaid before in LA (an occasion which was hardly an honour: she'd been one of eight), she knew that there were any number of trivial jobs she could claim she was going to do. It was just that, right this second, she couldn't think of a single one.

'It's no trouble,' Brian pressed on. She'd forgotten this about him: the persistence. 'Carolyn always makes too much and I can easily pick you up from... your hotel or...?'

'My mom's place.' Why was she saying anything? It sounded like she was agreeing to this impromptu meal, almost as if it were just transport arrangements that were preventing her from signing on the dotted line. She compounded it further, by saying, 'My stepdad could drop me off.'

Things moved quickly. Brian scribbled down his address, made an awkward joke about picking up some more groceries and then hurried away, presumably to alert the miraculous Carolyn to her unexpected guest. It was only when Laura appeared ('There you are! What's taking so long?') that Madison realised how long she'd been standing motionless.

When she'd left LA, Madison hadn't expected to be attending a suburban dinner party. She'd packed her bag with practical shorts and tops, and the one formal dress she had with her had been earmarked for the dinner her mom had organised for the evening before the wedding, when Madison would meet selected members of Mike's family. It was far too formal for a simple dinner in someone's house, but it was all she had, and a black dress was, after all, a black dress.

Laura had been suspiciously quiet about Madison's evening out. Some of her silence could be put down to an ongoing anxiety over Zach's whereabouts, but Madison wasn't sure that fully explained it. Not wanting to draw any more attention to it than necessary, she didn't provoke her mother. Mike was alarmingly happy to act as a taxi service and everything went so smoothly that Madison was stood on Brian's doorstep before she knew what was happening.

Their house was unassuming, but nice, definitely nice. The neighbourhood was one of broad streets, SUVs and grass that would be green when this disgusting weather abated. Madison could imagine that people left their doors open and their children played in the road and dogs went crazy under water sprinklers. It was very nice.

As was Carolyn. Madison didn't know that she'd ever imagined who might marry Brian Johnson, but within five minutes of meeting the woman, she realised that Carolyn was exactly that person. She was pretty in a wholesome way, a homemaker rather than a homewrecker: pink cheeks, blonde hair, a ready smile. She made Madison feel like she was stepping into a home, not just a house, and the Golden Retriever which followed her round only compounded that impression.

'Brian talks about you all the time!' Carolyn beamed over her shoulder as she led Madison down the hallway. 'He says you live in LA? That must be incredible, you must tell us more about it!'

The earnestness could be grating, but it was accompanied by such a warmth that Madison forgave her. Whilst she couldn't believe that Brian spoke about her 'all the time', it was clear that his wife more than made up for any social awkwardness he exhibited.

What Carolyn couldn't make okay was the crowd in the dining room. 'Crowd' was probably the wrong word, but Madison had never seen four people take up so much space. Brian she glossed over, as well as the anonymous man. It was the other two which took up all of her brain space.

'Madison!' Brian exclaimed, sounding a little less effusive than he had in the grocery store this afternoon. The way he glanced across at the couple suggested that her presence wasn't entirely welcomed by everybody here.

Andy had put on weight. It had been ten years, so Madison supposed she ought to cut him some slack. He'd been a somewhat-star athlete at Shermer, but given the fact he hadn't become a household name, she assumed he was much less than a star athlete in life. Eating had been one of his very favourite things to do, so it was hardly a surprise that he might have thickened somewhat around the middle in the intervening years. Besides which, she didn't want to imagine what he might think of her.

Allison was another matter. Madison actually had to blink, because she was virtually unchanged from when she'd last seen her. Her hair was the same length and colour, her weight unaltered. She even had the same 'black shit' round her eyes. Seeing her felt as much like home as Carolyn's smile.

But Allison's own smile was somewhat muted: polite rather than genuine, and polite smiles had never been Allison's way. Where Madison had sought to go under the radar through studied niceties, Allison had always stood out in a quietly rebellious fashion. This Stepford-Wife greeting did more to unsettle Madison than Andy's almost-open hostility.

'Madison, this is my brother, Drew.' Carolyn presented the sixth member of their party almost as a prize on a gameshow. Even being named did little to reduce his anonymity. He had the air of being erased, like a copy of Carolyn but dialled down to zero. He offered Madison a smile which was barely worth noting, and it was only then that she realised he was here specifically for her; he was here to help balance the numbers.

'Shall we eat?' Brian suggested when silence descended upon them, a suggestion readily taken up by everybody. Food gave them something to focus upon, a common goal. In amongst praising Carolyn's cooking and asking for the recipe and likening certain dishes to dishes they'd had elsewhere, the meal kept them busy for at least thirty minutes. Or at least, it kept everybody but Madison busy. What it allowed her to do was to fade, simply and easily into the background.

From there, she could observe and think. A study of Andy and Allison proved that there were, indeed, Andy-and-Allison, very much a unit and not just coincidentally alliterative people. That was quite some relationship, marked only by a modest ring on Allison's finger. That they'd yet to sanctify the partnership properly was only marginally less baffling than their obvious dislike of Madison herself. True, she hadn't made any effort to contact them in the past decade, and true, she'd left with minimal warning all those years ago. But she'd been on good terms with them back then, they'd been friends, of a sort. There was nothing she could think of which justified their treatment of her now. That she found she even minded was perhaps the most shocking thing of all.

'Carolyn says you work in LA?' Drew asked from her left hand side. It was the first time anybody had directed any comment towards her, and she'd truthfully forgotten he was even there. It took her a couple of seconds to find any words.

'Yeah.'

There was a pause, after which Carolyn herself stepped in, apparently the social arbitrator for both husband and brother. 'And what is it you do there?'

It shouldn't be this hard to explain what she'd been doing ever since she graduated, but even in Tinseltown what she had to say sounded pretentious. After a long pause, which she knew sounded both rude and dumb, she said, 'I work freelance, editing screenplays.' The shrug she followed it up with was supposed to make it seem less of a big deal, and it somehow made it more.

'Seriously?' Brian's mouth fell open so wide she could see food caught in his teeth. 'You work in the movies in Hollywood?'

'Do people use the phrase "in the movies" anymore?' Allison queried.

'Brian does.' Andy grinned, but stopped when he looked back at Madison. Indeed, he frowned. 'Worked on anything we'd have heard of?'

It was always the men that did this, as if she had to prove she really did do what she said she did. Trying not to sigh, she reeled off a couple of films they'd know. She withheld a couple of others which had been Oscar-nominated a few years ago; past experience told her that people never believed those ones.

'Wow!' Carolyn exclaimed. 'That's... incredible, it must be such an interesting job!'

Madison nodded. Nobody wanted to hear about the lean months, the isolation and the frustration when something was handed back for the twentieth time for a minor rewrite. The job had afforded her opportunities she would never normally have had and enabled her to stay on the West Coast long after college had ended. For that alone, it was indeed incredible.

Enough about her though. Time to turn the tables. Madison had always found asking other people questions to be an absolute winner of a move: most people liked talking about themselves and she didn't have to carry the conversation. 'So, what is it you do?'

There was a momentary pause before Allison jumped in, snippier than she'd been so far. 'Andy's a high school coach. Wrestling and athletics. They're a successful team, aren't they?' Her hand patted his arm, and it all sounded like nothing more than a defence against a challenge Madison hadn't known she'd issued.

'That's... good.' She wasn't sure how else she was supposed to respond. Andy had had several full athletic scholarships ready for when he left Shermer. True, he'd never become a household name, but somehow she'd expected more than a high school coach. Perhaps everybody had expected her to know all of this and her innocent query had seemed an attack on this much quieter future. If so, she didn't dare ask about Allison herself: there was no way of guessing what on earth the 'basket-case' would have become.

It was now that Carolyn's true expertise came to light. 'How did that exhibition go, Ally?'

What followed answered Madison's unasked questions. Allison, it appeared, was an artist, a reasonably successful artist, with contributions to exhibitions in local galleries and some well-paid commissions. She was no more a household name than her fiancé, but it sounded much more like she might yet make it than he would. It was possibly the revelation of the evening so far.

Talk of their lives since they'd last broken bread together seemed to loosen things up a little. A couple of glasses of wine in, Carolyn asked questions about the actors Madison had 'worked with', and she had to break the news that she didn't get to spend much time on the film sets themselves. Most shoots, she was invited along as a courtesy, usually toured around in a group of other nobodies by a disgruntled junior runner: it suited her completely. She was able to confirm that this actor was indeed that good looking in real life, and that actor was indeed dating that actress. Carolyn's eyes shone with excitement and alcohol, and Madison thought she'd made a pretty good impression there. It surprised her that she cared.

By the time the dessert plates were cleared away, Madison too found her vision slightly impaired by alcohol. Her tolerance was supremely low, and she'd learnt her limits out in California, albeit perhaps far too slowly. It was time she went home.

'Is it okay if I call my step-dad for a ride home?' she said now, already standing up, thereby proving any inhibitions had vanished with the drink.

'Oh, you don't have to do that!' Carolyn insisted. 'Brian will take you, right?'

'Sure.' Brian nodded chirpily. He gestured towards his untouched wine glass. 'Somebody has to be the designated driver.'

'No, it's fine,' Madison insisted. 'I don't want to break the party up.'

'We should be going too.' Allison dabbed at her own mouth with a napkin. 'Right, honey?'

Andy nodded, and then they were all making their way to the front door, fetching bags and belongings. Brian went to find his car keys, the telephone rang, there was a general hubbub that hadn't been there before. Waiting in the hallway, Madison found herself reflecting on an evening that hadn't been that bad, that she'd even – against all expectation – sort of enjoyed.

'Okay, here we go!' Brian jangled his keys at her just as Carolyn re-appeared. 'Shall we go?'

'Brian?' Carolyn broke in, just as he reached for the door. 'That was...' Her eyes darted from her husband to Madison and back again. 'That was O'Grady's.'

It was a phrase seemingly imbued with more meaning than a simple reference to a dive-bar in town. Madison thought little of it, beyond a brief moment of amazement that the place still existed. It had been notorious when she was at school for being a place where IDs were rarely requested, even for juniors. Unlikely as it was that the place would call Brian's house, she didn't think a lot of it.

'Oh.' Brian's mouth worked, as he looked from his wife to Madison and back again. 'Could you...?'

'I've been drinking.' Carolyn shrugged. 'They... they want him gone.'

A long pause, in which Madison finally realised that there was something strange going on here: the alcohol had blunted her senses. Unwilling to interrupt a marital conversation, she wished she could fade right away. She even began to say, 'Mike can come and get me if it's a problem...'

'No!' Brian shook his head. 'It's... It's on the way. I'll... sort it.'

'I'll wait up.' Carolyn nodded. 'It was lovely to meet you, Madison.' There was a hesitation before she planted a kiss on her cheek and then pulled away quickly. 'Drive safely.'

For the first five minutes of the drive through suburbia, Madison held her tongue, fighting against her drink-fuelled wish to ask a thousand questions. It was so unlike her usual self, but Brian's reticence was very unlike the boy she'd once known, and even the man she'd known these ten hours. There'd been no explanation of the call, or even why they were taking this detour downtown. Even when they reached the block O'Grady's was on, all he did was bring the car to a stop and kill the engine. They sat for a few seconds in silence.

'Okay. So, the thing is...' He drummed on the steering wheel. Then, in a rush, he said, 'I've got to pick up John from the bar and take him home. So... I'll be back in a minute.'

The door slammed shut behind him before Madison could respond. John. It was the first time she'd heard his name out loud in so many years and it rang in her head so loudly that it was some time before she could process what she was being told. John, here, in this car, with her, within a matter of minutes. She'd worked so hard to put him behind her and now she'd be sharing the same few feet of stuffy stale air with him. She felt nothing less than ambushed.

Then she processed it a little more. The bar had called Brian's house, as if that was the usual protocol when somebody drank too much. Why would they have his number? Why would he be John's next-of-kin? The conversation between Brian and Carolyn had been filled with absences, she mused, as if they didn't need to speak, as if this happened so regularly that a simple nod of the head was enough. John was a part of their lives.

She didn't know why that bothered her so much. God knew, it wasn't as if she'd been a big part of the Johnsons' lives, so it wasn't as if they'd cheated her on as such. But there they'd been, all of them, at dinner, with two massive absences amongst them, and the bigger rolling around a bar, and it hadn't been because they'd not seen him for years or because they didn't know where he was, it was because-

Enough. She'd had more than enough. There was a payphone within her sight; she could call Mike, he could come get her and she could put this whole mess behind her. She swung the car door open.

A groan made her turn around. It seemed like a monster was lurching towards her through the twilight, a four-legged, two-headed monster. It emitted groans and grunts and hissed words. Madison truly regretted that final glass of wine.

Then, as it came closer, she saw it for what it was: Brian, struggling underneath the dead weight of another man. A man with deep shadows under his closed eyes, who could barely walk in a straight line, whose once bronzed skin now looked clay-like. The clothes were virtually unchanged, but the man within them was shrunken, somehow less than he had been ten years ago. John. All of her concerns and anxieties had never conjured up this. She couldn't move for a moment.

And then, when she could, she found walking away impossible. Without words, she opened the car door, although she stood back and let Brian struggle the final few steps before attempting to cram a fully grown man into the backseat of a car. Actually physically touching John was beyond her, but when the door was closed behind him, she slipped back into her own seat and let Brian start the engine.

For a long while, they drove in silence, passing the familiar neighbourhoods from Madison's past on their way the trailer park. Their disgraced passenger offered little in the way of conversation; it seemed his drink-induced coma had only intensified once he was horizontal. It took her a long time to decide which words she wanted to use.

'How often?'

Brian didn't take his eyes off of the road. There was a tension in his jaw that was both old and new, a remnant of the brain of the past. Finally, he said, 'Often.'

Madison glanced over her shoulder. Then, finding it an all too-intense experience, she turned back again and cleared her throat. 'Why do they call you?'

In a very tired voice, one which didn't belong to a twenty-seven-year-old, Brian said, 'Who else is there?'

If it was intended as a weapon, it worked, but also elicited Madison's own form of defence. Alcohol and ten years of unspoken hurt and anger made her question into a knife of her own: 'What about Nancy?'

Brian almost choked. 'Nancy? Why would she give a fuck?'

Madison was startled by the expletive, which still sounded like a small boy's attempt to impress. 'Well...' she stammered. 'She... she and him always seemed... close.'

'Nancy's nothing to do with this.' Brian spat her name out. 'She's...' He shook his head and fell silent, forcing Madison into doing the same.

In the back, John was either asleep, unconscious or dead. Right now, Madison wasn't completely sure which she'd most like.

They drove on through the twilight, reaching the turn off for the trailer park. As Brian signalled left, Madison made an effort to be helpful. 'I could come with you if you need help with...' His name wouldn't make it past her lips.

Brian didn't reply as he slowed up, checking the counter-traffic and making the turn.

'Brian...'

It was with the very deepest sigh that he said, 'You don't need to. We're here.' As he brought the car to a stop, he looked across at her, only mildly surprised by her perplexity. 'Your mom didn't tell you, huh?' She shook her head. 'She lets him stay here. In one of the trailers. When he's in a bad way.' He slammed his door shut behind him.

For a second, Madison was frozen in place again. Then, in a rush of anger, hurt, betrayal and confusion, she launched herself from the car, bolting for the house. The security light outside lit up an unfamiliar car, but she ignored it, thudding up the porch steps and through the screen door.

'You're home early,' Laura commented with a smile, glancing up from the book she was reading. It took approximately two seconds for that smile to become something more quizzical all together. 'What's wrong?

It would be so easy to explode with anger, hurl a thousand accusations across the room. Madison certainly felt like it. But this was her mom, the woman who had always been there, always in her corner, always loved her. More than anger, she felt betrayed, utterly, and that only made her throat thicken with tears.

'Madison?'

She flung an arm back towards the door. 'You've got visitors.' She found herself shaking her head, as if to clear her long-chopped off bangs out of her face.

Whether it was that or the look on her face or whether they were the only possible visitors at this time on a Sunday night, Laura asked no further questions. Instead, she called, 'Mike?' over her shoulder, before heading out onto the porch. She was back within moments, just as her fiancé appeared. 'Mike, could you help Brian?'

Mike sighed, but nodded. 'Sure.'

Madison watched him go, closing the screen door behind him, unsure if she was seeing this. The whole thing was so choreographed, as if it were a regular occurrence, just part of life in the Hart-Anderson household. If the place had seemed unfamiliar yesterday, it was a whole alien world now. She couldn't imagine a life where this happened, where John happened, so regularly and in such a chaotic, yet unremarkable fashion. And still Laura was looking at her, waiting, just like she always did, so sure that Madison would tell her what was wrong.

Madison refused to play ball. 'Well? Say something.' Laura furrowed her brow. 'Explain... that.' She gestured outside again. 'Explain... what is this? Why have you never said? Why... why would you help him?' Question followed question, all without pausing for an answer. 'Why would you let him stay here, whenever he wants, after everything, after-' She ran out of words, surprised to find herself shaking as she raked a hand through her sweat-damp hair.

'Hey, what's the shouting about?' Mike reappeared. He glanced between mother and daughter, and moved towards Laura instinctively. To her, he said, 'Brian's handling it.' To Madison, he added, 'What happened?'

She snorted. 'How am I supposed to know? Ask her.'

Laura took the blow without so much as a wince. 'I'd answer if you gave me a chance.' She barely raised her voice, but it was enough to make Madison stop in her tracks. Throughout her life, her mom had rarely had need to tell her off or give her a reality check. Now, she could only remember one other time, sat in a hospital, brushing off the importance of Him: he is not just some guy you know.

Now, still in the same firm tone, Laura said, 'You weren't here, Madison. What I did or didn't do about John didn't seem to make much difference to you. I couldn't just turn him away. That's not who I am.'

It was true. It was precisely what had made Madison so proud of her when she and John had been together. So many other parents would have locked the door on the criminal; it was precisely how Claire's dad had responded. All of the things John had done – getting Madison drunk, virtually abducting her from school, sneaking into the trailer every night – would have more than earned him such treatment. But Laura never did. That she'd continued being that person even when Madison had gone shouldn't have been a surprise. After all, John hadn't cheated on her. If Madison had ever thought about it, she could perhaps have anticipated something like this.

And Laura had a kicker to deliver anyway. 'And neither are you, Mads. Or you're not the person I thought you were.'

The alcohol and the tension and the shock and the betrayal were too much. In a choice between crying in public and crying in private, there was only one thing she could do.

'I'm going to bed.'