Three Years Old

Chapter Fifteen

So here it is! This is the chaptere where you find out a bit more about what's going on with Debby.... not everything of course, I'm not gonna make it that easy for you, but you find out... more. Hope you enjoy! The video on the side is Magic Position by Patrick Wolf - I'm absolutely obsessed with him at the moment!

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     I put off calling Michael for three days. I kept on telling myself I would do it, then would find that the whole day was gone and I still hadn’t. Finally, when it got to Monday – now a week and a day since Debby had arrived – I found myself at home alone and realised now was the ideal time.

     Debby had been contacted by one of her old school friends, Bronwyn, who had somehow found out that she was in St. David’s, and so she’d gone to Haverfordwest to spend the day with her. Blake had done the food shopping the day before with Flick, where they’d met a woman with a daughter the same age who lived on a farm just fifteen minute’s drive away, and so had gone over there for a “play date” of sorts. We’d been thrilled at this, as otherwise Flick wouldn’t have made any friends in the area until she started nursery in September.

     Even when I’d finally decided that I had to call him – it was now or never – I still deliberated as much as possible, having no idea what I was going to say to him. Hey Michael, do you have a job? Michael, why’s your girlfriend telling me that you’re working at a school during the summer holidays? Why is your girlfriend here with us rather than living with you? Why doesn’t she want to go to her old house or her favourite beach? What the hell is going on?

     I sat for at least ten minutes just holding the phone in my hand, before I even dialled the number. Then when I did dial, I pressed each button slowly, and took a few seconds before pressing the call button.

     When I pressed the phone to my ear and listened to it ring I still hadn’t decided what I was going to say, I guessed I’d just have to wing it. He took a long time to answer, and part of me was hoping it would just keep on ringing and he wouldn’t pick up. When I thought about it I realised that I had no idea why I was reluctant to talk to him, but I just was.

     Finally the phone clicked and after a second his familiar voice came down the phone. ‘Hello?’

     ‘Hey Michael,’ I said. ‘It’s Beth.’

     ‘Oh my god, Beth!’ he cried. ‘Finally, I’ve been trying to get hold of you for days! But you must have got a new mobile and I didn’t have the house number for your new house and apparently you don’t check your Facebook anymore.’

     This knocked me into silence. This was not the reaction I’d been expecting. After a slight pause I realised he was waiting for me to speak.

     ‘Um, yeah,’ I managed to spit out. ‘All of that’s right. I’m sorry… but why were you trying to contact me?’

     ‘Have you seen or heard from Debby at all?’ he asked me quickly, rushing over the words.

     ‘Yeah,’ I replied, shrugging my shoulders even though he couldn’t see me. ‘Course I have, she’s staying with us, didn’t you know?’

     ‘Oh thank god!’ he cried, then to someone with him, ‘It’s Beth, Debby’s in Wales with her.’ There was another sigh of relief in the background.

     ‘Michael,’ I said, completely confused. ‘What’s going on? I presumed you knew she was here, she turned up last Sunday.’

     ‘She hasn’t told you anything?’ he asked me, his voice sounding surprised.

     ‘Nope, she just said she wanted a visit,’ I explained. ‘But it seemed like she was hiding something so I called you to find out. What’s going on?’

     ‘Well, you’re right about her hiding something,’ he replied. He let out a sigh of exasperation before he continued. ‘Well, we um, we had… an argument. Like a huge one. This was the day before she got to yours. Most of the time, after our arguments she goes out for a bit, to calm down, organise her thoughts, so when she left the house I didn’t think anything of it.

     ‘But then when it got later and later and she didn’t come back I started to worry. I kept on trying to call her, but she didn’t pick up. It wasn’t until the next morning that I realised loads of her clothes and her suitcase was gone. I contacted all her friends, her family, but no one had heard anything about her. You were the only one that I couldn’t get a hold of, so I’ve just been hoping she was with you.’

     ‘Wow,’ I muttered. ‘I had no idea. She told us everything was fine. She said you had a job in a girl’s school, and that was what really got me thinking, because it’s the summer holidays, so schools aren’t open.’

     ‘Really? I have no idea why she told you that,’ he admitted. ‘I still don’t have a job. I’m tutoring a couple of kids over the summer whose parent’s are worried, but apart from that, nothing.’

     I grunted with frustration, none of it made any sense to me. ‘But why would she lie about that? It has nothing to do with you guys having an argument.’ Michael didn’t reply. ‘Michael?’ I asked.

     ‘Um, yeah, I don’t know,’ he told me. ‘To be honest with you Debby’s been a bit… unstable for the last couple of years. A lot of what she says and does, well, it doesn’t make that much sense.’

     ‘But other than the fact that she was clearly lying about something and not telling me everything, she seems pretty normal to me,’ I said.

     ‘Yeah, yeah, of course she’s the same,’ he quickly contradicted. ‘She’s not properly insane or anything, she’s still herself. She’s just more restless and irrational, and she loses her temper at everything with me. I don’t know what it is that’s wrong, but she takes it all out on me.’ As he said this last sentence his voice sort of cracked, like he was about to cry.

     ‘Oh, Michael,’ I sighed. ‘I’m so sorry.’

     ‘No, it’s fine. I want to be with her, I’m in love with her no matter what,’ he told me with confidence. ‘I knew all this about her when I decided to be with her, but I wanted to anyway. I’m not giving up just because it’s a little bit difficult recently.’

     I didn’t say anything to this. I had no idea what I was supposed to say. ‘Look, I’m gonna come and get her tomorrow, okay?’ he told me. ‘Don’t tell her I’m coming, or she’ll probably just run off before I get there. See you tomorrow.’ Then before I could say anything more he hung up.

     I was left completely shell shocked. I’d had no idea that anything was seriously wrong with Debby, I’d thought at least that she was trying to hide something about the way her and Michael were living or something, not that they’d had an argument and she’d run away. That was another thing – don’t tell her I’m coming or she’ll run off. Was she really that determined to stay away from him? And what had the argument been about? Had it just been something stupid like it always was with her, or was it something more?

     I found myself with more questions than before, when I’d only been making the call to get some answers. All I wanted to do was talk to Debby, and try to get her to tell me what was going on, but I was worried that if I tried to ask her about it, she’d do what she did to Michael and run away.

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Sooo? What do you think? Please leave a comment to tell me and vote if you enjoyed it :) I'll try to upload sometime this weekend again, but it's a bit crazy, so I may not manage to.