University of Westminster, 6th January, 1987

"Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck!"

Monica cursed under her breath as she read the beginning of the letter in her hand:

RETURN OF EQUIPMENT: FINAL NOTICE

Equipment: Panasonic Omnimovie Newvicon Tube Sensor VHS Camcorder

Date of rental:15/12/1986

Return date: 22/12/1986

Extended date: 28/12/1986

Outstanding charge: £60.00

Dear Ms Brannigan,

This is a reminder to return any outstanding equipment that you have rented out from the audiovisual facilities office and to pay any extra charges as soon as possible. Please see above for more details.

In line with faculty policy, your returns window has been extended by five days from the original date given (see above). If you do not return it before then, your outstanding fine will subsequently increase by 25%. Note that this is subject to change depending on the condition in which said equipment is returned to us.

Regards,

Audiovisual equipment loans office.

Monica aggressively stuffed the letter back into its envelope when she was done reading it, and into the bag hanging on her shoulder as she stood at her designated pigeon hole, in which another one was waiting.

"How could I have forgotten to return it?" She pondered as her cold fingers hastily ripped open the next letter, "Probably because of... because..."

It was because of 'the Dublin incident' that almost killed her right before Christmas, and the abysmal days recovering in bed at Garden Lodge that consequently followed afterwards.

But fortunately the new semester at University had officially started today, and Monica hoped that it would bring order back into her life again once the new year kicked in.

Or so she thought:

AUDIOVISUAL EQUIPMENT: FINE OF MISUSE

Equipment: Panasonic Omnimovie Newvicon Tube Sensor VHS Camcorder

Outstanding charge: £100.00

Reason for charge: VHS film not removed/ developed.

Dear Ms Brannigan,

You are receiving this letter with regards to the condition in which you returned equipment loaned from audiovisual facilities.

It appears that the equipment has not come back in the state outlined in your agreement that all students are required to sign at the beginning of the course year, and therefore you will be fined the total outstanding charge listed above. Furthermore, the loans office will be subsequently conducting a review into the way in which you misused our equipment outside of educational purposes against the terms and conditions also outlined in your agreement. Note that this could potentially result in expulsion from your course.

If you feel as though there were circumstances beyond your control that we ought to know about, then you are welcome to make an appeal via the academic office if you so wish.

Regards,

Audiovisual equipment loans office.

Despite Monica's best hopes, that letter she finished reading was just as foreboding as the one before it.

"Oh, shit!" she realised, "Paula must've returned the camcorder when I was still sick and forgot to remove the tape of Johnny's play!!"

But Monica couldn't blame her 'tech-illiterate friend' Paula, and knew that she meant well. Despite Ms McIntyre's crippling and costly error, she had been so good to her and the twins in the past few weeks and during Christmas whilst she was still bed bound from alcohol poisoning and near asphyxiation.

As for Freddie, she had barely spoken to him within the last couple of weeks. Except for the accustomed 'Merry Christmas' or 'Happy New Year, darling' on the appropriate days.

Hence, Monica craved that brief interaction in the dark she and Freddie both had on Christmas Eve, for to her it felt like the only real conversation between them ever since they got home from Dublin.

Otherwise, Freddie did his best to avoid Monica as much as possible once she started getting out of the guest bedroom and walking around the house. If she went into one room such as the kitchen, Freddie would quietly slink into another nearby such as the piano room to keep himself busy. Or at night if she went into the master bedroom, he'd wait in the en-suite bathroom and pretend to take a shower or brush his teeth until he was sure that Monica had fallen asleep.

"10 years ago, he used to tell me that he loved me and that mine was the company he craved most in the world. But now he obviously dreads it" she sadly reminisced.

Besides avoiding her, Monica could sense that the way in which Freddie's hurt from her actions in Dublin was eating him alive, just by watching the way he sullenly hung his head and stared at his feet as he walked out of the room. Or the way he inched to the opposite edge of the mattress of the Queen-sized bed they shared whenever they'd both lie awake for hours, and flinched if ever she rolled too close to him under the covers in the dark. Or, overall, in every wall he'd put up to block her attempts to communicate with him and begin to apologise. It was obvious that what at first seemed like a foolish stunt to gain Freddie's attention only pushed him further away from her in the end, and the children...

Two weeks later, and Monica was unsure if she could stay in the dark for much longer whilst her heart constantly ached with the remorse. She knew that if she turned to her friend Paula, Paula would only tell her something that she didn't want to hear. And now that Phoebe was gone and had officially found employment elsewhere, she was unsure of who else there was to confide in.

"I made my bed, now I must lie in it," Monica convinced herself, walking down the corridor as she was tormented with guilt once again, "Another reason to get stuck into University work..."

She sucked in a breath as she stopped in front of the white-painted wooden door into Professor Giorgia Visconti's office, and on it hung a page at eye level with the names of her classmates and time slots printed on it.

Monica Brannigan: 10:30-10:40am

Monica looked at her dainty gold digital Casio wristwatch, a joint Christmas present from her parents and younger brother Lenny back home, which read 10:28.

"Wow, I'm actually early for once" she thought, and knocked on the door gently.

"Come in!" A woman's smooth, husky Italian-accented voice crooned on the other side.

Monica opened the door a crack, and introduced herself, "Monica Brannigan, according to my calendar I have an academic progress meeting with you now?"

"Ah, yes," Professor Visconti lifted her head from the paper sitting on her desk, gesturing in front of her, "please, take a seat."

"Thank you" Monica shuffled inside quickly and closed the door shut behind her, pulling a padded waiting room chair out for herself.

As she sat down she straightened her trusty pea green winter coat as it crookedly fell over her knees.

"I wonder if the equipment technicians told her about the camcorder thing" Monica thought apprehensively, watching in the corner of her eye as Professor Visconti lifted her tortoiseshell reading glasses out of her long, witch-like salt and pepper hair.

"I have your end-of-semester results in front of me," the professor proclaimed, lifting a document up from her desk, "Shall we, as you Brits say, jump right into it?"

"Go ahead" Monica squeaked, for the sooner she got out of this office the better.

"Very well. I notice that your grades in the film production module are still quite high since we last spoke," Professor Giorgia Visconti remarked, "Yet, despite what you agreed on back then I see little improvement in your academic theory modules."

"Oh..." Monica stared at her hands on her lap disappointedly, although she had no reason to be surprised.

"Doctor Mayfield also left me a note to remind you that he is still waiting for you to submit your essay analyzing postmodernism in Hollywood films."

"Really?" The young woman sounded, cursing internally.

"Yes, it was due a couple of days ago. Care to explain?"

Monica was sure that her woeful tale that involved binge-drinking and jumping into a swimming pool whilst fully intoxicated and almost drowning as a result wasn't going to make her look any better to the woman sitting in front of her than she already did to her on paper.

"A lot went on over the holidays... I, erm," she awkwardly cleared her throat, "You see Professor, in December I got sick and spent time in hospital for a bit. Everything academic-related went straight out of my head."

"I'm sorry to hear about that, Monica," Giorgia set the essay feedback and criteria back forms down, "Did you fill out an exceptional circumstances form and a deadline extension request?"

"No no, it happened at the start of the Christmas holidays" Monica clarified, clenching her hands together on her lap.

"You can get both forms at the academic offices, you know. The sooner you fill them out, the better it'll be for your marks," the professor advised, setting her documents back down, "Let me ask you something else. It was you who submitted that short film Shades of Green last year during enrolment, wasn't it?"

Taken aback slightly, Monica replied, "That was me, yes"

"And what or whom were your influences for that short?" Professor Visconti asked.

"I'm sorry?"

"Who influenced you? Hollis Frampton? Maya Deren?"

"Oh, nobody really," Monica shrugged, "It just came out of nowhere."

"Everything comes from something." Professor Visconti laced her hands together and leaned forward.

She stuttered, "W-Well, I was on a road trip across Ireland with my two children and-and..."

"Yes?" The professor raised her brows expectantly.

Monica continued, "It had been years since I'd gone back to my home country, and I guess I'd forgotten how green everything was."

"You guessed?"

Monica uttered, "I just... I can't describe it any other way. It was more of a commentary, really."

"Really? That's all? That's disappointing," Professor Visconti flatly said as she leaned back into her office chair, "The professors and I found your film to be so promising and lively. Unless, of course, you deliberately left it open to the audiences' interpretation?"

"If you want to call it that, you can," she nervously tittered, "I mean, what do you think?"

"You want me to be honest?"

Monica nodded in reply.

Professor Visconti sat in front of her, dark eyes glowering back down at her through the reading glasses perched on the bridge of her prominent Italian nose.

She leaned forward again, and began:

"I think that you should go away and ponder as to whether or not this is the right pathway for you, Monica. And if you are sure that it is, then there's always the option for a deferral to repeat the year. But if you want to stay and keep going, then the time to improve your essay writing should be now."

"Wow, that is a lot for me to consider... What do you think would be the wisest thing for me to do at this stage?"

Out of nowhere, the professor indirectly asked her, "Do you know the meaning behind your name?"

"What's that got to do with anything?" Monica thought.

At a loss, she shook her head and rambled on, "I was named after one of my grandmothers who was an Irish Catholic, who was named after Saint Monica herself because Roman Catholics tend to name their children after saints as you probably already know. That's all I was told."

Professor Visconti frowned, then chuckled gently, "It's ironic, really"

"Sorry, what's ironic?" Monica cluelessly queried, her cheeks now flushing red.

She went on to explain, "Your name derives from the Latin word monere which means 'to advise', yet some sources say that it comes from the ancient Greek words for 'monk' or 'hermit', both of whom live solitary lifestyles."

"Okay, I didn't know that."

Professor Visonti continued, "And I find it ironic that I am the one who's sitting here and being asked to advise you. Although that's technically my role in this meeting, I can't be the one to make a decision on what's best for your future."

At that, Monica silently nodded one more time, biting her lower lip as she did her best not to react.

The professor asked her, "Now, is there anything else you want to bring to my attention?"

Monica glanced at her wristwatch, which read 10:34.

"Well, that wasn't a very good use of time at all"

"No, thank you" Monica stood up from her chair, and straightened up her pea green coat.

But before she could walk out of the room feeling any more downtrodden and insignificant than she already did, Professor Visconti's voice stopped her.

"Actually, Monica?"

She looked indirectly over her shoulder, hand clenching the door handle, "Yes, Professor?"

"The master has failed more times than the beginner. Remember that you are still a beginner."

In spite of Professor Visconti's bluntness, such an affirmation also alluded that perhaps she didn't want Monica to give up after all.

But Monica still felt as though she was being set up to quit. Especially when she exited the professor's office to find a group of a few of her classmates standing outside the door.

All of them were snickering amongst themselves except for Florence whom she met on Day 1, who looked rather sombre in comparison.

"Looks like we don't have to wait for you to make your breakthrough anytime soon," the one with long curly hair and glasses teased, "You're already famous!"

"I don't know what you're talking about." Monica uttered, trying to push past them.

One of them wordlessly handed her a piece of paper that was the size of the palm of her hand.

Monica didn't have her reading glasses, so she had to squint and hold it closer in order to look at it. Judging by the bright colours and the font, it was a cutout of a column that had been taken from a teen gossip magazine. It read:

Big Disgrace: Queen spouse's drunken plunge

This week's winning Spotted In The Wild submission goes to Anonymous Teen, who claims to have witnessed a bizarre incident before Christmas that involved Monica Brannigan, whom any of you diehard fans of the rock band Queen will know as the spouse to frontman Freddie Mercury and therefore the mother of his two children.

According to our reader, who was staying at the Hilton in Dublin, Ireland on one of their parent's boring business trips and relaxing in the jacuzzi of the Hotel's spa when the incident happened, an extremely drunken Ms Brannigan entered swimming pool area of the spa and began disturbing the peace before jumping into the deep end of the pool and almost drowning. She then had to be fished out and rescued by the on-duty lifeguard and hotel staff before being wheeled into an ambulance in front of many other on-lookers. We don't know what possessed Ms Brannigan's bizarre actions, but we do know that there have been rumours of Freddie Mercury taking a HIV test circulating since October which have perhaps been causing a strain on the couple's relationship. A few other sources have claimed that in the last few months Ms Brannigan has been frequently sighted by Paparazzi without the simple diamond that used to be on her ring finger since her alleged engagement to Mr Mercury some time in the late 1970s.

Monica stopped reading anything more past the words 'Hilton in Dublin', and scrunched the piece of scrap up in humiliation before stuffing it into her coat pocket, just in case she needed it later.

The group walked off and ignored her as she did so, giggling to each other. However, Florence stayed behind.

"Is it true? Freddie Mercury is your children's father, and not some "dangerous psychopath" like you made him out to be?" She asked timidly.

Monica sheepishly nodded, "It's true."

Florence went off, "Why are you keeping so many things about yourself from me?! Do you think that you're better than the rest of us just because you're in love with him and you've already had a practical career in the industry before we have, or what?!"

"Why don't you ask Professor Visconti that?" Monica impulsively retorted, making a beeline for the staircase.

Taken aback, Florence didn't respond or even follow her, giving Monica the chance to escape.

*****

The ride back to Garden Lodge on the Underground only took about half an hour, but the internal crisis that Monica was faced with about her university course was making it feel like a much longer journey.

In that time, she probably ought to have taken her Professor's advice during the meeting and come up with a decision to carry on, defer or drop out of her university course, but it was hard when she couldn't predict the outcome of any of those three options.

Then there was the gossip column that was still creased up in her coat pocket, which was probably bothering her more than it should've been.

"They're just a bunch of pretentious teenagers trying to get a rouse out of you, you handled it considerably well in front of them" she reflected.

Monica was itching to read the rest of it, but knew that it would paint her out to be a laughing stock like most gossip magazine articles and therefore only make her feel worse about herself than she already did. And it probably wouldn't be long before Queen Production's publicist and manager Jim Beach caught wind of the column either.

Her sweaty hand gripped onto the ceiling handle whilst the other held onto the strap of her shoulder bag as she stood and watched other passengers in the carriage as they read magazines or the morning newspapers, and she wondered if the cutout came from one of them and if they happened to be reading about her.

"I doubt they even know who I am," She thought, "And if they do know me, it's because of Freddie. If I'm ever going to make a mark on this world it'll always be because of him"

When the tube finally reached Earl's Court, Monica's final destination, she was glad to get off of it and head back into Garden Lodge after a five minute walk from station. Then, she could forget about the article and the camcorder fine and spend time with Johnny and Roshni before they'd have to go back to Ireland for Boarding School to start the new term at Headfort. And then she'd be left alone with Freddie and his cats in deathly silence once again for god-knows how long until one of them cracked...

This time Monica opened the front door of the house, having decided to enter the main hallway for a change. That way she could avoid talking to a certain somebody in the kitchen if she entered the back door and cut through the living quarters as she usually did.

But even then, upon entering the hallway she was immediately unable to avoid him.

There he stood opposite her at the foot of the wooden stairwell, slowly lowering what appeared to be duffle bags in either of his hands down onto the floor by his feet.

What immobilized Monica from being the first to speak was how he was dressed as if he was about to go out somewhere, wearing his light blue pinstripe dress shirt under one of his black bomber jackets, and his raven hair was hastily slicked back with gel using a gap-toothed comb.

Finally, he coolly purred:

"I'm leaving for Barcelona... and I'm not sure how long I'll be gone for."

Initially, Monica was far too dumbfounded to react.

But when she managed to process Freddie's words, she stammered, "B-But... the twins aren't leaving until-"

"Don't use them as leverage, I can't fucking stand it anymore!" Freddie spat, snatching his bags off the floor.

"Can't stand what?!" Monica argued back.

"Being in this house with you, after what you did that day!"

Freddie brushed past her as he aggressively marched towards the front door, and it was the first real physical contact that they'd both had in weeks.

Yet all of Monica's pent-up emotions that she'd been keeping in that whole time came pouring out right then and there:

"Maybe if you actually came and visited me when I was in hospital or still recovering then I'd actually have had the chance to apologise to you for what I did in Dublin!" She ranted to Freddie, following him to the door, "And I'd also get to ask you other things like why Phoebe left without saying anything, or why you keep putting walls around yourself each time we're in the same room and shutting everybody off, EVEN YOUR OWN FLESH AND BLOOD!!"

To which Freddie angrily roared back, "AND WHY SHOULD I HAVE COME AND VISITED YOU?! YOU MADE A BLOODY FOOL OUT OF YOURSELF AND ME!!"

At this point Monica was also yelling, "WHY DO YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO MAKE EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU?!"

"Oh for Christ's sake, Monica!" He loudly scoffed, "You're still not sore about that bloody mix-up, are you?"

By now the raised voices throughout Garden Lodge had attracted the attention of every living being inside it, including the cats.

Johnny and Roshni, who were in the piano room, paused whatever they were playing at the coffee table in alarm.

"What do you think they're arguing about?" Roshni anxiously whispered to her brother, peeping over the back of the settee they sat cross-legged on.

"Could be anything," Johnny shrugged, "Mum mentioned Pheebs, and something about his own flesh and blood."

To which his sister quietly explained, "Flesh and blood is another word grown-ups use to call family, I'm sure of it"

Johnny's eyes bugged, "Does that mean... us?"

They both hid behind the settee in trepidation, timidly peering through the doorway into the entrance hall to watch the yelling match between their parents unfolding.

However, Freddie and Monica were far too embroiled in it to notice that their own children were in the next room, let alone begin to think as to whether or not they were listening.

"You could've at least found it in you to say sorry to them both for not coming to Ireland on time!" Monica stomped away from the door and turned her back to him.

Freddie quickly followed after her, "Their dear, dear Auntie Paula has already given me a bollocking on that topic, thank you very much!"

"And yet Paula shouldn't have to be the one telling you!!" Monica's arms swung erratically by her sides for emphasis, "But then again I suppose I always put too much faith in you Fred and in the end, I'm the one getting hurt picking up the pieces while you-you... you just bugger off somewhere like you're damn-well buggering off now!"

Now, Freddie had been fully riled up.

He exploded in retaliation, "WELL, IT SERVES YOU RIGHT FOR DRINKING YOURSELF UNDER THE TABLE LIKE THAT! IT'S A WONDER YOU DIDN'T EVEN GET YOURSELF BLOODY-WELL RAPED AS WELL AND IF YOU DID, YOU'D PROBABLY DESERVE IT!!"

Monica numbly froze at the foot of the staircase, and a silence followed as Freddie smugly awaited her response.

Johnny and Roshni took the quietness as a signal to creep off of the settee and closer to the doorway, light on their feet so as not to accidentally step on a creaky floorboard below them.

Monica slowly turned back around to face him in disbelief.

Breath hitching, she asked, "What did you just say to me?"

"You heard what I said black and white, dearie," he taunted, now calm and collected, "You're so naive and damn irresponsible that you even fell for a man twelve years older than you, and it's a wonder I didn't even take advantage of you when I had the chance."

Like a fool, Monica still stood there awestruck, giving Freddie enough time to head back to the front door.

But she also had time to elicit a comeback of her own.

"You're right, I am irresponsible," Monica admitted, "And do you know what else? That night we don't talk about when you screamed at me and accused me of having an affair with the doctor who was checking if I was pregnant, I am now starting to wish that I took responsibility into my own hands."

Freddie stopped dead in his tracks, "What on Earth do you mean 'take responsibility'?!"

"And Fred, if I knew that you were going to turn out like this eventually then I should've trusted my instincts that night... I should've run back to Ireland with Johnny and Roshni in my belly and never, ever come back to you."

"Don't you dare say another word, you BITCH!" Freddie lowly warned as he stood across from her, fuming like a bull that was ready to charge.

Being called such a derogatory slur should've knocked Monica off-balance, but she didn't flinch once because seeing the veins popping out of his red neck was rather gratifying at that moment.

And so, under Freddie's dark-eyed glower, she unwaveringly kept going:

"I suppose you only wanted one thing from me after all, didn't you? And in the end, those two were the product of your own selfishness and uncontrollable sexual appetite, weren't they? Go on, you might as well admit that you're a shit father and a shit-"

Smack.

That sharp, crisp sound echoed through the hallway and bounced off the walls for a few seconds, followed by a deafening stillness throughout the entire household.

"MUMMY!!"

Johnny and Roshni were the first to react, exclaiming in terror and anguish as they broke cover and ran to their mother's aid.

Monica flung her head forward again and straightened up, her hand shakily clutching her freshly-struck cheek as it throbbed bright red with shock.

Quivering, she ordered her children, "Get your coats and shoes on"

One of them protested, "But where are we-"

'Just get them on now, we're leaving!!" she pushed their short arms off her waist and ushered them both towards the front door.

"B-But what about Luke and Leia?"

"We'll worry about them later, just get out of the house!!"

The front door slammed shut, and everything in the house was quiet again.

The entire time, Freddie watched on blankly and made no attempt to stop the three of them leaving, for he had been rendered powerless by his own actions.

When they were finally gone he slowly lifted the hand from his side that did the damage.

He stared at it and started unwinding his long, trembling fingers one by one as he did his best to register in his mind what he had just said and done to Monica in the last couple of minutes.

But even he himself was too numb with the shock.

Then, after a minute that felt almost like ten, the phone on the hall table rang.

It snapped Freddie back into time and reality, and he angrily dragged his feet over to it.

Snatching the receiver off the cradle, he barked into it, "What?!"

"Erm, Pardon me," a man on the other end, who was rather surprised by his brashness apologised and then asked, "is Mr Frederick Mercury there?"

Freddie knew that whenever his full name was used formally like that then it must've been a serious matter.

His stomach then dropped in panic as he thought, "Monica couldn't have already called the police on me for domestic battery in such a short space of time, could she?"

Although he knew that if he were to be questioned by police, or even arrested, he probably deserved it.

"Who is this?"

"It's only me, Gordon Atkinson, your GP?" the mystified doctor replied on the other end.

"Oh..." Freddie uttered, "I almost forgot what his voice sounded like."

"I'm phoning you as I have the results of your HIV blood test just back from America," Dr Atkinson explained, "Since these last few weeks I'm sure you've been eager to know the answer. Or, perhaps, the opposite?"

At this point, Freddie was unsure if he was supposed to feel relieved or anxious.

But what difference was it going to make anyway?

He heard himself ask, "What are the results?"

He heard his doctor pause to take a deep breath, before he answered, "Well, I'm pleased to confirm that you are negative for the human immunodeficiency virus, Fred."

"I'm... negative?"

"Congratulations," Dr Atkinson praised, "you can put your mind at rest now, and enjoy the time you really do have left..."

"Congratulations?" Freddie thought.

What was there to celebrate now? With his anger, fear and his selfishness Freddie had just pushed away the three people who were most important to him, all in the space of a short few minutes... and for what?

Now, he realised that it was too late to take everything back.

"Thank you, doctor" Freddie murmured.

He didn't give Gordon the chance to wish him well once more and say goodbye, emotionlessly slamming the receiver down onto the cradle.

Out of nowhere Luke and Leia emerged, slinking and winding themselves around Freddie's legs as they both chirruped for his attention, fully unaware of what had just occurred or transpired in the past ten minutes.

At that, the only living creatures showing him some form of affection that he didn't earn or deserve, Freddie began to loudly and regretfully sob.

He crumpled down to his feet and blubbered through the tears as he curled into a foetal position in the centre of the cold, marbled floor as he wailed in despair:

"Oh, I-I've lost them! I've lost everything..."

Meanwhile...

"Johnny, you see my bag at your feet? Give it to Roshni"

"Why?"

"Just do as I say and help me navigate the road with the map in your hand!!"

Johnny swiftly obeyed his mum's instructions as he sat in the front passenger side of her Austin Maestro, setting his road atlas aside and lifting the shoulder bag that was sitting below his seat as the car sped into what must've been North Kensington by now.

"You haven't even told us where we're going!" Roshni anxiously noised in the back seat.

"I know, I'm trying to form a plan..." Monica trailed off distractedly, looking right at left as she approached a crossroads of a suburban area, "Johnny, where do I go now to get out of Kensington entirely?"

Johnny looked at the page of the inner city yet again, "It says you can go straight ahead and then there'll be a roundabout"

The boy then unbuckled his belt so that he could stretch across to the back seat behind him, and hand the bag to his twin sister.

As he did so, he looked at the pink marks on the side of his mum's exposed face yet again.

"I can't believe dad would hit mum and shout at her like that, not after that big speech he gave us me and Roshni about losing our tempers and what can happen..."

He was also surprised that his mother wasn't crying from the pain and shock of such a slap, even if her voice sounded like she was ready to burst into tears at any second.

Instead, Monica's eyes were dry and focused on the road ahead as she sought out an escape route for herself and her children, her foot firmly on the pedal the entire time.

"She's like a robot on Autopilot" Johnny thought.

"Roshni, take out my address book and Motorola and when you do, I'll tell you what to say" Monica instructed, taking another sharp breath.

Her daughter obeyed, frantically digging through her mum's belongings on her lap.

But suddenly, almost all of the items spilled out of the bag as the car swung sharply and ferociously around a street corner, some of them rolling across the seat whilst others landed on the car floor.

"Mum, you're driving too fast!!" Roshni complained.

To which her mum defended, "You know why that is, we have to get away from- oh, nevermind"

"But you said we don't have a plan!" Johnny argued.

"I know what I said Johnny, now the plan is to phone Auntie Paula!" Monica urged, swerving off yet another residential street she had been on and back onto the dual carriageway.

Roshni grunted as her seatbelt restricted her from stretching any further to get the black leather-bound address book that was flung to the edge of the car floor, so she grabbed the nearby fold-up umbrella and used it to successfully nudge the book closer.

"I've got the address book, mum! Now what do you want me to do?"

Monica's car was now approaching the Holland Park roundabout, which Kensington borough's boundary was cutting right through.

"Great!" She said triumphantly, "Now look for Auntie Paula's number in the M pages under McIntyre, Paula... and then call it on my Motorola"

"But Auntie Paula lives that way" Johnny pointed to the exit they'd just passed.

"I know, but we need to make sure she knows we're coming first" Monica explained to him.

"Mum, there's two numbers in here!" Roshni peered up from the address book.

"Try the one that says, 'work' beside it first"

"But mum, your handwriting is all scribbles, I can't tell which is which!!"

"Oh, just give me the phone then!!" Monica looked over her shoulder to the back seat, "And read the first one out to-"

"Mum, look out!!"

Johnny cried in panic, pointing at the honking car that was coming straight for them.

Monica immediately jerked the steering wheel to avoid its path, but her Austin Maestro didn't like the sudden movement.

Its wheels skid on a patch of unsalted ice, causing the driver to lose control of her steering as the Austin violently ploughed into a street corner lamppost at a high speed before the three of them could react.

In a mother's race to keep herself and her children safe from harm, Monica had instantly lost.

To be continued...