Hirakata, Osaka prefecture, Japan, 8th January, 1987

"Dad, did you happen to see a letter written in English in the fax tray?"

"Leave your father be, he is reading the news" Mei Toshyuki sternly told her young son, Oshiro.

The boy stood in the doorway of the living room, staring at them both expectantly as they sat kneeling around the table, reading their magazines or books and drinking green tea.

"But mum," he stepped into the room, "My friend Roshni from school hasn't faxed me back in two days!"

"Are you talking about that girl in your class that didn't want to meet us when we came to get you in Dublin?" Mei put her hands on her hips.

"No!" Oshiro snapped confusedly in protest, "I mean, yes, but we've been faxing each other every single day since the end of term and for some reason she stopped replying to me-"

"That fax machine is not a toy, Oshiro. It's for your mother's work." his father, who was actually listening the entire time, sternly told him as he stared straight into his newspaper.

The boy dropped his mouth open to speak, but then knew better than to protest against his father, a naval officer.

"I wish I had a father like Roshni's," he assumed, "at least he takes an interest in her friends"

"Oshiro, go and help your grandmother prepare lunch in the kitchen." Mei demanded, climbing back onto her feet.

"But-"

"Your Sobo came up to Osaka to spend time with you especially while you were home from school," she gently ushered her son out of the doorway and towards the kitchen, "Besides, it's important that you learn to cook sooner or later so that you can feed yourself whenever you're older and living on your own"

"As if I'm not on my own enough already" Oshiro wanted to say.

He sometimes longed for a pet or a sibling, like his cousins in America or Roshni herself, then perhaps he wouldn't feel so lonely. But for now, his grandmother's company would have to do:

"Ahh, my little Oshiro-chan!" the old lady beamed warmly when she saw him walk into the kitchen.

"Hi, Sobo..." Oshiro respectfully bowed to greet her.

She bowed in return, and signalled him closer with her finger, "I'm preparing your favourite, pork Gyozas. Do you want to know how to make them?"

"Oh... yes please!"

"Come, take a wrapper from the pile" she instructed kindly.

Oshiro's heart burst with excitement. He missed his grandmother's cooking whilst he was at school, for Miss O'Malley the dinner lady's food just couldn't match up.

He allowed his grandmother's soft hands to lay the pre-kneaded flour dough flat on his open palm, and guide his other hand to the spoon sitting in the bowl of raw mince pork and spring onion.

"Put a little bit of the mixture onto the wrapper, but not too much or else it won't close properly" she demonstrated.

"How do we wrap them?" Oshiro asked.

"Watch me do it first," she took it out of his hand, "Dip your finger in that small bowl of water, and wet the outer edges of the wrapper"

The boy watched as his grandmother folded the wrapper in half, and effortlessly started making some short of pleat formation with her nimble, floured fingers, and once the Gyoza was prepared she put it in the bamboo steamer with the other freshly prepared pile.

"Roshni would probably enjoy this more than me" Oshiro sadly thought to himself.

"Sobo, is it possible to make gyozas with vegetable filling for, say, those who don't eat meat or fish as well?" he asked curiously. 

"Of course you can! Or you can make sweet ones for dessert using fruit, such as apples"

He copied his grandmother's movements, spooning just the right amount of pork filling into the centre of the wrapper, folding it in half, dipping his fingers in the little bowl of water to stick it shut and trying to make the same neat pleats.

But no matter how much he tried, the pleats wouldn't stay closed.

"Here," grandmother interfered, "You've put far too much water on your fingers. Not to worry, we'll fix it with a little corn starch and try again."

Oshiro allowed her to guide his hands along the edge of the wrapper once more, and once again she constructed the flawless folds within seconds.

She carried on doing the next one, but noticed that her grandson instead stood quietly with his head hung low, for gyoza-making was a lot more difficult than he thought.

She turned the boy's chin towards her, "What is it, Oshiro-chan?"

Oshiro shrugged, unenthusiastically lifting another wrapper and pretending to follow along.

"Don't fret if you don't get them right the first time. No two gyozas are the same." She comforted him.

"It isn't that, Sobo. It's... it's something else that's bothering me."

"Aww, are you sad to be leaving home going back to school halfway across the world tomorrow?" she lovingly pinched Oshiro's chin.

"Actually, I'm dreading it," he admitted quietly, "You see, I made a friend."

Grandmother's wise, aged face crinkled like brown paper as she smiled.

"What's so dreadful about that, Oshiro-chan?" She carried on making the next gyoza, "What is your friend's name?"

"Her name is Roshni. We talked practically every day on the Fax machine since I got home for the holidays, but about two days ago she stopped replying and I can't understand why"

Grandmother paused, "Roshni? That's a very unusual name... where is your friend from?"

"She's from London, England, but her mum is Irish and her dad's from India" Oshiro answered.

Then his grandmother paused.

"What is it, Sobo?"

Grandmother earnestly told him, "Soon enough you will learn that a lot of foreigners, especially white foreigners from Europe, North America, and Australia can be extremely impolite and ignorant. And some of them don't like us Japanese because they don't like what our country did in the Second World War."

"But Roshni isn't like that. Her dad is a world-famous rockstar and he loves visiting Japan when he's on tour," Oshiro explained, "she says that he loves our culture and has so much of our art and antiques in her house, and he even spoke Japanese to me when I met him!"

Grandmother took another wrapped, and spooned filling onto it as she carried on, "As you grow older you will learn that there will be things in life that are unfair."

Oshiro was watching her as he listened, "What kinds of things?"

"Complicated things such as love, death, friendships... and why you're unable to fold gyozas perfectly the first time" she chuckled to herself.

"I still don't understand why Roshni would stop taking to me, Sobo. And I want to understand." Oshiro murmured with dismay.

"What Roshni does or doesn't do is out of your control, but you can control how you deal with it," she lifted the last wrapper from the pile, "You can hold onto your hope and keep sending this girl letters or telegrams or whatever way your generation communicates nowadays, or you can leave it be and focus on something else more worthwhile and rewarding in return."

"Which one would you choose, Sobo?"

"Right now, I'd focus on steaming these delicious gyozas for lunch, hmm?"

With little hope, Oshiro watched as his grandmother put the final gyoza into the bamboo steamer, and put the lid on it before carrying it to the pot sitting on the stove.

She then wiped the excess flour off of her hands and onto the tea towel sitting on the rail, before taking Oshiro's hands in hers.

"Cheer up, Oshiro,-chan," she comforted him, "It may not be what it seems, and only time will tell."

Oshiro nodded slightly and forced a smile, wishing that he could he could believe her words.

Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London, England, Several hours later...

"How long will it take to empty the whole thing? The sachet, I mean?"

Monica squinted in the low-lying morning sunlight, watching the nurse in the corner of the room.

"It's usually four hours at most, especially for a child" he answered her, unwinding some sort of tube apparatus that he was about to attached onto an IV pole.

Monica nodded quietly, stroking Johnny's bare arm as she sat close by his bedside whilst he lay in a coma, trying her best to ignore the uncomfortable and intrusive cannula stuck onto the back of his hand that prevented her from holding it properly.

"It was the only place where we could find a visible vein in a state of emergency" was the doctors' reasoning at the time it was inserted.

On the IV pole hung a transparent sachet filled with freshly donated blood that was illuminated by the sun shining out the hospital window, a possible saviour for Johnny's life.

"That is, if he wakes up from the coma" doctors said.

But hope and longing is what kept Monica going, sleeping uncomfortably on a chair two nights in a row with a sprained neck knowing that her son had a chance at life, even if there was a probability that he would wake up and not be himself anymore.

Her friend Paula begged her to allow her to take "overnight shifts", but Monica never wanted to leave her son's side for fear of something bad happening again such as another seizure, or if the worst was going to happen she feared that she was going to miss Johnny's last moments alive.

"Stop it Mo, you're overthinking again!" She scolded herself.

Besides, who else was going to mind her daughter Roshni besides Paula?

"Oh, I've just noticed that this line has a crack," The nurse said, examining the tubing in the light, "I'll have to grab another one, if you'll excuse me"

"Oh, that wouldn't be good, would it?" Monica watched him swiftly walking out of the room.

As he did, he brushed past a hospital porter who was dressed head-to-toe in scrubs.

She heard the porter knock on the door, "Monica Brannigan?"

Monica lifted her gaze off of her son, "That's me"

The porter pulled a small bunch of white roses and lilies from behind, "These are for you"

"Oh..." she got off her chair apprehensively.

"They came with a note," the porter handed her a folded piece of paper, and offered, "Do you want me to put them in a vase for you?"

"Please, that would be lovely" Monica took the note with trembling fingers.

Her initial thought, or fear rather, was that the flowers were from Freddie.

It had been two days. Two days since the man had said all those vile things. Two days since he slapped her across the face. Two days since she crashed her car trying to run away from him and put her own life, especially Johnny's, in danger. And it was going to take him more than a bunch of flowers to say sorry to her.

But there was no way that Freddie knew of her location, let alone the fact that their son was lying in a vegetative state in a hospital bed and that their daughter broke her arm, was there? Even if he did, Monica knew that she was going to have to tell Freddie eventually, even if she saw no reason to...

"There we are. That makes the room look much better, doesn't it?" the porter mused, arranging flowers the flowers in the vase at the window sill.

Monica absentmindedly nodded in agreement, "Thank you"

When the porter left the room, she unfolded the note.

But the handwriting wasn't that of Freddie's, or of anybody else that she knew.

Dear Mo and Johnny, it read at the beginning.

"Okay, it's definitely not from him" Monica breathed a sigh of relief, and continued to read:

We're sorry that we booked a holiday to Majorca at the wrong time. We're trying to find a flight over to London from the Balearics as soon as possible, but if not then hopefully these flowers get to you both before we do!

Say hello to Roshni from us too!

Lots of love,

Mam, dad, and Lenny xxx

"Aww, isn't that nice," she spoke to her son, placing the letter beside Paula's Get Well Soon card sitting alone on the side table, "Your granny and Granda and Uncle Len wish you well"

Of course Johnny didn't respond, but talking to him gave Monica a sense of solace. She instinctively reached over and rubbed the boy's forehead that was invaded by head bandages and breathing tubes connected to the endless humming, bleeping life support machines either side of his bed.

Despite the physical obstacles that prevented her from being affectionate with her son, there was a sense of everlasting peace plastered on Johnny's comatose, pale face that made it a lot easier to look at him in his afflicted state.

"Found one!" the nurse finally returned with another set of transparent tubing, and noticed the roses and lilies at the window, "Oh, flowers... are they from his father?"

"No, they're from my side of the family" Monica answered.

"Oh. Well, they do look lovely." The nurse complimented, wheeling an instruments trolley and the IV pole with the blood over to the bed.

At that Monica was now beginning to wish that Freddie was the one who had sent her and Johnny the flowers after all, for it might have made the notion of eventually confronting him a little easier.

"Can you hold out the boy's arm, please? Not too far" the nurse requested.

Monica did as asked, lifting Johnny's arm so that it hung over the side of the bed.

As the nurse tied an elastic band around the boy's upper arm so that he could insert a new cannula in the child's arm,  she studied the details on the label of the blood transfusion bag now that it was in closer proximity.

'Volunteer Donor', it read.

Monica asked him, "Do you know who the donor is?"

"Unfortunately I don't, I just administer it" the nurse replied, attaching the new IV line tubing to the sachet.

"It's just that I'd like to thank them personally, if that's possible"

"I can find someone who will be able to track them down and arrange that for you," the nurse offered before forebodingly adding, "Keep in mind that the donor may be already dead, though"

"Well, if it's a volunteer then I really hope that isn't the case" Monica thought whilst the nurse attached the other end of the tube to the new cannula.

"That's us ready to go now" he declared, twisting the cannula tap ever so gently with his gloved hands.

"Here we go, sweetheart!" Monica softly spoke to Johnny as if he were awake.

She watched the first drop of donor blood starting to filter from the bag and drip down the IV line, unaware that the very same blood was already flowing through her son's veins...

Notting Hill

"Careful, Roshni. You don't want to break your arm again!"

"I am being careful, Auntie Paula, don't worry!"

Roshni's free left hand gripped onto the frosted rail, her right arm in a fresh cast and sling underneath her scarf, whilst she gingerly climbed down the icy concrete steps one-by-one down to Paula McIntyre's bright pink front door.

The sun was shining outside again, and most of the snow and ice on above ground level that had caused Monica's car to skid the morning before last had melted, but both still had to be careful when making their way to the shaded 18th century converted basement flat which was below ground level.

"Are you sure you don't need a hand?" Roshni watched her Auntie Paula chugging a large shopping bag of freshly-bought groceries in her hands, all the while trying not to slip.

"Don't be silly, you only have one hand left and you need it!" Paula remarked the child's right arm that was in a newly formed cast and sling, then added, "Although, do you see that blue plant pot there? I've left the keys under there, if you could shift it aside and put the circular-shaped one in the hole that would be fantastic"

The little girl did just that, carefully nudging the large glazed indigo terracotta bowl by the door with with her foot before bending down to pick up with her left hand the brass house keys that lay underneath.

"Stand back, love," Paula warned her as she turned it in the lock, explaining, "this door needs some welly to get it open in the winter"

Roshni watched as the woman gave the handle a few tugs towards herself, grunting with difficulty.

As soon as the door swung wide open, a big black dog burst into the corridor and gleefully bounded down towards them both.

"Max!!" Roshni cheered his name.

"Settle down, Maximus! She's just come out of hospital!" Paula scolded the excitable Great Dane, grabbing him by the collar as he jumped up at the little girl, almost knocking her back.

But Roshni was unbothered, giggling as Max licked, or rather kissed, her cold pink cheeks.

Paula smiled gently at the sight, thinking, "It's good to see her smiling again."

"Well, welcome to my humble abode" she gestured the girl inside, removing her burgundy beret and unzipping her red puffer jacket.

"Wow..." Roshni slowly walked into the living area, mouth agape as Max the dog pranced ahead of them both, wagging his tail the entire time.

The walls of the room were painted clear white, but donned prints of brightly coloured famous artworks by the likes of Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Paul Gaugin. There were mediterranean ceramics that Paula had collected on her drives through Europe in her dearly departed Fiat Pandora hanging up in the tiny kitchenette area in the corner, which was reminiscent of a '50s American diner with its letterbox-red tiles, cabinets and even an electric kettle to match. Wooden tribal masks filled in the gaps on the wall between the small bookshelves and art posters. Green, long spider plants sprouted in the corner by the window, injecting life into the tiny space. A vibrant, geometrically-patterned Peruvian Frazada rug filled the entire plain wooden floor with even more colour.

"That's where you'll be sleeping" Paula pointed at the faux cheetah print fold out two-seater sofa with a hot-pink glass floor lamp and Max's large plastic dog bed beside it, "Is that okay?"

"It's more than okay!" the child exclaimed as she jumped onto it, and lay back.

Paula chuckled, pushing a tape into her stereo cassette player on her kitchen sideboard.

https://youtu.be/nhHMMOjiLi8

Roshni loved the flat already. It was simple, yet uniquely stylish and spunky like her Auntie Paula was, and the little girl had never been anywhere like it.

But there were only one or two bare necessities that Roshni needed.

"Do you have a TV, Auntie Paula?"

"Yes, right here!" she pointed to the small futuristic white box sitting on the breakfast bar of her kitchenette as she went to switch on the red kettle.

The television was so little that Roshni had at first mistaken it for a microwave, but she didn't say anything.

She then asked, "What about a fax machine?"

"A fax machine? What does a wee girl like you need a fax for?!" Paula laughed, lifting a cup from her cabinet, "I'm making tea, want some?"

"Oshiro's probably been wondering where I am" Roshni thought disappointedly.

"Forget your troubles, come on, get happy," July Garland sang from the cassette player, "You better chase all your cares away..."

In that moment, it was hard for Roshni to follow Judy's advice. She felt guilty that she was worrying more about correspondence with her Japanese classmate/pen pal more than she was about what happened to her twin brother and mother.

All that Roshni could remember from the operation was laying in her bed in the operating theatre with a bright light and a surgeon putting some sort of mask over her mouth, and within seconds everything blackened and faded away as she had drifted off to sleep, even the pain in her arm. And when the girl woke up again briefly, she found that her broken arm was now placed in a rock-hard cast and that her Auntie Paula was standing above her smiling down at her, telling her to get some rest.

And so the Roshni did. And when the girl woke up again after that, it was morning time.

Her mum did come and visit her, but only once, and that was last night.

"The doctors have had put your brother into a deep sleep for now." Her mother's answer to her question of Johnny's wherabouts echoed in her mind. Nothing more, nothing less.

The doctors finally discharged Roshni on her second morning in hospital. Auntie Paula packed up what little belongings she had brought with her and whisked her out like it was nothing.

"Roshni love, I asked you if you wanted some tea?" Paula repeated a little louder over the steaming kettle, unpacking her groceries into her tiny fridge.

"Oh, no thank you," the girl snapped out of her daze and stood back up again, and made her way to the breakfast bar stool as she innocently remarked, "You have a very small flat for a very big dog, Paula. Why is that?"

"Yes, I suppose I just miss being all claustrophobic living half the year in a camper van. Maybe that's why." Paula giggled, putting a teabag into one of her many mugs.

"Claustrophobic. What does that word mean again?"

"It means that you're scared of tiny spaces" Paula poured hot water into the mug.

"Oh, like that bit in Alice in Wonderland where she grows big inside the house and gets stuck?" Roshni suggested.

"Yeah, a bit like Alice in Wonderland, actually," Paula bent down to her fridge, lifting out a small carton of milk, "Are you sure you don't want anything? I've bought some coke, Tropicana..."

"Maybe just a glass of water for now, please" Roshni squeaked, spinning on the barstool whilst her casted right arm rest on the bar.

"'For now'. That's so grown-up of you, you're just like Mo when you say that." Paula mused to herself, taking a clean glass from the drying rack.

Max affectionately laid his large head on Roshni's lap as she sat at the bar, and she wordlessly scratched the canine's floppy, velvety ears with her free left hand whilst Judy continued to croon about "washing sins away in the tide" from the cassette player.

Roshni winced, "I miss Luke and Leia now... and Golly, and Oscar, and Tiff..."

"There you go," Paula placed the glass of fresh tap water in front of her, "Cheers!"

Roshni silently obliged, clinking her glass of water against Paula's steaming mug as the woman took the stool beside her, and bringing it to her lips.

"Ahh, that's nice..." the woman sighed with satisfaction after taking a big gulp, "So what do you say we go out somewhere, eh? Your mum gave me some money yesterday evening. We can get the train to Margate after, or go to the cinema, the zoo. It's your day, you decide."

Roshni shrugged, "How about something normal?"

"Normal?!" Paula laughed at such a notion, "Like what?"

"Something that normal girls with non-famous parents do with their friends and family at the weekend, like getting the tube and going to a normal shopping mall to buy normal clothes without the paparazzi following them or strict grown-ups chaperoning them."

"And why would you want to be a normal girl when most people spend their lives trying to be different?" Paula stirred her teaspoon in her tea to cool it down.

"Because my life isn't normal." The girl answered honestly.

Paula easily forgot that, despite Monica's best efforts, Roshni still had a somewhat unconventional upbringing.

But now that Freddie was seemingly out of her life, possibly for good, perhaps it was time to start their lives afresh.

"Alright," Paula swallowed more tea, "how about we take Max for a walk, and then go to a shopping centre to find you some 'normal' new clothes with the money that your mum gave me to mind you with? Then we can go to McDonald's for lunch and buy a Big, Big Mac?"

"Actually, I'm a vegetarian now" Roshni said awkwardly.

"Oh, damn... well, not to worry," Paula got off her stool, and emptied what was left of her not-even-fully-brewed tea down the sink, "I used to be a vegetarian in my uni days too. We'll easily find somewhere."

Max started panting excitedly as his tail wagged when he noticed his owner lifting his dog leash from the coat hanger, almost as if to say, "Oh boy! Is it time for walks?!"

But the same could not be said for Roshni.

Here she was, in a fantastic flat with a cool, fun lady who was all of a sudden acting very 'bouncy' and talking about doing exciting things. It was almost as if the world she knew hadn't come crumbling down only a day before.

"Auntie Paula?"

"Mmhm?" the woman was zipping herself back into her red puffer.

Roshni guiltily admitted, "I don't think I should be having this much fun"

Paula's face fell as she was about to put her burgundy beret on her head, "Why not? Your arm is in a cast, it'll heal fine"

"Well, it isn't my arm. I mean, what about mum, and Johnny? Why can't they join us?"

The twinkle in Paula's green eyes disappeared, her red-lipped smile also falling as the fresh, vivid flashbacks of Johnny going into shock right in front of her and Monica played in her mind.

"Your mum needs to be with Johnny right now, pet."

Roshni sensed that Paula's solemn answer was one of those vague answers that adults gave when they didn't want to talk about something, and in her experience adults would get cross and combative when you'd try to reveal more information. So, there was no point in asking much else.

Paula put her hand on Roshni's cheek affectionately as she promised, "We can visit them as soon as we hear word back from the hospital, okay?"

"Can we buy them presents in the shopping mall to bring them when Johnny wakes from his deep sleep?"

Paula hesitated, but her face quickly shifted back into a smile, "That's a nice idea! Shall we go?"

Roshni nodded, watching Max bound in front of them as he lead them both out the door.

Garden Lodge

"Freddie?!... Fred?"

Mary Austin called her ex lover's name as she went up the stairwell, for she couldn't find him anywhere downstairs.

"Fred, are you up here somewhere?" She called again gently.

She peered into the first room she saw, which was obviously the children's bedroom, for the floor was covered in books with brightly coloured pictures inside out and toys ranging from soft to hard.

There he was, kimono-clad and curled up in a foetal position on Johnny or Roshni's unmade bed.

"What are you doing up here?! It's almost midday" She awkwardly walked in.

Mr Mercury's dark eyes glanced over to her to acknowledge her presence, red and wet with tears as he stroked the large mysterious bandage visible on his forearm.

The sight was jarring, but Mary daren't ask what had happened, or why the house was so devoid of anyone else apart from him and the cats. Mary was also clueless as to how the bandage got there, let alone the whereabouts of Monica and the twins.

But she could tell that they had left him, otherwise he wouldn't have been so visibly broken lying in their bed if they were just heading back to school.

"About time, as well," Mary contemptuously thought, "I don't know what he saw in a drunk like her"

"My oh my, this room is untidy..." she remarked, careful not to trip up on any of Johnny and Roshni's belongings.

Freddie didn't respond, and just stared into space.

Mary carried on talking business, pulling the curtains apart to let the light in, "Anyway, I hope you don't mind but I invited myself in. I'm just off the phone with Montserrat and the hotel in Barcelona, like Phoebe requested on your behalf the other night. Everything has been refunded and she said it was fine, and to take all the time you need"

At last, he politely muttered, "Thanks, Mary."

"Why did Phoebe phone me, anyway? I thought he'd resigned?" Mary continued to push for a conversation, bent over him slightly and arms folded.

"...He did leave, it was just a final favour."

"Well, at least he didn't mess up this time." She commented.

The closer Mary was to Freddie, the more she noticed his dramatic brow arch ever so slightly in confusion.

"What do you mean 'this time'?" He asked.

Then the transparent plastic rotary telephone rang from the office next door, as did the rest of the sets throughout the Garden Lodge household.

"I'll go and answer that, shall I?" Mary offered, straightening back up and exiting the bedroom with an unusual spring in her step.

Freddie sat up slightly so that he could hear her conversation, being urged on from the little hope he had left in him that it was word back from the hospital...

"Hello, Garden Lodge? May I ask who's calling?" He faintly heard Mary answer the phone call with such professionalism, "Confidential? Alright... you want to speak to Mr Mercury? I'm very sorry, Mr Mercury is indisposed at the moment. Can I pass on a message?"

At that, Freddie climbed off of his child's bed and crept out of the bedroom, listening in further:

"I'm sorry, but like I said he can't make it to the phone." She was now hissing, standing by the desk.

The woman looked well put together for the late morning. Her blonde, bobbed hair was tucked back from her face to reveal the gold disc stud earrings on her lobes and red lipstick to match the colour of her long cardigan, and best black-heeled boots that gave her a bit of height.

"She was probably on her way to a coffee date with Whatshisname when she stopped by," he thought, "Should've kept on walking"

He made himself apparent, "Who is it, Mary?"

"Oh! Erm, I think it's just a nuisance call from a fan. They won't tell me who they are" Ms Austin casually replied, her hand covering the receiver.

"How did they get our landline?" Freddie thought aloud curiously as he stepped into the office.

"It's alright, I'm handling it," she mawkishly assured him, and went back to the call as she curtly said, "I don't care, Mr Mercury doesn't want to speak with-"

Mary stopped talking when she heard the dial tone.

"Well?" Freddie urged.

"They hung up, quite rightly so," She set the receiver back down onto the rotary phone, and offered, "I'll go downstairs and stick the kettle on, shall I?"

Freddie slumped into the office chair at the desk as Mary left the room, blankly looking at all the paperwork that had been piled up and scattered across it since late December.

He was too emotionally drained to even care about chasing it all up himself, especially when he didn't have a personal assistant to help. In fact, the thought of Johnny lying in a coma was so debilitating that it left him feeling far too lost to carry on waiting for any more news.

But then again, having hope was pointless.

"She isn't coming back. None of them are..." Freddie reminded himself sadly, just as the fax machine sounded beside him as it printed a page into the output caddy.

He picked it up out of boredom, only to find that it was a handwritten letter addressed to non-other than his daughter:

Dear Roshni,

I don't know what I did or said to make you stop talking to me, but I'm flying back to Ireland tomorrow and I cannot wait to see you and Miss Singh again at school again on Monday. Hopefully we can talk about it then, but if you don't want to talk to me ever again then I will try to understand.

Goodnight from Japan,

Oshiro

Freddie looked at the small, simple clock on the desk, and realised that Japan was several hours ahead, making it his children's bedtime over there.

"Poor boy" he pitied, feeling almost compelled to write to the child himself and explain the entire mess that had gone down in the past 48 hours, partially due to his own wrongdoing.

He found a couple more of Oshiro's handwritten letters sitting in the caddy, and put them together to one side just in case Monica did eventually come back to pack her and the twins' things, or at least someone else on her behalf. There were a few other faxes in the caddy that were probably junk his mind, and headed for the scrap tray beside the machine.

But as Freddie was about to put them in, he saw a handwritten fax sitting near the top that was of the tray that was dated in November 1986, and addressed to Mary Austin.

"Must be a carbon copy put the wrong place" he thought, picking it up to check it:

Hi Mary, I have to take Freddie to a meeting in town today. Can you please contact Woods Mews Surgery and book a deposit for him to have some bloods done please? Preferably on a date no later than Thursday 18th December, if possible?

Thanks a mil! Phoebe

"December 18th?"

That familiar date rung out to Freddie, and he began retracing his steps as best he could.

"Ah, there was a flight to Dublin the next morning, the 19th... But I couldn't go to Dublin because of the HIV test!"

Freddie scanned the letter once more, rising up off the office chair and making his way to the stair well.

"So Phoebe really was telling the truth after all!" he realised, making his way down each wooden step, "But why would Mary be the one to book it on the 19th when this letter told her otherwise?"

He was headed into the kitchen to ask her, where she was boiling a pot of tea.

Mary was at the sideboard when he entered with the back of her blonde bobbed hair to him, pouring hot water from the kettle into one of his Japanese pots and batting away one of the cats on the sideboard as it tried to drink out of the jug of milk.

"Mary, dear?"

"Hmm, you're up? Good!" he heard her say, "Would you like milk or sugar, or lemon perhaps?"

Freddie decided to spit it out right away, "Why did you book my blood tests with Doctor Atkinson on the 19th December?"

He watched Ms Austin pause.

"I don't know what you mean, isn't that what you'd asked for?" she hesitantly excused.

Freddie gently grabbed her shoulder to turn her around slightly, holding up the fax letter in front of her.

"In this letter," he explained seriously, "Phoebe asked you in clear black and white to book my bloods on a date before the 18th. But you didn't, you booked it on the 19th. Why?"

Mary's face contorted, and for a second there was panic in her icy grey eyes.

Needless to say, she shrugged his grip off, "Maybe the hospital got it wrong on their end. Did you say you wanted milk or-"

"How could they get it wrong? I know how careful you are about these things!" Freddie cut across her persistently, waving the letter in his hand, "My flight to Dublin was already on the calendar and in your diary! You would've seen that and made sure that it didn't clash, unless..."

"Unless what, Fred?" She sounded, walking over to the dining table with the tray of milk and a pot of tea.

Freddie vacantly lowered the letter in his hand, and thought aloud in a murmur:

"Unless you allowed the clash to happen?"

Mary was about to lift the Japanese teapot by its bamboo handle and pour it into one of the porcelain cups when she froze, and wore an expression like that of a deer in the headlights.

But Freddie didn't feel any sympathy, only bubbling hot feelings of disloyalty and betrayal that were much worse than most that he'd felt in the past.

"How could you, Mary? I trusted you to do a job for me!" his voice trembled with growing outrage.

"I don't understand what you're trying to say, Fred" Mary's voice faltered as she shakily lifted a china porcelain cup from the tray.

"You didn't actually want me to see my children, did you?! Well, congratulations! You succeeded in tearing my family apart!"

"Why on earth would you think that?!" she naively defended with a nervous chuckle, "We broke up ten years ago, and anyway I have my own thing going on with Nick now. You met him, remember?"

"Come off it, Mary!" Freddie continued to vent his anger at her, "My own children think that I don't love them! Not to mention that the consequences of your actions drove the woman I love to almost kill herself that night!!"

She condescendingly dissuaded, "Look, Monica was very young and simple when she met you, and she still didn't know any better when she jumped into that pool. Besides, she was bound to discover that falling in love with a world-famous rockstar came at a price."

"And what price would that be?" He argued, fighting the guilt and shame.

"Heartbreak, of course" Mary nonchalantly disuaded.

She continued to sit quietly and calmly, excessively stirring her tea with her spoon, and Freddie couldn't stand it anymore.

"You know what? You're right, Mary," he continued to seethe, "Monica may have been young and immature when she met me... but I fell in love deeper with her than I did with you because she was what I wanted and needed at the time. And you know what I think, Mary? I think you know that, and I think you want her to feel how I made you feel when I broke your heart."

Mary stopped meekly sipping.

"You need to get over that wino," She gratuitously jibed, "She threatened her own life, and theirs!"

"What did you just call her?!"

Mary refused to look Freddie in the eye as he stormed closer, so much so that she barely noticed his hands clenching by his side.

"It was going to happen anyway, Fred. And who cares? It was only a child's play, they will get over it too."

"You've gone too far this time. Get out." He quietly demanded, blood at boiling point.

She lifted her head up with a sigh, "You're just being silly now."

"GET OUT OF MY HOUSE NOW! LEAVE!!" Freddie exploded.

There was a loud smash of his arm angrily colliding with his Japanese tea set, knocking across the table and onto the floor beneath.

A tense silence followed, and it that was enough to scare Freddie into regaining composure and make the shock on Mary's face stay permanent.

She timidly stood up, and shuffled out of the dining table bench as he stood towered over her, breathing deeply and sharply as he controlled his temper. His imposing, dark-eyed glower followed her entire time out of the kitchen, into the entrance hall and all the way to the front door.

Mary stopped at it, and sneered over her shoulder, "You'll still ask for me back when it's convenient for you, just like you always do."

Freddie slowly shook his head, "Leave your keys on that small table with the telephone."

He stared at his feet the entire time he listened for the clanking of metal inside Mary's pocket as she hesitantly complied.

When he glanced over in the corner of his eye there were only two keys on the table, one for the green gate on Logan Place and the other for the front door of the house.

"Where's the third one? The Holland Park one?" he sorely demanded.

Mary lifted the key to the flat that they'd once shared for several years out of her pocket, and finally set it beside the others.

Freddie pulled the creaking wooden door open, the last polite gesture he swore he'd ever do for her at that moment, and watched every move as she scurried out and down the garden path to the front gate, listening as the heels of her boots clanking down the paving stones grew further and fainter.

Not once did she even look back.

Tiffany the cat made herself apparent, chirruping a meow or two as she rubbed herself against Freddie's bare ankles under his kimono.

Feeling bittersweet, Freddie reached down to lift her up. Just as he did the entrance hall telephone rang, as did the other phones throughout the house. 

It was the very same phone that delivered the 'good' news from Dr Gordon Atkinson with his negative HIV test results the morning before last, but that didn't make the feeling of answering it feel any less unnerving.

"Hello?"

A familiar man's voice answered softly, "Fred? It's me, Phoebe."

"Oh, Phoebe! How are you?" Freddie gushed in both relief and remorse as Tiff sat perched on his shoulder, purring in her daddy's arms, "I owe you a big apology, you were right about the dates before Christmas all along. I'm truly sorry for being an arse!"

Peter "Phoebe" Freestone gave an exasperated sigh on the other end.

"Thank you, Fred," he told him earnestly, "It's okay now, really."

"Really? You forgive me?"

"Mhmm, none of it's important anymore. Anyway,  I'm calling because I have something more important to talk to you about."

"How important?" Freddie asked, nuzzling Tiff's creamy long fur gently. 

"You remember that lady Abigail at the hospital the other night, don't you?"

"The West Indian one?" Freddie prompted apprehensively, "Yes, what about her??" 

"I'm just off the phone with her now," Phoebe elaborated, "She said that she tried phoning you first, but there was a lady on the other end who wouldn't hand it over? Anyway Abigail had me down as a secondary contact, so she rang me and she told me she has some news."

"It's about Johnny, isn't it?!" He felt himself grip onto Tiffany in panic.

"Not exactly, don't worry just yet. According to Abigail, word reached her department that Monica wants to thank whomever donated blood to Johnny, face-to-face."

Freddie looked at the bandage on his arm where the needle had gone in only yesterday.

"But that's me!" he sounded, dazed.

"That's right, Fred," Phoebe confirmed, "Monica wants to meet you..."