Authors Note: This is the first draft and is raw at the moment - when I have completed all Parts I will start the editing process. (All critiques welcome) 

Lavinia took a deep breath and knocked on the door, of course at what turned out to be five thirty am there was no answer. So without much thought or consideration, she began to knock on Charlie's door, gentle at first and then harder and harder. There was no response so, she just continued to bang and she soon realised how desperate she was to see him. 

She needed to see him, he was her solace, when this world got too much she could just disappear into his small bleak office and remind herself why things were so painful, but it wasn't just that. Lavinia couldn't help but think that Charlie was the only person in her life who felt as dark as she did. She could see it in his eyes that sensation of lost, longing, it cried out to her, a call of recognition. 

She had to see Charlie he was the only one who would understand. 

There was no response. 

He wasn't there she thought, and broke into silent weeping and slid down his office door onto the ground. Her head in her hands she pushed the grey hood away from her face, and then got more frustrated when her red hair tumbled around her and forcing her to cry out in distress.

 It didn't matter how much time she was a guest in this body, Lavinia always expected to see her brown curls fall beside her. She pulled a hair band violently from her wrist and tied her hair out of sight on top of her head. She stood up, slapping her thighs almost in punishment, she knew she had to leave, her behaviour was becoming ridiculous and she knew it. Then to her surprise the door opened and there stood Charlie, holding a bottle of rum wearing a black fluffy dressing gown and with bed head to boot.

He pushed his glasses away from his nose.

"You've got to be kidding me," said Charlie his face didn't look angry just exasperated.

Lavinia stood up and gave him her best rise and shine grin.

"I think we need a little chat about our doctor-patient relationship," said Charlie blocking the door with the hand that didn't contain rum.

"So... you sleep in your office?" Said Lavinia wrinkling her nose.

"It's none of your business where I sleep," said Charlie irritated.

"Can't bear to go home, understandable," said Lavinia nodding to herself.

Charlie shook his head in amazement.

"Me doctor, you patient" Charlie pointed at his chest a bit too hard. 

 "Get in the damn office," Charlie growled. 

 Lavinia smirked and walked passed him. 

Charlie let out a sigh then remembering he was angry and he slammed the office door.

Lavinia skipped into Charlie's office slash makeshift bedroom and while he dumped his duvet on the floor made herself comfy in her usual chair. Charlie looked at her in amazement, he took one last swig from his rum bottle and ducked into the toilet to get changed, brush his teeth, wash his face basically de-rum himself. When  he was back he looked slightly tired but the reminisce of his night of drinking alone in his workplace seemed to have vanished.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Said Lavinia

 Charlie gaped at her for a moment.

"Are you insane, you came, bashed my door down at five thirty for what Lavinia?" Said Charlie putting his head in his hands and eventually sitting down.

"First, I want to know what's wrong with you? What's ya know, with the rum?" Said Lavinia waving her arm towards the empty bottle in the waste paper basket beside his desk. 

Charlie let out a silent cry of annoyance and then looked straight at Lavinia and just shook his head stating his inability to talk about it.

Lavinia took off Sam's hoodie, revealing a pink lace vest, Charlie just stared at her. She untied her hair and allowed her long, thick, deep red tresses to tumble down her back, and then pulled her hair over one shoulder into an elegant twist. She got up from her chair and moved slowly over to Charlie and perched on the end of his desk where sat a framed picture of his wife.

"I know I look like her," said Lavinia who opened her big green eyes and stared deeply into Charlie's dark ones. 

"Can you tell me now, now I look like this?" Lavinia just looked at Charlie who was clearly a man on the edge. He was trying to hold everything together and failing, he was looking at the floor, unable to look at Lavinia. Then suddenly looked up and stared into her eyes like he wasn't looking at Lavinia at all but someone else entirely. He reached out and grabbed Lavinia's hand and squeezed it gently like he wasn't clinging onto her hand at all but his own life. 

Then he spoke.

"I can't go home, not to a place surrounded by ghosts, ghosts of something I shall never have again. If I go back there I fear I would never leave those four walls." Charlie broke off and dropped Lavinia's hand and she quickly tied her hair back and pulled the hoodie back over herself covering her hair once more.

"That was good," she said sitting on his desk. Trying to reassure him. 

"Get off my desk," said Charlie quickly transforming into his former self.

Lavinia rolled her eyes and moved back to her chair.

"I knew you were messed up," said Lavinia with a smile.

"That obvious?" Asked Charlie.

"Just to me," said Lavinia.

"Now, what are you really here for Lavinia?" Said Charlie.

She looked up at him slowly from underneath Sam's hood.

"I need to talk about the lake, a need to tell you about the day everything changed forever."

~

Summer time in the English countryside was, and is I suppose a fleeting marvel, we waited for it all year and as promised it came and was gone just as quickly as it arrived in a hot bright flash, a bookmark in our many expected rainy days. 

This day was the first day of summer, not the calendar kind but the first real day of summer like a kind of promised land, the sun burned down so bright that your only option for relief was the shade or water. 

On this day Jimmy and Sarah were back at the Manor for a short time, Jimmy just for the day and night while his wife attended to a sick friend and Sarah for the week while her husband was away on business (actually her husband was having an affair but we called it business and never spoke of the real reason he was never around). 

I had to confess that I loved having them home again, Jimmy and Sarah ran about the place as if they lived there, their noises and sounds announced their arrival as they moved, the Manor had seemed so foreign since they left but somewhere deep down I knew that it was me who was leaving next, me who would return a visitor and I suppose as much as I loved having them home they presence worried me all the same. That morning Jimmy had come up with 'the most marvellous' idea, to go and spend the day at our lake, it was on our estate and we so rarely spent time there not since we were children.

"Blink at you'll miss it" he would say of summer he had such vitality in his eyes that it was hard to say no to Jimmy in any regard but this time, a day at the lake did sound wonderful. As soon as Sarah and I had given our seals of approval to the idea, Jimmy declared that he was going to meet Lady Penny and Will who both lived in the village and bring them back to the Manor, he whizzed off, always a thousand miles a minute and we expected him back in no time at all, all full of ideas and a plan for the afternoon. 

Percy floated out of her bedroom and sauntered downstairs, I couldn't help but gape at her as she moved. She was all in red from head to toe, red swimming costume, red sundress even red lipstick all finished off by her mass of short black curls, she was a beauty. I slipped on my cream sundress and Sarah her yellow and we were happy, well almost happy. 

Fay was stuck upstairs, stuck doing lessons on a day like that, it didn't seem right somehow, not when blissful days are so few and far between. Sarah and I made our way outside and stood on the lush green grass, how it smelt, just how the grass is supposed to smell in the summer, the kind of grass you reminisce about in the winter on a bleak and stormy night when summer feels like this impossibility that will never be.

 Sarah, Percy and I stood outside the Manor and waited for Jimmy, Penny and Will, but it was Fay who was on our minds and how we were going to get her out of the house, how we were going to set her free so she could see the first-day summer.

"I don't know Doll, that tutor is a right old cow, and she doesn't take her eyes of Fay for a minute, you remember what she was like with us." Said Sarah

"I know, I suppose she could say she was going to the loo..." I Said and pulled a face at my own bad suggestion.

"I don't know what all the fuss is about, it's just the sunshine, it's always in the sky isn't? She can just see it tomorrow, or the next day, or whenever that damn tutor is done with her." Said Percy.

Sarah and I just looked at each other, there was never any point in arguing with Percy, she always was a bit hard I suppose. We heard them before we saw them, Jimmy, Penny and Will, the subtle crackle of their laughter and then their hands waving vigorously as they walked joyously over the hill.

 Sarah and I waved back, Percy stood still, one arm folded across her chest the other hand was being used to fan herself gracefully,Jimmy sometimes wondered if the fan was some kind of seductive weapon (not without concern). Soon they met us at the side of the house and Jimmy and Will said something about a boat but the conversation soon turned to Fay much to Percy's annoyance who just wanted to get going.

"Oh God, it's boiling" moaned Percy, we pretended not to listen. 

"So how are we going to break her out of jail then?" Said Penny her eyes were dancing mischief.

"Basically ladies and gent" nodded Jimmy to Will.

Will nodded back.

"You may think this plan is flawed but my general thinking is, we go in there and get her, what is it, five against one, and really what's she going to do, she's a tiny little woman?" Said Jimmy with a smirk.

Jimmy smiled at us as if a signal of his intent and we began to run towards the house and, for the last time in my life I never looked back.

"Charlie, I don't know if I can do this," said Lavinia

"What do you mean?" Said Charlie

"I can't talk about this day I thought I was ready but I just can't do it."

Before Charlie could protest Lavinia was out of his office with as much determination as she had entered. Charlie sat in his chair for a moment, he didn't bother to chase her or call her back because he knew Lavinia would find her own way to him. 

He knew that he had crossed a line with Lavinia, their relationship was more like a friendship, not something that a doctor should have with his patient and on his part it was fuelled by the fact she had such a likeness to his dead wife but there was something else also, he just couldn't put his finger on it. 

Charlie moved from his office and walked uneasily into the next room and hovered for a moment over his laptop. His fingers moved guiltily over the keys but he knew he was just delaying the inevitable so he Googled Marxby Manor and his eyes grew wide as results flooded onto the screen.

The posting schedule for The Girl That Fell Out of The Ocean is Wednesday and Sundays!