Many, many thanks to Mriceman1964 once again for his help in editing, proofing, commenting and criticising where it was needed, and generally being realistic about where this story went. Without his help and real-world view I would have foundered, so a huge thank-you!
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If you have a particular point to make, please, drop me a line or make a comment, I do read them and take them to heart, but if you just want to be rude, save it; barking-mad, pointlessly rude and gratuitously nasty comments just get deleted, unless they're funny enough to give me a chuckle! Witty I love, half-witted goes in the bin...
For those of you who wanted to know, chapter 3 Parts 1 & 2 details the story of how Julie and Mark reunited with their lost family
BB1958
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The girls at work soon picked up on the fact that something had gone terribly wrong between Mark and I; the first and most obvious thing they noted was that he no longer came to see me; after two years of almost daily visiting me for lunch, and collecting me at day's end, suddenly he was conspicuous by his absence; also, a couple of times one of the girls had come into my office unexpectedly and found me crying, so they knew that we'd broken up, but nothing else. I had taken to closing my office door firmly, I wanted to be left alone to work, I was in no mood to discuss something so personal, and they knew me better than to ask.
Eventually, it was Doreen, of all people, who worked up the nerve to confront me about my misery, to try and get me to talk about it with a sympathetic ear, and try and get me out of my depression.
One afternoon, about a month after it had all gone so horribly wrong, there was a soft knock at my door, and before I could say anything, Doreen had slipped inside and shut the door behind her.
"Jules, we need to talk" she said, before I could say a word. I just looked at her, unable to think of anything I wanted to discuss with anyone that wasn't work-related.
"Doreen, I'm very busy, is this about work? Because I'm not really interested..." I began, but she cut me off.
"Jules, what happened with you and Mark? You lock yourself in here, you walk around like a zombie, you don't talk to anyone, and we don't see him anymore; plus, I know you've changed addresses, and we've all seen and heard you crying in here. Whatever happened, you can't keep it all bottled up, and you can't keep us locked out; we're your friends, and we're worried."
I tried to tell her to mind her own business, and instead the tears started again. Doreen led me away from my desk and sat with me on the little couch in my office, letting me cry while she hugged me and waited for the tears to ease-off.
When I stopped crying, she looked me in the eye. "All right, Jules, now talk to me!" she commanded, and I did, telling her everything, except the one searing fact at the core of the whole story, the thing I knew would disgust her; that Mark was my brother, that I'd slept with him, done things with him that I never dreamed of doing with any man, and he'd abandoned me. Doreen picked up on that gaping hole in my story, and tried to make sense of it from my disjointed account of what had happened, and the more I told her, the more confused and muddled my story became, as I tried to gloss over what had really happened.
"Jules, none of this makes sense, you tell me your mother kicked you out over Mark, and that he left you, why? What did your mother have to do with Mark, and why...Oh!"
I looked at her fearfully, realising she'd just made the connection.
She looked at me quizzically. " I suppose I should have guessed, I mean, in hindsight, it was right out there in the open; from some angles you even looked a little alike, I just never bothered to look at the two of you; I was too busy looking at him!" she grinned. "You have to admit, he was worth looking at! So what happened, your mother found out, and blew a gasket, yes?"
I nodded miserably, unable to look her in the eye.
"So why didn't he just give her the finger and take you away? I mean, he was into you in a big way, everyone could see that, it made us all very jealous!"
I started crying again.
"Dor, I don't know, one minute he's telling me he loves me, that I'm the one for him, that we'll always be together, a few minutes later he's looking through me while she's screaming at me that she should have got rid of me with a coat hanger, and throwing me out the door, at the same time praising him for being a good boy and apologising to her! I was so scared, and he never even batted an eyelid! The fucker used me, screwed me every way he could, and watched me leave without even a twitch of his fucking eyebrow!"