Chim- In aeternum

Chapter 1

Not once in the ten years since has the memory left her, it's presence felt each and every day.

She wakes up every morning, slate clean as if she's home and they're anticipating the upcoming tour, only to realize in a millisecond that years have gone by and she's no longer in London, but in the middle of the Australian outback. No one knows her here, where she's been for the last nine years, her old boss none the wiser with the British lass that had rode into town on a bus all those years ago looking for work with nothing more than a backpack slung over one shoulder. She'd moved on from cleaning bathrooms in Sydney and washing dishes in Melbourne after finding too many people giving her that look of puzzlement, as if they knew her from somewhere, had maybe seen her on a breakfast show or on the news. Their simple confusion at who she might be had been enough for her to get out of the two cities, get away from the crowds and the tourists and suburbia, leave the echoes of London and her old life behind.

She'd managed, as much as possible, to do that. She'd settled, had her own room away from the old farmhouse, worked hard from dawn till dusk herding sheep and cattle, fixing fences, doing whatever needed to be done. The house still needed cleaning, food still needed to be prepared and cooked. There was enough variety in her days to get her by, enough monotony in her days for her to find comfort in. She'd accepted that the town was a decent enough result after what she'd done, but she'd never allowed her head and her heart to attach the idea of home to this place. The place was simply a stop off she'd allowed herself to sit still at.

Home was something she'd left behind, so long out of her reach that she'd forgotten how her mother had looked the last day she'd seen her, what Adam had sarcastically mentioned as she'd walked through the front door, what her sisters had been wearing that Christmas Day. She couldn't for the life of her remember what Nadine's bar was called, what Sarah had been singing before they'd wrestled the karaoke microphone from her, what Nic had made a point of telling her as she'd left that last night she'd seen them. They'd been happy, she remembered that much, but the details, the little intricacies she'd once known by heart were long gone, lost with the passing of time.

Justin crept across her mind every so often, grinning in her dreams as he'd often done in real life, that smile of his a haunting reminder of how much she'd cared for him, and of how little she'd taken him into account when she'd seemingly dropped off the face of the earth. Early on, there'd been a search for her on both sides of the Atlantic, the British media frenzy a rival to Princess Di's death. She'd been in such a state that it wasn't until she'd been in Australia for a week that it dawned on her to at least ring her mum, let her know she was all right and no harm had come to her. Her mother had begged her to come home, insisting that Kimberley could sort out a proper break if she needed one, that Hilary and Coldplay could shove their tours where the sun didn't shine while she rested, while she sorted out her life.

She'd never rung again. Birthday and Christmas cards had become her means of letting her family know she was fine, not giving away too much information about where she was, knowing that they all still kept in touch with Justin and that he, or at least the girls and Hilary, would've searched high and low for her. She'd spent the first few years constantly worrying about one of them driving up the dirt road that snaked through the farm, locating her when she did not want to be found, dragging her back to circumstances she didn't want to be in. She still spent most of her time looking over her shoulder, rehearsing her story every night while she lay in bed, still stressed about the law catching up with her and dragging her back home.

Things had changed, she'd allowed her world to flip upside down in one single night and waking up the morning after had brought this realisation crashing down upon her, the knowledge that she'd let desire overrun, if only briefly, the stability of Justin's love. The memory of sleeping with Cheryl has never left her, startles her from sleep in the early hours of the morning, has her imagining how life might have been if they'd stayed friends and that night had never happened. Would she be married to Justin? Would they have had those kids he and everyone else had wanted? Would Cheryl still be with Ashley? Would she still be taking him back one more time, in the hopes that he'd stop cheating on her?