Chapter Text
"MUUUM!!!"
Vicki opened her eyes. Disoriented, she observed her surroundings. She was in her bedroom, and it was obviously the dead of night, based on how dark it was.
That interaction she'd just had with Ronan had just been a dream. A burning memory cropping up in her mind to torment her. Vicki suddenly felt heavier as reality started seeping in.
She checked the time on her phone. 4:12am, 31st August 2026. Her only solace was the fact that she'd actually managed to sleep nearly the entire night this time. This time.
"MUUUM!!!" Vicki heard again. She sighed. Ryan was awake.
"Give me a minute, Ryan!" she shouted back, her voice ever so slightly hoarse. Without any other choice, Vicki climbed out of bed, slipped into her dressing gown, and left her bedroom.
"MUUUM!!! I'M STARVING!!! I NEED BREAKFAST!!!" Ryan shouted again.
Vicki made her way into her living room, Ryan was pacing up and down the room. She wondered if it was even possible for the boy to sit still.
"Do you have any idea what time it is?" Vicki asked. She wanted to sound angrier, but she didn't have the energy.
"Yeah! Time you made me some bacon and eggs!" Ryan said. "I haven't eaten anything for nearly a whole day."
Vicki sighed. "That's your fault for not eating your tea last night."
"Name one kid who actually likes green beans and chicken kievs." Ryan replied. "No? That's what I thought."
Vicki bit her lip, then took a deep breath. "I'm sorry that you didn't like it. I'll make you some breakfast in a few minutes. But promise me you'll go back to bed for a bit. It's quarter-past-four in the morning and I'm working at the chip shop tonight."
"Can't sleep!" Ryan said.
"Then watch some stupid telly then." Vicki replied. "Just keep the volume down. I've got a banging headache."
"You always have a headache!" Ryan said as she went back upstairs.
Vicki felt like going back upstairs and burying her face back into her pillow. This is what she has had to deal with every day for god knows how long. She did love Ryan very much, but having to raise him on her own had taken a toll on her. Still, she could only blame herself for the situation she was in.
Years ago, Vicki had friends. She had family. She had a boyfriend. His name was Ronan, and in her opinion you couldn't have found a better guy. She had loved him so much, and he had loved her. That was all over now.
It's not like things were perfect back then, because they weren't. And that was what had caused Vicki to go off the rails to begin with.
Some truly horrible things had happened to Vicki back in her school years. Although she often tried to not think about those awful things, the memories were still active in the back of her mind every now and then, whenever it was too quiet in the house.
To support her dying father financially, Vicki had become a stripper, in a sleazy bar where grown men would touch her in places a grown man is never supposed to touch a 15 year old girl.
Then her dad had passed away, and Vicki had her family home taken away from her. She lived with her best friend Jess' family, the Fishers, for a few days, but once she'd realised they had their own demons to battle, she'd done what she figured was probably the only selfless thing she would ever do in her entire life and quietly left to live in a hostel, where she was threatened and treated like an invalid.
Her science teacher, Mr Mead, had managed to help her get into a decent care home, but the damage to her psyche had already been done.
All this, along with the workload that came from her ambitions to find a career in science and medicine, caused her to become incredibly stressed and make decisions which hurt the only people who cared about her.
She had cheated on Ronan with Aiden, Jess's boyfriend. Ronan had just about managed to forgive her, but her mental health started to deteriorate more, and she'd ended up lashing out and attacking him during an argument. That was when she'd lost him. Forever.
Her life had only become worse since then. Her aspirations came crashing down once the eggheads had told her she wasn't good enough for them. She'd got pregnant from... well, she didn't even want to think about him. The end result of that fiasco was that she was stuck raising her ADHD-suffering son on her own.
To top it all off, about five years ago, she'd fallen out with Jess. Having to look after her own daughter on her own, since Aiden had ran away from his responsibilities as a father in mid 2012, as well as also having to start looking after her mother, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's in early 2021, Jess had become increasingly irritable and had started blaming Vicki for ruining what she and Aiden had. Snide comments had quickly turned into shouting matches, where Vicki would haplessly try to convince Jess that she was deeply sorry for everything she did. Their last argument had even become physical, though Jess' younger brother Harry had thankfully been there to play the peacemaker and break up the fight, but not before Jess had practically screamed that she never wanted to see Vicki ever again.
The sadness and guilt that came from losing everyone she'd ever cared about had just become too much for Vicki to handle. She had started drinking. A lot. She'd had developed a full-blown addiction to alcohol. It had quite literally aged her. It had caused her to burn bridges with every colleague she'd met since leaving school. It had cost her her job as a science teacher at Forest Mount.
Eventually, Vicki realised that she had to stop. So she did. She's been sober for a full year now. But the temptation to drink all her problems away still crops up every now and then, like a cancer eating away at the last of her conscience.
Vicki brushed away at the tears forming in her eyes as she went into the kitchen to get some bacon rashers out of the fridge. She missed her father. She missed Jess and Harry. And she missed Ronan. But this was her life now.