Shadee rolled her eyes and proceeded towards the stairs after Caleb. He was skipping happily along the fence, throwing continuous glances at the road. He looked up and gave his niece a big grin, seeing that she wasn’t in the best of moods.



‘Got everything packed up?’



‘Yup!’ the boy answered, patting his suitcase.

‘Do you have any food or water with you, for the road? If you need a sandwitch I can go and fix you something up in a jiffy-’

‘Don’t worry, Shae’ Caleb laughed ‘I’m not going at the other end of the globe! The camp is just a three hour ride away from here.’



‘Right...’ She grumbled ‘And where’s Seb? He said he’d come to see you off!’

‘It’s okay, I went to say goodbye to him before I came to you. Knew he’d probably forget anyway.’ The boy chuckled, then suddenly took a serious grimace at the furious glance of his niece ‘Oh look, the bus’s coming!’



He gave Shadee a quick hug and hurried through the wide open doors. The young woman remained there waving and watching until the yellow bus disappeared in the distance.



She then turned around, glaring at the window of her husband’s office. Typical for Sebastien! What bothered her most was that poor Caleb had already got used to these awful habits of his and didn’t expect anything more from him.

She turned on her heel, marching back inside the house, up the stairs and back in front of the office door. This time she didn’t try to open the door, she simply banged with her fists.

‘Sebastien, you twit!’

‘Uh oh!’

There was a click from the inside of the room and the young man backed away a few steps to let his wife storm her way in.



‘I’m so so so sorry!’ he began before Shadee could start screaming again ‘I was just about to leave, when this idea hit me-’



‘An idea isn’t the only thing that’s gonna hit you!’ she roared back, flaring her nostrils ‘You know perfectly well what that boy’s been through! You know he sees a new father figure in you! He’ll be away for two whole months and you can’t even come for a few minutes to say a proper goodbye to him!’

‘I-’



‘I’ve had it with this! Really! It’s been going like this for almost an year!’ she had rapidly gone from raging anger to being on the verge of tears ‘Why can’t we go back to the way we used to be? Is it really that hard to put work on second place…’

She would have liked to continue saying her mind, but the phone started to ring off the hook.



While Sebastien returned to his desk to answer it, she ran quickly to the bathroom, as she suddenly felt the urge to vomit.