Synopsis: Unable to sleep, Sophie decides to sneak out of her house right under her mum's nose so that she can go and see Wilf for one final time before she heads off to University

It was late on Friday night and as Sophie lay on her bed in the black silence of her bedroom, she just couldn't get to sleep. Glancing over at her digital alarm clock it was almost midnight already and she had already been tossing and turning for a couple of hours without success. In the morning she would be loading up all her earthly possessions into the back of her mum's car so they could make the long journey to University in York. It would be her first time living alone, in a strange place where she would meet new people and be opened up to a whole new world of experiences. You might assume that it would be nervous excitement and trepidation about her future that was keeping her awake, but it wasn't, it was Wilf.

When she had gotten home from his place a couple of days earlier she had snuck into the house, unlocking the front door as quietly as possible and creeping upstairs to change out of her outfit from the night before. During her walk home she had managed to hold it together, but once she was in the safety of her room the waterworks had begun in earnest. She had changed into her pajamas and hung her dress back up in the closet to ensure her mum would have no idea that instead of spending the night with her friend, she had actually been having sex with a man in his early sixties.

Laying on her bed, she had sobbed into her pillow at the thought of being away from the man she had grown to love. The fact she had no-one she could talk to about it just made her feel even more wretched. She was trying to be quiet, but as her mother had passed her bedroom door on the way to the bathroom to carry out her morning ablutions, she had heard the sounds of distress coming from her first borns room and knocked on the door with a concerned look on her face. “Sophie, are you ok?” she asked softly and when no response came she slowly pushed the door open.

When Sophie was a little younger, she had been very protective of her personal space and had screamed at her mother multiple times for entering the room without knocking. All teenagers had a phase like this of course and Sandra was just grateful that it had only lasted for a year or so. Even though Sophie had mellowed in the years since, she always tried to respect her daughter's privacy, but at times like this, it was more important to check that her eldest was okay.