Welcome back! Sorry for my absence. This follows on from Sundays At One, but you can read it independently. This FF is their weekly conversations with tie-ins/spoilers for Season 16. Harry is still tormented by bad music karma especially from the lift in his new apartment building (shown as chapter subheadings) and Nikki is still holding everything together.
Silent Witness and characters belong to the BBC no infringement intended. I'm keeping everyone else, I hope you like them. Sorry for the long wait, I know I was mentally planning this out harvesting veg from the allotment last year and now it's time for planting again… Suspend your disbelief and SW depression and enter on in for a smile or two. (Well and a bit of angst here and there, you know me!)
We left Part One with H&N having the world's most stressful journey to the airport, leaving no time for goodbyes. Nikki just had time to hand Harry a present and he blurted out that he loved her and then ran for the check-in desk.
Sundays At One: Part Two
Chapter 1 It's Up To You
Start spreading the news I'm leaving today.
Harry hurtled across the airport concourse towards the baggage check. He had checked in online the night before, booked his seat and meal, but there was still every chance that if the line at security was a long one, the gate would shut and he would not be ready to board. The baggage checker looked up sympathetically at his harassed face.
"You got stuck on the M4 too?" The badge on her lapel said 'Lola.'
"Me and most of the rest of West London," Harry agreed.
"Give me a minute," Lola said and fished her phone from her bag.
Harry stared dumbfounded as she appeared to start texting as she was checking in his baggage. He had managed to keep his cool in the car in all the traffic but now when the last few minutes were so precious he couldn't believe that this girl was making a phone call; and after she had already realised the reason for his delay. He dragged his hands through his hair and glared at her.
"Gary, you still got the shortest queue up your end?" he heard her say.
She swiftly put the phone back in her bag before too many of her colleagues noticed and smiled at Harry.
"I've just got a couple of security questions to ask you?" she said in the curious monotonous voice that all the check in technicians he'd ever dealt with seemed to have and then under her breath added. "Don't go through the middle to security, the queues are terrible, head right down to the end on the left hand side, there are more security lanes down that way and hardly anyone uses them, you'll be through in half the time. Gary'll look after you," she smiled.
Harry pulled his hands out of his hair and pulled the rant that was just about to spew out of his mouth into a jagged smile.
"Thank you," he said sincerely and then added. "I've packed them all myself, no one has given me anything to carry on for them and I'm not carrying any of the prohibited items from your list."
She had been busy snapping the tags on his luggage as Harry made his speech.
"That's all your baggage checked Dr Cunningham, have a good flight." Suddenly reduced to his jacket, one bag, a wallet, passport but no keys at all he felt strangely naked but there was no going back now. He turned left and followed the signs to security, his gate closed in fifteen minutes. He hoped it wasn't a long walk.
He didn't know whether it was Gary or not that had processed his carry-on, he was too busy removing his shoes, belt and anything and everything from his pockets. He was restuffing his pockets when he spotted two toddlers holding on to the conveyer belt on the other side of his one.
"Stay there and don't move!" commanded a voice from below the conveyor belt. Harry assumed it had to be their mother, who was also in the process of replacing her shoes, belt and other worldly possessions. He leaned over and saw the blond head struggling with three sets of laces. There was nothing other than the mother's command to stop those two children from running off and if they chose to run in opposite directions then the mother would be in real trouble.
Harry picked up one of the coins from his tray of belongings and pretended to make it disappear and reappear in the other hand. This raised a smile, so he repeated the trick but this time reappearing the coin out of his ear. This earned him a chuckle. He was just about to reappear the coin from his nose, when the mother stood up and looked from her children to the stranger. Harry tried smiling, and pretended to hit the back of his head to dislodge the coin from his nose, to the hysterical amusement of the toddlers. Suddenly the mother relaxed.
"Thank you," she said.
"It can't be easy travelling on your own with them," Harry added but she had already moved off. He hoped that this exchange was not going to be a forerunner to the new friendships he would have to make in the next few weeks.
It wasn't far to the gate, he did have to take the transit train thing but there was one waiting on the platform when he arrived and the plane began to board just as he arrived at the gate. When he finally made it to his seat on the plane, it was the first time had had sat down since leaving the car. He had been in such a rush he hadn't even considered what had gone on the other side of the airport doors.
He had told her he loved her! He'd said it before of course but this time was different, he wasn't winding her up, joking with her or trying to get her to do something for him that he didn't want to do himself. He didn't know where it had come from. It certainly wasn't how he had intended leaving her. It had just fallen out of his mouth without his brain even comprehending or realising what it was doing. What would she think of him? Would she believe him? Did he believe it? Wasn't it just sheer relief from making it through that hellish journey, or was it that she had just been so kind to him? Or maybe in that moment where he embarked on an entirely new life his perspective on his old life revealed his emotions with a startling clarity.
The ventilation on the plane was pumped up to maximum and the cold blasts of air were making his sweat soaked shirt freezing, so he pulled his jacket from the overhead locker to put across him as a cover. It was only then he felt the rectangular package in the pocket.
"No one has given me anything to bring on board," he recalled himself saying. She wouldn't have would she? Laced whatever this was with some nasty chemical, so the sniffer dogs would have a field day when he arrived at the other end and walked through security? He would understand if she had, but that wasn't her style, was it? He would probably have deserved it though. That really would be a 'welcome to America,' to remember. He opened the package to reveal a pocket sized guidebook to New York and relaxed. This wasn't a set up. Even now she had thought only of him. He flicked through from back to front his eyes fixing on the front page. Instead of quotation marks she had drawn a couple of quavers around each end of the Sinatra lyrics she had written.
"It's up to you,
New York New York," and then underneath the title,
"I love you too."
He closed the book and held it against him. The book had been wrapped, she must have written that before they left, before he had said what he had said, what he didn't even know he was going to say.
Did she know?
Did they both know?
Was she replying to when he had told her he loved her during one of those dreadful arguments they'd had weeks back? The one in her kitchen? She had never responded to him then but in the middle of a fight he was hardly surprised. He looked again at the words. They weren't words she could say to him; in all their years together she had never returned those words even in jest. He doubted she used those words with anyone and now here they were at the front of a guide book to a city he was going to without her.
"It's up to you." Why those words? And in what way was it up to him?
It was up to him what he chose to do with his future? Or it was up to him what he chose to do with the future of their relationship? He felt the plane judder as the engines emitted the sudden burst of acceleration to race it down the runway. He stared straight ahead and gripped on to the arm rests.
"If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere. It's up to you, New York New York!" ran through his head as he felt the plane lift into the air. The plane banked sharply to line up on its flight path giving Harry a panoramic view of London growing smaller below him.
"Nikki," he sighed and closed his eyes.
New York New York: Frank Sinatra
