Disclaimer: All rights belong to TG and the BBC

Author's notes: Although the characters remain the same, the timetable and the course of events that lead to them getting to know each other is different … so I hope that you can suspend what you know and enjoy watching their story unfold.

Prologue

Molly rolled over and tried to open one eye which was so swollen that it appeared to be glued shut as she slowly became aware that for the second time in a few months she'd woken up wrapped in the arms of someone who she thought was probably one of the most attractive men on the planet. The only difference was that last time they'd both been naked, limbs entwined in a post-coital glow in his king-sized bed in Bath and that this time she was wearing her bra and knickers and he appeared to be fully dressed, minus his shoes and jacket. They were in her small double bed with it's cheap bobbly sheets in a grotty little room just off the seafront in Weston Super Mare, a room that smelt of drains and that the last thing she remembered actually saying to him the night before was "sod off" …

Hiding In Plain Sight

"But Mum, how much do you actually know about her?"

"As much as I need to know, honestly Charles, what on earth is all this about?"

"Rebecca called me, she's worried, she said that you hadn't done any references or anything, that you don't know anything about this girl at all, and that she's not the sort of girl you'd normally have anything to do with, not someone you'd normally pick. Becca says that she's common, that she swears like a trooper and that she's not sure about Sam being around her, either"

"Rebecca is a nosy, spiteful old cat and it's got nothing whatsoever to do with her, and Sam is perfectly safe for heaven's sake. Do you think I'd let anything happen to him?"

"She's only worried Mum"

"Is she? Is she really? Well, if she's that worried let her come and help your Dad have a shower and get on and off the lavatory and help me to do stuff, to get dressed and to peel the potatoes and so on. No? I thought not"

Molly stood just out of sight and listened to her employer's Skype conversation with her son who was in the army serving in Afghanistan. She wanted to go in and high five her, gently because of her damaged wrist, then tell the snotty posh bastard of a Rupert she could hear talking to his mum that he had nothing at all to worry about, that she'd be long gone well before he got home. She'd been appalled the first day she'd started working here to see all the photographs all over the shop of their beloved only son in army fatigues and dress uniform, photographs of his passing out parade at Sandhurst and on the tarmac at Brize Norton, the place was stuffed full of them, and the last place she would have picked to hide was the home of a serving soldier, and a bloody Rupert at that. Mind you, what was it they called it, hiding in plain sight? Anyway she had no intentions of hanging around here when he got home, it wasn't worth the risk.

Molly Dawes, or Maggie Dawkins as she called herself now, had got the job after a friend of a friend who lived in Batheaston, an almost village near Bath had pointed her in the direction of the James' cleaning lady who had been telling everyone in the pub about this lovely couple she worked for who'd had this terrible car accident on their way home from holiday in France, and who needed some help desperately.

The phone call from her mate had seen Molly apply for the job, it was perfect for what she needed, live-in and temporary, and far enough away from London so that there was no risk of bumping into anyone who would recognise her. She'd still taken the precaution of having her long dark hair cut much shorter and died red, so that she got a huge shock when she caught a glimpse of herself in a shop window or a mirror and which she now felt was possibly a massive over-reaction. Mr J had broken both his legs and his pelvis so that he was stuck in a wheelchair for the time being and couldn't even get on and off the loo without help and despite her lack of inches Molly was fit and strong enough to help him easily and Mrs J had broken one arm and had the other wrist in plaster as well which meant that she couldn't do up her own bra or pull up her own knickers or even make a cup of tea without help. The job didn't have a salary as such, which suited Molly down to the ground because then she didn't need to bother with tax or any of that shit, but it included her accommodation and food with just a small amount of pocket money which they paid her in cash, which meant that no-one would be able to trace her. She imagined that they probably thought that she was some kind of benefits cheat, but that couldn't be helped.

She'd enjoyed the time she'd been there and had stopped expecting someone to come knocking on the door any second looking for her, or at least she had enjoyed it before the ex daughter-in-law and grandson had got home from a month's holiday in South Africa and had taken to visiting almost on a daily basis. To say Rebecca seemed deeply suspicious of her was an understatement, Molly thought she was like one of them sodding Nazi gestapo people with all her questions and she was another good reason why moving on sooner rather than later was looking like an attractive option, maybe even before the snotty Rupert finished his tour and came home. Their little boy, Sam, was cute if a bit bloody precocious, and very, very sure of himself, not a bit shy about speaking up, but then what else would you expect with a Nazi gestapo officer for a mum.

There was probably only about two weeks left before she'd have to start making tracks to find something else, and in one way it felt like a shame because it was a lovely place to live and she'd enjoyed it enough to relax a bit, but on the other, she'd already started thinking about what the fuck she could do next, knowing that any sort of proper job would need her to use her real name and that was a massive bloody problem. She began to work out how she could go about getting some seasonal work "off the books" in one of the seaside resorts.

Shit, shit, shittin' shit, she stood in the kitchen and swore under her breath as the two army officers that had just turned up on the doorstep spoke to Mrs J and then came in. Molly couldn't believe how unlucky she was, that she'd been so close to moving on when they'd found her, so that she weighed up the relative merits of trying to hide somewhere in the house against legging it out of the back door across the garden. Legging it would be crap, it was cold, she had no shoes on and it was raining, on top of which her coat, money and everything else was upstairs, and she hadn't a clue where she could go, but hiding was only a good option as long as they didn't have a search warrant which she wasn't sure whether they would have or not, so she held her breath and tried her best to listen in to what they were saying.

She realised that it had nothing to do with her when she heard Mrs. J cry out her son's name and knew instantly that something had happened to the Rupert in the photographs; she thought for a second or two that he'd been killed, but helping Mrs. J pack a case as they waited for the gestapo to arrive to drive her to Birmingham she found herself telling his mother that he'd most likely be fine, that although they'd said his injuries were life-threatening he was in a great hospital for battlefield injuries. That the QE was famous for being fantastic, so that she'd ended up having to tell her, although she knew it was a very dumb thing to do, that she knew all about it because once upon a time she used to be an army medic. She felt incredibly sorry for Mrs. J, not only because of what was facing her in Birmingham, despite what she'd said to her about it Molly knew how much danger her son was in, but because of who she was going to be forced to spend hours with. The person she felt most sorry for was poor Mr. J who was just as devastated as his wife, but whose injuries meant that he couldn't travel with her to mount any sort of vigil for their son, so that he was forced to stay behind in Bath with her and wait for phone calls.

Almost a month of going backwards and forwards to Birmingham with Rebecca for company had taken a very heavy toll on Mrs. J so that the news that he had recovered sufficiently to be transferred to University Hospital in Bath came as a massive relief, especially as she had to attend the Outpatients Department there to have her plasters removed and to go for physiotherapy, which would have been very difficult, if not impossible, if she was still going backwards and forwards to the QE. It also meant that Mr. J could take his turn in visiting their son, albeit with some help with his wheelchair, and it meant that Mrs. J didn't have to watch the ex-daughter-in-law do her best to become the current one again, or so she kept complaining to Mr. J.

-OG-

Their new routine of Molly waiting for Mr. J every afternoon while he was in the ward visiting his son was more than two weeks old when Molly began to wonder what the fuck was going on. Every day Mr. J would pin a bright smile on his face and take a deep breath as she wheeled him in to where his son was propped up in the bed by the window, the curtains round him tightly closed shutting him off from the rest of the three bedded room. A nurse would wheel Mr. J out again to where Molly was waiting, sometimes after an hour or so or sometimes after barely five minutes, and he would have a deeply anxious frown on his face, which he covered with a smile the minute he saw her. Without being aware of what was happening and against her better judgement she'd allowed herself to get very fond of both Mr. and Mrs. J, so she got more and more worried about what was going on when day after day she saw Mrs. J come home from her evening visits with the same sort of anxious expression on her face.

After a few days of taking Mr. J right through the closed curtains and up to the bed, and hearing Mr. J introduce her as Maggie, their little angel and hearing him tell Charles how much they relied on her and how they wouldn't know what they'd do without her, her terribly guilty conscience made her decide to visit him on her own. She still had no intentions of sticking around, as soon as he was out of hospital she was out of there, but she wanted to tell him how much he was upsetting his parents by behaving the way he was and that everyone understood how difficult and depressing this was for him, how they knew that he was very worried about his future, but there was no need for him to be quite so bleeding obnoxious, something that she also knew was none of her business. She didn't tell his parents she was going to visit him, she'd always maintained that she wouldn't sit down by his bed because hospital wards full of sick people gave her the willies, in fact she was scared that any minute some military pal of his was going to show up, someone who, unlikely as it was, might recognise her.

His bed was empty when she arrived, the covers thrown back and the sheets all rumpled, so that she stood stock still in the middle of the ward and experienced a stomach lurch of fear that something had gone wrong, but one of the regular nurses recognised her, saw her face and reassured her that he was with the physiotherapists working on his leg.

"How is he today?"

"It's tough for him, lying here day after day, not being able to get up and with all his worries about the future, and he's lost his appetite, so he's not eating"

"What you mean is that he's being an arse"

"No, he's just a bit depressed sometimes"

He barely greeted her, just nodded in her direction when he was wheeled back into the ward and helped into bed, the nurse closing his curtains as he stared straight ahead without speaking to her.

"How are you today?" Molly found herself pinning the "visiting Charles" bright smile on her face as she tried to instigate the conversation she wanted to have, knowing that she had no right to be there, that it was all none of her business and that he could call for a nurse or security any second and have her thrown out.

"Shit"

She actually thought that 'shit' was probably a fair enough response in the circumstances, but his answer made her even more aware that he wasn't making any effort to pull himself out of the low state he'd got into, or if he was it wasn't working and she knew how vital it was to his recovery as well as to his parents that he made some attempt to do just that.

"Look, I know that it's none of my business but you are getting much better and you'd get better still if you'd eat and you really need to ….."

"I need to do what exactly? I don't know if you've noticed but I can't really do an awful lot at the moment, and you know what Maggie? I'm not going to be able to do a whole lot more when I get out of here either, I'll be on the fucking scrap heap, the army doesn't want anyone whose stomach and legs are fucked" His posh voice was scathing as he looked at her for the first time since the nurse had helped him back into bed "Just go, you're quite right, this has got nothing whatsoever to do with you, just leave me alone"

"I'm sorry, I was only trying to help, your parents are trying to help, everyone is trying to help you feel better, but never mind, I'm going"

"No, trust me, people keep telling me that I'm doing well, that I'm recovering, because they're trying to make themselves feel better"

That was the point at which she saw red and completely lost her temper.

"How do you work that one out? My god, you're such a knob, and an ungrateful one at that" she took a deep breath and told herself not to shout "You should be dead, you were dead a couple of times, and then all these people, these people what are trying to make themselves feel better, the medics, the bloody surgeons and all the rest of them that have all worked their knackers off saving your sorry arse, alright maybe not so much here but at Bastion and the QE definitely, and your poor bloody parents what have been through hell, especially your dad who can't even get on and off the shitter without help, and who couldn't travel to Birmingham when you were scaring the crap out of everyone by trying to drop dead on them, and now you're back down here he has to rely on me to help him come in here every day so that you can be a bleeding miserable sod and refuse to talk to him" She took another much needed deep breath before she continued "He knows you're fragged, everyone knows you're bleeding fragged, but he's never complained, not once, nor your poor mum who went up and down that bleeding motorway all the time and she couldn't even pull her own knickers up, she had to rely on that horrible cow you was married to, and your mum's never moaned once neither" Molly suddenly realised that she was saying a whole lot of indefensible things that were none of her business to someone who was laying badly hurt in a hospital bed, someone who'd been through a nightmare and who couldn't just get up and leave "And I'm sorry and I'm gonna go now before you call someone and have me thrown out"

She didn't look at his face as she flounced out, leaving the curtain wide open in a final act of ill- tempered mutiny and tried not to see the other two patients staring at her as she realised that she hadn't exactly been keeping her voice down, that she'd been yelling at him, and that she was going to have to go back at some point and say that she was sorry, that it wasn't now, it never had been and it never would be, any of her business.

-OG-