This is the second in my series of six conncted stories about A2A. It follows London Fields and preceeds And If I Start a Commotion.

Thank you to ThisisZircon for giving this a good beta-ing :)

I

Workmen had left a sledgehammer next to a half-demolished brick wall and Hunt made Carling run back from the terraced house steps to get it.

Skelton was hunched by the front door next to a non-plussed tortoise shell cat. Couldn't hold his damn gun without shaking, and he flinched at the sound of breaking glass from around the front.

Irritated, Hunt told him to go down to the back door.

Carling kicked the remaining glass from the doorframe, yelling all the time for the people inside to stay down, stay down! Plods almost tumbled over each other to get into the lounge where the man of the house was still busy punching his wife's face.

Hunt pushed after them and wrenched the woman away from one final punch.

"Take it easy." He held out a fist but the man obligingly spreadeagled himself on the floor.

Typical domestic. The cowards would switch from swinging hay-makers at the missus to abject compliance in a second.

"Make sure that twat doesn't move, Ray." Hunt leant around the front room door and saw a distorted view of Chris through the glass of the back door. "It's alright Chris, the nasty man's-" He dropped forward, shoved into the wall by a second man, naked except for some red y-fronts.

The man made for the back door, saw the spectre of a hunched-over Chris and desperately rattled the kitchen door for another escape route.

"Who the fuck was that?!" Hunt yelled at the room of plods. "I'm confused. Don't just stand there."

The woman was in her best lace knickers and bra. Her assailant had a streak of vomit down his trouser leg. Chris brought the second man into the living room and pushed him into a chair. The man shivered in his underwear as he begged Chris to let him leave because he didn't know the "slag" and had nothing to do with the domestic.

"Okay, Princess. Here you go then." Like the new man of the house, Hunt stood on the doorstep and handed the assailant over to plods for collaring. "One more for the limo."

He frowned at the woman sitting on the settee, blood welling up under the bruises on her lips and cheeks. "Get her a fucking coat or something, Skelton."

"So was she?"

"Was she what?"

"In shock, Gene! She must have been. Did you call social services so that woman can get the help she needs?" Alex nodded thanks to Luigi as he filled the jug of Chianti back up to brimming.

"Shock?" – wincing – "The lady looked guilty, Drake, but I doubt she was shocked that her old man thumped her for fumbling the nice man over the road who coaches the girls' gymnastics."

Oh god. He was doing it deliberately. She put down her drink for emphasis. "That woman has probably been beaten over and over again. She probably has PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. Sometimes the man thinks he's gallant if he leaves the next beating until the previous cuts have healed over."

Ray and Chris were arm-wrestling in the corner and she shifted her head so he couldn't watch them.

"You're right, Drake. The worst thing about this job is seeing that kind of brutality day in and day out. Me and Raymondo had a big cry in the men's room before. Shame you missed it." Hunt picked his beer up. "Now I must go and console Chris."

Moments later Alex heard them all clink beer glasses in a toast to a good day's work, and she turned back to the bar.

"I haven't seen you with your young man lately, Signorina Drake." It was just like Luigi to leap right in to fill a silence. She'd noted a while back that one of the ways he got himself through the long nights of boorish insults and eye-tie taunts was to probe each of them at quiet moments like this. She'd seen him doing the same with Hunt, and every now and then both Luigi and Hunt would look across at her. Talking about her. The look on Hunt's face - always pissed off - told her that Luigi took it too far with him too.

No. She hadn't thought of Evan in more than a week.

It made her uncomfortable to dwell on him because, though she didn't have many memories, she knew exactly what was happening with Evan.

At home, making Thursday night pancakes with me in the kitchen. Bewildered for the first month. I knew mum and dad had been in the car when it exploded, but I still woke up every morning as if they'd just left me at Evan's house and gone on holiday. Trying to act normal – made my breakfast in the morning, trudged off to school. Gradually I started to notice that people had a thing about me: I wasn't just an ordinary school-kid. I was "Alex Price. Her parents..." And then maybe I started to take advantage of it a little. Poor Alex Price ... And Evan kind of bought into it too because he kept bringing me home presents. When I think about it now, he spent his prime years trying to get me to practise the violin and tidy up my room. Then he'd tidy it up for me. Because I was poor Alex Price.

"It was never anything, Luigi."

"I know a special relationship when I see one."

God he was relentless. She'd almost stopped drinking at the bar because as soon as she took a stool, Luigi would immediately start in with his latest intelligence on DCI Hunt's burgeoning relationship with Lorna Albert, ashen-haired expert dry-cleaner and tennis player.

"I'm happy for you then if you're happy," he said now, only Luigi didn't look happy. "Like you said, the man is your family which is …" – he made the equivocal hand gesture for 'dodgy' – "except now I am puzzled about, you know, come se dice, you and Mr Hunt."

"Come se dice you've got it all wrong, Luigi."

She turned because Luigi was looking beyond her, staring over her shoulder at the door: the ashen-haired lady herself.

Hunt actually bounded – she could have said 'bounced' even – over to the entrance, and Alex could tell from their whispered conversation as they went over to Hunt's usual table that Lorna Albert was trying to persuade him to have dinner elsewhere.

I don't blame her, Alex thought. She's new but she senses the weirdness.

Alex didn't mean to, but she sipped her drink and shifted in her chair a little to give herself a better view of the table, of Lorna. She was very … neat. Very self-contained. She declined a drink and Alex knew it was because the drink would wipe away the matte dark pink lipstick she wore. She appeared to have an amazing capacity to ignore Ray's eyes roving over her body.

You silver-tongued cavalier, Gene. Alex finally saw Lorna settle back into her chair. Hunt had evidently persuaded her that there was no finer cannelloni to be had in London than at Luigi's, and what better than an Italian candlelit meal accompanied by authentic Italian jokes.

What's the difference between toast and Italians, Luigi? You can make soldiers out of toast.

"I don't know much about white wine, Luigi. Give us your best bottle." Hunt appeared at her side suddenly, nodded at her. "You can come and join us, you know, Bolls. You and Lorna can talk make-up and knitting."

"Funny. Ah, no thanks. There's something on television…"

Alex had in fact tried to strike up a conversation with Lorna Albert a couple of weeks ago. Okay, she'd been a bit smashed and every conversation opener had fallen over, with Lorna quickly turning to Chris to answer some daft question of his about caring for his clothes. Apparently the hemline of Chris's slacks was more interesting than anything Alex had to say.

Oh yeah, it had definitely been embarrassing, and even Chris and Ray had noticed how cold Lorna had been to her.

"I'm glad the Guv's found someone," Alex had said to Shaz at the bar after giving up all attempts at befriending Lorna. "But why's she being horrible to me?"

"Chris was just saying it's because she thinks you're patronising her."

Patronising?! "I was just being polite!"