A/N: So this is just a short once shot set the day after tonight's episode :) hope yous all like it!

Sarah x

Sandra looked up for the first time all morning when her office door opened and shut quietly. There stood Gerry, looking down on her in silence. It felt like forever before he actually spoke. "How much did you drink when you went home last night?" he demanded quietly.

"I didn't have any booze after I left the pub," she replied, and for once it was perfectly true.

"Pull the other one," he laughed, though the sound held little humour. "You're hungover."

"No, I'm tired. Look it up, Gerry. Not the same thing."

"Tired, hungover," he shrugged. "Both of those two things would have come from you having a hard night." She glared at him for seeing that she had barely slept last night. He ignored her and walked around to perch himself against the desk, standing right next to her. "Danny said you refused to spend last night with your mum."

"I swear to God, you lot gossip like old fishwives!" Sandra exclaimed indignantly, slamming her pen down on the desk in frustration. Why couldn't they just leave her be? Accept she had an off-day and leave it at that? No, they would rather talk about her behind her back. Gerry was the only one who wasn't remotely scared to ask her straight once he knew something was up. Perhaps it was because he'd spent a decade around her as opposed to a year or less.

To her surprise, he reached out and stroked her hair comfortingly, his hand resting lightly on the back of her head. "Why didn't you go and see her?" It was a simple question, but her own guilt made it sound like an accusation as it fell on her ears. "You always spend the anniversary with your Mum."

She stared into his face, trying to see if the concern was genuine or not, but he seemed to be worried for her. Not for Grace. Not for Gordon. For her. And it was more than any of her family had ever shown her. "It's been thirty-eight years ago," she whispered. "It's time to stop pretending."

"Pretending?"

"Yeah, pretending!" she half-shouted, anger and old grievances bubbling to the surface. "Pretending he was perfect. Pretending he did no wrong. Pretending that I still love him!" she said. She instantly regretted it. That last one was a lie and the pair knew it without any admission on her part.

She met his eyes reluctantly. "You don't mean that," he asserted confidently.

"I know," she sighed. "Of course I love him. I just can't ignore his failings. You have to admit, Gerry, he made a right old mess of everything."

"You can't punish a dead man," he reminded her gently, his thumb moving up and down the back of her head as he seemingly attempted to calm her down. "You can only punish the living. Thinking all these things...you're only hurting yourself, Sandra."

"The truth hurts," she laughed bitterly. She felt a lump forming in her throat as she tried to disguise how torn she was. She couldn't work it out in her head. She didn't want to do this anymore but she felt she had to. It was convention to grieve for the dead. But after thirty-eight years, it was meaningless. It felt meaningless to her, anyway. There was no point in it. It was a habit. Nothing more. A bad habit she had fallen too easily into.

She wasn't going to keep this up just so her mother could wallow every year. The man was dead. He'd been dead a long, long time. It was time to move on. It was still the biggest of the many rifts between Sandra and Grace. Sandra was a daughter who had realised Daddy was far from perfect and his own mistakes and failings had been his downfall. Grace was a widow who preferred to pretend to herself that it wasn't so bad and that her late husband's stupidity had not been the source of all the pain and misery she had suffered.

"I need to stop grieving," she said. "I need to stop letting it eat away at my life. He's dead. Gone. He's been gone for nearly three quarters of my life. I'm drawing a line," she explained. "Mum can pole vault over it all she wants but I'm not following her."

He looked slightly startled by her sudden ruthless outlook but he seemed to understand that she had had enough of this. She'd had enough of talking about it. Thinking about it. Acting on it. There was no basis to it anymore; it was a ritual. She did believe that rituals mattered, that they helped the mind process emotions like anger and grief, but there was a point when a ritual became an act, just going through the motions because that's what they did every year.

"I know that sounds horrible. I'm a horrible, selfish person. But for once I'm doing something for me."

"You ain't selfish," he assured her. "You've just got to that point where it's in the background."

She was suddenly very grateful for Gerry's presence in her life. He came across as the grumpy old man, the too-honest, quick-tempered grouch, but she was being reminded that his compassion was infinite. If anyone understood her, it was Gerry Standing; he was the only constant she had had in her life for a whole decade.

"I'm sorry," she said. The realisation that Gerry was the only one left, that Jack and Brian were gone and Grace was distant at best, hit her, and the tears she had forced back poured out. "I'm sorry," she repeated, choking on the last word. She wiped away her tears only for them to be instantaneously replaced. "I shouldn't offload all this crap onto you."

"Hey, I asked!" he reminded her. She laughed and cried at the same time. "Come here, you silly woman," he ordered her gently. He opened her arms for her and she stood up, for once not thinking twice about taking comfort from another person. He hugged her tightly and she put her face into his neck as she felt the warmth of a person who actually cared about her and not the past behind her that claimed everyone else in her life.

She felt him press a soft kiss into the side of her head and she could only smile as she cried.

She smiled for Gerry and his ways. She cried for the father she had let go.

She smiled for the freedom of leaving death behind her. She cried for the guilt it caused her.

She smiled for the future in front of her, whatever it may hold. She cried for her last act of grieving.

This was her last act for her father: letting go.

Hope this is OK!
Please feel free to review and tell me what you think!
Sarah x