Office Christmas parties.
A great way to get pissed and do something that will haunt you for the next year, until someone outdoes your gossip-genesis.
With little exception, they move in phases:
PHASE ONE – awkwardness.
Generalised nervous behaviour from all. It's a strange situation, everyone's out of uniform (or suits for CID) and some people have partners. People are oddly brittle and unfamiliar with close friends.
Smithy wants no part of this.
He has no partner, not since Louise. Everyone's seen him in his jeans, he's hardly dressed up. Old news.
He acknowledges members of the force, is introduced to wives, husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends. He wonders how many will be at next year's Christmas party and for what reasons they will be absent.
As he sits at a table cluttered with plastic cups in various stages of emptiness, coats and handbags, he wonders how many couples will fight over the Holiday period.
Honey and Will are talking, standing awkwardly. He gestures with his hand, then claps it to his face in horror; she laughs and steadies herself on his arm before quickly taking it back and glancing nervously at a group of Uniform and their spouses.
Emma Keane's boyfriend has his arm possessively around her as she listens to Phil Hunter and Sam Nixon telling a story relay-style. She strokes the back of his hand absent-mindedly to reassure him.
Gina, Adam, Jack, and June are standing by the bar as if they were chaperoning a high-school dance. Smithy could feel their stony silence on the other side of the room.
He decides on his conversation – the stony silence of the bar.
"Guarding the booze, Gina? Changed your mind on the free bar?" Smithy smiles, helping himself to a can of beer.
"I haven't changed my mind, but I'm hoping my disapproving glares will mean all the more for me." She replies, fixing him with one.
Smithy ignores her and opens the can with a hiss.
"You seem full of the Christmas Spirit, Smithy." She observes dryly.
"Overflowing with it." He agrees, even drier.