Ok, so this is a little bit of silly. Like I could resist…! Enjoy! Jessie xx

THE DAY ROBERT STRICKLAND PUNCHED THE RIGHT MAN

"I assume they'll be some sort of drinks thing…?"

Cursing myself all the way through the end of the conversation and back to my office I would have sworn blind, lied in a court of law and sold my soul at the devil's pawnshop to say that what had just happened hadn't. No amount of convincing, rationalising, comprehension could have told me that what was going to happen was happening as I kicked the shredder.

Watching previously immaculately presented memos and notices and letters fall in waves over the carpeted floor I saw my future in a mechanically ordered, systematically encrypted, destroyed mess of paper streams also. She was leaving. I wasn't stopping her. What the hell was wrong with me? Why couldn't I just take her in my arms? Push my lips to hers to stop her saying the words? Hold her so close that she simply, physically, couldn't leave me? Why couldn't I bring myself to say the words, the word: stay?

I don't know when I fell in love with Sandra Pullman. But I know she doesn't know. She'd laugh if I told her. Not that I'll ever have the chance now.

Nine years she's been in my life. Nine years she's been in my head. Nine years where I have with great effort, efforts that in school would have earned many many merit points, kept as distant as possible; both professionally and personally. Sod the bloody shredder. I turned back on myself and walked back out of the office. I jogged down the corridor and ran down the stairs. I didn't care who saw or what they thought. My own mind was racing with a hundred thoughts: every memory I had with her in it; each possible outcome to whatever I was about to do; what I was about to do; what was I about to say. What was I going to say? Stay.

Dashing through the UCOS doors I managed to bring myself to a halt. There was no-one there. The thudding and clicking sounds that my shoes had made on the journey here had ceased. There was nothing. Only silence and emptiness. No. "NO!" I exclaimed to the abandoned offices.

"I beg your pardon?" came a quiet voice behind me.

I spun on my heel. It was the new boy. Danny. What was he doing here when Sandra wasn't?

"Hi," I realised with a shock how out of breath I was. "Erm, where's DS Pullman?"

"I've just seen her in the car park," Danny replied. How could he be so calm? Didn't he know? Of course he didn't. I thanked him as courteously and swiftly as I could and set off full pelt back out of the doors, up the stairs, through a different corridor and out into the fresh, wet air. Great. It was raining. How dare it be raining? Where was she? Scanning the car park frantically I spotted her: and suddenly I knew what I was going to do.

She was standing underneath an umbrella being held by the person she was talking to. Everything around her blurred into the greyness of the rain. There was shelter; where she was. In profile. In silhouette. In jeans, shirt and jacket. Reaching up with one hand to touch her companion's cheek.

My heart ached as I watched her head tilt to one side so I broke the spell.

"Sandra!" I called as I splashed towards her. "Sandra!"

I didn't know that Danny Griffin had followed me out of UCOS; I hadn't a clue that he'd been texting Gerry and Steve to make sure that they didn't miss the spectacle I was about to make of myself; I was completely unaware of the audience I had unwittingly been gathering. And I wouldn't have cared if I'd known any of these things.

As she registered the sound of her name being called, she turned away from the Frenchman, towards me. Her hand fell from his cheek and to her side. Her eyes narrowed as she recognised the soaking wet man in the perfectly ruined suit hop-scotching through puddles to reach her.

"Sir?" she questioned uncertainly.

"Robert?" Max drawled in his abominably seductive French accent. "What are you doing man?"

"Something," I puffed as I stopped beside them, blinking through the rain that was plastering my hair to my forehead and into my eyes. "I need to do. Sandra…"

She was looking at me as if I was the maddest bastard in the whole world. I probably was. At that moment, I probably was.

"Don't go."

"What?" she questioned.

"Don't go," I repeated. "Stay. Stay. If not at UCOS… then…"

"Then what?" she had every reason to ask that question, what I'd so far said did not resemble any form of reasoned argument. But before I had a chance to try and put one together my French friend spoke again.

"Ah, Robert, you cannot poach my staff just as I have poached them from you," he laughed.

I punched him.

I'm not sure I have any friends left. Stephen Fisher held a gun to my head. Max French-poncy-Flash-Git just tried to steal my Sandra. My Sandra who was looking between the immaculate continental better offer sprawled on the floor, his stupid umbrella to his side, spokes bent out of shape; and the sodden fool who had just punched him. I didn't dare let the silence last.

"I love you, Sandra Pullman. And I can't bear for you to leave me. Take the job, take whatever job you want, you deserve it and I would never stand in the way of that. But please, don't... stay, here, in my heart, with me."

Oh. Dear. God. She wasn't saying anything.

Possibly because she had just slung her arms around my neck and pressed her lips to mine. Sweeter than I could imagine, her mouth so perfectly meeting my own. Rain pelted down around us, no, wait, rain didn't sound like that…? She drew away and bit her lip, raised her eyebrows a little and nodded over my shoulder. I frowned and turned my head to see almost the whole of the MET standing on the tarmac behind us. Cheering. I offered no reaction, returning my attention to the woman whose hands had only left as far as my forearms. I needed to hear her answer.

"I know I didn't exactly ask you a question…?" I practically whispered.

"OK," she whispered back. "Ok."

"Cool," I replied. She was totally right to laugh at my response. I sounded like a crass teenager. Clearing my throat, I tried to rectify the situation. "How come they all look drier than us?"

"Because," she lifted her hands and knelt to take Max's umbrella off the ground. "They had the sense to bring umbrellas."

As she held the umbrella over our heads, I took hold of her hand and bent my head to kiss her again. She was staying. If not at UCOS, with me. Somewhere in the distance I heard a not quite steady cockney accent announcing to the crowd that there was 'nothing to see'. In the corner of my eye I could see Steve helping Max to his feet and offering him a sympathetic shrug.

"I assume," she murmured as she pulled away for a moment. "That there's going to be some sort of drinks thing then?"

"Absolutely," I promised. There would be many many drinks. I probably owed the French git one too.