Love is an ever-fixed mark

Gillian had only gone round to Caroline's to make peace.

Well, perhaps she'd wanted to yell at John first, show him how his indiscretion had caused her to lose the trust of her father and her soon-to-be mother in law. Perhaps she was also on the verge of losing a friend. She'd never intended to hurt Caroline; she'd been frustrated and upset, and sufficiently drunk to believe that she was holding Eddie's hand rather than John's as she was led up the rickety stairs to her bedroom. None of that was John's fault, mind.

She'd planned on giving him a bit of a dressing down, and then making peace with both of them, John and Caroline. Kill two birds with one stone, promise both it was a mistake which would never be repeated. And that was the truth. Caroline's friendship was too precious to be lost over such stupidity.

She hammered on the front door with knuckles weathered by decades of rescuing lambs from snowdrifts and delving into her tractor's engine and punching stupid men. Then she realised there was a doorbell and pressed that too for good measure. Raff would love this, it was like something from a film, all long gravel driveways and elegant arcing windows so that you could clamber up on the window ledge and look out. Imagine that, window ledges which weren't buried beneath junk. Gillian had always been content with what she had, what she'd built up for herself, but crikey, Caroline knew how to be successful.

Gillian stood on the door step and, in the way that emotion catches us unawares sometimes, felt her lips smile and her eyes well with tears over Caroline. Their first words to one another had been so horrible and now she couldn't imagine being without her. When one was wound up they would ring the other, and they would talk about Alan and Celia's antics, and their boys, or else they would lapse into silence and Gillian would see in her mind's eye Caroline at the kitchen window, wrapping a blonde lock around a finger.

She had looked to Eddie for love and only now did she learn that love didn't need to be like that. Love wasn't finding someone to tolerate for the rest of your lives until something unspeakable – something that made Gillian want to rip her hair out with guilt and grief whenever it crept up on her – happened. It was meeting someone who came from a different world and finding that your worlds slowly combined until you were the salt to their pepper, or whatever analogy you wanted to use, you needed them and you wanted to need them.

Still no answer. She was turning away when she heard something, a moan, a repressed cry, from somewhere beyond those posh windows. Gillian had been depended upon for so long, for so much – from her father, Raff, the animals – that she had come to recognise others' pain as readily as she knew she was hungry when her stomach rumbled.

The door was locked but the window wasn't. She wondered how she was going to explain this as 'making peace' as she kicked off her boots and heaved herself up through the window and down onto the window ledge, then the lounge carpet. The weeks of silence since Caroline had found out; did she mean anything to her? Did Caroline feel this love like Gillian felt it, like they had been together forever, climbed the same climbing frame and danced all night at the same eighties disco? They were poles apart, that was the truth. Gillian was a commoner who had to sell cigarettes to tossers like Paul to make ends meet, whose son had been cautioned for assault, whose husband– well. Get on with whatever you're doing before a neighbour calls the police, love.

"Hello?" She felt a bit like an actress filming for The Bill or something ridiculous. "Hello, anyone in here?"

A moan from upstairs again.

For God's sake, it was probably a dog or something. Did Caroline have a dog? It wasn't love between them, it was all a daft fantasy on Gillian's part because she wanted someone to treat her like she was special. She wanted someone she could trust irrevocably.

All the same, she climbed the stairs, conscious that the carpet was cream and her socks were grubby. She couldn't resist a neb in Caroline's bedroom. She ran her fingers over the tops of expensive perfumes, over the silky throw on the bed. In the same second that she decided to leave before she spilled Chanel all over the floor and her father disowned her forever, she realised that the en-suite door was slightly ajar.

"Caroline?" A triangle of light was cast over the carpet from inside. She pushed the door open a little more. "Oh, Caroline."

"You can take one of those bottles, if you want. None of them ever suited me. I don't wear perfume any more, Kate says I don't need it, I'm already–"

Here Caroline pressed her face into her hands and sobbed. The sobs burst out of her, at a speed which would have seemed impossible to Gillian, had she not been standing here. She was frightened Caroline might do some damage, crying so hard, something might rupture. Biology hadn't been ever a strong point – of course she could do the lambing stuff, but nothing to do with humans – and dealing with emotions definitely wasn't.

She had known what to do when Raff had fallen over in the yard as a little boy, she had scooped him up and sat him on the fence and kissed his knees, but she didn't know what to do now he was older. She didn't know how to express all of the things she felt for him, the fact that she'd rather die than see him suffer (another form of love). She didn't know how to say all of the things she felt about his father. Her Eddie.

"Caroline," she said again.

"Are you sorry?"

"Really sorry. I was pissed, he was pissed, we were both– from the bottom of my heart, I never meant–"

"Not that." Caroline brought her hands up to her face and swiped at her tears viciously, but more fell. She left behind a smear of blood on her cheekbone. "Are you sorry Eddie didn't get to see Raff grow up?"

Gillian wasn't prepared for this. She wasn't prepared for kneeling down on the cool bathroom floor and pulling the towel from the radiator rail in order to wrap it around Caroline's wrist. She would have been frustrated by anyone else doing this, she would've put it down to teenage angst, attention-seeking. Caroline submitted without struggle to Gillian's hands around hers, binding the cuts and pressing down hard; Gillian muttered something about it being okay, the usual babble people threw up when there was nothing else to say, and Caroline's hair fell over her face as she nodded. But even as Gillian shuffled close to Caroline, holding her wrist, her blood on her fingers, she wasn't prepared to talk about Eddie with her. Not with anyone.

"Yes," she said, "I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry about– about this, I'm sorry." Caroline's sobs had died away and she was left gulping to compensate for the breath she'd lost. It was something you normally only saw in children, such a loss of control, such a desperate need for someone to hold you tight. "I haven't done it for– since university, when I was–"

"Has something happened?" Gillian shook her head as soon as the words had left her mouth. No shit, Sherlock. "What is it?"

"Please don't let the boys see me, they can't see me."

"They won't. It's alright."

A ringlet of hair rubbed against the blood on her cheek and hung in front of her face, blonde and red combined. Gillian fell into rubbing her thumb in wide circles on Caroline's shoulder with the hand she wasn't using to hold her wrist; she knew it comforted horses, and they were all only animals, really.

"I think we should probably get you to A&E or something, they'll have to bandage it properly. I should ring Celia, she'll want to– and Kate."

Here Caroline let out a strangled sob. "Kate wants a baby."

"Is that what this is about?"

"I'm too old to start all that again. I love them more than the world, Lawrence and William, but I can't. She says she can't pretend they're her own any more, she feels like she'll die without leaving any mark on the world."

"Did you have an argument?"

"I said–" Caroline's nose was running, she looked like a little kid hiding from the bullies under the sinks in the school toilets. "I said a terrible thing."

Gillian wasn't sure whether she was supposed to wait for an elaboration, whether Caroline wanted to elaborate. The blood had seeped through the towel a little bit. She didn't think the cuts were so deep – these things look worse than they are, that was what her dad had always told her – but they needed checking all the same.

"I can feel your heartbeat," Caroline whispered, "It's faster than mine."

Gillian hadn't realised how hard she was breathing, how the panic had flooded her so that she felt sick with it all. Like the time Raff had come off his bike. Like when she'd found Eddie.

"I asked if she wasn't satisfied with me. If she wanted– a man. You know?"

"Kate worships you," Gillian said.

"I know, I know. She ran out, she'd left her bag in the– and she had all these adoption brochure things, she'd got all this stuff written down all over them, and– she was looking at adoption and I thought she was fucking–" Something between a laugh and another sob came out at the double meaning of what she'd just said. Everything punctuated by sniffs. "Oh, God. She just wanted to talk about it, it must have taken so much– She's so good with Lawrence, it's like she's his mother, she would be so–"

"You were scared. Kate will understand that."

"What would it be like for the kid?"

"It's much more accepted now, it's–"

Caroline waved a dismissive hand. "Having a mother like me. Did you know I nearly drove Mum and the boys off a cliff a few weeks ago?"

Gillian didn't think it was possible for her heart to pound against her ribs any harder. You could almost hear it, the only sounds in the bathroom were the faint buzz of the heating and the thudding of their hearts.

"No, I didn't mean to, I wouldn't ever– I can't do it. I don't know what's going on in my head; I can't look after myself, let alone a child. And those children, they've already been hurt so much. I can't."

"You need to talk to Kate about this. I need to ring your mum, then I'll drive you across to the–"

"In a minute."

For someone so vulnerable, she sounded remarkably strong and certain when she said that. She put her unbloodied fingers on Gillian's free hand, and Gillian turned her palm upwards so that Caroline's locked into hers. Caroline slipped sideways a little bit and leant the side of her head against Gillian's shoulder.

"I'm really sorry," Gillian said, "About John."

"Not at all. You're welcome to him."

They both laughed weakly. Lapsed into silence for a short while. It was all a little bit incongruous, such a beautiful, powerful woman slumped on the normally-gleaming, now blood-covered floor of her bathroom. It felt strange that only now, supporting Caroline as she bled, could Gillian bring herself to think about all of the other painful things she'd pushed away again and again for so long.

"I'm really sorry Eddie can't see Raff now. I will always be really sorry."

"He would have been proud of him."

"Aye, he's a good lad," Gillian murmured, squeezing Caroline's hand, "Whatever you decide, with Kate, she'll always be there for you."

And I'll always be here for you, too. As if she understood that, as if the love Gillian felt was reciprocated, Caroline squeezed her friend's hand back. Gillian realised she hadn't yet asked her how she'd got into the house; she was going to have a fit when she found the grubby footprints on her usually spotless staircase. Incongruous and surreal. Gillian had only blinking come round to make peace.

"Will you call her now, please?"

"'Course."

Gillian thought that, when she'd brought Caroline back from the hospital and made her comfortable on the sofa with a mug of hot chocolate, she might just sit on the lounge window ledge and look out at the dusky sky with her knees tucked up beneath her chin. It occurred to her that very little really happened like it did in her daydreams. Surely she deserved one little thing.

IT'S NEARLY TUESDAY. Words cannot describe how excited I am.

I own nothing. Parts of this are loosely based on the trailer for series two. Even the title is stolen, from Shakespeare (Sonnet 116; I'm not usually a fan of lovey-dovey poetry but that one is beautiful).

For one reason or another I'm really dissatisfied with this ending, but anyway. Please review if you've got a moment x