A/N: I'm aware that this is quite offbeat so any feedback would be much appreciated. It's based on some research I've been doing recently for my EPQ about Elizabeth I and the idea that she had two bodies- a natural body, vulnerable to weakness, and a body politic, which represented the state. This sort of reminded me of Sandra in a way, how she is (or was) different people at home and at work. Thanks for reading anyhow :)
Disclaimer: I don't own New Tricks.
She'd always been that way, if she thought about it. Adaptable to fit the situation, to fit the people around her, but not in a laidback way, no, quite the opposite. She did it to get what she wanted, to be everything to everyone. Janus-faced, they called it in politics. Yes, she was the female and much better-looking equivalent of Nick Clegg, constantly swaying left and right as the climate called for. Much more stylishly though.
Even when she was a child, she was always badly behaved for her mum, good for her dad.
Then it was the teenage years, post-father, post-idol. She was an absolute bitch at school, acting as the bully to get what she wanted- power over something, when she had no control over her emotions, and certainly no control over the mythical heart attack that had supposedly struck her beloved father without warning. That was what one of her many shrinks said, anyway. She remembered with a pang of discomfort the many days she and Grace had spent without any form of communication, almost like strangers united by their coexistence in a place that felt familiar to them, but nothing else, no real relationship. So that was the second stage, the bully, and the quiet, grieving, not-so-little girl.
Next came Hendon, where she was half the outgoing, pretty young Sandra, who everyone wanted to be friends with, and half the top recruit, silently working hard to what she wanted- power, again.
After that, it was the balancing act of marriage and working on the beat in Soho for a living. Admittedly, it wasn't the best time to get married, but she'd desperately wanted to be the perfect wife at home and the best candidate for promotion at work. She'd quickly found that making casseroles and cleaning the shower whilst nursing her bruises from wrestling London's finest to the floor didn't work. Numerous sleepless nights were spent worrying about the girls of a similar age to her who would be out on some dark street corner that night, waiting for the yellow glow of headlights. She needed to have the power to stop that.
Then the inevitable happened. Divorce. It hadn't taken her long to get over it by any standards, but the classic 'I'm fine' at work, swiftly followed by crying yourself to sleep routine hadn't failed to impose itself upon her.
By that time, she was DI under a certain DCI Jack Halford. There, she was London's version of Wonder Woman by day, taking down on average one murderer a week, combined with serial drinker and one night stand participant by night. Although, Jack did have somewhat of a calming influence on her, by inviting her to his and Mary's for dinner, welcoming her into their shared little paradise. That was the one place where she was just Sandra, nothing more, nothing less. She didn't need to be.
Next came James. It was funny, she realised with an ironic smirk, how she was describing her life in terms of men rather than her job. Well, at that time she was flying high career wise, the youngest female DCI in the Met, the head of a unit that she'd worked damned hard to transform from the alpha male dominated group of nine to fivers of the eighties and early nineties to a successful team of committed officers, a perfect blend of youthful enthusiasm and 'more experienced' officers (or at least in ordinary Met terms, they were practically spring chickens compared to her boys. Although, they were far from ordinary). Her clean up rate had been second to none, and she'd been in her element. Never happier, she remembered telling Grace, on one of the rare occasions she'd had time to visit her.
For once, in her personal life, she didn't want control, she had enough of that at work, she just wanted…love. Whatever that is. They were in love for a while, she supposed, going by the Oxford English definition of the word. But, in line with her former personal philosophy, good things don't last, and soon enough it all went pear shaped, and she returned with a unsatisfied resignation to being the cool and confident boss at work and the lonely 'thirty nine year old' at home, whiling away her hours with ready meals for one and crappy yet strangely addictive TV, now that her power had risen to such extremes that she had people to delegate her work to.
Then, the sainted dog incident. The end of her career as she knew it. Or so she thought. At first, she was the bad cop (literally) in response to the team of frankly annoying and way too relaxed geriatrics at first, constantly reminding them of the rules and chastising them for their old-school, 'Life on Mars' method of policing, as she called it. She'd been doing a lot of thinking around that time, as she realised that she was perfectly content sitting around in the basement with a bunch of old blokes who weren't actually that bad, thank you very much, and she definitely did not want to return upstairs to the terrible land of backstabbing pricks in suits. She was also beginning to realise that she wasn't getting anywhere in terms of men, especially after that fiasco with the posh art dealer.
It finally dawned on her in the pub, of all the places. She looked around the grinning faces of her boys, laughing at some dodgy joke of Gerry's, and accepted that she wasn't properly looking for a man to fulfill her other self, in fact, she didn't even have another self anymore. Finally, she had become one person, a Sandra who was the same in work as she was outside it. She had found her own sort of not quite perfection in three old, grumpy and downright strange men, and that was all she needed.