The Conversation

A BBC New Tricks fan-fiction

By Jessie Marsh

disclaimer: New Tricks and all it's goodness belongs to BBC. Just borrowing from the store cupboard...

I

"I want you at that presentation in one hour and preferably sober," I said firmly, adding the latter as a serious warning to my three renegades. Two of which were going to drink; one of whom could hide it well; and the other…well.

"You know, it was a woman who drove me to drink in the first place," the 'other' quickly quipped with a cheeky wink and a step toward me.

"Yeah, yeah, and you forgot to write and thank her," I grinned, planting a light kiss on his cheek. "I mean it, Gerry. Let's at least try and make a good impression for the new DAC."

"I suppose he can't be any worse than the last one," Gerry rolled his eyes.

I smiled. Gerry and our previous DAC, Don Bevan, had a lengthy history of mutual distaste for each other, punctuated at various intervals with Gerry breaking Bevan's jaw and me taking the rap for Gerry setting off the fire alarm during an identity parade. I was sure that when he found out the truth about our new superior, he'd be equally as nonplussed. "One hour," I repeated.

"One hour," he agreed with a small kiss. "Sober. I promise. Well…"

"Just be there," I shook my head in mock despair, nodded to Jack who was standing in the background, and walked round to the small car park. Sometimes I wondered what Jack thought about me and Gerry. I don't think for a moment that when he persuaded me to hire the Cockney rebel that he was doing a Cilla Black and setting us up. But these things happen. He annoyed the hell out of me; thoroughly disgusted me in many and varied ways, both personally and professionally; and made me laugh. He'd been so excited about Little Gerry's christening that, thankfully, he hadn't seemed to notice my distraction since hearing the name of our new DAC. It wasn't that I liked to keep secrets from him, from any of them; but how I would explain my previous…relationship, with our new boss was something that I could not completely fathom out until I had met with the man first. How this meeting would go, I was not entirely sure. I couldn't say for certain whether I was glad or incensed that it wasn't going to be a private meeting; I wasn't even sure that I truly deserved a private audience with him. At this distance in time, and it was a considerable distance, it was perfectly feasible to assume that we were once again strangers and that there would be no peculiar underlying, threatening to become all-encompassing, emotional turmoil which might appear unprofessional. If only I could believe that. For the last week, since hearing the news, and after the joy of Bevan's departure had worn off, I had been in two minds whether or not to tell the boys. I was sure that I was doing the right thing in waiting to see how it would play out. I was also sure that I had spent the last week in the afore mentioned emotional turmoil. Would it be weird? Or more precisely, how weird would it be? How much would he have changed? How much had I changed? Would his voice still sound the same? And his eyes… would his eyes still look the same?

I managed to shake a modicum of sense and calm into myself before I entered the hall, fashionably late. As quietly as possible, and successfully too I might add, I snuck into the room unnoticed. My eyes were immediately drawn to the stage, to him. He seemed to be listening intently to the words the woman was saying as she concluded and introduced him to the lectern.

It was a disaster. Oh, don't get me wrong; the lectern didn't spontaneously combust and take him and any hope of reconciliation in a gulf of smoke; he didn't trip over a stray black cat, fall off the stage and randomly ignite; he didn't open his mouth to reveal that he was in fact a dragon (taking after his mother) and transform the entire assembly into a massive ball of flames and tar… in fact, there was no fire. Just a terribly dampening, soul destroying realisation that enveloped my senses as soon as he began talking and his eye accidentally caught my own: I still loved him.