Author's note: I know there's not a great deal going on in this chapter, but trust me; I'm just setting the stage at this point. I hope you enjoy, and thanks very much to everyone who commented on the first chapter.

2. Fathers and Daughters

She looks out on the ranks of upturned faces and knows she must have gotten old when she wasn't paying attention – some time between shoulder pads and skinny jeans – because all she can think is, Christ, they're infants.

She finds herself looking over to where Gerry's youngest daughter sits amidst the ranks of trainees. Caitlin's auburn hair is yanked back into a no-nonsense bun, but the freckle-splashed face still isn't difficult to locate. Sandra has finished her part of the 9 a.m. lecture and is marooned on the stage at the front of the lecture hall with the other three speakers who got roped into this, telling herself not to fidget, not to cross and recross her legs, and not to scratch her nose lest anyone should think she's picking it.

When Sandra's find them, Caitlin Standing's eyes are trained not on the man droning behind the podium but directly on the blonde detective superintendent, and they are studying her thoughtfully, appraising. When Sandra realises this she's somewhat disconcerted, but she likes the way the young woman doesn't avert her gaze, only blinks once and flashes out a quick grin. Sandra smiles back, suppressing the urge to wink. She wishes she were squished between Brian and Jack, who would be imitating the speaker, and Gerry, who would pass the time by cracking lewd jokes.

It's a weird day, which Sandra expected – so maybe that means it's not a weird day after all.

At least she remembered to order the flowers.

She glances at her watch and her mouth tightens fractionally. Not only are the natives getting restless, but Mother Pullman will be growing irritated. Sandra should have left fifteen minutes ago.

As if on cue, her mobile vibrates in her handbag, and Sandra's jaw locks. Strickland's going to owe her big time for this, especially after he promised her she'd be finished in plenty of time to take her mother to what she'd assured him was an important doctor's appointment.

Whose scathingly brilliant idea had it been to schedule the question and answer segment after all the speakers had finished? Every person in this room has been a member of a captive audience now for over three hours. There was always going to be one prat in love with the sound of his, or her, own voice, who rambled for an age and cocked up everyone else's schedule. Sandra cuts her eyes at the director, attempting to send him some sort of karmic or subliminal message.

Tell Bill Henderson to shut it.

The director doesn't, but fortunately Henderson falls silent of his own volition, like a wind-up toy whose string has finally retracted. As soon as the Q&A begins Caitlin's hand shoots up. "My question is for Detective Superintendent Pullman," the young woman says pertly, something of Gerry in her tone, and Sandra schools her features into an appropriate cast of interrogative solemnity as Caitlin asks about the policies that govern measures taken when interviewing former police officers.

My policy, Sandra thinks, is that I don't take any bullshit from them or from the former officers who work for me. She smiles politely. "It's a bit of a balancing act, really," she begins smoothly.

She is far and away the most popular of the speakers with the students during the next half hour, which gives her ego enough of a boost that she's not feeling as guilt-ridden as she probably should when she jog-trots to the car park. Her mobile has gone twice more during the last thirty minutes. Grace will be turning the corner of querulous and making for the home stretch to livid by now. Not even if Sandra sprouted wings could she be less than obscenely late, and she's usually irritatingly punctual. The idea that she's always late to her mother's because she dreads going is so obvious that she doesn't need to waste time considering it.

She is standing by the open car door, scrolling through her missed calls and realising to her surprise that the first is from a number she doesn't recognise, when she hears the shout: "Sa – Ah, D.S. Pullman!"

Even without the slip of the tongue Sandra would've recognised the voice. Caitlin lightly jogs toward her, but stops a few feet away. "Are you leaving?"

"I'm late already," Sandra responds, but with a smile. "I'll be back tomorrow, though. You're stuck with me until Friday."

"I know," Caitlin replies quickly. "I signed up for your seminars. I was just hoping to talk to you at lunch."

Sandra's smile turns into a grin. "I remember the quality of the food here well enough not to get caught eating it again."

"Emily sent me a whole box full of snacks," Caitlin confides, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "But I suppose I shouldn't have told you that."

"Don't worry, I won't grass you up." Sandra pushes her sunglasses up – wonder of wonders, it's sunny – to anchor her hair and squints slightly. "Your dad sends his love."

Caitlin frowns. "I'll bet he does."

Not particularly eager to get stuck in the midst of the Standing family feud, Sandra merely murmurs, "Of course he does."

"Yeah, but he'd send it a lot more cheerfully if I were doing something nice and feminine like teaching nursery school or popping out babies," Caitlin responds snidely.

"Oh, you know it isn't that," Sandra chides. "He worries, that's all."

"Because I'm his daughter and not his son."

Sandra shakes her head. She's already abysmally late; what will a few more minutes matter? "Because you're his, period, and he still thinks of you as being about six years old. It doesn't mean he doesn't think you're capable of chewing villains up and spitting them out. He's your dad. And he's not quite the dinosaur you think." It's the very word Sandra herself had used just last night to describe Gerry and his ilk, but Caitlin doesn't know that. "After all, Emily's a copper too. And you may not have noticed this, but his guv'nor's a woman."

"Yeah, but Emily didn't really – I mean, Dad didn't have much of a choice about what she decided to do, did he? She sort of arrived pre-packaged."

Sandra bumps the car door closed with her hip and leans against it. "From what I understand, he didn't have much of a choice with you either."

Caitlin's sudden, sunny grin transforms her into that 15-year-old Sandra had first met. "Yeah, but he thought he did, didn't he? – Anyway, it's not my dad I wanted to talk about. But you should go; you're late. If that prat Henderson hadn't rambled on for six ages –" She breaks off suddenly, eyes wide. "Shit! – I mean – Oh, shit. Sorry, sorry, sorry." Caitlin winces. "I apologise, Detective Superintendent. That was completely inappropriate."

Sandra smirks. "It's all right; you've known me for yonks as that pushy woman who orders your father about."

"You've just described all the mums."

"We'll talk tomorrow," Sandra promises. "Come and find me before the seminar, yeah?"

When Caitlin has gone Sandra sinks into the driver's seat and dials her mother. "We've missed our reservation," Grace answers briskly. "Shall I guess? You're working." The slight slurring of her speech caused by the stroke is barely noticeable any more; she has battled hard to overcome it.

Sandra presses her fingertips against her closed eyelids. "My boss sent me to do a seminar at police college, Mum. I'm sorry, but I couldn't very well leave in the middle."

"You still have that nice boss – the handsome one? What's his name, Robert?"

Sandra slumps forward against the steering wheel. "D.A.C. Strickland," she supplies firmly.

"Ah, well." Grace sighs. "I suppose there's no point hoping now. You know what they say about fruit that hangs too long on the vine."

Sandra rolls her eyes in exaggerated dismay but says, "I'm leaving now, Mum. We can have a late lunch –"

"A very late lunch."

"—Or we can go straight to the cemetery and then have an early dinner. I just have to stop off and pick up the flowers."

"Did you get the right kind?"

"Lilies. I got lilies."

"What's the variety?"

"…White?"

A sigh. "Hopeless, aren't you? And nearly fifty years old, so I suppose you'll never learn. Never mind, Sandra."

Thank God: at least Grace is acknowledging that horticultural knowledge isn't a matter of life and death, pun intended. "I'm on my way."

"I said never mind, Sandra."

It's Sandra's turn to sigh. "Mother –"

"No, really. If the ritual isn't important to you, there's no point in dragging you along. I would've thought that for your father – I mean, if it were me I would understand."

Sandra's grip on the mobile tightens dangerously, strangling it. "I know I'm an hour late," she says, striving mightily for calm. Her voice is strained, but that's pretty much how Grace is used to hearing it. "But does it make that much difference, an hour?"

The pause is even longer than she expected it to be. "Yes," Grace says finally. "It does."

Sandra swallows. "Don't do this."

"Sometimes, Sandra," Grace replies to her daughter, "you just have to know when to stop."

It takes Sandra a few seconds to realise the line has gone dead, and then she blinks stupidly at the hunk of plastic in her hand. She has options, she coaches herself. She can ring Grace back, make ineffectual efforts to soothe her mother's feelings until she herself becomes excessively irritated, drive like hell back to the city and cart Grace and the lilies (it sounds like a sixties girl group, she thinks) to the cemetery. She can stand there numbly while Grace places the arrangement, examines the headstone, and murmurs about whether the maintenance staff is taking proper care of the grass, which looks as if it might be struggling, and cemeteries with no grass are so dreary. These are Grace's lines. Then they'll go for a meal, and Sandra will wish she could drink a lot too much while her mother drinks a little too much and launches into some inappropriate topic of conversation, like Sandra's failure to procreate, with an abrupt transition to exactly what Grace wants at her own funeral and how it's all paid for so Sandra will have no need to cut corners to save money.

Sandra and her mother are too alike to enjoy one another's company, especially on an occasion like this one, when they're both ill at ease. It makes them hard-shelled and brittle. What was it Grace had called today? A ritual. Yes, that was it. Rites for the dead, rites for the living.

Or, Sandra thinks, staring blankly at her windshield rather than through it, she could take her mother at her word and not do a damn bit of that.

She has vaguely heard the gravel crunching beneath someone's weight, but still the rap on the window startles her. She jerks and finds herself eye to eye with a very tasteful green tie graced with tiny yellow diamonds. The diamonds stare her down expensively for a couple of seconds before she looks further up.

"You weren't going to leave without saying hello, were you?"

Opening the door so that they can hear one another without shouting, Sandra calmly responds, "I was in a hurry. Hello, James."

"That's better." He offers her a slow, lazy smile, and Sandra remembers why she'd once found James Hargreaves so attractive. Now that smile is almost enough to have her turning the key in the ignition and making a beeline to Grace's retirement home.

Almost.

Her former colleague seems like the lesser of two evils as an image of wilted lilies pops unbidden into Sandra's mind, so she says, "It's been a long time."

"Too long." Sandra can't exactly participate in the sentiment, but she doesn't want to be overtly hostile, not today, so she replies with a slight smile. "You said you were in a hurry, implying you're not now. Why don't you come back in and have a coffee? It would be good to catch up, Sandra." His heavy-lidded dark eyes always give the impression that he's just waking up. She'd liked that too, Sandra remembers clinically, as if the feelings had belonged to someone else. "Really good," he adds.

"All right, a quick one."

Her heels sink precariously into the gravel as they walk back toward the cluster of buildings, but Sandra has had decades of practice at this. "You look fantastic," Hargreaves says as he holds the door for her.

"The years have been kind to you too, James. The last time we talked was when, '94? '95?"

It was October 1994, as Sandra perfectly well remembers, but if she says as much he'll think she remembers the date so clearly because of him, which she doesn't. D.I. James Hargreaves had definitely not been Sandra's biggest problem at the time. He had barely even made the list. "Oh, hang on – We were both on that course. What was it, ah –"

"Policing Methods in the New Millennium," he supplies, grinning. "Utter rubbish. But even that's been ten years ago."

They'd drunk coffee then too, she recalls. It had been scorched and she had been smugly triumphant, a high-flyer, a star. She'd been awaiting official word on her expected promotion to detective superintendent, and he'd still been a D.I.

They're sitting at the end of one of the long cafeteria tables, surrounded by the comings and goings of trainees and instructors, when Sandra smoothly inquires, "How are your boys? And Rachel?"

Hargreaves is still smiling, but her keen eyes don't miss the tightening of his lips. "The boys are great. Oliver's studying engineering in America; Bradley's engaged to a clever, beautiful girl – medical student. Rachel and I divorced some time ago."

"I'm sorry to hear that," says Sandra, who isn't. Rachel is well rid of him, she thinks.

"Bollocks," he returns, and she can't help grinning. James did have his good points, in all fairness. "You're not married, are you?"

She shudders. "God, no."

"Only to UCOS."

Sandra shrugs. If that was supposed to be a dig, and she's not sure it was, it doesn't faze her. "It is absorbing."

"Tell me about it."

Her eyebrows arch. "You've just listened to me go on about it for an hour. Surely you know all you could ever want to know."

He leans back, all cool nonchalance as he drapes one arm along the back of the chair beside him and fixes Sandra with a meaningful look. She sips her coffee and waits. She can scarcely believe the cafeteria still has these same long, wooden tables, but here they are, battle-scarred but supporting the weight of hundreds of dishes and weary elbows. At first she had dreaded the dinner hours. Next to rising at half five they were her least favourite time of the day. She'd hated standing there with her tray, looking for a place to sit, a group to welcome her, feeling more unsure than she ever had as a girl at school.

She'd been popular, sort of, at university, but she didn't want that sort of popularity in the police.

That, and the food was wretched. Grace had told her it would be a good opportunity for her to lose a few pounds, but then Sandra had acquired mates – suffering breeds comradeship – and they'd cheerfully shared their snacks, their contraband biscuits and cakes and crisps, like children at summer camp.

"You've got Gerry Standing working for you."

It's a statement, not a question, so still Sandra waits.

"One of his is in this class."

Again, this is not exactly new information. Sandra is growing impatient. If she left now, she could get back to the office in a reasonable enough amount of time to find out what the boys have gotten up to in her absence. Yes, combined they have roughly a century's experience at the Met, but they have the disturbing habit of choosing cases for all the wrong reasons, and she doesn't like leaving them to their own devices. Once a type-A control freak, etc.

"Katherine," says Hargreaves, and Sandra briskly corrects, "Caitlin."

"You know her, then."

Sandra's eyes narrow slightly. Certainly James had seen Caitlin chatting with Sandra as he approached. "Of course I do. I've worked with her father for eight years."

"And what do you think?"

Sandra doesn't like the way the wind seems to be blowing. She carefully places her formerly eggshell-coloured cup, discoloured with the residue of thousands of servings of tea and coffee, in its saucer. "Of Caitlin?" Hargreaves only cocks his head. "She's bright, curious, determined. She'll make a good detective."

"You think so, do you?"

"Don't you?"

The D.I. takes a leisurely sip of his coffee – black, but with two sugars – and glances idly around the room before returning his gaze to Sandra. "I must admit I have some doubts."

Her eyes narrow fractionally. Whatever purported "doubts" James has about Caitlin, he's bursting with eagerness to admit them. Wary that she has inadvertently given him a forum, Sandra leans back in her uncomfortable ladder-back chair, determined to offer no encouragement. "I suppose time will tell."

"Not if she doesn't graduate."

Well, shit. She can't just ignore that. She considers for a few seconds before neutrally asking, "Why wouldn't she?"

"Because she's her father's daughter."

Sandra's fingers curl tightly in the safety of her lap. "You might as well go ahead and tell me exactly what you want to say, James, since it's obviously the reason you dragged me back in here. I don't like games."

"That's not what I remember." He pauses, but her icy gaze doesn't so much as flicker, so he continues, "She cheated, Sandra. Or should I say Detective Superintendent Pullman?"

"Whatever you prefer, D.I. Hargreaves."

"She cheated on a written exam in my class. I can hardly ignore that."

Still not rising to the bait, she returns, "So you've reported it, of course."

"That a copy of the exam was stolen from my files, yes. But not who the responsible party is. – Would you like a chocolate?" he asks conversationally as he begins to unwrap one. It's enclosed in shiny gold foil. Chocolates, sugary coffee: the man always did have a sweet tooth. It makes Sandra wonder how the hell the two of them got tangled up together. Well, it's not the only thing that makes her wonder. You're not supposed to still be that terminally stupid when you're in your mid-thirties, are you?

Wide of the point, Sandra.

"So you don't have proof."

"Call it circumstantial evidence. But given the way Gerry operates – I mean, come on, Sandra. The man's history is hardly a state secret. He's been involved in more shady dealings than you and I've had hot dinners."

"Let me be sure I've got this." Sandra folds her arms and eyes the man across the table. "You got me in here so I'd say that Gerry Standing, a member of my team, is bent, ergo his daughter must be as well?" As if, she mentally appends, she'd need to cheat on your poncy exam anyway.

He shrugs. "If the shoe fits. You'd know, wouldn't you?"

She wonders how long he's been saving that double entendre, but she isn't about to lose her composure. Sandra retrieves her bag and stands. "Grow up, James. And perhaps you could consider growing a set while you're at it."

As she strides through the corridor she thinks, Yeah, okay, I could've left that last bit off. It probably hadn't done Caitlin any favors. She is intensely irritated at herself for letting James trap her into that conversation, especially since she well knows what an asshole he can be.

There's no need to mention this to Gerry and get him all worked up before she speaks to Caitlin tomorrow and finds out just what the hell is actually going on, whether there's anything at all to this. How like Hargreaves to think he's marked the girl's cards, just because of some ancient second-hand rumours about her father. She wonders how many others think the same thing.

There was a time when she might have thought the same thing. As Sandra steps again into the April sunlight, the thought shames her, and then she allows herself a grim smile. She'd learned that lesson the hard way – not to judge one member of a family based on what she thought she knew about another.

Sandra is glad to leave those hallways behind. They echo with too many whispers. Ah, Miss Pullman, yes. I knew your father.

I know you, their eyes had said, only she hadn't understood the language. It was probably just as well that no one had warned her. (Who would have? Grace, who hadn't wanted to know what happened at the end of her husband's life, and who would certainly never thank her daughter for having told her?)

Maybe someone should warn Caitlin, though.

It would keep until tomorrow. It would have to.

Again Sandra slides behind the steering wheel. There's no compelling reason for her not to head back to UCOS, only the thought doesn't appeal. Good teams don't have secrets, right?

Her sigh whispers through the quiet interior as she shifts into gear. She might as well go pick up the lilies; they're paid for, after all. And if she doesn't take them to her father's grave, no one else will.

Please R&R, as it makes me write faster!