A/N: I just wanted to say thank you for the reviews I have received so far. Brookii mentioned in her review that it looked like it could be a Terry/Grace fic, but I can assure you that's not the case (and I should know, I'm currently in the process of writing the 26th chapter! lol). I have tried to write their relationship more like brother/sister friendship, and I think I referenced it in one of the previous chapters, but apologies if I didn't make it clear enough. Anyway, enough of my ramblings, on with the fic!

Neil watched Grace closely over the next few days, concerned. Grace had got extremely thin and looked about ready to collapse whenever she stood up or moved around. She had also stopped wearing any make up and appeared to be ready to burst into tears at any given moment. But Neil found that hard to believe. Grace was one of the strongest people he knew. She never cried. He did realise one thing though. She was very good at pretending everything was okay, unless you really looked. On the surface, she would still laugh at everyone's jokes. If you looked closely, you could see the smile never reached her eyes. On the surface, she seemed on the ball and awake. If you looked closely, she had bags under her eyes and she would repeatedly suppress yawns. On the surface, she was completely 100 percent focused on any job that she was doing. If you looked closely, she checked her phone for messages every 5-10 minutes, and although she arrived bang on time, she also left at 5pm on the dot every night.

Something is horribly wrong, thought Neil, and he realised that he needed to find out what.

Later that day, Neil poked his head out of his office, saying,

"Grace, could I just talk to you in here a minute please?"

Grace pushed herself up, and wearily stepped into his office. Once she had entered, Neil closed the door and the blinds, and pushed her down into the seat opposite his desk, before pulling his own chair round to sit next to her.

"What's the matter Grace?" asked Neil, showing his concern as he leant forwards, resting his elbows on his knees.

As Grace paused, Neil quickly said, "I'm not asking you as DI Manson here Grace. I'm just asking you as Neil, your friend. You can trust me Grace. What's wrong?"

Grace was torn. Part of her wanted to tell him everything, get it all off her chest, but another part of her knew that if she told him he would make her take time off work, and, worse than that, might start feeling guilty about the fact that his son was recovering whilst her sister was dy… well, wasn't recovering. So she fell back on her reliable defence mechanism.

"I'm fine Neil, just a bit tired. Time keeps getting away from me and so I'm not sleeping as much as I should be."

It wasn't a complete lie. She is fine when she isn't thinking about what's going on… which is rarely, but that's beside the point. And time is getting away from her whilst she's at the hospital, which means that she isn't sleeping.

I'm not lying, she tried to convince herself, I'm just skipping parts of the truth.

But Neil wasn't convinced.

"Come on Grace," he sighed, "I'm sorry I didn't tell you about Jake, but I didn't want to burden you with it. Banksy knew part of what I was going through, so he knew all the right things to say when I wanted to hear it."

Grace was tired, which meant that she sometimes spoke without realising what words were leaving her mouth until it was too late. The numerous sleepless nights were catching up with her when she sarcastically snapped at him,

"Oh, I'm sorry, guv, that you felt that I would make you feel worse. I'm glad Jake's okay, but just to let you know, sometimes I might have known what you need to hear, but don't worry, I understand. You don't want to have to wait for me to think of something when Banksy had it all stored up in his head ready to spew out at you whenever you needed to hear it. I'm sorry that I'm such a disappointment."

Grace stood up to walk out, but Neil slipped his hand into hers, effectively stopping her, and then pulled on her hand slightly, causing her to turn back around.

"I didn't mean it like that Grace," he sighed, watching her as she looked down at their joined hands, absently fiddling with the fingers that were now interlaced with hers. Why did this feel so right?

"I'm sorry. I just wish you'd tell me what's eating you up at the moment. You look like you haven't slept or eaten in weeks. I'm worried about you Gracie."

The endearment just slipped out of his mouth accidentally, as he tried to portray how much he cared about her, but it was enough to pull Grace out of her thoughts, and her hand out of his.

"Please," she begged him, "Please don't call me that."

And with that she fled out of his office and out of the station. As she headed towards St. Hugh's, Neil suddenly thought of something she had said that, in his mind, didn't quite make sense.

"Sometimes I might have known what you needed to hear."