I've just realised there are 20 people on the alert list for this story now, thank you so much, I love you all. Hope you enjoy this chapter, it took me a while to write but I think I'm reasonably pleased with the result ;')

xDivashell24x – Thank you! The ties for the Finn and Grantly puppets are being made currently... •••Malika Rose Day••• - You should get a fanfic account so I can talk to you properly. Or actually I could tweet you. What's your name on Twitter? Never guess what mine is.

How can you be so insecure and so beautiful at the same time? *

Her hair was still damp from the bath, framing her face, with a couple of escaped strands hanging down over her forehead. She wore a scarlet dressing gown, her legs beneath it pale as ivory, the contrast stunning. Everything about her was stunning.

She raised a hand to her face self-consciously, flicking her fringe away. It bounced back, falling over her eyes again, hiding her from the world. She laughed nervously. "Hey. Are you okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah," Tom nodded, "Are you? Good bath?"

"Yeah, thanks. Much nicer than my own. Your hot tap runs hot, for a start, which I suppose makes quite a difference, so..."

"I suppose it would."

"Is it okay if I sit down? I thought we could watch a movie or something, and we could get a takeaway – I'll pay – and..." she realised she was chattering, talking unnaturally fast, sounding like a nervous child, "Where's Josh?"

"He's staying at Finn's tonight."

"Oh. I didn't know."

"Neither did I, until about five minutes ago, when Finn's mother rang me."

Nikki sank down at the other end of the sofa, leaving room between them, "Has something happened, Tom? Did you argue?"

"No, he just..."

"What?"

"Michael talked to him; he wanted to know how the medication was going, if the psychologist was okay. There's someone talking in assembly tomorrow about Schizophrenia too – he wanted to make sure Josh knew."

"And Josh wasn't happy about it?"

Tom shook his head distractedly, "Josh said... he said no-one gave him a choice about anything any more – everyone was treating him like he was different, like he needed looking after. He said he was the same, just different."

"We said it wasn't going to be easy for him, Tom; we knew that. Of course he's going to feel upset. He's going through so much at the moment."

"Yeah, and I've made it worse."

"How have you?"

"They got onto talking about us. Michael asked how you were, and if we were getting on okay, and..." he trailed off, suddenly fascinated by the floor again, refusing to meet the gaze that bore into the side of his head, "And he took it the wrong way. He says everyone's talking about us – everyone keeps asking him if we're... I think he's just confused about what's going on, and he thinks I'm lying to him."

"But there's nothing going on."

"I know. I know."

"Tom..."

He looked at her again, entranced by her eyes. Beautiful, deep bluey-green. They portrayed so many emotions he couldn't quite separate them, work out what she was really feeling.

As he watched, she blinked, and he realised she was forcing back tears, trying to hold herself together. He wanted to reach out and touch her arm, but... But what? For Christ's sake, but what?

"Tom," she repeated in a whisper.

He didn't reply. He didn't want to pierce the moment.

"Look," she said softly, eventually, in that all-over-the-place accent he'd grown to love and to hate in equal measures, "I'm going to dry my hair; I'll be back down in a few minutes. Why don't you look at the takeaway menu, if you still want to..."

"Chinese?"

She smiled as she left the room, her bare feet padding across the rug, "Yeah. Sounds good."
He picked up the book she'd left on the sofa. Small, leather-bound, battered. Presumably, it had fallen from her pocket; presumably, it was her diary, with her meetings scrawled in, and phone numbers she needed to remember on the back page. That was how his own diary looked. Something like organised chaos.

He knew he shouldn't, but he carefully unbound the buckle and opened the cover. Flicking through the pages, his heart pounding: each was crammed full with poetry and lists and quotes and lyrics, and then there were photographs tacked to the paper, and sketches. A diary, but a different kind of diary altogether.

He felt as though he was holding her in his hands, caressing her entire life in one book. Some of the ink was smeared, ruined with tears; some pages were torn and creased as though she'd attacked them. One was splattered with blood.

"Jesus Christ," he murmured. Words escaping his lips subconsciously; bitter, and frightened. "Nikki. My God."

"Don't," she whispered from the doorway.

He stared up at her, hands clamped around the book.

"Don't read the last page."

"W..." he couldn't get the word out. The question: a one word question. Although it was a rhetorical question, really, wasn't it? He didn't really need to ask it, because he knew the answer, deep down, when he searched through the things in his mind he really didn't want to search through.

"Just..." she took a step forward, held out her hands for the book.

He shoved it into them. He didn't want to know. "I shouldn't have looked."

"It's okay."

"I don't..."

"No," she slumped down beside him again, cradled it, "I was going to suggest to Josh that he makes one, actually. It might help him. It helps me."

"I don't understand, Nikki."

She shook her head.

He laughed weakly, because he needed to clear his throat, "Sweet and sour?"

"Like me, huh?"

"Nikki..."

"My best friend was killed. My last year, in the army. We went out drinking for their birthday, and... and... they... there was a bomb, and..."

"I'm so sorry."

"I was in hospital, for a while after. I never went back."

"You... were you..."

"PTSD. Depression. I don't know. It doesn't really matter, does it? They just said it might help me, to do something like this, to write things down, and it does. It helps me keep myself together."

He realised she was running her fingers along her wrist; there were scars there, deep gashes in her skin that had been made to hurt, scars that would never heal.

She followed his gaze and pulled the scarlet sleeve back over her hand, "Sorry."

"No, no. You... God, Nikki."

"I know. It's all happened in my life, hasn't it? Never a dull moment," she smiled again, but her voice was crackling as though her throat was full of tears, "You know, the army was the best decision of my life, but it was also the worst. That's just how things worked out. This is just who I am now."

"If you ever want to talk about any of this..."

"How about that sweet and sour now?"

"Yeah," he said, but he didn't move.

He didn't know which was this conversation was going to go, because he didn't know what was going through her head, and he didn't really know what was going through his own either. In his mind, three different scenarios were unravelling.

a) He leant in and tried to kiss her, and she pushed him away and jumped up and told him that he was being stupid and making a mistake, and feeling as though he loved her when he couldn't possibly, and that this wasn't right for either of them;

b) She leant in and tried to kiss him, and he stopped her and explained that she wasn't in any fit emotional state to do this, that she needed to think carefully, that they both needed to go into this slowly and be sure of what they were doing if it was ever going to happen at all, which it wasn't;

c) They kissed.

XxXxX

* Explanation of the quote at the beginning –

Heather: (sings a bit, stops, laughs nervously) Sorry. Start again. It's just because I'm worried about my voice. Sorry. For those of you that just recorded that, delete. Take two.

Gill: How can you be so insecure and so beautiful at the same time?

Heather: You've taken that directly from Some Kind of Wonderful. The 80's film. Yeah. Carry on. (sings)

Me: (cries)