"Listen. All the jokes, everything that I've said to you, all the stuff I've done and everything, it's just a joke, you know that…"

"Rod, if you'd ever really managed to wind me up, it'd be you leaving now, not me." – Rod and Suzi, "The Parent Trap"

3rd March, 1998

Seven days. A whole week. It managed to be both a lifetime and as fresh as yesterday. Detective Constable Rod Skase frowned as he pretended to be studying the contents of a file on his desk. His gaze travelled sideways once more to the empty desk to his right. Well, it wasn't exactly empty - the surface was covered with piles of files and papers that had been dumped there. No, the desk was empty in the sense that it currently had no owner, despite the crude name tag still taped to the side. WDC Croft. Nobody in the office had quite yet summoned up the will to remove it. After all, it had only been a week since she'd made her abrupt departure. And maybe there was just the tiniest flicker of something that lingered amongst the Sun Hill colleagues she had left behind, that made them hope she'd be back through the door at any moment, with an impatient toss of her dark curls and a thorough condemnation of High Barnet's finest. But it was now seven days and counting...

"Have you done the paperwork yet?" Liz Rawton's voice intruded on his thoughts as she returned to her desk. He heaved a somewhat exaggerated sigh and looked at her.

"I'm working on it, all right?" Liz's response to his half-hearted snappishness was not one of her famed rejoinders, but instead a look which bore a slight hint of...sympathy? He scowled and deliberately returned his attention to the papers in front of him, suddenly motivated to complete what he was supposed to be doing. He and Liz had been investigating a drug dealer. All pretty straightforward, really. Then again, that's what he'd thought last week when he and Suzi had been looking into a burglary and it turned out to be anything but - in more ways than one. There had been signs there that something wasn't quite right with her that day and Rod had glossed over them, deciding that she was simply miffed because he wasn't being too cooperative with getting to the bottom of the case. Even so, he'd never have imagined that she'd been contemplating her future at Sun Hill. He supposed that Suzi would rather have spent her last hours with Liz, or running around after Deakin, or maybe with her favourite DS, Alistair Greig, although Rod had never been able to work out why she was so fond of the prim, lanky Scot. Sergeant's pet...

He pressed his pen harder against the paper. She still could have said something to him. In spite of all the childish bickering - and the full-blown rows – he thought that they had forged a camaraderie of sorts. Well, maybe he had misjudged that, too.

"I haven't heard from her, yet." Liz once again broke the silence of the office. He didn't look at her.

"Heard from who?"

"Suzi."

"Yeah, well. She's probably too busy running around ingratiating herself with her new friends. Or giving grief to some poor sod." He gently bit at his lower lip, an action which contrasted with his blasé tone of voice. "Just glad it's not me anymore."

"Yeah, right," Liz muttered. Rod finally glanced in her direction.

"Sorry?"

"I said: You're right. Maybe now we'll have some peace and quiet in the office without you two and yer handbags," Liz stated, candidly. Rod snorted softly and returned to his paperwork. Although Liz was obviously waiting for Suzi to get settled into her new job, the point was that she was only a phone call away. High Barnet wasn't exactly the end of the Earth. All he had to do was to pick up the phone and...

And say what, exactly?

Everything had been wrapped up with the case they had investigated, so there was no reason to call under the guise of a query. Of course, there was nothing stopping him getting in touch just to see how things were going for her. But he reasoned that she'd probably find that weird considering he'd spent the past four years antagonising her to various degrees. She'd probably think that Boulton had put him up to something. She'd probably want to talk to half the office before him. He'd probably make an arse of himself. Again.

The truth, which Rod (grudgingly) allowed his inner self to admit to, was that there had been something about Suzi Croft which got to him, something he hadn't expected and couldn't deal with. Not that she appeared to have any intention of succumbing to his self-proclaimed charms, anyway. In the early days, the honeyed smile and voice were met with a quizzical look, the jokes with polite exasperation. It didn't help that they never worked a case together in his initial few months at Sun Hill. Johnson and her big ideas changed all that. Something to do with weddings, of all things. Already frustrated at Suzi for her disinterest and desperate to nab the bloke responsible for the thefts, Rod couldn't help himself. In his mind, Suzi needed taking down a few pegs anyway, and a reminder that she was just a trainee.

He'd heard from some of the others in the office that Miss Perfect was flawed by a temper and if he'd heeded those warnings, he might have spared them both some grief that day. Yet their bumpy shotgun marriage didn't end in an acrimonious divorce – and, importantly, he'd discovered how to get a reaction out of her. If the only way he could get her to pay attention to him involved receiving a verbal slapping from time to time, then so be it.

He had been certain that one day she'd crack…

He scribbled his signature on the last page and sullenly shuffled the papers together. Suzi said that her decision to transfer wasn't because of their colourful ups and downs. Perhaps it was the old ego that made it difficult for Rod to fully accept her assurance, but he still couldn't help feeling that something had gone awry without his knowledge, that it wasn't supposed to be this way. Maybe he'd become so entrenched in his routine with Suzi that he hadn't realised how serious she was about the bloke she'd started seeing.

Maybe he hadn't wanted to realise.

Rod stuffed the paperwork into the appropriate files, glancing at the unoccupied desk once more whilst his back was turned to Liz. He knew one thing for certain. That empty desk hurt more than any angry words she could have hurled at him.