Thank you for the reviews.

So, let's get Rachel back to work, shall we?

Obviously, this is S04E01 but minus Melissa and a gun...

Worse Could Have Happened

Support her but don't smother her.

That had been Eddie's frame of mind for the last week or so since Rachel surprised him by nestling into his side and telling him that she needed time. And it was true what he had said back to her. He had waited nearly two decades to be reunited with her. He wasn't going to let this opportunity go so easily.

But that didn't mean that he didn't expect the resistance off her when he said about him driving them to school, with him having to argue that she didn't have a car and wasn't insured to drive either his or the twins' car and the fact that the whole school already knew that they were living together because Maxine had been round and Amelia was right when she said that Maxine was the right person if Rachel ever wanted something to be spread around the student body, like he would tell Steph if they ever wanted something to be spread around the staff (probably also adding that he wanted it kept a secret).

He felt like he had got his point across well when she accepted his lift and, even though she had argued that she was ready to go back to work many times over the last couple of months, Eddie was sure that Rachel was glad that he drove. Because he was sure that she was realising how unready she was.

So as she started to gather her bags together, a shaky hand going towards the door handle, Eddie knew he had to reassure her. Which is why he reached out and removed her hand from the handles of the bags and laced his fingers with hers, stopping her slightly panicked movements.

"We do everything together." He said when she looked up at him. "I want to know if you aren't okay."

"I'll be fine."

There was a point where Eddie probably would have admired her for her resilience. But he was beginning to think that the resilience was now just bloody-mindedness and he just wished that she could be as open with him as she was before the fire.

And so he gave her the intimacy that he was missing by raising their joined hands up and pressing a kiss to the back of her, in an attempt to show her that nothing had changed for him. That he had embraced and accepted everything that had happened in the last year.

There was a moment where Eddie felt like he could believe that she was starting to believe and he held onto that moment, praying that nothing was going to go wrong on Rachel's first day back.

Although, would it be Waterloo Road if something didn't go wrong?

Rachel had just planned to get through the day. To prove to herself, Eddie and the twins that she was ready to go back to work. And she felt like Eddie had been planning something but she never would have expected to walk into assembly to the little surprise that he had waiting for her. She managed to catch both James and Amelia's eye as she walked towards the stage as the song was sung. If that hadn't overwhelmed her enough, Bolton starting off the chant definitely did and part of her couldn't take the look on James' face of 'look, nothing's changed'.

So she tried to run through the list of things that she needed to say as quickly as she possibly could. She knew where she felt most comfortable and as soon as she got back to her office, she would bury herself in the paperwork until the overwhelming feeling went away.

That was the plan. Hence why she pulled Eddie to one side once the assembly was over and she had talked to everyone that she thought she needed to talk to.

"Eddie, what was that?" She said.

"What was what?"

"I get it. I understand. But that was all a little too much."

"Well, I do hope you get it now. You are important to everyone at this school. And Bolton wasn't me. I'll take responsibility for Matt and the song but I am not responsible for the outburst from the pupils." He sighed. "There are more people that have missed you and worried about you more than me and the twins. Okay?"

"I… I would have just liked to have known about it."

Eddie smiled. "Well, it wouldn't have been a surprise if I told you. I'm sorry. I just thought you might have needed… to know that nothing has changed here. That what happened at the end of last term hasn't changed what the pupils think of you."

"And maybe, on my part, that sounded a little ungrateful."

"Not if I did overstep a mark."

Rachel had that feeling that she wanted to tuck herself into him again. To allow him to help shield her from the world and her own mind. Especially as she remembered how tenderly he had kissed her hand an hour or so earlier. But she found herself looking away at him, noticing the way that Eddie deflated by her move. It was something that she had noticed a lot. That he was making the effort and she seemed to be ignoring that. She wasn't. She was just still fighting with herself as to whether she should let him in or push him away for good.

So to walk out the hall, with Eddie in tow, to see the family fighting with the cab driver out the front of the school, she knew her morning of paperwork had gone. Mainly because she found herself running towards them to stop the boy from hurting the driver.

"What the hell do you think you're doing? Get off him!" Rachel said as she pushed the boy off him.

Eddie couldn't have been too far behind her as he intervened the second time. Not that she hadn't had the practice of getting in between people to stop someone from getting hurt (with her having to admit to herself how many times she had to talk James out of hurting someone).

"What's going on here?" Rachel asked.

"And who are you?" The boy said.

It was the moment that Rachel felt like she could step back in the role as headmistress of Waterloo Road. This was a family that (potentially) didn't know what had happened and she could be who she was meant to be.

"I'm the head of this school. Who the hell are you?" Rachel said.

"Your worst nightmare."

Earl, as his mum shouted, obviously didn't understand what Rachel's worst nightmares were. Because it was very unlikely that he could live up to that title. Mainly because she had already lived one of her worst nightmares.

"I'm here to enrol the kids in school." The mum said.

"Enrol?" Rachel said as she looked at Eddie. "I don't…"

"Let's take this inside," Eddie said. "To your office."

Her saviour again. Although Rachel wasn't completely happy about helping out, especially when she was left with the youngest child in the pushchair. She just didn't know what it was about her. Usually, she would have made some comment about the child but she was more worried about her tarnishing the child in some way.

Which wasn't helped when the comments came when Eddie helped her with the pushchair up the stairs. Although maybe they came from the right people as they passed Amelia with Chlo, Janeece and Maxine.

"Cute baby, Miss," Chlo said.

"Looks like you, Sir," Janeece said.

Rachel knew that Amelia was going to tell them about how maybe they shouldn't have said anything but she was sure that Eddie had just seen her go into herself for a moment. Maybe this wasn't the distraction she wanted from her own thoughts, but it was the distraction that she was going to get.

Philip knew that he wasn't fitting in like James and Amelia had hoped that he would. He was certain that the only reason Bolton and Paul kept him in their company was because he was the head's nephew. Although with the reaction to his auntie's return to the school, Philip was glad that there was the love for his auntie that James and Amelia had talked about.

And it was a different school from where he had been before. It just seemed like the same things were happening. That sooner or later, Bolton and Paul were going to go from 'looking' after him to bullying him. That he was going to go back to having lunch on his own and there was nothing that James or Amelia could do to stop that.

No one had missed the new set of kids that had shown up. Mainly because they weren't wearing uniforms (or at least part of the uniform).

What Philip didn't expect was for one of them to drop into the seat opposite him at lunchtime.

"Alright?"

"Yeah, you?" Philip said, unsure.

"Earl Kelly."

"Philip Ryan."

Earl smiled at him. "Nice to meet you, Philip. What is this place like then?"

"It's alright. Different in ways to the rest I've been to."

"Moved about as well?"

"Mum gets bored and decides that she needs a change of scenery."

Earl tutted. "We don't settle long enough to get bored. What about the head?"

"W-what about her?"

"Is she as tough as she is making out to be?"

To Philip, his auntie was the strongest person he knew. Especially after everything she had been through in the last few months. So for Earl to be questioning his auntie's strength felt like a bit of a no go area. Of course, his auntie was as tough as she was making out to be. Because she was that tough.

"I think so," Philip said.

"Well, maybe she hasn't met her match yet."

Philip couldn't really deny what Earl had just said because there was a chance that his auntie just hadn't met her match yet. That she hadn't met the one kid that she wasn't going to 'fix' and turn around. He hated to think that Earl thought he was up to the job of being that. Because Philip didn't want anything else to go wrong for his auntie.

"Maybe. But I do think she is one of the good ones. Everyone seems to love her here." Philip tried.

"She is a teacher. There isn't a good one."

Earl changed the conversation to something entirely different but Philip couldn't help but think about Earl's last statement about his auntie. He got the feeling that this guy was going to try and test his auntie in ways that she hadn't been tested before and he didn't know whether to say something or not. Because Earl Kelly seemed like he was trouble and Philip didn't understand why he had picked him out of everyone in the school.

The thing that had kept Rachel busy when Eddie wouldn't allow her to come back to work was her new initiative. It was phase two of her master plan for Waterloo Road and she knew that she had got to go ahead as planned (even if it was a term later than she would have liked). She knew from experience that if the education system failed the parents then there was a chance that the parents wouldn't be able to help or willing to push their child to succeed in the education system. It was a bit of a flip of the coin situation with the child potentially following their parents into low paid, unskilled jobs (not that there was anything wrong with that).

The education system had almost failed her until she realised that finishing her education and following her dream was the only way to create a better life for James and Amelia and she was going to make sure that they took every opportunity put in front of them.

So the person that they employed as the Head of Extended Services had to be someone that could inspire a group of people that were willing to give the education system a second chance.

It had been offered internally and externally (with Rachel wondering why they had offered it internally when she saw that the only internal applicants were Steph and Grantly. If anything, she had hoped that Jasmine or someone like that was up to the challenge of it). Eddie had done the first round of screening, replying to the obvious time wasters (with her telling him that they had to give Steph and Grantly a chance because, at the very least, they were teachers). She had done the next round, wondering why Eddie had kept some of the applicants that he did and offered a telephone interview to those on her long list to get it down to her shortlist (only keeping Steph and Grantly in the running because of two reasons; they were internal candidates and they were the two that would kick up the most fuss if it was only external candidates).

With her list of questions ready and a mind full of hope that they were going to find the right person, she felt that it was only fitting that things seemed to go in a certain order; from very bad to very good.

It might have been mean of them to interview both Grantly and Steph when they didn't think that they were up for the job but Rachel was definitely more distracted by Grantly's toupee to really hear anything that he was saying and the moment that Steph said about speed dating, she had flashbacks to what happened with Claude and she was sure that Eddie was thinking the exact same thing when they turned to each other.

The last three applicants that they interviewed were definitely the best (although Rachel thought that they were all lacking something. Maybe Eddie was right when he said that she was asking for too much). She shook the hand of the last applicant while saying that they would be in touch before she walked over to the sofas and flopped down on one of them.

"I don't know whether that has made our job easier or harder." Rachel said.

"Well, it is your initiative," Eddie told her, rather unhelpfully.

"How long do we leave it to tell Steph and Grantly?"

"I could feel myself having a heart attack when she said speed dating."

"God that woman." Rachel said as she ran her hands down her face. "Are we in agreement that it has to be one of the last three?"

"Yes."

"I don't want to extend it any more than it already has been extended."

"Rach, you can't rush these things."

Rachel looked at Eddie properly and she felt like he wasn't just talking about the extended services. She was sure that he had noticed that she knew that she wasn't ready to go back and she had hoped that the distraction with the unexpected arrival of the Kelly's. Actually, she felt like the Kelly's would be more than a one-day distraction. Her next little pet project.

"I told you, Eddie. I made a lot of promises when I started here and I haven't kept any of them. If anything, I put the school in more danger than I saved it from. This year is going to be different."

"And I am there, by your side, to help you reach it." He said.

"I know. I know."

She found herself unable to hold his gaze again and she stood up to look out the window, over her school. If anything, she was now getting a little frustrated at herself. She knew what she wanted. What was it going to take for her to accept it?

She turned back to Eddie, to finish their conversation about the Head of Extended Services, to find that he had gone, obviously thinking that the conversation was over. She found herself sighing and telling herself to make a decision. Even if she had asked him for the time, she didn't think that this was fair on him. But was that line of thinking going to make her make the wrong decision?