She's pacing outside the office, and she's been doing the same all day. I hear her feet going back and forth outside the door, can see her shadow on the floor through the glass. She does it for a few minutes, before she stops and walks away. The noise of her shoes dissapearing into one of the back rooms she commands most of the time now.
She smothers sometimes. Pushes, trying to get me to open up. The pathetic 'are you ok?' ready to tumble from her lips at any given moment. Despite how i'm so obviously anything but ok that it if wasn't so damn painful, would be laughable. And if I thought it was annoying when Gill did it, then you can only imagine how much is pisses me off when some bent cop who doesn't know the last thing about me does it. The staff wonder why she's here. Why I keep her around. I don't have the heart to give them an answer. Don't have the strength to tell them that the only reason I put up with her is because it was one of the last decisions Gill made that I was clear on. I don't understand it. Don't get what was going through her head that made her think that Wallowski was what I would want. Be what I would need. But she did. That much was clear. I've analysed our final days together over and over. Gone through ever second of every moment. Every movement she made; every word she said; every tiny reflex that have face gave me engraving itself onto my every thought. So I know that she wanted me to keep Wallowski around. Wanted me to have Walloswki by my side in the aftermath of her. So I let her stay. Let her work from our rooms instead of the station. Let her attempt to smother, and boss me around. Let her attempt to fill the shoes of a woman she will never be worthy of. It drives me insane. But I do it. Because it's what Gill wanted. She may be gone, but I don't want to dissapoint her. She may be gone, but I can't turn my back on her.
Which is how i've ended up in a sitation like this. With Wallowski pacing and walking away. With wallowski returning and walking away again. Dissapearing before anything more than her shadow has come into sight. I'm about to go out there and lose it with her. Tell her to bugger off. Tell her to go and hide herself somewhere where I can't find her. Can't see her or hear her. Somewhere I don't have to be reminded that i'm stuck with her, rather than with the person I really want. About to go out there and remind her that she knows the rules. When i'm in here, in this particular space, i'm not be be disturbed.
But before I have chance, the door swings open and she steps inside. I hate it instantly. Hate the presence of someone who does not belong filling the air, and threatening to erase what little left of Gillian there is. No one has set foot in here since she left, bar me, and that's they way I intended to keep it. And she knows this. They all do. Some i'm done. I'm ready to let rip, tare her apart; to hell with repsecting Gills wishes. And then I see it. And I stop dead. My eyes refusing to look at anything but the delicately wrapped package in her hands. The paper is white. Her favourite colour. She told me that not long after we first met. I'd had her pegged for a pink or red kind of woman. Her love of romance novels and all things corny guiding me towards her loving anything that supposedly symbolised love. But it's white. Was white. She was very clear. Said something about how there were endless possibilities that came with it's simplistic beauty. White, she'd said. You can't escape it's honestly. Full of endless surprised she was, and I remember thinking about how many things there were about her that I was yet to learn. How many things there were I could not wait to discover. How lucky I was that she wanted me to know even the simplest things about her.
She clears her throat, dragging me back to reality, and away from the simple yet beautiful memory of Gill. I want to be angry at her for dragging me away, but i'm not. Because I can see she has a purpose. Has a valid reason for being here. A reason for disturbing me in my sanctuary. She shifts from one foot to the other, and as she does the package tips forward slightly. And that's when I see it. See the label that holds my name. 'Cal' breaking the white paper, her beautiful script standing strong against the clean white background. I suck in a breath. Unsure how i'm supposed to feel, unsure of how to form words when i'm faced with her writing once more. I've avoided the files that she'd handwritten. Avoided her neat scribblings in margins. It being too crushing to see her words come to life on paper. Too damaging to look at her thoughts and know that she'll never have any again.
I guess Wallowski can sense my discomfort. The unease. The waves of grief that are rolling over me and rendering me speechless, and so she doesn't wait. She just opens her mouth, and finds the words that she's held within her. Finds the words she'd promise to hold onto until the time was right. Finds the words that I didn't know excisted, yet alone lived inside her of all people.
"She said there would come a time where the shock wore off. Where her being gone, it became a reality". She paused and as her words reach my ears, and I process what her voice is saying my head snaps up. My eyes leaving the package she's holding for the first time since they found it. I search her face for something. Anything. But she's doing her level best not giving me anything. Not to give me a clue as to where this conversation is going .
"She said there would come a day where something would cause your disbelief to give way to a harsh world in which she was permenantly gone. Said that when that time came, you'd be hit with a whole new level of pain that would try to destroy you. Today's that day right?"
She's right. For all her faults. For all the things she's wrong about. All the things that are so far from perfect, so far from Gill that I feel physically sick, she's right about this. Today's the day I lost her all over again. I don't know what made it happen. But I woke, and for the first time since she left, it was the details of a current case that were running through my brain. Ideas flying all over, my mind working over time to try and make them make sense. And as I always did before, when I needed a place for my ideas to land, needed a place to bring them to life and then pick them apart, I called her. I was still foggy with sleep and already overrunning my system with work that it wasn't until her phone went to voicemail, wasn't until her voice came tumbling through the speaker, that I realised what I had done. And it's exactly like i'm losing her all over again. It knocks the wind out of me, and I have to concentrate hard of pulling in my breath. I haven't called her phone since she left, haven't been able to bring myself to listen to her voice, knowing that I would never hear it in person again.
And finally hearing it, finally hearing her sweet sound, after the painfully slow, and heartbreaking quick speed the weeks since I felt her leave have moved, it takes me back to the day it happened. Takes me back to a place i've barely left, a place so cold and dark it takes everything I have to stay alive. I call her phone over and over. Listening to her words too many times to count. It gets harder every time, but it's like i'm possessed. Unable to stop the sweet torture that her voice brings. I listen until her words, her simple 'you've reached Gillian Foster, leave a message and i'll get back to you as soon as I can' twists into a soundtrack of a broken heart. Until i've listen to it so much that it doesn't sound real. Doesn't sound like her anymore. Until the crushing realisation that she will never 'get back to me' has me doubled over my toilet. Has me unable to stop the sickness that pain brings.
That's when I left. Grabbed my things and ran from the house. Trying to escape everything missing her is doing to me. Trying to rid myself of the shackles her death have me held in. I drive the streets aimlessly until I realise that I can't outrun a ghost. Until I realise that even if I could, I don't want to ourun her. And that's how I wound up here. In her office. Seeking comfort and refuge in a space that used to provide the same for her.
I look up at Wallowski, knowing there's more to come. More for her to say. And as much as it's killing me hearing words from Gillian through her, as much as it's killing me knowing she trusted Wallowksi with her secrets, I know she will have had her reasons. I trust her decision for it to be this way. So I nod, giving Wallowski permission to continue. Giving her permission to end whatever her role in all this is.
"She told me I had to give this to you when that happened. When you lost her again. She said you'd need it".
"What is it", I whisper as I carefully take the delicately wrapped package from her hands.
She smiles sadly at me then. Her eyes filling with tears. Her face twisting with a mixure of guilt and grief.
"It's her Cal. It's Gillian".
Thankyou for continuing to read this story and for those of you who have reviewed; your comments mean alot and are motivating me to get this story finished! In my head there's another two chapters left, but as I write more may appear. Who knows!