Episode
7/12 Love and war

Review
A ghost from Samantha's fast arrives, Charlie disappears, there's a problem with the hospital plumbing and there's an imposter roaming the hospital.

Cast list
Robert Daws, Amy Robbins, Paul Fox, Polly Maberly, Anna Madely, Wendy Craig, Michael Starke, Andy Wear, Zoie Kennedy, Linda Armstrong, Michelle Hardwick, Dennis Lil, Daniel Feltham and Sophie Foster

It's morning in the Omerod household, Tom and Katy are fighting over the free gift from the cornflakes packet, Charlie's reading the morning paper and Gordon and Jill are trying to get everybody ready in time for school or work. Charlie picks up her toast, eyes half on the paper, half on her brother and sister, a slight smile plays around her lips. Before being fostered Charlie had never known such a happy family life such as the one she enjoyed now, just Tom and Katy play fighting brought it home. Suddenly Charlie's toast freezes halfway to her mouth, the smile went completely. This wasn't possible Charlie thought as she re-read the article, if it had been even remotely possible she would have been out of here months ago. Her reasons for staying were rational, numerous facts backed them up, this couldn't be happening.

"Tom, Katy stop that. You all ready to leave?" Gordon breezed in, both Tom and Katy shifted around and looked at the table, "Well, go get ready then." Gordon suggested, they didn't need to be told twice, Tom grabbed the toy they'd been fighting over and ran off with Katy in hot pursuit. Charlie hadn't heard any of this, she was scanning the article again, her anxiety growing. "I take it you're ready then?" Gordon asked while collecting the breakfast dishes and stacking them neatly on the draining board, ready to be washed when they got home, normally Charlie did them when she got in from school. "Charlie." Gordon called exasperated with the lack of reply, he then pulled the newspaper out of her hands. "Are you ready?" he reiterated.

"What? Oh yeah, yeah I'm ready." Charlie replied nodding, trying to put some conviction behind it, it wasn't the fact that she wasn't ready, it was that she wasn't sure of anything at the moment. Gordon looked skeptical but let it pass.

"Ok, go give Tom and Katy a hand then." Charlie nodded and left, Gordon shook his head, teenagers half asleep all the time.

Ten minutes later the Omerod family was leaving, they were running late which while it wasn't usual it wasn't unheard of. Gordon had to prep for surgery so Jill did the school run. First she dropped Tom and Katy off at Elsinby Primary, with the promise that Charlie would collect them at the end of school. She then dropped Charlie off at Ashfordly High, Charlie headed for the school gates, joining a throng of fellow students. When Jill was out of sight, Charlie doubled back round the corner, there she took her blazer and tie off, she had a long walk back home and the school uniform was just too distinctive.

Meanwhile Alun was sweeping up the yard at the hospital, it was something he liked to do every morning, you could people watch something that was always fun, Alun liked to watch the patients as they came for morning surgery, it was fun to guess which ones needed to be there, which one's didn't and which one's were just malingering, it was also fun to guess the ailment. It was normally just him in the yard and outside the hospital away from the patient areas, so when a man appeared from behind the shed, Alun was completely taken by surprise.

"Who are you? what are you . . . hey come back here." Alun yelled after the rapidly retreating strangers back, as soon as he'd seen Alun he'd run off. It was odd enough that Alun went and had a look around the back, there was nothing to see, Alun shrugged and wrote it off as one of those things, and went back to sweeping the yard and people watching.

"Lizzy, you haven't seen my patient notes have you?" Lucy asked "I can't find them anywhere, yet I'm sure I had them this morning." Lizzy shook her head,

"No doctor, but I'll keep an eye out for you." distractedly Lucy nodded her thanks, it had been a long night last night, she'd been to the pictures with Jeff, the late showing, they'd then got takeaway chips and laid on the beach talking till the sun came up, it had been terribly romantic.

"Morning Lucy," Jeff smiled, "Something wrong?"

"I've misplaced my patient notes, I had them this morning, I'm sure of it." Lucy replied miserably

"They're most likely in your office, I know what it's like when I'm looking for something, it can be right under my nose and I won't find it, come on I'll help you look." Jeff offered. "Together we'll find them." Lucy smiled, Jeff was right, they would find them, she'd overreacted, it was just she seemed to be losing so many things recently.

A little later Gordon, Meryl and Alun were waiting on Dr Rose, they had been waiting for twenty minutes, if he didn't arrive soon they would have to reschedule the surgery.

"Good morning." Dr Rose greeted, bursting into the operating room. "Staff, all ready?" Meryl rolled her eyes, they'd been ready for ages, it was Dr Rose that wasn't ready.

"Yes doctor." Meryl replied.

"Good show." Dr Rose said just as he turned the tap on, he hadn't even scrubbed yet Meryl realized, instead of water, brown sludge gushed from the tap, covering Dr Rose, both Meryl and Gordon struggled to keep their faces straight, Dr Rose was completely covered.

"What happened?" Dr Rose asked in between spitting the brown sludge into the sink, he'd been unlucky enough to have his mouth open at the time, his pipe was ruined.

"I don't know Dr Rose, I'm sorry." Alun replied wincing at the picture Dr Rose cut.

"You don't know!" Dr Rose bellowed, "You don't know, my favourite pipe ruined and you don't know!"

"Dr Rose, it's not Alun's fault . ." Meryl tried.

"Not his fault, his job is hospital maintenance isn't it?"

"Not exactly . ." Gordon began

"This is an outrage, at Ashfordly this would never have happened. My favourite pipe!" Dr Rose then stormed out of the room, a soon as he was out of earshot Meryl and Gordon collapsed with laughter, Alun had taken the patient back to the pre-med room.

"I'm glad to see he's got his priorities right." Meryl laughed, Gordon nodded, he was laughing too hard to reply. Suddenly a light knock came at the door.

"Come in." Gordon called with difficulty.

"Dr Omerod," Lizzy said.

"Yes." Gordon pulled his face straight, Lizzy's expression told him this was serious.

"It's Charlie . ."

Meanwhile on Milner Ward, Matron was conducting the daily ward check when Dr Rose strode in. Everywhere he had walked he had left brown sludge footprints, Sister Bridget noticed him first.

"Dr Rose, what on earth?" Sister Bridget asked, her eyes wide with shock at the mess he was making of her clean ward.

"Matron! I've been looking for you." Dr Rose shouted.

"I sincerely hope you haven't, look at the mess you've made." Matron replied acidly, Dr Rose looked round, he had made a bit of a mess.

"Oh dear, um. There's a problem with the water, this sludge is coming out of the taps instead, it's ruined my favourite pipe. So what are you going to do about it." Dr Rose asked them, Matron had succeeded in almost deflating him, just not quite.

"I'm sorry about that." Matron apologised, though she wasn't sorry at all. "I'll tell Ken there's a problem with the plumbing, I'm sure it'll be fixed by tomorrow."

"Is that all?" Dr Rose said incredulously

"No, I suggest you go have a shower and change into something clean. Now where were we Sister?" Dr Rose glared at both women but he knew he'd never win an argument with Matron, instead he strode back out of the ward with as much dignity as he could muster went to do as he was told.

"Where could she be?" Jill wondered aloud, for the past hour, they'd been driving around the area between Ashfordly High and home looking for Charlie, at the moment they were driving along the high street, for all the good it would do.

"I don't know but we'll find her." Gordon promised, "She's only been missing for a couple of hours, she can't have got far."

"I just can't understand why she would want to run away. She always seemed so happy." Jill lamented. Suddenly Gordon slowed the car and pulled into the side of the road, in front of a newsagents. Without a word to Jill he ran into the newsagents and bought a copy of today's paper, the one Charlie had been reading that morning.

"What are you doing?" Jill asked, Gordon didn't answer he was to busy flicking through the paper looking for the article, there it was. 'IRA terrorists caught by customs'

"That's why she ran away." Gordon pointed at the article, "I don't know why but she was fine until she read that."

"A pint of bitter please Les." Ken ordered, he'd missed this place, he'd only just judged it safe to come back after the disastrous incident with the fumigating. "Cheers Les, hey you wouldn't happen to know any plumbers. We've got a bit if a situation at the royal, they would have to be able to come this afternoon, Matron wants it fixed by tomorrow." Les thought for a moment, "Well I don't know anyone local who could do it that short notice."

"Thanks Les, it doesn't matter." Ken told him, sipping at his beer.

"Hang on a minute, did I say I was finished? I know a couple of guys who could help you out. They're Irish but don't hold that against them, they're not all like the IRA. They're from Belfast, business was none to good so they're setting up here." Ken smiled,

"Where are they."

"Over there in that corner." Les pointed, "Bryan and Marc."

Meanwhile at the royal Lucy was starting to get suspicious. No-one could lose as many things as she had in the past week, unless someone was deliberately taking them and she knew who that someone would be. She told Jeff, he didn't believe it of her but agreed that a confrontation was the best cause of action. They then went looking for her suspect, they found her in the nurses kitchen.

"Samantha, we've been looking for you." Jeff told her smiling slightly. Suddenly Samantha felt uneasy, the smile seemed sinister.

"Yes, we've reason to believe that you've been taking my things, making it look like I've lost them. Have you?" Both Lucy and Jeff realised as the words reverberated in the air how childish they sounded, but then the crime was childish, the type of thing a spoilt child would do when they didn't get their way. Samantha smiled, there was no point in denying it, she had been going to stop anyway because it was getting boring.

"Ok, yeah I did it. It was so funny watching you running around looking for them." Jeff looked at her in shock, he had never actually thought that she had done it, he'd thought it was all some terrible misunderstanding, he couldn't believe he'd ever liked her.

"You admit it." Lucy said incredulously, "You're actually admitting it."

"Why not, I've had my fun. You should never have dumped me Jeff, no-one dumps me and gets away with it. When I see what you dumped me for I wonder about your sanity."

"You bitch." Lucy said calmly, "You bitch." Samantha smiled sweetly.

"Yes well, he chose me first, so you're second best, like having my crumbs really." Then for a second Samantha was quite scared, Lucy looked like she was going to attack her. Jeff thought so to, so he firmly held her arm.

"Come on, let's go." Jeff urged, pulling her away, Lucy didn't resist.

A little later Alun was watching the two plumbers work. Hospital regulations stipulated that a member of the hospitals staff had to accompany any outsider around the premises. Normally Ken didn't bother with it, but as he didn't know them he decided to be better safe than sorry. It was hot in the boiler room, Bryan had already stripped to his waist when Marc decided to follow suit, he was wearing a long sleeved shirt. Alun who was half asleep in the corner noticed a tattoo of a serpent on Marcs arm, he hadn't seen many tattoos before, they weren't common in Elsinby, for some reason this one looked familiar, it took him half an hour to work out why.

"Ken." Alun hissed, waving furiously for him to come over. Ken finished giving Mrs Clarkson her cup of tea before coming out of Fawcett ward.

"What Alun, can't you see I'm busy?" Ken asked him crossly, he liked giving out the tea and talking to the patients.

"It's one of the plumbers, I recognise him. He was here this morning, round near the boiler shed, he ran off before I could talk to him." Alun told him, Ken's face froze in thought.

"You thinking maybe they decided to create a little work for themselves?" Alun nodded in agreement, they then left to force a confrontation, much to the disgust of Sister Bridget, Ken hadn't finished giving out the tea.

"Hey you." Ken called, tapping Marc on his shoulder, "Alun here recognises you from this morning. You doing a little creative employment?" Bryan and Marc exchanged glances, they'd been discovered, albeit not in the way they'd anticipated, well it had been going to happen anyway this way it just happened a little early. They both reached into their plumbers bags, then in one swift movement they stood up facing Ken and Alun, pointing AKA-47 assault rifles at them.

"The landlords right, not every Irishman is IRA, unfortunately for you we are." Bryan smiled, both Ken and Alun stared in horror, what was going on?

All afternoon Gordon and Jill had been looking for Charlie, they'd tried all the routes out of the area, they had also tried most of the places where she might hide, now they only had one place left to check before they were out of ideas. Spirit waterfall, it was about a mile into the moors in a small forest that bordered onto Elsinby estate. They'd been there once in the summer shortly after Charlie had come to live with them, they'd been on there way to the seaside when the car had broken down. Gordon had been determined that the day shouldn't be ruined so he'd said that they'd picnic here, it had turned out to be a really good day.

"Charlie." Gordon yelled, "Charlie."

"Charlie" Jill called, inside her hiding place Charlie shut her eyes and covered her ears, if they called too long she knew she'd want to go with them, but she couldn't, for their sake as well as hers.

"Charlie, come on. We want to help." Gordon shouted.

"She's not here." Jill muttered, "Come on let's go, there's got to be some place we haven't checked."

"Just because she's not answering doesn't mean she's not here."

"Look around, there's no place to hide." Gordon smiled.

"That's what you think." he then proceeded to climb a tree next to the waterfall, it wasn't hard it was a good tree for climbing, besides he'd done it before.

"Gordon what are you doing? You'll hurt yourself." Jill told him irritably.

"You'll see, trust me." Jill sighed annoyed, but there wasn't anything she could do about it. Gordon then stepped from one tree to another and Jill knew instantly that he would fall, that tree looked as fragile as anything, surprisingly he didn't fall instead he jumped, Jill screamed alerting Charlie to the fact that they hadn't gone at all.

"It's alright I'm ok." Gordon yelled back down, "there's a shelf behind the waterfall. I've found Charlie." Jill sighed with relief, she'd kill him when he got back down, scaring her like that. Meanwhile Charlie was doing her best to ignore Gordon, trying to ignore the fact that she'd been discovered.

"Charlie games up, now let's go back down and talk it through ok." Gordon told her gently, he took her arm. "Come on." reluctantly Charlie went with him. Coming down was a lot easier than going up, there was a fireman's pole at the back which you slid down, you then walked out of an opening that looked from the outside nothing mire than a small fissure in the rock.

"It's an old bootleggers place for his stash. We came upon it last summer, Tom had lost his Frisbee, Charlie had climbed up to get it back, I went up to see what all the fuss was about." Gordon explained, Jill nodded she didn't have any questions about it at the moment, those would come later after Charlie had explained.

"So why did you run away?" Jill asked, Charlie closed her eyes, the time had finally come to tell the truth.

Meanwhile at the hospital afternoon surgery was just finishing when a man walked into reception.

"Hi, I'm here to see Mr Caldwell." he smiled, Lizzy immediately noted the Irish accent, perhaps he was with the plumbers.

"Do you have an appointment Mr . .?" Lizzy asked smiling back.

"Mr Wilde, Paul Wilde. I'm your new ambulance driver." Lizzy nodded, she'd been told he was arriving today.

"Would you like to come through?"

In another part of the hospital Matron was getting cross, the bulb in her office had gone and she couldn't find Ken or Alun anywhere.

"Nurse Taylor, you haven't seen Ken or Alun anywhere have you?" Matron asked, Meryl shook her head.

"Sorry Matron, not since just after lunch." Matron nodded her thanks and went on looking.

"Sister, you haven't seen Ken or Alun anywhere have you?" Matron repeated.

"No I haven't," Sister Bridget replied darkly, "Well not since Ken was giving the tea out this afternoon. Alun interrupted him halfway through, there seemed to be some problem because they both went off immediately." Matron frowned.

"I hope they're alright."

Ken and Alun were anything but alright, they'd been hold hostage all afternoon. Bryan checked his watch.

"It's time." he told them. Ken and Alun were then made to stand and with the guns at their backs walk back across to the hospital.

Back in reception a tall dark handsome man entered.

"Hi I'm here to see Mr Caldwell." behind the reception Samantha froze, she recognised that voice. "Paul Wilde, your new ambulance driver." confusion crossed Lizzy's face.

"You can't be he arrived twenty minutes ago."

"Well there must be some mistake because I'm Paul Wilde." Paul told her.

"He is Paul Wilde Lizzy. Hi Paul." Samantha greeted.

"Sam what are you doing here?" Paul asked, a big grin spreading across his face.

"I work here."

"I can see that, god it's great to see you. I've missed you." Samantha smiled.

"Me too."

Then several things happened at once, Gordon, Jill and Charlie entered looking tired and disheveled, Jeff and Lucy entered from a different direction, from behind Jeff and Lucy came the imposter Paul Wilde carrying an identical gun to the ones Bryan and Marc were pointing at Ken and Alun behind him and from the main entrance came the man who had orchestrated this little party.

"Hello Charlie."