So, I come back. The hardest bloody thing I've ever done in my life was walking back into the CID office. Not going into Jack's room, not even meeting him again, but making my way through the general office, past all those people I'd worked with. Oddly, I wasn't worried about meeting Jack; it didn't keep me awake for nights beforehand.

How can I explain? He was a mentor to me; someone I trusted heart and soul. I would have - still would - died for him without hesitating. He's the man who saved my life and reminded me that I was still capable of feeling love; how could I not have looked forward to seeing him again?

I hid in his office that day because it was safe, because it was his and that's what he always meant to me - safety, protection, that sort of thing. And I thought that he'd still look after me, like he always had done in the past, despite whatever he thought about me having got engaged. Me coming storming back into his life and station like this.

But he didn't look after me, did he? He was there when Kate died, there when I'd been raped. All I've been through with him, he never once let me down. I needed him so badly in the last couple of days, needed him like I've never needed anything before, and I would have thought that Jack out of all the people I know, would have realised that. Either he realised and didn't care - so he doesn't love me or care for me like I thought he did - or he didn't realise, so he isn't as clever as I thought.

I never thought I'd be criticising him. He seriously thought that I was corrupt. Didn't it ever cross his mind that Beech wrecked my life, and that I spent months helping him get that bastard Chandler? Surely, he had to have seen how much I hat anyone that's bent. That he thought I was like that was worse than finding out about Liz.

Much worse really, because I'd known Jack longer, trusted him more deeply. Hell, Jack…I sat with him that night and told him what Delaney did to me, every single part of it. Stuff that I couldn't have admitted even to myself but could tell him. That's how much I trust him and his way of repaying me was thinking that I was bent.

Perhaps I should have told him about Lizzy and me. But, God, Jack…I couldn't do that. Not when I remembered that I'd slept with you once and I guess you loved me more than I realised. His face when he found out that Liz was my fiancée…Was he so quick to distrust me because he was angry with me? I think it was.

I never wanted Jack to get angry with me; I've spent my whole time at Sun Hill - and before that, at Dagenham - trying to impress him, make him proud of me. I thought he might have been impressed by me getting my own flat, a fiancée, by the fact that I was coping. Seems I was wrong and all he really wanted was for me to be back with you, or maybe out his life forever.

So, it's all over now. I'm sitting perched on the edge of his desk, looking at him staring up into my eyes. We've been here, silent almost, for the past twenty minutes or so. Correction, he's been sitting in silence, watching me bawl my eyes out over Liz. I had to give in and break down sometime; she was the woman I should have married and I loved her like I loved him. I had to come here. Right after I'd chucked the rings in the river, I run here, because I remembered it being safe in the past.

But this time, his version of looking after me consists of being quiet and sitting there, just watching. I can't say the words to him that I need to - 'Jack, I'm sorry for thinking that you were bent; Jack, hold me, take care of me.' This is what the closet, the best friendship of my life ended in - two people sitting in a room, only inches apart, with nothing to say to each other anymore.

We've doubted each other. I've let him down, tried to replace him. Too many incidents over the past few days, like me screaming 'you think I'm bent? How do you think that makes me feel?' at him, so loud that blood trickled in my throat. Too many little things and suddenly, there's nothing left between us. Nothing that I can feel, but then again, I've been crying so hard that all I can feel is pain in my eyes and my stomach muscles, so maybe I should have expected this numbness. But before now, he's always been able to make me feel plenty. Does he know that? I doubt it.

Eventually, one of us is going to have to speak. I don't want it to be me; I haven't got the breath anyway. What words can explain or excuse what I've done to this man? It's all my fault, everything that's happened between us for a long while has been my fault.

'Mickey?'

His blue eyes are boring into mine, so intently that he might be trying to read my mind. A few times in the past, when the depression was really bad, he was able to do that. Not since we met again, I must have changed too much for him to know me.

'Yeah?'

'It's okay. All alright.' He stands up, walks over and embraces me, so I'm left resting my head against his chest and as alone as I've ever been in my life, more distant from him than I would have believed possible.

I want to be with him more than anything else in the world.

I want nothing to do with him, and he feels the same about me.

I wish that my life had been different, so that I wasn't sat here, and I wouldn't want to change it, because I've got one last moment with him.