Chapter One – A Breakout of Chicken Pox

It was an ordinary Monday morning, on an ordinary winter's morning when Frankie walked into work. It was in fact Christmas Eve (so not so ordinary then) and it was Frankie's last day at work before she got her well earned Christmas holiday! She hadn't planned much, just a dinner with her sister, Anna, and niece, Helena, and then presents all 'round! Oh yes, and she was, of course, planning to be very drunk and disorderly on New Years Eve with her old mates from Uni. The lot of them were getting together in Hyde Park to drink as much as they could and see New Year in with a bang…or a headache, whichever they preferred.

Mel also wandered into work that morning, in an even worse mood than the day before. For her, Christmas would be a lonely time. Her family lived too far away for her to visit them, and all her friends lived up there too. She kept in contact by phone and email (which had resulted in many strange midnight phone calls when one or other of them was feeling lonely) but it wasn't the same. She sighed softly to herself and flopped down at her desk.

'Feeling miserable?' asked Frankie, breezing past the gloomy detective on her way to the coffee machine. She was in desperate need of a caffeine overdose before she could even contemplate cleaning out her stuff out of the lab for her holidays!

'You don't say,' muttered Mel sarcastically, ignoring Frankie's seasonal happiness.

Frankie fetched herself a coffee and Mel a hot chocolate, and proceeded to seat herself with great effort on Mel's desk.

'Now, what is wrong?' she asked, putting on her agony aunt tone and wrapping one arm around her friend. 'Come on, you know you can tell Auntie Francesca.'

Mel giggled, unable to stop herself! Frankie smiled sweetly at the pretty young woman, noticing, not for the first time, how cute Mel was when she smiled like that. She pushed away the thought, putting it down to the fact that she was just in good spirits and the season of goodwill, etc… Besides, Mel wouldn't feel the same way, even if Frankie decided she felt that way about little miss Amelia.

'So, what's up?' asked Frankie, serious this time.

'It's just…Christmas,' sighed Mel. 'I miss my friends, my parents, the presents, all those little things that made Christmas special. It's so lonely in my flat, you know?'

And indeed, Frankie did know. Her own flat was often so lonely that she couldn't bear to go home at the end of the day; instead she pretended that she had some urgent work to finish and would stay for hours in her lab, often with Mel for company. Mel insisted that she just didn't like to see Frankie working alone, but both women knew that the truth was that Mel was lonely too. They often had girly chats late into the night, talking about serious topics as well as what kind of lip gloss was best for your lips.

Frankie gave Mel a hug and a sympathetic smile as Boyd and Grace strolled into the office. Spence followed swiftly behind them. None of the team planned to do any work today – after all, it was practically Christmas! Instead, Grace had bought in some decorations to decorate the office nicely for when they all returned after New Year. You didn't necessarily have to have Christmas on the 25th of December, after all! The team were planning to have their Christmas on the 2nd of January, but all the decorations had to go up now because they wouldn't have time on their first day back.

Spence grabbed a handful of tinsel and wrapped it around Mel, laughing all the time.

'My little angel,' he joked, throwing a piece of tinsel to Frankie too. He smiled as she wrapped the tinsel around herself and wrapped her arms around Mel. 'My little angels,' Spence proclaimed joyfully, snapping a picture of the two of them together.

'When you lot have finished playing dressing up, there's a tree to decorate!' yelled Grace, trying to contain her giggles.

Frankie all but skipped over to the tree in her desperateness to be the one to place the angel on top of the tree.

'Now, I'm afraid we don't have an angel,' said Boyd, snorting quietly to himself. 'So instead, we have a model of David Beckham, complete with moving foot for the top of the tree!'

Frankie tripped over her own feet and went flying into a pile of tinsel, hysterical as she was. As she clambered, a little unsteadily, to her feet, she felt strangely nauseous… She swayed, reaching out to hold onto the chair, her head spinning around like she was on a roundabout.

'What the hell…' she murmured, falling to the floor, banging her head on the chair.

Mel gazed at her lying on the floor, a look of astonishment on her pretty face. 'What…' she stuttered, crouching down next to Frankie.

'Somebody had better take Frankie home,' said Grace seriously. 'I think she might have a fever or something.'

'I'll take her,' nodded Mel, heaving Frankie up and dragging her towards the door.

Spence dissolved into hysterics before rushing over to help Mel. 'We'll get this done, you stay with her,' he ordered. 'And give her lots of soup!'

'What?' shrieked Mel, almost dropping Frankie. 'Why does she need soup!'

'Who knows!' shrugged Spence, 'but my mum always gave me soup when I was sick! Have fun looking after the invalid!'

Mel pulled a face and bundled Frankie into her chair, driving as quick as she could to Frankie's place. She reasoned that Frankie would much rather have her own DVD's to watch while she was sick, and Mel only lived round the corner anyhow. Frankie was coming round from her knock on the head by this time, and moaned softly to herself as Mel parked the car.

'Frankie?' asked Mel. 'Can you hear me sweetie?'

Frankie nodded and rubbed her aching skull. She opened her mouth to form a sentence, possibly one involving lots of swear words and much sarcasm, but failed in producing anything. She allowed Mel to help her out of the car and up the steps to her flat, making soft moaning noises all the time. Mel didn't need to be a doctor to realise that her friend was sick with something, although she had yet to discover what. That was possibly where it would have been useful for Mel to be a doctor. Mel sat Frankie down on the sofa and parked her own backside next to her friend's.

'How do you feel?' she asked, feeling Frankie's forehead.

'Like some fucking great big elephant sat on my skull and the proceeded to jump up and down on me,' replied Frankie, who had apparently recovered her ability to be sarcastic, no matter what the circumstance. 'Why the hell are you stroking my forehead?' she added, as an afterthought, although not really caring why the beautiful detective appeared to be touching her rather intimately.

'Well, my sweetheart,' began Mel, as though about to break terrible news to Frankie. 'You collapsed in the office so I brought you home, which would explain the elephant jumping on your skull, and I think you have chicken pox.'

If Frankie had had the energy to move, she would have jumped up and screamed with horror. As it was, she opened her mouth in shock and disgust and murmured something indistinguishable about drinking and how the fuck was she supposed to enjoy Christmas with no alcohol? She then proceeded to attempt a coherent sentence.

'My Helena,' she waffled inanely. 'Anna. Helena. Dinner. Here.'

Okay, so not really a coherent sentence, but it was close enough for Mel to understand.

'Who is Helena?' she asked, bemused by Frankie's apparently delusional waffling about alcohol and strange women called Helena and Anna.

'My niece,' explained Frankie, more understandable now that the elephant bouncing on her head had gone back to the zoo, where it belonged. 'Anna is my sister, Helena's mother. They are…were coming to stay here for Christmas and then I was going to get drunk in Hyde Park with my friends!'

By the time Frankie reached the end of this statement, she was positively wailing! Like a banshee. Mel wasn't used to dealing with an irate Frankie, so she simply returned to stroking Frankie's forehead, in what she hoped was a reassuring manner.

'Well, I'd better ring Anna and Helena to tell them that you have the pox and they can't come for dinner. You can email or text your friends and tell them that you're fatally diseased and are unable to get drunk in Hyde Park. Instead you can get drunk with me and my good friend, Jack Daniels, over Christmas!'

With this Mel wandered off to find a phone in all the clutter, tutting to herself about how she should really tidy up Frankie's flat. She explained first to Helena about chicken pox, although Helena seemed convinced that her precious Auntie Frankie was going to die in seven days because a lady would hop out of the TV (she had obviously been watching 'The Ring' a few too many times), and then to Anna, who was a little more understanding and told Mel to wish Frankie a happy Christmas. Frankie, meanwhile, was explaining to her friends about chicken pox and how she was unable to get drunk with them anymore. They also seemed convinced that Frankie was going to die, and so their only advice was to get drunk and hope it wasn't too painful! Needless to say, Frankie wasn't all that pleased with the advice.

'So how are you feeling now?' asked Mel, sitting next to Frankie on the sofa.

'Much worse,' replied Frankie. 'I have only you to get drunk with and I appear to have spots on my tummy!'