She is never drinking that much again. Never. A bad couple of days at work and she has ended up smashed on champagne, thrown herself at her partner, and now she feels like there's an entire demolition operation taking place inside her head. Not only did she mix disastrous cocktails and make a shameless pass at Dempsey (much of the night is hazy but she distinctly remembers pressing her lips to his…) but she apparently fell asleep in the hallway and had to be carried to bed by him. In the living room she spots two glasses and a presumably empty bottle of champagne on the mantelpiece. On the floor are her shoes and bag, her underwear spilling out of the bag, and beside them is Angela's dress, and as she scoops everything up it hits her. If the dress is on the floor and her underwear is in her bag then she, in a moment of champagne fuelled madness, clearly decided that rather than waiting until she got to her bedroom she would undress in the living room, in front of Dempsey. Oh God.

The phone rings and it makes her jump. She hopes beyond all hope that it's not him. Even though she knows blushing can't be detected over a phone line she's not completely certain she's willing to risk it. She sighs and heads for the hallway, sinking down gratefully onto the stool beside the phone table before she takes a breath and picks it up.

"Hello?"

"Harry, it's Angela!" She's relieved but only for a few seconds because she realises Angela is going to want to hear all about last night. "I thought I should call and check you're still in one piece after last night."

"Angela, hi." She closes her eyes, a brief respite from the pounding in her head. "Apart from the loud drilling that seems to be happening inside my skull, I'm fine."

"Thought that might be the case. You were…" Angela pauses, no doubt thinking about the state she was in last night. "Well, I haven't seen you that drunk in years, Harry."

"I know, it's been quite a...strange week at work." She almost laughs aloud at her own understatement. "I think I just needed to blow off some steam."

"Well, you certainly did that." Angela's grin is evident even over the phone. "You know it's been a good night when you go home wearing someone else's dress and with your knickers in your handbag."

"Oh god, I'm so sorry about the dress, Angela." Another thing to be embarrassed about, marching her friend into the loo and demanding her dress. "I'll have it cleaned and get it back to you as soon as I can."

"Never mind that. What I really want to know is whether it had the desired effect." She expected this from Angela, she can't blame her for her curiosity and she can only imagine what she must have thought last night. "I have to tell you, Harry, I haven't seen you quite as smitten since...actually, I don't think I ever have. I'm rather envious, to be honest, he's really quite delicious in his cool American sort of way, and he looks at you like you hung the moon."

"I'm not smitten, Angela. It's not like that. I was just...well, I was really smashed last night." She knows that's not really true. As drunk as she was she remembers how she felt when she realised he was there, she remembers her stomach flipping over in response to the look in his eyes when she reappeared in the dress, and she most definitely remembers how the gentle touch of his hands on her back made her feel. "And anyway, it was you he was staring at in that dress."

"For about half a second, maybe. Until he saw you in it. Come on, he only has eyes for you, that much was obvious from a mile off. And don't even try to pretend it's not mutual. I've known you for a long time, Harry, and I know what I saw last night." She's about to cut in but she's interested in what Angela sees when she looks at the two of them, so she lets her go on. "You introduced him as your guardian angel, not as the pain in the arse you're always trying to insist he is, and when I dared to be even the slightest bit friendly towards him you announced that he belonged to you, that he was your-"

"Private dick." The memory hits her like a bucket of cold water and she squeezes her eyes shut, which only seems to serve to imprint it deeper into her mind. "Oh God, I did, didn't I?"

"Yes you did, and his face was an absolute picture, darling. Anyway, never mind all that. Tell me everything." She knows Angela is grinning, she can tell. "God, the way he was looking at you last night I can only imagine how good the sex was. Are you even still standing?"

"Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you, Angela, but we didn't...nothing happened." She pauses for just a second, sighing. "Well, not nothing, exactly."

"So, what exactly then?" Angela sounds bemused, understandably considering the impression she must have got last night.

"Look, I know nothing probably says 'I'm going to fuck my partner' like demanding a sexy dress from a friend and then dragging him by his tie into a taxi but…" She thinks again about her assumption this morning and how awful she had been to him when actually he had done everything right. "I kissed him, I remember that much, but it would appear that my partner is actually a perfect gentleman who decided I was far too drunk to really know what I wanted. Thank God I have no recollection of apparently falling asleep in the hallway and of him having to carry me to bed."

"Well, that's certainly not the story I was expecting to hear when I picked up the phone tonight." Angela laughs faintly. "You know what that means, don't you?"

"That despite my being drunk enough that he could have done whatever he wanted last night, he didn't." She sighs, a tiny shadow of doubt creeping in which she realises is not only unfair to him but completely bloody ridiculous. "I mean, I quite literally threw myself at him, Angela. I couldn't have made it more obvious."

"You said you had a rotten few days at work?" Angela sounds like she's going somewhere with this and she's too tired to get up off her stool right now so she may as well hear her out.

"Awful, as it happens, yes." She thinks about everything that happened this week. Jock, the spaghetti, her fight with Dempsey in the restaurant car park over it. Yeah, not the best week.

"And Dempsey works with you. Closely. All the time. Day and night. He knows you, Harry, he would have known how you were feeling. I know I'd never met him before last night but I would put money on him only having shown up at all because he was worried about you." She knows Angela is right. Despite how cool Dempsey had played things, she knows that's exactly why he turned up last night. "I saw the way he looked at you, the way he kept an eye on you. If the two of you didn't end up in bed together last night, I'm absolutely certain it's not because he didn't want to."

"I think...I knew that, I just...I dont think I've ever wanted anyone like I wanted him last night, Angela. Like I want him quite a lot of the time lately, actually." Saying it out loud makes it real and making it real somehow makes it terrifying. "Now I don't know if I'll ever find the nerve to try again."

"Harriet Makepeace, you run around London with a bloody gun chasing the most terrifyingly badly behaved people imaginable. Don't you dare sit there and try to tell me you lack nerve." Angela has always found her job more than a little difficult to comprehend but she's really missing the point this time.

"That's a totally different kind of nerve. I'm a police officer, it's my job, it's what I do, it's what I trained for." She knows what Angela is trying to say but she's never been afraid of a single criminal, no matter how tough, in the way she's afraid of ruining what she has with Dempsey. "This is different, he and I are...well, this is my…"

"It's your heart, darling, I know." Angela does know. She's the one who watched as it shattered under the double deception of her husband cheating with her best friend. She's the one who listened to her cry about how foolish it had made her feel. She's also the one who listened when she vehemently declared she would never again let anyone get close, a vow that doesn't appear to be going entirely according to plan.

"Yes, well…" She takes a breath and has to pause to swallow the sudden lump in her throat that threatens to turn into tears, because she is absolutely not going to do that tonight.

"Did the pair of you not talk about it today?" Angela sounds incredulous which she supposes is fair. "Please tell me you didn't go through a whole day at work with you both pretending nothing at all happened last night."

"No, we did talk. Well, sort of." She lets out another sigh, wondering not for the first time where the conversation may have gone had Spikings not found them in the locker room when he did. "We established that absolutely no sex had been had, that I had put my pyjamas on to go outside to say goodnight to my car, and that he had taken me to bed when I apparently decided the hallway floor was a perfectly good place to sleep."

"And then what, you shook hands and wished each other a pleasant day?" Angela's exasperation is clear, the impatience in her tone obvious.

"He said he had fun last night, and then we were interrupted by our boss and had to get back to work." She recalls the sweet smile on his face as they talked and feels guilty all over again for making the assumption that not only had they slept together but that he was bragging about it to the boys. "If the people of this city would just stop shooting each other for five bloody minutes…"

"Talk to him, Harry." Angela says, her tone firm. "Show up on his doorstep and just tell him how you feel."

"What on earth would I say?" She knows Angela is right, she does need to strike while the iron is still at least a little bit warm, but the thought of turning up at his place and pouring her heart out makes her head pound even harder than it is already. "Look, I was the drunkest person in the whole of London last night and I'm sorry I made a complete fool of myself, but I'm even more sorry that I was too hammered for us to sleep together?"

"It's not exactly you at your most poetic but it's a start, I suppose." Angela laughs, she knows her well enough to know that she'll agonise over what to say so much that she'll end up saying nothing at all. "I think you should just be honest with him, Harry. I saw the way you looked at him last night and I don't think it's just a casual thing you want from him. Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm certain the two of you will have the most ridiculously great sex, I'll probably hear it from here when it does actually happen. I just don't believe that's the only thing you want from him. And if it's of any consequence I don't believe it's all he wants either. If it was he'd have whisked you out of there before you were quite so drunk last night and tried his luck. I think the fact that he didn't do that says it all, and I think you know it too."

"Oh God." It hits her like a hammer how right Angela is. It's been building up to this for so long and she's been ignoring it, pushing it away, telling herself it could never work. Last night showed her that when her defences were down and her inhibitions lowered it was clear what she wanted.

"Did I just hear a rather large penny drop?" Angela giggles, probably in part caused by the satisfaction of knowing she's just brought on this little revelation. "Put the phone down, get into your car, and go and tell your hot American that you're in love with him."

"I'm not…" A denial starts to fall from her lips almost reflexively but she stops it, a strange combination of terror and acceptance washing over her. "Okay, so, say I did have feelings for him, say I had begun to think of him as more than just a colleague, I can't exactly just turn up at his door and blurt it out, can I? I mean, that's absolute madness, I-"

"Yes you can." Angela stops her, quite probably recognising the signs of her starting to talk herself out of it. "Listen to me, Harry. You are the woman who ended her marriage without hesitation when she found out she was being cheated on, who joined the police force even when everybody kept insisting it was a crazy idea, so you can bloody well knock on your partner's door and be honest with him. I swear to God, I will drive over there right now and take you myself if I have to."

"You don't have to do that. I'll...fine, I'll go." There's a sizable part of her brain telling her to make some tea, have an early night, and tell Angela she has it all wrong about them. There's a larger part that knows her friend is right, apparently the same part already picking her keys up off the table and sliding her feet into her shoes. "I just hope you know it will be your doorstep I end up on if it all goes horribly wrong."

"I know that, but it's not going to go wrong." Angela sounds so smug that she can't help smiling. "Now go, before you talk yourself right out of it."

"I'm going." She feels slightly sick at the thought yet there's a thread of bravery running through her that she's determined to grab onto. "I'll talk to you soon, Angela."

"Of course." Angela pauses, no doubt pleased with her handiwork. "I would wish you luck but you're not going to need it."

"I hope you're right." She hangs up the phone, grabs her jacket and heads for the door before she can change her mind.