Disclaimer: I don't own Ashes to Ashes or its charaters, BBC, Kudos and Monastic do… we know the rest.

Many, many thanks to everyone who's given me such positive feedback for Chapter 5. I do appreciate it so much. A few words from you keeps my creative juices going!

I never thought that a story set so far in the future might be affected by what we've found out in Series 2. Goes to show how wrong you can be. Just think of this as AU!

Molly read the letter with tears pouring down her face. By the time she reached the last page, she could barely see, and had to keep stopping to wipe her eyes before she could continue. Allie made to stand up and go to her, but Sam laid a hand on her arm and shook his head. When Molly finished the letter at last, she laid it down on the coffee table, as carefully as if it were made of porcelain, and she bowed her head into her hands and cried until she thought she must have shed all the tears in the world. Then she cried some more, and still more. Sam and Allie closed in on either side of her, supporting her, comforting her, until at last Molly wept out the last of her desolation in Allie's arms, her head resting on her breast, with her new friend holding her like the mother she had lost.

At last her sobs ceased. All three were silent for a long time, while Allie rocked her and stroked her hair. Eventually Molly gently disengaged herself and sat up, breathing deeply. Allie let her go.

"I'm sorry," said Sam quietly. "Mum said it was up to me to decide whether to give you the letter or not. Looks like I shouldn't have."

"No, no, you should." Molly helped herself to a handful of tissues from the box of Kleenex he had thoughtfully placed on the coffee table, and resolutely scrubbed her eyes. "I'm glad you did. So glad. It's just - " She stopped, as she realised that she had no words for what she felt at that moment. She reached for the brandy glass and downed a slug as she considered. Sam and Allie waited patiently.

"I - I can't really explain what I feel, unless - " She looked at Sam. "Will you read it?"

Sam looked very serious. "Do you think I should? It looks very private to me."

"Yes. Yes, I think you should. Both of you, if you will. Please. It concerns you too."

She felt rather than saw the glance that Sam and Allie exchanged across her, and Sam nodded. She picked the letter up and they all three read it together. Looking at it a second time, Molly felt almost eerily calm. Shock, probably, a distant part of her mind told her. Sam took one sharp intake of breath about halfway through, but otherwise he and Allie were silent until they had both finished it.

"Well..." Sam murmured, settling back on the sofa cushions. Allie said nothing, but she looked utterly dazed. Molly put the letter down, shivering with emotional reaction. Sam stood, picked up a warm woollen throw, and wrapped it around her shoulders.

"It's her. My mother wrote that." Her voice sounded to her as though it were coming from a long way away. "Where she described the last time we saw each other, on the Millennium Bridge - that's exactly what happened. She blew me a kiss and I jumped up to catch it, and she promised we'd blow out the candles together. The only other person who knows that is Evan, and why would he have told your mother? But it's impossible."

Sam sat on the coffee table, facing the two women, and pouted thoughtfully, an expression that anyone who had known his father would have recognised. "But that's what she says. Believe one impossible thing, and everything else will fall into place. Which it does."

"But how?" said Molly dazedly.

"I'm only a poor, simple copper. I don't know how, probably we never will. But I saw my mother writing that letter, and you've just said that it describes an event in 2008 that only you, your mother, and Evan could have known about. We know that my mother knew Evan in the 1980s, but she'd lived in Spain since 2005, and she saw hardly anyone after she came back, just a few friends and family members at Dad's funeral. So how could she have known - unless she was on the Millennium Bridge with you, in 2008?"

Logic battled in Molly's mind with the conclusion that she ached to believe. "We're talking about something that couldn't happen, but you don't seem as surprised as I'd have thought you would be. This is your mother we're talking about."

"Correct. My mother. And, it appears, yours." He flashed his brilliant smile at her, then looked serious again. "As to whether it couldn't happen - well, I'd never call Mum mad, although one of Dad's favourite nicknames for her was Mrs Fruitcake, but she was always very driven and intense, very hyper, living her life at a hundred and fifty miles an hour. She could come out with the most unexpected things." He looked very hard at Molly. "She could foretell the future."

"My God..." Molly whispered.

"Not everything," Sam went on. "But historical events rarely seemed to surprise her. Take the Lockerbie bombing, I was only a nipper of five when that happened, but I remember it because it happened so near Christmas. The whole country was in shock, but Mum just said, "I didn't remember that it happened in 1988." Which was odd, to say the least of it. Then there was 9/11. Carrie had arranged that Sondra, a penfriend of hers in the States, would fly over to stay with us for a couple of weeks in September 2001 on an exchange visit, but when Mum heard about it, she said, "No. She mustn't fly here. Tell her she mustn't come." Carrie was very upset, she'd been looking forward to the visit. As it turned out, Sondra would have been all right, she'd been planning to fly to the UK on the seventh of September, but as flight traffic was suspended for days after the attacks, she'd have been stranded over here for an indefinite period. Mum told Carrie not to go to work by public transport on 7 July 2005, when the underground and a bus were bombed. Luckily Carrie listened to her and took the day off. She was working in Russell Square then, and her office was hit by debris from the bus bomb. There were other things. I told you earlier, Mum had a good eye for investments, and knew when to take money out as well as put it in. Saved Dad a fortune on Black Monday in 1987. She knew which pop groups were going to make it big and bought their first discs - another investment. Carrie was the best dressed girl in her school because Mum knew what the coming fashions were. It was a family joke that Dad and Uncle Chris would always ask her who was going to win the Cup Final, and which horses would win the Grand National and the Derby. Sometimes she got it wrong, and they lost their shirts, but more often than not she got it right. She kept moaning about the cost to the country of the 2012 Olympics, long before it was announced that Britain would host it. Dad asked her why she was so sure that our bid would succeed, and she said, "I just know, Gene". And she was right."

"Dad's always been very into the latest technology," said Allie a little unsteadily, speaking for the first time since reading the letter. " I remember Mum telling me how desperate he was to buy a laserdisc player when they first came in."

"Yeah, I remember them. Just," said Sam. "Before your time, Molly. Great big discs about a foot across that needed a special player."

"He'd been having trouble with his old VHS video and was anxious to upgrade," Allie continued. "But when he mentioned it to Auntie Alex, she spent hours talking him out of it. She insisted that it was a fad that wasn't going to last and he'd waste a lot of money. She talked him round in the end. It was just as well, they were very expensive and he'd only just been promoted to DS. It would have made a huge hole in his salary. And it turned out that Auntie Alex was dead right. Laserdiscs went off the market after a few years. But several years later, when he asked her about buying a DVD player, she told him to go right ahead. He asked her about buying a Net MD player when they first came in, and she told him not to bother, but when he wanted to buy an iPod, she said, "Yes, Chris. This one will last."

"There were lots of incidents like that," Sam added. "Can't remember them all just now. Mum knowing these things was just a fact of life. Hell, I grew up thinking that everyone's mothers had second sight. It was a surprise to find out that they didn't. But then it all stopped. For the first time in 2008, she didn't get a single sporting winner, and when the recession started later that year she and Dad lost heavily on their investments. Dad went ballistic. We thought for a time that they'd have to sell up and come home to England, but they weathered it. I rang up to see how they were doing, and almost jokingly asked Mum why she hadn't seen it coming, and she just said, "I'm sorry, Sam. I didn't remember. I didn't know." " He paused for effect. "Whatever knowledge she had of the future, it ended early in 2008. When your mother was shot and, according to her letter, went back in time to 1981 to marry Dad and become my mother."

"My God," Molly whispered again.

"Not only that. We've already established that your mother was Alex Price, the child whom Dad rescued from the car bomb. The letter says that my mother and Alex Price were one and the same person. She saw Dad save her younger self. So they were all three the same Alex - my mother, your mother, and the child." He shook his head dazedly. "It's lucky she didn't try to tell Dad this. He'd never have been able to get his head around it."

"But you can," said Molly timidly.

"Only just. I think that's because I'm her son as well as his," he said wryly. "I hesitate to say it, but it's in the genes." Allie winced. "There's one thing more. What do you know about Sam Tyler?"

"Just what it says in the letter. He was a DCI in the GMP who was in a bad car accident in 2006 and went into a prolonged deep coma during which he hallucinated about - " Her eyes met Sam's. "Oh, no."

"Yes. Remember I told you that Dad's DI, his best friend, Mum's predecessor, was killed in an accident in 1980, just before the team transferred to London? I was named after him. My full name's Sam Tyler Hunt."

"Good God," Allie breathed. "There were two of them."

"Looks like it," Sam agreed. "Two people who died and travelled back in time to Dad."

"But why him?" Molly was still struggling to comprehend.

Sam shook his head. "Can't answer that one. Maybe we'll never know. All I do know is, that the two of them changed his life. He said they were the best things that ever happened to him. They made him a better copper and a better man."

Molly frowned. "But what about Layton? He shot my mother in 2008, and she arrested him in 1981. How much does he know? You heard what he said today - "

"Yeah. Drake and Hunt, Hunt and Drake. Son and daughter." The emphasis with which Sam said it, told her that he did not want her to repeat Layton's insinuations in front of Allie.

"He knows I'm Alex Drake's daughter from 2008. But does he know or guess that Alex Drake in 1981 and 2008 were one and the same person? Can he travel in time too?"

"I don't care if he's bloody Flash Gordon. He'll be charged tomorrow, and if he starts talking about time travel, we'll get him certified and he'll end his days in a mental home."

Molly nodded.

"One impossible thing," Sam went on. "Looks like we'll have to believe it. Mind you, now I can see why she was so worried that I might think she'd been unfaithful to Dad. If she hadn't said that, and I'd found you, her daughter, born in 1996 - well, I wouldn't have known what to think."

"What I'd have thought if she'd found me and claimed to be my mother," said Molly sadly. "I wish so much that she had, but I see why she didn't. To think that all these years I've mourned her as dead, and she was with you and your father and your sister. She was happy, alive..."

"But she always missed you," said Sam gravely. "That's what she says in the letter. The one abiding sorrow of her life."

"Yes. I know. She says she chose to live in the 1980s to save my life, and hers and your father's. If I had someone I loved as much as she loved me, I know I'd have had to do the same. I don't resent her having been happy without me. That would mean resenting that you and Carrie and your children are alive, and I could never do that. I'm glad she had another life with people she loved and who loved her. So glad. I just wish that I'd known before now." She stopped, swallowing back the tears that threatened yet again. "She said she was waiting until she could join your father. I hope - wherever they are - that she's found him."

Sam cleared his throat. "The very last thing she said was his name. She looked as though she could already see him there with her. Then something happened about six months after she died, shortly before you joined the team. We were going to raid a night club in Camberwell that was suspected of being a centre for drug distribution. The plod had already been deployed around the club when we arrived. PS Wilmslow was in charge, and when he saw me he jumped like a scared bunny. I asked him why he was so very surprised to see us, and he said, "I'm sorry, sir, I thought you were here already. I only saw you a few minutes ago. But I thought it odd that you were in a different car, and I didn't know the people with you." I asked him what the hell he meant, and he said that he'd seen me driving slowly along the road in an old-fashioned red car, with a beautiful dark-haired woman wearing a white jacket in the passenger seat and two more people in the back whom he couldn't see clearly. He hadn't caught the full registration number, but he thought it included JLY." Molly reached for the snapshot from her mother's letter and held it out to him. "Well, you've seen from the photos how like me my Dad was, and that photo of yours shows Mum in her working clothes. She wore that white leather jacket in and out of season for years. As for the car - " He reached for the album and turned to a large photograph of his parents sitting on the bonnet of a red car. The numberplate, just visible, was JLY 751V. "That Audi Quattro was his pride and joy. Almost a part of him. "Fire up the Quattro" was his battle cry." He laid the album aside. "They were young again."

"Once a copper, always a copper." Molly smiled through her tears. "So they're still policing the mean streets. Together. But who can the people in the back have been?"

" I've wondered whether one of them might have been my namesake Sam Tyler. Maybe in time to come, you and I will take turns riding in there as well, and Uncle Chris and Auntie Shaz."

"It'll have to be a big old Quattro to take the lot of you," said Allie with a smile. "But your Dad always could manage anything."

"Well!" Sam held out his hand, and Molly took it. "Mum said that if I found you, I was to be your guardian angel and treat you like another sister. Welcome to the family."

"Yes." Allie hugged her.

"Thank you." Molly could hardly speak for emotion. "I can't say how much this means to me. I've felt so alone. It's been so long since I had any real family. I never felt truly at home with Dad and Judy, although they were so kind. I missed Mum too much. Now I feel I've got her back again."

"Good." Sam smiled again.

"As for being my guardian angel, you've been that already," Molly went on. "All day. You saved me from being blown up, arrested Layton, saved my career, worked out who I am, gave me Mum's letter, you'll charge Layton with her murder tomorrow - and now, if he starts saying things about Evan killing Gran and Grandad, or Evan having an affair with Gran, or Grandad getting Layton to blow them up, I'll know he's lying. That must be why Evan has been so scared about the prospect of Layton being arrested, all this time."

"Layton still might accuse him at the trial," said Sam very seriously. "We can't do anything about that."

Molly nodded. "Poor Evan. All these years, he's backed me up in my search for revenge on Layton, and it's only now I realise that he's been living in dread of what Layton would do if I found him. Mum's letter clears him, but we can't produce it as evidence."

"No, but she says that Layton hasn't got any evidence either," said Sam emphatically. "Dad destroyed it."

"I'd never have thought that your father would be the type to destroy evidence," said Molly, frowning.

"Oh, he played by the rules, but he bent them as far as they would go, when the occasion demanded. Destroying false evidence to protect an innocent man and a child, that would have been right up his street."

"I'll have to tell Evan that Layton's been arrested. That news alone could kill him."

Sam considered for a moment. "What he'll be worrying about most, is that Layton could turn you against him. Maybe you can tell him that Mum told me about it. Nothing we do can affect what Layton might say at the trial, but at least Evan will know that you know the truth. It should set his mind at rest."

Molly sighed. "Yes, I'll do that. It might help."

They were all silent for a few moments, taking time to absorb what they had just learned. Molly was too absorbed in her thoughts to notice Allie glancing meaningfully at Sam, and Sam nodding.

"Molly." Allie's voice was gentle but urgent. "Stay here tonight. You're exhausted. You shouldn't go back to an empty flat like this. We've got a spare room, and I can lend you some night things. Sam can drive you to the station in the morning."

Molly only stopped for a moment to consider. She knew that everything Allie had said was true. But more than that, she understood that the invitation to stay was part of the process of accepting her into the family.

"Yes, I will. Thank you, both of you. So much. For everything."

Suddenly she felt so tired that she barely registered saying goodnight to Sam and being gently chivvied upstairs and into the bathroom by Allie. She luxuriated in a long shower, letting the warm water wash away the stress and grime of the day and the ache of the past. Cuddled in a fluffy bathrobe, she stumbled down the corridor to the spare room which Allie had already pointed out to her, and found a hot water bottle in the bed and a cotton nightshirt laid out on top. As she was about to get into bed, there was a light tap at the door and Allie came in, holding an envelope and a steaming mug.

"Your letter," she said quietly, handing it to her."I thought you'd like to have it with you."

"Thank you." Molly took it as if it were the most fragile and precious thing in the world, extracted the photo, and propped it up beside the bed. Allie smiled and pushed the mug into her hands.

"Drink all of that before you go to bed," she said in the tone of a woman who had brought up three children to take their medicine. Molly sat on the edge of the bed and sipped it gratefully.

"Mmm. Horlicks."

"With cinnamon. You'll be out for the count in five minutes. Never fails." Allie bent and kissed her cheek lightly. "Sleep well, love. Sam's said it already, but I'll say it again. Welcome to the family."

She crept out. Molly sat there for a few minutes, finishing her drink, and then collapsed into bed, barely able to keep her eyes open. The last thing she saw before she sank into a heavy sleep was her mother's photograph, smiling down at her.

"Good night, Mum," she murmured. "Thank you. I'm not alone now."

-oO0Oo-

Allie returned to the living room to find Sam sitting on the sofa, wine glass in hand, lost in thought. She sat beside him, curled her feet up beneath her, and laid her head on his shoulder.

"You think she and I are both mad, don't you?" he said into the silence.

"I knew your Mum," said Allie tactfully, "and I know the things she could say. What she seemed to know. And I know something else, too."

"What's that, love?"

"She saved my Mum's life twice before she married Dad, first from Layton and his gang, and then when that Hollis stabbed her. If it hadn't been for her, none of us would be here - not you, me, Carrie, nor the kids. I believe in divine sendings, Sam. If your Mum did - come from another time - then I believe that she was sent to 1981 for a reason, and that reason was to be Mum's guardian angel and to make your Dad happy. Just as Sam Tyler was sent. He saved both our Dads, and Auntie Annie and Uncle Ray."

Sam breathed out slowly. "Thanks for that, love. I was afraid you'd disagree with what I'd done."

"No." Allie snuggled her head closer into his shoulder. "Do we tell anyone else about this? Carrie? Mum and Dad?"

Sam considered. "I'd have liked to tell Carrie. But it's hard to imagine anyone who hasn't been here tonight believing it. It's been hard enough for us to believe it. That girl's in a very fragile state, and if we tell someone who thinks she's a fruitcake - or that we are - I don't know what it would do to her. Let's introduce her to Carrie, and to your Mum and Dad, when we have the opportunity, and see how they all get on. We can start tomorrow. Ring your Mum and Dad and tell them that Layton's in the coop. On Sunday we'll invite them and Molly to dinner, and introduce Molly to them as the officer who nailed Layton. Then we'll have to see how it goes from there. I'm her guardian angel now, sweetheart, and that's a heavy responsibility."

Allie smiled into his neck, then sat up and looked him in the eye. "Do you believe it? Really?"

Sam drained his glass and put it down before replying. "All I can say, love, is that there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in a copper's philosophy. Especially where Mum was concerned. She believed it, and that's good enough for me. More than that, there are just too many things Molly told us for it to be nothing more than coincidence. So, yes, I believe it. But if none of it is true, if Mum was deluded and we've given her letter to someone who has no connection with us, then we've found a frightened, lonely kid and given her a sense of having a family and a home. Whichever, I like to think Mum would have approved."

-oO0Oo-

Molly awakened the following morning, having slept like a top, and feeling more deeply refreshed than she had done in months. Allie brought her tea and asked her if she wanted breakfast in bed. "Breakfast with the kids is always pandemonium, I'm afraid."

"Oh, no, that's all right. I don't want to hide away. I'll be down soon."

I've been hiding away for far too long, she realised. Even a small thing like having breakfast with a noisy family would be a step in the healing process. Towards starting again. Just as I know Mum would have wanted. The prospect did not seem so daunting now.

After breakfast, Sam swept her out to the Nissan, and they drove off with the whole family waving and calling their goodbyes from the doorstep. Molly wiped her eyes. Such a little thing, to move me so much.

"But, Guv, this isn't the way to the station."

He flashed her a smile for reverting to his work title without being prompted. "I know. I'm taking you home first, so you can change before you start work." She looked down at herself and smiled ruefully. She did look a bit crumpled after the rigours of the previous day. "Then I want you to go and see Mrs Helen Cobb, secretary of the Borough Market Association." He fished a piece of paper out of the glove box. "There's the address and phone number. See if she can give us anything that could help us on these muggings."

"Right, Guv."

After that, stay away from the station until midday." He pulled the car to the side of the road and looked at her very seriously. "Bill and I will be charging Layton this morning. After that he'll be transferred to jail. I don't want you in the building until he's out of it."

TBC

A/N: The sighting of the Quattro in Camberwell was inspired by the lovely BBC1 ident for Series 2. Readers outside the UK can find it on YouTube.