A/N: Thanks, as always, to everyone who has read and reviewed so far.

Sarah x

Hanssen sighed and sat on the sofa, putting on the TV solely to distract him from the screaming silence between him and Serena. Whatever was wrong with her, what she had said earlier was uncalled for. He knew he withheld things from her, usually in fear of her reaction. If she knew of all his many mistakes, she would undoubtedly take a dim view on how her treated Maja and his son, and how he fled from anything with the potential to damage him. But it was none of her business. It didn't affect her.

He could feel his head beginning to pound again and put it down to the strain and stress of Serena's current temperament; he knew his body and he wasn't ill. It was just all the tension and emotional chaos taking its toll.

He heard Jonny say, "No, no, no. You're cutting away half the tattie! It'll end up a tiny wee square thing if you keep doing that!"

"Get me a peeler then!" Jac retorted. Hanssen found their bickering a little amusing, and completely disconnected from his issue with Serena – Jac and Jonny were engaging in light-hearted banter, but Serena was being snide, and he was replying with silence.

"But it's easier with a knife!" argued Jonny.

"Does it look like I'm finding it easy?!"

"A surgeon who can't peel a tattie," Jonny laughed, and Hanssen had to agree with the irony as the drawer opened. "That's a new one."

"Shut it, Maconie," Jac grumbled. "Thanks," she added, and Hanssen assumed that the nurse had succumbed and replaced the surgeon's knife with a potato peeler. The couple continued talking in the background, and Hanssen tried to see a way forward where his thoughts concerned Serena; she was being unreasonable, unkind and unthinking. It wasn't like her.

He stood up and paced the living room until his attention was caught by a painting on the wall. He turned to gaze at it, to see twelve faceless people painted onto a canvas, the background a swirling mass of blue and purple. Despite the facelessness, the men, women and children could be easily distinguished. There were three children – one redheaded girl, a blonde boy and a brown haired boy – five women and four men.

It was a strange painting and not least because it definitely had not been hanging on the wall when they left for Dundee this morning. He knew his brain well enough to know he would have noticed this long before now had it been here.

He went to take it off the wall but it would not budge for anything, no matter how much of his strength he put into his efforts. He went through to the kitchen and got a long knife, slotting it between the canvas and the wall, and tried to lever it off. It didn't work. How odd. It was like there was a gravitational field pulling it to the wall, a force he did not possess the strength necessary to break. Or else a strut of some sort, attaching it mechanically to the wall with tension greater than he could produce.

He put the knife back in the kitchen, confused as to how a picture could be stuck to the wall. Especially when he could physically stick a knife between it and the wall.

He allowed his thoughts to wander to the woman in the bedroom, the woman who was meant to be his partner, and her recent behaviour. She had been fine until last night. He was actually starting to think she might be ill – he had seen her drain white earlier, leaning into the trolley she had insisted on pushing. She had bought fleecy pyjamas and got touchy about the size, and she had been fighting back the obvious urge to vomit as Jac's pizza had been prepared for her.

When she spoke, she cut to the bone, and when she fell silent, she raised a wall he could not climb.

With a sigh he walked slowly to the bedroom with great caution, anticipating that she might bite his head off the moment she laid eyes on him. He thought about knocking on the door but after a moment's deliberation, he saw no reason why he should. It was his room as much as hers for this trip. He opened the door and sat on the end of the bed as he took his shoes off. "What do you want?" he heard Serena, curled up on her side of the bed, grumble.

"You to cheer up," he replied shortly. "Or tell me what's wrong if cheering up doesn't feel possible to you."

She said nothing but he felt her wriggle around; when he turned, she was lying on her back with her hand over her abdomen, rubbing gently. "Are you in pain?" he asked her.

She hesitated but she replied, "No. No, there isn't any pain."

"Are you sure? You looked like you wanted to throw up earlier," he reminded her of the instance, when they had stood watching Jac's pizza being created.

"Didn't you?" she reasoned; a wry smile found its way to his lips as he acknowledged that more people than Serena would have been unimpressed with Jac's choice of food. He watched for a moment while she was lost in her own thoughts.

He just wished she would share them with him. He went to her side and lay next to her, staring at the ceiling. "I do wish you would tell me what is upsetting you," he sighed. She turned away from him, leaving him staring upwards without a clue what she was thinking. She seemed to do nothing but think, and though she wasn't crying or showing outwards sign of upset, her silence discounted, he could tell by her very manner there was something she was confused and fixated by.

Without a word she reached over and handed him a photo. He saw her, bright and smiling, sitting on a swing with a child on her knee. A little boy with a smile as wide and full of life as hers was sitting in the sunlight. "Who is he?" he asked quietly, fearing for a moment the worst – that this boy was her son, who, for whatever reason, she no longer could hold.

"I don't know," she whispered. "I've never met him."

"But you've had your picture taken with him," Hanssen argued, trying to find some logic in what she was saying. "How can you not have known him?"

"Look at the date." Bemused by her order, he did as she said and read the date. "Of course I haven't bloody met him," she added. It couldn't be possible. It was obviously some kind of joke on her part. She must have had the photo taken and written the date herself. But it was not her penmanship, nor that of Jac or Jonny or anyone else's he had seen. It was old fashioned copperplate, long outdated. Serena had the clichéd doctor's writing; more than once, nurses and pharmacists and board members alike had asked him for a translation.

He reached out and gently pulled her around to face him. "What does this mean?" he asked of her.

"Nothing," she shrugged. "It's just weird. It was lying on my bedside table when we got in." He looked again at the photo. He could see what confused her – if, as she had told him, did not know this child, how was it that she was in a photograph with him? It made absolutely no sense. Again her hand fell to her abdomen, and she looked slightly frightened.

"Is this what's been getting to you?" he said gently. She said nothing and he could only assume something more was going on. He sighed and looked away from her; he started slightly when he saw a man standing beside the wardrobe with a slight smile on his face. The door had not been opened, and he wore clothes from what seemed to be the nineteenth century. Serena looked around and her eyes widened; obviously she saw what he saw.

Hanssen opened his mouth to speak but the man was gone before he could demand any answers. Jac was right. This place had to be haunted. Why else would a man appear and disappear before his eyes? Concerning these things, he had given up on trying to find science and logic many moons ago, because it quickly became apparent that there was nothing there for him to understand.

He sighed and pulled Serena's top up a little to examine her abdomen. He felt it and found nothing amiss. Nothing that would cause her pain. No swelling, no tenderness. Maybe she was telling the truth and there was no pain there.

Though they were by no means as close as they had been yesterday, she was letting him in a little more, and he knew that was an effort for her. He stood up and straightened his shirt, Serena mirroring him. There was a knock at the door and Serena told whoever it was to come in; it seemed Jonny had learned to knock yesterday. "Tea's ready," he told them. Hanssen nodded and followed him, leaving Serena behind to collect her thoughts. She seemed to be trying to process something, and he realised now that pushing her would get him nowhere. She would tell him when she was ready to, if it was of any concern to him.

He sat down at the kitchen table to a plate of mashed potatoes, mince and vegetables. Jac, however, had chosen to start scooping mashed potato onto that pizza of hers. He had hoped her bizarre eating habits would have subsided by now, but clearly she was stranger than ever. "I saw him," he said, picking up his fork. "Just now, in our room. I saw the man you told me about."

"No kids?" Jonny asked.

Hanssen shook his head. "No, just him." He decided against telling them about the photograph, as it had clearly unnerved Serena and he wanted to get to the bottom of it as much as she did.

It was another few minutes before Serena joined them, shooting Jac's pizza a glare as she sat next to Hanssen. It occurred to him how little concern the four of them showed for other beings appearing out of and vanishing into thin air. He knew people who would completely lose the plot if they saw these things. He would have paid to see Michael Spence see a ghost. Or perhaps Mary-Claire Carter. He could imagine there being a lot of shouting, swearing and pleas for saviour from the unknown.

He offered Serena a glass of wine but, uncharacteristically for the woman who seemed to love wine more than anything, she refused. She elected instead to have a cup of tea, and he watched her grip the counter with unnecessary force while she waited on the kettle boiling. He looked away from her to see Jonny exchange a look with him he didn't like – it was almost like he was telling him to brace himself.

And despite the warning, he found his feelings for her momentarily intensify, even if he would never tell her as much.

As steam poured from the almost boiled kettle, the pounding headache he was able to ignore turned into the sensation that an axe was being thumped into his head, attempting to split it in two. His self-discipline was overcome by such intense, searing pain. "Agh!" he groaned, his hands on the sides of his head, like the pressure would somehow squeeze the pain out.

Jac and Jonny did nothing because there was nothing they could do, and he knew that, but Serena, of course, attempted anyway. Just like this morning, she dug out painkillers and pushed them into his hand, getting a glass of water. Her hand fell onto his knee and she looked up into her face, seeing unadulterated care in her dark brown eyes.

Through the pain came a realisation that the woman sitting with him was one he loved for exactly this reason: she truly cared about him. He had never told her that. Why hadn't he told her?

He brought the glass to his lips and the pain vanished, leaving alleviation and the notable absence of discomfort one feels when relieved of such consuming pain. He didn't speak, or say that the headache was gone. Instead he set the glass and painkillers down and returned to his dinner, receiving strange looks from everyone at the table.

Between Jonny's concerns about hauntings, Jac making abnormal efforts to make other at peace, Serena acting so oddly and his own agonising recurring headache, he wasn't sure he could put up with this for the rest of the week.

Hope this is OK!
Please feel free to leave me a review and tell me your thoughts!
Sarah x