The night before Series 2, epsiode 5 begins. I thought Jan looked like she needed a cuddle at the start of it.

Rachel tucked her knees up tighter and curled her fingers around her glass of red wine. She was sitting on Janet's sofa with half an eye on the telly, waiting for Janet to come back downstairs from seeing her mum got into bed ok. Rachel looked up as she heard a door open then close somewhere above her. Footsteps crossed the landing then another door opened. Rachel heard muffled voices and hit mute on the TV control. Of course the girls weren't asleep yet. Jan had sent them upstairs an hour ago but they were teenagers - far better things to be doing of an evening than sleeping. Rachel hoped they were gonna be quiet though and not start acting up tonight. Janet was under enough stress as it was. To be fair to them, the girls didn't usually kick off much when she was around but Rachel had heard enough from Janet to know that they were quite capable of raising merry hell when they wanted to. Fortunately, things seemed peaceful enough. Rachel had deliberately left the sitting room door open so she could hear a bit of what was going on. Just in case. Now she heard Janet's footsteps on the stairs again and a moment later her friend appeared in the doorway. Rachel leaned her head back and smiled at her gently. Jan looked tired.

'Here.' Rachel leaned forward and lifted a second wine glass from the coffee table. 'I topped you up, thought you'd need it.'

'Thanks pal.' Janet closed the door quietly and sat next to Rachel on the sofa, leaning forward as though she was expecting to have to jump up at any second. She took a judicious sip of wine and stared into the glass. Rachel waited. Janet was still tense. She took another, longer sip then put the glass down. She let her breath out in a long controlled sigh but continued to stare into empty space, still hovering uncomfortably on the edge of her cushion.

Rachel dumped her own glass and reached out one hand to rest on Janet's shoulder. Janet looked up. Her eyes were particularly large tonight in a face that seemed to shrink away from them. She looked terrified. Rachel stroked her hand across Janet's shoulders repeatedly, soothingly. It cut her to see Jan looking like this but the only thing she could do was to be strong for her, be there for her, for as long as she was needed. She was, possibly, the only person Janet would let herself be this vulnerable around, certainly one of a very small handful, so she was determined not to let her down.

'What if I can't do it Rach?' Janet's voice was a cracked whisper. Her eyes pleaded with Rachel for reassurance. Tell me it will all be ok. Show me I am tough enough.

'Eh come 'ere.' Rachel slipped her arm right around Janet and pulled her gently towards her. Janet went willingly, slipping her shoes off and pulling her feet up as she leaned in. The two snuggled into the sofa together, Rachel holding the smaller woman in her arms. She seemed very small tonight, pressed against Rachel's side, as though anxiety had literally eaten some of her away. It was one of those moments when Rachel felt compelled to hold onto her tight, just in case she disappeared somehow.

'Shhh' she breathed automatically as she stroked Janet's hair. Jan wasn't crying, just holding herself very still.

They stayed like that for what felt like a long time and, ever so slowly, Janet began to relax.

'I keep seeing Veronica, dead. In the ground. I keep seeing her again.' Janet spoke very quietly, still staring off to the other side of the room. Rachel cocked her head slightly to show she was listening but she knew better than to interrupt.

'And I keep imagining all the other ones, the ones from the crime scene photographs and others. All of them in the ground together. I don't know why, it's not logical. And there's loads of them. There's hundreds. I see Veronica and then I look around and there's just more and more of them. Then I look back at Veronica, six years old and he did... that to her.'

Janet reached up a hand and gripped Rachel's.

'Then I think I'm going to walk into that interview room tomorrow morning and go for him. I really think I might.'

She shifted and turned her head so her eyes met Rachel's, an edge of desperation in their deep blueness. Rachel squeezed her hand.

'I know.' She spoke softly. No point telling Janet that she wasn't going to do that, that she was too professional and well-trained to do that, not now. What Janet needed was pure comfort. Her rational brain knew all that stuff. It was the rest of her that needed at this moment. The confused little girl, the freaked out teenager, the furious detective, the scared victim, the outraged survivor. She needed to feel herself, just as herself, beyond all those labels.

'I know.' Rachel brought their linked hands up to stroke her fingers down Janet's face. She repeated the words and the gesture several times until Janet screwed her eyes shut and shook her head. She pressed her face into Rachel's shoulder and Rachel felt the slight wetness of tears against her neck. Janet sniffed hard and lifted her face. Her eyes were damp and her mouth gone all slippery. Rachel looked at her appraisingly and Jan gave her a small, almost sheepish, smile.

Then she closed her eyes and leaned forward to press Rachel with a kiss. After a moment, Janet snuggled back down against Rachel and began idly stroking the hand that she had been hanging onto. Rachel looked down at her, affection warming her bloodstream.

'I had a dream, last night, as well.' Rachel immediately picked up Janet's more hesitant tone of voice.

'Oh?' she prodded very gently, not wanting to push but sensing there was something Janet wanted to get out.

'Mmm. This is going to sound crazy.' Janet turned her face against Rachel's sleeve, seeking physical reassurance. Picking up the cue, Rachel slid her hand free to start stroking again. She knew, from rare and precious experience, how comforting that simple action was. It was enough, Janet continue.

'You know how things get all mixed up in dreams. Well, it was like that, dead... bodies.' Janet choked on the last word and had to swallow a rising sickness before she could continue. She knew she had to tell someone to start the process of getting these images out of her head. It was one of the things that worked for her. And there was only Rachel, for this one. She couldn't go to Gill who was up to her eyes in organising this whole set-up; she couldn't tell Ade when they were barely on speaking terms; Andy wouldn't have understood exactly and she had been avoiding intimate conversations with him lately; her Mum would have gone off the deep end. No, there was only Rach who she trusted enough, who would understand why this was getting to her, would look after her and listen but wouldn't try to stop her going into that interview and facing that bastard and doing what she did best. So Janet steeled herself and went on, summoning up the images of that dream, winding inwards through her story, trying to make it easier to tell.

'There weren't lots of them that time. It was in the woods, like where they found Veronica. I saw Veronica first. By a tree. Then, there were only two others, a bit further away. In the middle of a clearing. Together.' Janet froze as she recalled standing there in that dream, looking down on two little bodies, completely unable to move or breathe or think or even scream. Frozen.

'It was the girls. My girls.'

Rachel's hand stilled for a second. She felt her stomach turn over, fear and disgust curdling sickeningly, followed by a hot shot of anger. She loved those girls. Not like Janet did, obviously, but with a strength and fondness she had never expected of herself. And she understood what they meant to Janet.

In that second everything remained frozen – Rachel's hand on Janet's back, Janet staring away from her, the dreadful image hanging in both their minds, the two women powerless to help the victims.

Then Rachel was holding Janet tight and Janet was crying hard and the image was melting back into dark fragments in the corners of their minds.

Rachel was still struggling with the personal aspects of this case. She wasn't used to things getting so close to home. They were the detectives. They figured it out and caught the bad guys. They weren't supposed to get hurt. Ok, rationally she knew that police officers sometimes got attacked, but it had never happened to anyone close to her so part of her had believed it never would. Until Geoff Hastings stabbed Janet, Rachel had still carried a certain childish internal conviction of her own invulnerability. That one sad, nasty little man could almost destroy one of the people Rachel held dear had shaken Rachel's world-view to the core. She still felt a niggling guilt that she had precipitated the attack. Most of the time, she managed to put it all out of her head but every now and then she was reminded of how lucky she was to still have Janet in her life. She cradled her friend now, muttering soothing nonsense and holding on tight until Janet's deep sobs shuddered to a standstill and she breathed more quietly.

It was a release, Janet knew, the crying. It was to do with letting go of those images that had scared her more than anything. She should welcome it and she did. An unspoken fear like that would be a way that Geoff could control her and that was the last thing she wanted. It left her very drained though, such an uncharacteristic outburst. Drained and tired and cold. She let her eyes close and breathed in the familiar comfort of Rachel. She could almost drift off, lying here, gradually noticing the warmth seeping through from Rachel's body, the sense of safety. She could just zone out.

Rachel smiled to herself when she realised that Janet had practically fallen asleep on her. She couldn't see her face clearly but she could feel the relaxation in the way that Janet held herself. It was very different from her earlier thrumming tension. Rachel rested her hand on Jan's side and let her own head loll against the arm of the sofa. It was a good sofa this, for cuddling on. Lots of space and deep comfy cushions. It was made to be shared and Rachel hadn't at all forgotten that it was the first place that she had kissed Janet. Her lips curled in a self-deprecating smile as she remembered that. She had been so strung up, so confused, so needy. It felt like a lifetime ago, tonight. Rachel had to acknowledge that she was feeling unusually calm and collected tonight, perhaps because she had to be. It wasn't how she had mostly been feeling lately. But tonight Rachel didn't even want to think about her own problems in case they spoiled the hard-won peace of this moment. She pushed them resolutely into their own box in her brain and turned her eyes back to Janet again. Somewhere under her hand, under Janet's clothes, was the scar from that day. Rachel's fingers twitched. She had never seen it healed, she wasn't sure she wanted to. Rachel had had nightmares about the blood, about the wound. She couldn't see pink for months without visions of deep red blood spreading across it. Janet stirred and Rachel realised that she was clutching a handful of her top, screwing her hand into a fist. She dropped it quickly and smoothed the fabric again, her hand sliding over Jan's stomach unconsciously, fingers just catching a sliver of skin between clothing.

Something shifted. The tiniest tremor went through the pair of them. Rachel shifted and Janet turned, definitely awake now. The confined space and tilt of the sofa pushed them even closer into each other. They smiled softly. It felt good when you shared an understanding. Rachel slid a hand behind Janet's head and gently pulled her in to a kiss. Janet's mouth opened on a sigh. They drew it out, lips and tongues moving together slowly with a quiet familiarity. She didn't have to think about it, Janet realised. She just had to feel what Rachel wanted, what she wanted and the kiss took on a mind of its own. Rachel's fingers moved in a random pattern against her scalp, sending tiny tingles across Janet's skin. It was sweet, relaxed, giddy-making and strangely trance-like. The kiss stretched over the minutes in the quiet house. Janet's hand found Rachel's cheek and rested there, cupping her face as it moved slower and slower. The kiss broke up into fragments as they paused, resting their lips together, then smiled and kissed again. They rubbed noses and Rachel turned her head to place kisses along Janet's cheekbone. Janet responded by twisting her head still further and kissing Rachel's ear. Rachel felt a warm shiver in her belly that went way beyond affectionate. She should go, she told herself. She should stop now. She wasn't entirely sure if Janet knew what she was doing to her and she didn't want to take advantage of that. Rachel wasn't sure but she suspected that feeling too much might be breaking the terms of their agreement. So Rachel reached for the dregs of her self-restraint and tried to kiss her way to a standstill. It was hard with Janet's mouth warm on hers, their bodies pressed into one. It was so hard to tear herself away. Rachel could have happily stayed there all night. It was late, though, and Janet had a difficult day ahead of her. Pinning her thoughts on that, Rachel managed to stop herself. She smiled at Janet and brushed strands of hair out of her face, trying to draw back a little.

'You ok now?'

Janet smiled at the concern shadowing Rachel's eyes, even as she felt a little of the old chill when she thought about why Rach was asking. She nodded. In a few days, hopefully, she could put that chill aside for good.

'I should probably go. Let you get some sleep.'

The thought flashed across Janet's mind that she had a better chance of sleeping right there on the sofa in Rachel's arms than she did in her own bed but she dismissed it. She needed to be alone to prepare herself for this interview. Leaning on Rachel wasn't going to help with that, no matter how nice it felt.

Janet nodded. For a minute longer, neither of them moved, both savouring the last opportunity for peace and intimacy that they were likely to get in a while.