They were trying to get back to normal, now all the wedding photos for the press had finally all been published and Rose thought that now, Jamie might want to bring up the subject of having a baby. She cornered him one night when they got home.
"Well, what do ya think then?" Rose wanted to know, trying to judge the look on his face.
"Ah, well?" he began nervously. "We've only been married a year Rose."
"Well, what's to stop us?" Rose wanted to know. "It could take a while ya know? We should both get checked over in medical before, ya know."
"Well? We'll have to move, you know? This place isn't suitable for kids running around. Well when I say kids, I mean one kid to start with and maybe another one later."
"Jamie, I'm not asking ya to start our own version of The Waltons ya know?" Rose had to laugh. "We shouldn't decide how many we're gonna have just yet though. Well, can I at least tell mum we're thinkin' about starting a family?" she asked hopefully.
"If it stops her going on about it?" Jamie relented slightly. "I mean looking after Tony's one thing, we can hand him back at the end of the weekend," he laughed.
"Well, we can't stop having Tony over, he'd be upset," Rose reminded him. "Let's tell mum then?"
Rose thought it was all agreed, so after Sunday lunch a few days later, Jamie was off playing a new game with Tony and Rose and Jackie were in the family room.
"Is that for real?" Jackie was making sure she'd heard right at the prospect of being a grandmother.
"Yeah but it may be a while yet Mum," Rose assured her. "Don't keep going on at Jamie, will ya, or it might put him off."
"Well I don't know why," Jackie laughed. "Oh, so he's still not that keen then?"
"I really don't know what's wrong with him Mum," Rose admitted. "I mean I thought he'd be more enthusiastic."
"He'll come around Rose," Jackie tried to assure her.
Rose made appointments for them in medical and they were both declared fit to be parents, Rose thinking it might prompt Jamie to be a bit keener. It wasn't happening though as Rose started a course of vitamins that would help and she knew Jamie wasn't taking what he'd been given by Doctor Harper.
She went back to see the head of medical, to see if Owen could tell her anything.
"Give him time Rose," she was advised. "I can't tell you much without his permission, you know that."
"I just want to know there's nothing wrong with him," Rose insisted.
"There's nothing wrong with him, physically," Owen told her. "Has it occurred to you two that it might be something romantic?" he then smirked.
"Shut up Owen," Rose laughed.
"Well, there's nothing I can do about that," he then told her. "Anything else I can do for you today? Do you want me to give him a psychiatric evaluation?"
Rose got up, trying to stop laughing.
"Good luck with that then Owen. It took some doing getting him to our last appointment."
"Get your friend Jake to talk to him then?" Owen then suggested.
"I'll see how it goes. Jamie's never been one to be over-romantic though," Rose admitted. "Well except for our wedding anniversary. Can I tell ya something?"
Owen nodded, trying to be serious.
"Go ahead, it won't leave his room," he promised.
"It had better not Owen," Rose warned him. "Well, he got jealous of someone at our wedding, someone who looked a lot like him."
"You mean more jealous than usual?" Owen wondered, remembering what Jamie was like with Mickey.
"Well yeah, he hated coming face to face with his twin. Owen, there are a lot of things we never told him about the Doctor. Well there was that detective, Alec Hardy, he brought his daughter to our wedding, she was one of the bridesmaids. I thought it was gonna be guns at twenty paces. Ya should've seen them."
"I never saw them together," Owen admitted. "So, this detective, he's the one from that case with the two missing girls?"
"Well yeah. Jamie said it was like facing himself in the mirror and they were both on edge when they saw each other. If it had been somewhere else they'd met, well I don't know what would've happened," Rose explained.
"It was that bad?" Owen had to laugh. "They've not seen each other since though?"
"No, thank goodness," Rose replied. "Geez Owen, ya think that's the problem? That somehow, Jamie's still got the jealousy bug? I mean there were those times, before the wedding when he'd got jealous but with Alec Hardy, it was different."
"I can imagine," Owen grinned.
"Owen, I don't even want to go there. How can I ask Jamie if he's still jealous? I mean he's fine with other things, why that?"
"You know him better than I do Rose," Owen reminded her. "Get Pete to talk to him then?"
"Well dad knows what happened, well some of it," Rose recalled. "Is it a good idea though? I mean to bring it all up again?"
"Rose, talk to Pete about it then?" Owen then suggested, feeling out of his depth. "I'm not the one to ask for help."
She thanked Owen for his input and went back to work, meaning to visit Pete later on or wait until the following weekend. Jamie would be keeping Tony occupied as usual so she should be safe to find Pete and see what he thought.
Alec's transfer had been delayed but now, he was on his way to Broadchurch but as he arrived, he got the strangest feeling he'd been there before and forgotten all about it. He'd settled in the hotel he'd been put up in and gone back down to the beach, even though now, he hated water more than he'd already done.
He walked along the beach, since the tide was out but thought he'd best not take too long or he'd have to be rescued. Then, it would be in the local paper and Rose may get to see it. For some strange reason, he still thought about her most of the time and he thought a move would help clear his head.
It didn't and now, he was stuck in a small seaside town and when he'd seen a certain cliff, he knew exactly why he remembered it. It was where he used to escape from his parents arguing all the time they'd been here, camping at one of the farms.
He had been too young at the time to understand why they'd argued but it had been his mother getting ill and his father was in denial. He got back to the hotel, the owner staring at him.
"Have you been to Broadchurch before?" Becca Fisher asked him.
"Ah, not exactly," he admitted, thinking it wasn't really a lie, since the small village they'd been to was called Eype.
His dad would never go up or down the narrow road in the car after dark so once they'd got back, they were stuck where they'd camped.
"Well, if you need someone to show you around, just say, yeah?" she then asked hopefully.
He thought it would be a big mistake to get involved in any way with the Australian hotel owner, who if she talked to everyone, word would soon get out. Maybe though, he could get over Rose Tyler once and for all? It was doing him no good thinking about her and that it was just over a year since he'd been at her wedding and he'd refused to dance with her or line up with the others to kiss the bride.
If he'd been brave enough to do the latter, would he have felt any different? It may have only made her husband even more jealous and he'd not wanted that. He'd thought about her, yes but only because he'd regretted not saying anything to her.
Becca brought him back down to Earth.
"Well, I'm off most evenings for a few hours," she was telling him.
"Ah, don't take this the wrong way Ms Fisher but I moved here to get away from my ex wife, I'm not looking to replace her just yet," he told her.
Becca then changed her mood.
"Well, if you say so? Don't let me keep you then, inspector. Call if there's anything you need. Don't take my asking you the wrong way, will you?" she then added, thinking he might spread rumours about her and that would ruin any chances that Mark Latimer would somehow follow up on his flirting with her when he'd come to collect his daughter the other week.
How long was a woman supposed to wait, she asked herself as Alec went off to his room. She may have to take matters into her own hands, if the new inspector wasn't interested. He did look familiar though and she meant to look him up.
Alec was glad when the weekend came around, it had so far been boring, having a sergeant showing him around while waiting for the DS whose job he'd taken to come back from her vacation. Then the sparks would fly. It would be on a level with facing Rose's husband before and after the wedding.
He still couldn't forget that morning, when he'd talked to her then gone off to find her brother. It was like neither he nor Rose wanted anyone to know that he'd seen her and talked to her and she'd probably made up some kind of excuse to her stepfather, whom he'd seen as he gone off towards the attic room Tony had been in.
Then to make things worse, he'd found her in the conservatory later on and had prayed Jamie hadn't seen him leaving.
As usual, Rose and Jamie had gone to her mother's on the Sunday and she'd gone off to find Pete.
"Rose. What can I do for you?" Pete asked when she knocked on his study door.
"Dad, can I talk to ya?" Rose asked him.
"Is something wrong?" he wanted to know, since she usually called him Pete.
"It's about Jamie. I don't know who else to talk to. We went for a physical, to make sure we were both okay before we decided to start a family," Rose started to tell him.
"You were both okay Rose, Owen sent me a copy of your results, it's standard," Pete admitted.
"Dad, I think I'm keener to have kids than Jamie is. I mean he borrows Tony every Sunday and when Tony's with us, he goes more to Jamie," Rose told him.
"That's only natural, Tony looks up to him," Pete reminded her. "So, what else is bothering you?"
"Remember Alec Hardy?" Rose asked him.
"Of course. I wish we could have helped him Rose but we couldn't interfere," Pete told her.
"I get that Dad. No, it's something else, how Jamie got jealous and they almost started a fight," Rose admitted.
"I didn't know it was that serious Rose," Pete replied, closing down his laptop. "I know Jamie found it difficult with Alec looking like him but why would he be jealous?"
"I don't know why Dad, really. I mean he got jealous when we were working away that time. Why did he think Alec was there to make him jealous?" Rose asked him.
"That's between you and Jamie to settle," Pete advised her.
"I can't ask him Dad," Rose admitted. "How can I? I don't know why but I really think it's stopping Jamie thinking about starting a family. I mean why? Neither of us has seen Alec since."
"Rose, he was in the papers when the case fell apart," Pete reminded her. "Maybe that triggered something in Jamie?"
"Geez Dad, why would it? Unless he really thinks somehow I'd go off with Alec? Tell me it's not that."
"I wish I could tell you Rose, really I do," Pete sympathised with her. "Only Jamie can answer that question and you said you can't ask him. No-one can Rose, not without causing trouble between the two of you."
"So I have to keep quiet about it and hope Jamie comes round?" Rose guessed. "Well I just hope it manages to stay out of the papers then," she tried to joke.
"Yes, you had better hope so Rose. Then Jamie might be willing to go ahead starting a family," Pete agreed, wondering what Rose wasn't telling him.
There had to be more to it, to make Jamie so jealous that he wasn't even sure he wanted kids with his wife. What had happened on the weekend of the wedding? He'd seen Alec leaving the direction of Rose's room and then seen Rose at her door a few moments later.
Surely nothing had happened, like Alec being stupid enough to cause even more trouble for himself with Jamie. Then later, he'd seen Alec looking for his daughter and Rose had been missing. He had to give Rose the benefit of the doubt, that it had just been coincidence.
Rose kept quiet about her concerns but no-one knew what they were going to wake up to the following Friday morning. For Alec, all he'd needed was being called to the beach early in the morning, then the DS who had just come back to work had started an argument with him and kept it going all morning.
The worst thing for him wasn't finding a young boy on the beach, which had been too like finding young Pippa in the river but following close behind was word getting out via the local paper before the official statement and Rose would know where he was.
Rose and Jamie had got to work and Rose had meant to drag Jamie off somewhere for the weekend, a last minute idea to try to convince him he wanted a family as much as she did. He had caught her looking at her phone as she looked at hotels that had late offers.
"I know you're up to something Rose," he told her, trying to get her to look away from her phone.
"Well, I was gonna surprise ya," Rose admitted. "Let's go somewhere in the morning and stay overnight?"
"Oh. Well, okay but what about seeing Tony?" he then remembered.
"Jamie, he'll survive for one Sunday without ya," Rose reminded him. "I've found a nice hotel, right on the seafront in Brighton. It won't take us long to get there, we can be there in an hour or so."
"Well okay, I'll pay, if you want?" Jamie offered, Rose wondering what was wrong with him since he'd agreed then offered to pay when it was her idea.
Then, Rose jumped as she got an alert on her phone.
"What is it love?" Jamie wanted to know.
Rose could hardly believe what she was reading but it was just the news saying something had happened in a place called Broadchurch. Alec couldn't be there, could he?
"Ah, nothing, it's not about Brighton, it's about another place beginning with 'B'," she told him.
"That's okay then. Call the hotel and tell them we'll pay when we get there. Tell them who you are if they want a deposit paying," he then joked.
"Very funny Jamie," Rose laughed at the idea.
She went off to her desk, thinking nothing more of the newsflash of a place she'd never heard of. Then her social media alerted her about the same place and she followed the link to a local newspaper in the town that a young boy had been found on Broadchurch beach and that police, led by DI Alec Hardy were investigating.
She knew she couldn't tell Jamie, not yet anyway. He had to find out for himself, she wasn't going to be responsible for making jealousy raise its ugly head again. It wasn't until later that afternoon when they took a break and went to the canteen and people were talking about it and reading news headlines.
"What?" Jamie said to no-one in particular as he picked a paper up off a table. "Rose, have you seen this? Is this what you saw earlier?" he showed her.
"I didn't read it all Jamie," Rose defended herself. "It wasn't about Brighton, it was only saying there were long tailbacks on a road leading somewhere."
"Well, I suppose you wouldn't have read any more then?" Jamie seemed satisfied as he skimmed through the headlines. "It's a place called Broadchurch, a boy's been found on the beach. Blimey, hope they've not got Alec Hardy on the case, with what happened with his last one."
"Don't talk like that Jamie, it wasn't his fault, Jake found out the truth, remember?" she replied.
Jamie just pulled one of his faces and went to get his lunch, passing the paper to her.
"Did you ask him to?" Jamie then asked her.
"Stop it Jamie. Let's not spoil our weekend, yeah?"
They finished eating and went back to work but when Rose was about to finish for the day, Jamie didn't want to leave.
"I'll just finish off a few things, then I'll be home," he promised her. "Sorry about earlier love."
"Yeah, forget about it Jamie. It's hardly likely to be Alec, is it? He took the blame officially, they cleared his name but he insisted Daisy didn't find out," Rose reminded him. "He'd do anything for his daughter, even come to our wedding when he hadn't wanted to."
"Did he tell you that?" Jamie raised his eyebrows.
Rose refused to answer, she didn't start domestic arguments at work, for fear Pete would get to know and send Jake to break them up.
"See ya at home," Rose replied instead, which was her way of saying it wasn't up for debate.
When Rose had left, Jamie got his phone out to see if there was any more news and caught the beginning of a press conference. There was Alec, right in the centre, promising whoever was responsible would be caught.
"Hope you have more luck this time around pal," Jamie stared at the image.
Was Rose right and she'd not seen Alec since the wedding and it was pure bad luck the Sandbrook killer had walked free? It had been at the back of his mind though, Alec leaving the conservatory that night and when Rose had been messing around when they were all dancing, making Daisy laugh. Had she done it just for the teenager's amusement?
Rose had got home and was tempted to call Alec but it would just make things worse, were Jamie to follow her home. She switched on the TV as they were showing the press interview again, making Rose feel sorry for poor Alec. He looked tired but she thought that was only to be expected after the day he would have just had.
Alec was tired, he just wanted to get back to his hotel room and hope the owner wouldn't quiz him for ages about what had happened. He'd noticed she'd been missing the night before but she had pointed out she took a couple of hours off and he wasn't bothered anyway.
Then when he finally escaped the press conference, having avoided a certain London reporter who must have had her bags already packed the moment word had got out earlier, he thought this time, the killer wasn't going to get away. For one thing, Tess was miles away and another, maybe he could call Rose and ask for her help.