More Than Us

"So, you're leaving UCOS then?" Nick decided to broach the subject which he suspected was at the root of the silence of his first Monday Night Boys Night. Once they'd all tired of trying to figure out the knot in their current case and agreed to decamp to the pub; Sandra had hesitated and addressed them all. She'd told them that she'd accepted a lecturing job at Hendon but that during her notice period UCOS would be the guinea-pig of a new mentoring scheme. Steve and Gerry hadn't really spoken much since then.

"I guess so," Sandra glanced up shyly from the glass in front of her which had occupied her attention so far. The quietude following her announcement after buying the round had not been unexpected perhaps; though once it had fallen she had felt very suddenly that she had insufficiently prepared for it. She'd made the decision to tell them straight away; there were enough secrets tearing away at each of them to make the very thought of keeping one more unpalatable. She'd spent a large part of the afternoon telling herself that there was only one secret that she was keeping and that there was a suitably proper reason for keeping it; but couldn't shake off the feeling that her happy offices were becoming a web of secrecy. The rest of the afternoon she'd spent half-heartedly telling herself that she was being paranoid. Over ten years she'd become accustomed to a team that were not only colleagues but friends and family; there had been secrets before, of course there had, but there hadn't been the closed atmosphere that there was now.

"But this mentoring scheme…" Steve began to say before trailing off, shrugging and taking a sip from his half-and-half. Though it felt like years, in reality he hadn't been at UCOS or known Sandra that long for it to matter to him that she was leaving. In the six months he'd known them, he'd grown close to Gerry and Sandra; felt how much she meant to both Gerry and Brian and them to her. He'd respected how open and truthful they were with each other, professionally and privately; and that suited him fine. Even though he hadn't told Gerry that he'd found his son. No-one knew very much at all about Nick yet. And he wasn't entirely convinced that this latest revelation was as transparent as it seemed.

"I'm going for a cigarette," Gerry stood abruptly filling the gap that Steve had created. He lifted his glass and drained the remains of his pint before turning and walking toward the door.

"He'll come round," Steve tried to sound reassuring as he spoke words that resonated as empty as their truth.

Sandra looked at him. The Scot had arrived in her offices like a whirlwind; bewildering Gerry and Brian, reinvigorating the atmosphere and sharpening an edge that UCOS had never been short of. He was, if possible, more unpredictable than Gerry and Brian had been in the early days; though Jack had always surpassed them. She could tell that he didn't believe his own words any more than she did. She sighed. It wasn't Steve or Nick that she needed to talk to; their secrets were there own business.

The light April shower that had started mid-afternoon had settled into a full session of rain that dulled the sounds of the city that met Gerry's ears as he turned up the collar of his coat to try and stop the damned weather from infiltrating his insulation. He knew it was silly to get into a huff when it was himself that had practically opened the door for her to leave when Brian had announced his departure. But what Gerry knew and what Gerry did were usually different. After sixty-odd years on the planet, he'd come to know his own skin and mind and was fairly used to them.

"Gerry?"

Her voice was quiet against the percussion of the rain and drone of London; like a mouse testing whether the cat is really asleep or just pretending. He couldn't look at her. He didn't need to. Her bottom lip, the gloss of the day wearing thin, would be subtly tucking itself under her teeth; her eyes would be wide and open, slightly fearful of what they might see next, the corners twitching ready to blink and close the sentence.

"How many times do I have to lose you, Sandra?"

The straight stream of smoke that blew from Gerry's lips in the pause that his question created was quickly dispersed by dampness of the night. He hadn't meant to initiate a scene from a melodrama but the words once aired were precisely what he meant to say. Which was unusual, he had to admit.

"What do you mean?" she almost whispered. The harshness of his tone was tempered by the sentiment so heartfelt that it hurt her to hear it. Her response which so innocently fell from her lips was completely unnecessary for she knew exactly what he meant.

Pained he glanced to his right where she stood sheltered in the porchway of the pub; the lights from within filtering through and bathing her in an ethereal glow. He could tell by the slight lowering of her eyelids that her question was only half-genuine; the tentative twitching of her nose betrayed the guilt behind her pre-emptive understanding of his question; the childlike touch to her accent reminding him of every sense of protection and love he had for the woman whose eye he could not meet as he tried to put his grief into phrase.

"Gerry?"

The curling of white weightless ribbons from the paper edges of his cigarette around his thick fingers calmed the hopeless whirrings of his mind and gave him the focus to speak more freely and honestly than he ever had in his life before. "Ever since Jack left," he began quietly; his Burmensy roots breaking through in his inflection. "It's felt like you've left too. Closed off some part of you that was kept open just because he was there. Like Brian and me weren't meant to see it. Weren't meant to know you. We were happy. Then everything changed. Jack dying; Brian leaving; you and Strickland. Steve. Nick. Every time something changes, you get further away from me. It feels like I'm losing you Sandra."

As he lifted his head to meet her gaze she found herself unable to look away.

"And, I don't want to," he shrugged as if trying to lift the heavy blanket of despair that lay on his shoulders. "I promised Jack I'd look after you both. You and Brian. That's what I promised after he… was gone. And now it's like I've failed. Jack's gone, Brian's left, you're leaving. UCOS is…"

"No it isn't," she stuttered, a fervoured passion breaking her voice as she anticipated his premature sentencing of the unit that meant immeasurable amounts to the two people standing in the darkened porch. "Don't say it. It's not finished."

"It's not what it was," he stubbed his cigarette out. "And that's why you're going, isn't it? Because without Jack and Brian…"

"Gerry, stop it," she interrupted, thwarting the most painful accusation he had yet made. Stopping him from saying the words that would infer that he wasn't a good enough reason for her to stay. Halting momentarily the newly recurring memory that she was leaving. "How can you think…?"

"Because I've known you for ten years Sandra. I know that if it wasn't for Jack, Brian and me would never had a look in. We'd still be in the trenches of crap that we were in since the job screwed us over the first time round. And I know that if it wasn't for Jack, you'd never have made us what we are. Sure, you'd have stuck it out, but only until the first pardon came along. But when it did, you turned it down. For us. Whatever you want to think, he was the reason we were all there that first day and every day after. I know I opened the door and told you to leave, but bugger me Sandra, I've known you ten years and if you were going to go then you'd have gone."

The frankness of his words did not shock her. The accurate assembly of facts that he laid out in cold glory did not surprise her. The breaking of her heart as she listened to the effect her betrayal was having on one of the few people in the world that she cared about prevented her from rejoining the exchange.

"There's got to be a reason Sandra. A really good reason for you to want to leave," Gerry stated with the certainty of a judge passing sentence; the certainty that he was right; the certainty that he wasn't enough to keep her, good enough for her.

"There is," she replied quickly, finding her voice finally only to verify the validity of his assessments. Cursing silently as she realised that allowing the crack to appear would only hurt him more when she couldn't tell him what the reason was. That it wasn't because UCOS wasn't enough for her; that it wasn't because she didn't want to work with him anymore; that it was because she was terrified that she wasn't good enough to have it all, to do it all anymore.

"What?" he asked, knowing as he did so that her answer wouldn't explain her decision.

"I can't tell you," she said, knowing that she was cutting him still deeper. "Yet."

"Fine. You don't … Whatever. I'm not Jack."

"No, you're not," she returned suddenly angry. She was angry that she couldn't tell him; angry that he'd reacted the way he had; angry that she couldn't be the woman he wanted her to be anymore. Angry that he'd dared to compare himself to Jack. "And however much truth there might be in what you've said; UCOS was and is more than you, me, Jack and Brian. It's more than Steve, Nick or whoever else might walk through those doors. There is a reason that I'm leaving, that I've got to leave. But it isn't because I don't value what we do or we are. Can't you see that this mentoring scheme lets me hand over properly; I can't give up on everything we've built together. You, me, Brian and Jack, yes, we made UCOS. And I can't walk away and let it become something that it's not. And no, you're not Jack. But you're one of the best friends I've ever had and I don't want you to think for one minute that you're not every bit as important to me as he was. Don't let me lose you Gerry. Because everything you've said is true. In the last six months, everything has changed. You're right – it feels like everything we've had is falling apart. But it can't be, I won't let it."

Before he had a chance to ask her exactly how the hell she planned to achieve this promise without a time machine, the door behind them opened and two blazes of energy fired upon them. Sandra's coat and bag were thrust into her arms as Nick and Steve caught them in their epiphanetic tornado.

"Come on, we've got to go," Steve announced. "Nick knows where she is!"

"Eh? Who?" Gerry blinked as the two men dashed past them.

"The daughter!" Nick shouted over his shoulder. "Come on!"

"Aye," Steve paused on his root to the cars and started checking his pockets for his keys. "While yous two have been taking the last half a lifetime realising that Sandra getting a new job is not the end of the world and certainly not the end of your friendship; Nick and me have actually been doing some work; now are you coming to meet this woman or not?!"

Sandra looked at Gerry as the two new boys dashed through the rain to where Steve, Gerry and Sandra had parked up (Nick, like Brian, didn't drive. Though he did catch buses. Happily.) He grinned. "More than us," he questioned quietly, fishing in his pocket for keys.

"Come on!" Nick waved at them, he was standing by Sandra's car. Steve waited by Gerry's. They had divided themselves so as to explain the situation on-route to the key of their latest case.

"It has to be," she smiled sadly before correcting herself. "It always was."