A/N: Thank you to everyone who has read this fic, there is one more chapter, and this is it. The story was indeed convoluted, faafromhome, but I hope that wasn't bad. I wanted to make it seem as unconnected as the DiP episodes, clearly I need more practise - the writers of the show are phenomenally talented (but maybe don't have to fit in a meta-arc like I did with Diana).

Thank you to everyone who has reviewed and read this, it truly is an honour to know that other people are enjoying what I write.

Here it is, the last chapter. I don't think I'll be attempting any more DiP, although I said that about Master and Commander, Last Kingdom and Harry Potter! I wish that there were more Richard Poole episodes, these are the gold standard of DiP, in my opinion.

Enjoy!

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Beyond the present, East Caribbean sea

"Oh my lord, Diana Janet Poole!" scolded Richard. He leaned up from his repose from the stern of the boat. It was hot, it was sunny. "Can't you keep this thing steady for one moment?" He looked across at the picnic rug. "The vimto's all spilt and there's now salt water all over the bread."

Diana looked over to him, and put the boat into "cruise." It would be getting hotter before it got cooler. At least wool was breathable. She stepped back towards the stern and sat on the step beside him. Then she mopped up the purple cordial drink with a cloth and threw it into the bucket they used for soaking the laundry. She used. Her beloved brother hadn't lifted a finger since they had got aboard.

But then he had done everything up to that point, hadn't he? Diana poured out some pop, and handed Richard the bread knife. Two chunky slices and some off the ham, and they were sitting in view of the town of Weymouth, by the seaside, having rock-pooled and sandcastled.

She had, Diana corrected her thoughts. Richard would watch her, encourage her, handle the seashells with fingertips as if they would transmit a terrible disease.

"You nearly dropped it there, Dy-nee," Richard went on, chewing on the rough and ready ham sandwich. Diana looked up to him, tucking her hair behind her ears. A bit rough, perhaps unsettled weather that evening.

"And that's why you were scared?"

"I was not scared." Richard glanced at her, and then out to the featureless sea.

"When you thought I was really the Roberta Weymouth...maybe?" Richard looked at her, then gestured to the mango. Diana nodded.

"Noel was very good looking...that Scandinavian look that you like."

"Noel?" Diana laughed aloud. Richard gave her a knowing look. "I mean...when I was younger and knew no better…"

The mango was delicious, but Roberta would have loved strawberries. No prospect of those where they were going.

Then, after the long pause after her bald lie, Diana went on the offensive.

"You thought I'd slipped."

"What do you mean?"

"You thought I'd turned." She sat up and put her plate to one side.

"Dinah!" he frowned at her.

"Dick…?" And he conceded.

"Maybe for a moment." The fruitcake looked delicious, Richard considered. Mrs. Commissioner Patterson was an excellent cook.

"Slipped because I was still in love with Noel Svendsen?" Diana laughed. Yet, he was a good looking man. Pity for womankind he was spending twenty years in a Guadeloupe jail cell.

"No, it was not for me you were scared. But for yourself."

A gnat of breeze filled the sail. Good. That would lower the fuel consumption.

"Myself?

"Because of Camille. You were protecting yourself because of her feelings for you." Richard put down his cup of tea, unrefined circumstances that they were in. A flask? He would almost rather not have tea at all.

"Camille?" Richard protested. "Lord no." Diana propped herself up on her elbow, then reached over to the Thermos. It'd just have to do, until they reached civilisation.

"She liked you - loved you, even, see how she was when she thought you had died?"

"No," dismissed Richard, shaking his head, and remembering the heat of the wake of her kiss on his cheek when she thought he wasn't coming back from London. "Camille? She looked at me as a father figure."

More of the luncheon was consumed in silence. They had strayed into emotional waters that they were not equipped to deal with. Richard, at least. After a few small portions of the cheese course, Diana broke the stillness.

"You said maybe." She wondered when Richard would notice her grammar. "You didn't mean Dwayne Myers did you?" he added, accusingly. Diana Poole said nothing, but selected a cheese cracker for her Cheshire.

"You did!" he exclaimed, his face reddening with anger. "Right, I'm gonna kill him - KILL him!" Diana threw a cushion at him.

"Yes, right, the ghost of Richard Poole coming back to kick the arse of his constable." She grinned, and he subsided. And then, Diana looked beyond the boat.

The world was literally their ocean. But sometimes Diana Poole wished she could go back to how they were, when every day was sunny and every day there were sandwiches and ginger pop and cakes and bicycle rides, bird watching and story telling and adventures, big, small, tiny and fantastic. Like the town in her line of sight that she could see every morning of every summer holiday, Richard Poole, her big brother, was always there.

"Aren't you sad? Not to have met someone? Got married? Had children?" She stopped for a moment. "Because Dad always said it was my fault."

"I've told him," Richard replied, preparing to cut another slice of fruitcake, "So many times. Because I realised that it isn't you that has caused me to remain a bachelor all these years...it isn't anyone…I just don't feel like that about any one person."

He put a thin slice of cake onto a plate and offered it to Diana, withdrawing it at the last minute. She frowned, crossly. "Only," he laid out his condition, "If you don't go and ruin it by putting butter all over it."

"But I like butter on fruitcake!" Diana protested. Then she mock-sulked and took the plate. It would take as nice with another cup of tea.

Time seemed to pass strangely at sea, Diana thought. She was glad she brought an alarm clock with her - however would they know if it was four in the afternoon?

"But you may, you might, be right," Richard conceded. Diana looked back to her brother.

"What, about Camille?"

Too close, Richard thought. Too close to feelings and desires.

"Ah, no," he told Diana, firmly. "She is a brilliant woman, but no, I like my own ways, I like my life, Dy-nee." Then he looked at her, a look only an approving older brother could give.

"You pulled it off," he told her. "And your report - "

"I was trained as a spy," Diana replied, a little crossly. The critique was going to be brutal, it always was. "I did have to write reports." She sat up and folded her arms. "Before you say anything, I showed it to Selwyn."

"Selwyn?" Diana nodded. I was hardly going to show my big brother before someone else had read it and pointed out all the mistakes for me to fix." Richard leaned forward a little.

"I bet there weren't any mistakes, were there?"

"None Selwyn could see." From under the seat, Diana passed him a manuscript. "It wasn't so much of a report as - "

"The Adventures of Dinah and Dick…" Richard read, glancing up to his sister's face. "Set in Dorset…" he flicked through the pages, "With donkeys…"

"It passed the time."

"And the real report?"

"Left in the commissioner's barn conversion I'd been living in for the past year, before we went." Richard put down the manuscript.

"And they call it British intelligence…"

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"Put it on auto again," Richard asked Diana.

"Or you could navigate for once?" she asked, spikily. Richard Poole could no more sail this boat as she could - as she could…no. Diana couldn't think of an end to that sentence. She watched him sit a' mid-decks, and look down at a piece of paper, and gave in, and sat beside him,

"You don't have to do this," she told him gently, slipping an arm through his.

"I do," Richard told her. "I need to put this right, I need to tell Angela Birkitt that actually my family IS more important than her unrequited crush." Diana noticed the date on the letter. It was a few days before his "murder" and would look as if he had written it before the reunion. "I have to put away the past. The new man came."

"Do you know him?" Diana asked.

"No, but I did ask around, he'll suit them. He'll discover who my killer is. The commissioner will sort it all out."

"And once I've used my contacts to ensure this gets to Angela, what then? We can go? Travelling? Together?"

"While avoiding the international criminal faction, yes. And I'm now officially dead, so no-one can come looking for me. You can write, I can read." He glanced out to the setting sun. "To somewhere not hot."

"No, Diana agreed, "Definitely not hot." Then she asked, "How can you bear it, to be away from her, away from here? To know how sad you have made them?"

Richard said nothing, but contemplated the blank page in front of him. Blank pages had never been a problem for him before, he always knew exactly what to say. This time, Richard Poole screwed it up and thrust it into his pocket.

The boat continued south, into the featureless vista. Diana moved closer to her brother.

"I am right; she loves you."

"Who?"

"Camille."

"Don't be silly," Richard protested. "You saw them all. Look, that great lumbering replacement of mine, he loves her, you can tell." He leaned away from Diana and looked at her face. "How far is it exactly until we reach land?"

"Oh, another,day or so. Are you ready?"

"Ready for Tierra del Fuego, or wherever we are going? Yes." Diana nodded to her bag.

"We have supplies for one more teatime," she added. "And good guess, by the way." Richard frowned, and moved the bag towards them, looking in at the top.

"A picnic," he said aloud. "You've packed a picnic?" His words sounded scolding but his eyes appraised the contents of the picnic basket…lettuce…tomatoes…onions…carrot sticks..hard boiled eggs…new potatoes…mustard…"

"I'm doing better, okay?" Diana replied, defensively. "Only one person was sick in the office after my banana loaf. That was better than at Holly's, where I incapacitated the entire floor…" She watched Richard pull out a bottle.

"Ginger beer…?" Diana nodded.

"Radio…?"

"So you can just get the test match. Or the World Service." Unexpectedly, Richard Poole bent down and kissed Diana on the forehead. And they were young again, and out for the day, in the wondrous place that was Dorset.

"You're ready?" he asked. Diana squeezed his arm.

"Yes, Dick, I am ready."

"Then let's go, Diana, and have another adventure."