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Greg was fifteen when his older brother Brian brought his new girlfriend home to meet their folks. Johanna Farshaw, aged seventeen, was delicate to the point of seeming ethereal. She was polite, and demurely soft-spoken in front of Mr and Mrs Lestrade. They took to her right away, and from that point on she began coming to dinner at the Lestrade home once a week.

She and Brian didn't seem a serious sort of couple, really. There were no romantic gestures, no professions of undying love or promises to stay together past their teens. It was just the sort of going-steady that meant a partner at all the dances, and a guaranteed date on the weekends. Brian, especially, seemed laid-back about the whole thing.

"Yeah, she's all right," Brian yawned around his toothbrush one night.

Greg looked askance at him in the bathroom mirror. "All right?"

"Sure. She's pretty cool I guess." Brian elbowed Greg aside and leaned forward, flipping back the longest piece of his straight brown hair as he spat into the sink.

You mean you've deemed her worthy to actually spend time with you? thought Greg, occupying himself with the furious scrubbing of his own teeth. He watched his brother smirk at his own reflection and glide out of the bathroom without a backward glance.

Brian was tall, attractive, clear-skinned and utterly self-centred; maddeningly blasé. By contrast, Greg was scrawny, spotty, and awkward—a late bloomer in every sense of the term. Well, he was by no means the least attractive boy in his year—he could list off at least ten classmates who had it worse—but it was hard to appreciate that meagre fortune, when confronted with Brian's cool perfection every day. He could hardly imagine speaking to Gracie Trimble or pretty Wanda Smythe, let alone actually asking one of them on a date. It was almost incomprehensible to him, the way his brother coolly dismissed his own girlfriend as no big deal.

At least Brian didn't act like quite such a total arsehole to him, when Jo was over. That was something.

"You're sweet," said Johanna, bending to tie her laces at the front gate.

Greg did a double take. "What?"

"You heard me, dope," she laughed, still focused on her feet. "Don't sell yourself short so much." Standing straight once more, she pushed long, wispy blonde hair back over her shoulder and gave him a sisterly wink before flouncing out to catch up with Brian, already halfway down the street.

He stared after them, his mouth gaping a bit, entirely forgetting about Newton until the excited beagle had wrapped the leash three times around his ankles in impatience. Cursing under his breath, Greg re-negotiated his footing and led the dog off in the opposite direction.

Newton was full of energy that evening, and the early autumn sun was settling slowly and spectacularly over Bristol. Greg let the beagle urge him into a jog; his battered trainers pounded the pavement as his thoughts spun in confusion.

It was almost as if Jo could tell exactly what he'd been worrying about all day. He'd been trying to talk himself up to asking Deb out, and he'd been failing miserably—which was, apparently, obvious. It was clear she was going to end up with Scott anyway: it was all but a sure thing. What was the point of setting himself up for embarrassment?

Christ, Greg, he berated himself, you really are thick aren't you? Even Jo knows what you're about. He flipped up the collar of his blue windbreaker, and tried to let the rhythm of his strides clear his mind.

Even though they both made noises about it being casual, Jo was still going steady with Brian, for their third straight year. Brian had gone off to uni, but he hadn't gone far, and he continued to come home on weekends and term breaks; and whenever he was around, there she was too, following him like a bright afterimage.

Jo spent more and more time at the Lestrade home that year, until she practically became a fixture there, frequently helping his Mum with cooking supper and washing the dishes. Mrs Lestrade never made an issue of the fact that Jo was around so much; she treated the girl like the daughter she'd never had. In contrast to Brian's predictable attachment, within the last year Greg had very briefly dated Deb, and then Gracie, and had even escorted Carla to see two separate films before she'd taken up with Freddy, but he hadn't brought any girl to dinner with his family more than once.

Only a week after school was out for summer, Greg managed to break his leg in a rather ridiculous fall during a rough game of footy with his mates. He resigned himself to a season of solitude: stuck around the house, with Scott and Roger and everyone else going off on wild adventures without him. Brian was working a pitiful summer job that year, as an assistant to the mechanic at the local garage, and it kept his schedule full; he didn't notice for weeks that Jo had begun to take pity on the younger Lestrade boy. She started showing up daily, taking Newton out for walks and then returning to spend the long afternoons with Greg before Brian got home.

It was totally platonic between the two of them back then, of course. Greg never thought of Jo as more than a friend or a somewhat-sister, although she was certainly beautiful, tall and willowy with her fine golden hair and large brown eyes. Johanna always had a haunted, fae look about her, as if she might float away on the sunshine. She brought over records, some days, and they'd lie about in the hot shade of his dad's little work shed, watching motes of dust float past to the sounds of Pink Floyd or The Clash, talking idly about what they wanted out of their lives.

"Psychology is cool and all, you're the kind of guy who would get really into it. But yeah, I can totally see you as a copper someday, too," mused Johanna on one such lazy afternoon, lounging with him on the dusty old leather sofa Pop kept out there for his "writing sulks." Her long, pale legs were stretched out across it, her ankles crossed and resting on Greg's knee; Newton curled contentedly on her stomach.

Greg looked up from the record sleeve he'd been studying. "You think so? Brian says it's stupid. He keeps saying if all I wanted to be was a cop, I should just skip uni entirely."

"He's an idiot," she replied without hesitation, directing a calm smile towards the shed roof.

He laughed and shifted his cast-encased left leg into a better position. "What's the deal with you two?"

"What d'you mean?"

"You're the least couple-y couple I've ever seen, and you know he's a right arsehole on his best days. I just don't get why you stick with him."

She shrugged, reaching over the dog to pluck at a loose strand of her cutoff shorts. "He knows how to have fun. And I like hanging out here. It's no big deal, all right?"

Greg could tell when he was dancing on the edge of something Jo didn't want to talk about; he backed off and changed the subject straight away.

Johanna had broken things off the previous autumn, in a sudden move just before Brian left for his second term at university. It had made things awkward right away—Greg knew through some unspoken code he wasn't meant to see her anymore. He didn't even know the details of what had happened to put an end to the strange relationship between her and his brother. But he'd come to think of her as a best mate, of sorts, and that last summer before he went off to uni himself was hard on him.

The little house seemed smaller, somehow, without Jo's frequent presence at the dinner table. Pop was holed up continually in either his closet-sized office or his shed, when weather permitted, typing away at his third novel—this one, he insisted, was going to get more attention, and convince his publisher to extend and cement his series deal. Mum seemed distant, though not exactly upset. Brian came home far less often. When he did, conversation at the dinner table usually circled back to his big plans to make something of himself in the banking and business world; Greg sat by and listened to the grand talk without comment. His own ambition seemed pitiful and cheap, by comparison, and he kept it mostly to himself.

Near the end of that interminable summer, Greg could no longer resist going into the little record shop. He'd avoided it for months, perhaps out of some sense of brotherly loyalty—which was frankly ridiculous—or simply out of a desire to avoid confrontation. He'd even had Freddy go in and buy the new Pretenders album for him, two weeks before.

Greg kept his eyes down as he walked in, the tiny tinkling bell in the doorframe overhead almost lost under the ever-present music playing over the speakers. It was a fairly crowded shop that afternoon, and the pleasantly familiar atmosphere soon relaxed him; he browsed among the bins for a long while. By the time he brought his selection up to the counter, he'd almost forgotten why he'd been reluctant to come in.

"Greg."

He raised his eyes to the pretty blonde at the register. "Um, hi Jo."

She held out a hand, expectant; it took long seconds for Greg to realise she was waiting for him to hand over the record. "Haven't seen you around," she sniffed as she worked the register.

"Been busy," he mumbled, feeling awkward and ridiculous at the same time. Wish we could still hang out, he thought, but didn't say.

"Yeah. Me too. Three pounds," she replied, her voice tight. "Going off soon?"

He shuffled his feet a little as he dug the money from his pocket. "Leaving in two weeks," he said, nodding. "It's to be psychology after all, I finally decided."

"Uh-huh. Well, enjoy London, yeh?" Jo slapped change into Greg's palm, slid his bag across the counter to him, and turned away to the next customer without another word; her words seemed emotionless, but Greg could swear he'd seen her wink one lilac-shadowed eye.

Most of Greg's first year at university had passed without major incident. He'd made fast friends with the guy in the next room over (Sean Watkins spent more time in Greg's room than his own; he was a fun bloke, though Greg thought he was a bit of a pervert). His classes were going all right, and a couple of his professors were actually pretty interesting. As a secondary school biology teacher, his Mum had always tended to take a slightly dim view of the social sciences, though she placed great importance on high marks. Greg desperately wanted to make her proud; that was one reason he'd decided to completely ignore the first-year dating scene.

It was fine, actually; he'd never been much for asking girls out. The confidence and cool attitude needed to get started with someone were still beyond him, much of the time. He fancied himself far better suited to the bits that came after: the small, caring gestures and cozy romance of a steady girlfriend...but that was mostly speculation and fantasy. Back home, he'd never got much past the awkward early stages, actually. So, here he simply hit the books, and listened with half an ear to Sean's filthy ramblings. It was fine. Really.

Near the end of summer term, an unexpected visitor came knocking late on a Wednesday night.

"Jo! What are you doing here?" exclaimed Greg, nearly knocked off his feet in the doorway by the force of her arms thrown about his neck.

"Thought I'd come for a visit, check on you," she giggled. Her eyes were luminous and wide; she placed delicate hands on either side of his face, studying him intently as if seeing something other than she'd expected, and then leapt forward to hug him again.

Sean boggled at Greg from behind her at the other end of the room. He shoved a stringy piece of his too-long dark hair away from his glasses, and mouthed something incredulous at him. Greg wasn't sure what the exact message was, but he was pretty sure the words "babe" and "score" were involved, and probably more than a few exclamation points.

In response, Greg made an urgent face back at his friend that tried to simultaneously communicate multiple concepts. "Yes, I know her! No, I don't know why she's here! No, I didn't expect her! Yes, I want you to leave!" It's quite possible that it appeared he was simply rolling his eyes in sheer panic; that was only partially true.

By the time Jo detached herself from Greg's neck at last and tossed her denim backpack onto his bed, Sean had finally—thankfully—begun to take the hint.

"I'll just go see what Chuck's up to, tonight," Sean said; he scooped up the magazine he'd been reading and escaped the room.

They were alone, then. Greg stepped back, intending to speak; but one after another, questions rose up and died on his lips. Johanna was here. Who knew why—well, I'd ask why, if my mouth would bloody move—but did it really matter?

She wasn't speaking, either. Her big brown eyes were floating over him, twitching from point to point in a grand tour of all Greg's nineteen-year-old scruffiness: his mussed, spiky hair, his dark T-shirt, his utterly mystified face.

The silence stretched long, punctuated by an intermittent rhythmic thump from a room somewhere above, or below.

"Um," he managed, at last. "How 'bout some music here, yeh?" He grabbed the nearest record to hand—The Police, Outlandos d'Amour, and neither irony was lost on him—and put it on, sitting down on the edge of his bed.

Sting's voice thankfully broke the ice; Jo seated herself beside him, closing her eyes and humming along a little. "Your mum told me your room number wrong," she yawned, lying back sideways on the bed with her feet planted on the floor. "Some fit bloke named Dougie told me where to find you."

"Douglas? He's two floors away on the opposite hall," Greg said. Shite, now him and Sean both will be all over me about this... He wondered how many people she'd had to chat up before she'd met someone who actually recognised his name.

"Like I said. Mum got it wrong." She pointed upward at a poster on the ceiling. "Are you kidding me? You're an ABBA fan now?"

Greg slid down to lie in a similar position beside her and look up. "Nah! Sean put it up to mess with me. I got him back with a Captain and Tennille poster over his bed. Whoever breaks first gets to sleep under Tiny Tim."

Jo giggled.

"It's nice to see you, Jo, but why are you here?"

She didn't answer, just tilted her head on the bed so that the sides of their foreheads knocked against each other, and they lay silently together awhile.

Greg moved into his first real place a few months before he turned twenty, a small rented house that he shared with Sean and two other guys. Good old Watkins was still just as ridiculous and immature at twenty as he'd been at nineteen, but they'd built a good understanding in the previous year, and having Louis and Jimmy around sort of balanced out Sean's quirks enough to deal with.

About two weeks after the move, Louis got a call from his pop and had to catch a train home; his little sister had taken ill, and it was serious. He was a wreck before he left the house; bouncing about trying to find random small items, finding them and then immediately forgetting where he'd put them, packing and unpacking and packing again.

After a few false starts and panicky returns, Jimmy decided to accompany him to the station; he said he wanted to make sure Louis didn't lose his head on the way. Greg suspected it was something a bit more than that, but he wasn't about to say anything. Sean, as usual, was oblivious, and for once Greg thought he'd rather keep it that way.

It was no more than five minutes after Louis and Jimmy had walked out for what promised to be the last time, when a knock came at the door. Greg threw up his hands in exasperation and stomped over to throw it open.

"Bugger it all, Lou, what'd you forget this—"

"Heya."

"Jo?"

In what could probably be considered the most thoughtful gesture Sean ever made during their friendship, he somehow stayed away from the house for almost all of the rest of that weekend, and he presumably warned Jimmy off as well; but truth be told, Greg didn't really notice. Once Johanna was exerting her gravity, all the logical questions seemed to go right out the window—why she'd returned to London and how she had found him again took a definite backseat to the fact that she suddenly wanted his attention.

Another question that never came up was what it was she might have taken that had made her eyes wander and her hands roam so restlessly...for roam they did, over all of him; and it was surprising, unthinkable, sparkling, incredible.

After the frenetic whirlwind of Johanna had barged in, Greg hadn't made it to his Friday lectures at all. Instead they'd spent almost three days caught up in a spinning, giddy storm together, before she'd finally pressed a hot kiss behind his ear and hopped into a cab that had whisked her away, leaving him shaken and adrift for weeks.

That was the beginning of it.

Jo had come back again, without warning, for a single night about two months later.

And again, three days in September.

He found her sitting on his stoop one afternoon in early December; she spent five intense hours with him, and then disappeared while he was down the block picking up the takeaway he'd promised her.

That was just Jo.

In his last year at uni, Greg traded accommodations with Douglas Bosch, who'd found a single flat for himself but wanted more company. He still hung out with the guys, but he found that living alone worked better for him, once he took the part-time job working the door at a local club.

Greg took up drinking, a bit. He also took up smoking.

Jo, on the other hand, took up driving Greg crazy.

She was so damned creative, always coming up with some unpredictable way to get off: strange locations, new positions, dirty talk on a few memorable occasions. It was as if she meant to keep him permanently off-balance, hanging on for dear life whilst she cast about continually for new amusements. She'd try anything, it seemed. (And maybe that wasn't exactly true, but if there were things she wasn't bringing up, he was pretty sure he didn't want to think about them.)

Greg was no slouch, mind; he did his part to keep up, and set himself determinedly to the task of providing her as much pleasure as possible. It never seemed to be enough to keep her around more than a few days at a time, though. She was the wind, blowing in without warning, knocking him about, and disappearing just as suddenly.

"Where do you go?" he asked, one humid night in late summer, tracing aimless patterns on her thigh. She was shagged boneless, breathing slow and deep, hanging just on the edge of sleep: he'd learned that if he exhausted her, he could keep her close longer.

"What?" She shifted, pushed ineffectually with the heel of one hand at the sweaty blond hair stuck across her face, mumbled. "Home. Work. Dunno. Why?"

He responded with a silent shrug; he knew she'd feel it, with his left shoulder pinned beneath her as it was. "Just. I miss you, sometimes, you know?"

"Mmm. Baby." She was too far gone to be coherent; he sighed and tried to relax, which should have been easy in his current state, but his mind continued circling.

Greg had realised three months earlier that he had a problem. He found himself thinking about Johanna more than was strictly healthy; the way she kept him at a casual distance was beginning to make him wonder.

He knew where her flat was; she'd taken him there exactly once. She insisted that she much preferred his place—said her flatmate had a boyfriend over all the time, and she liked to give them their privacy. When he'd started to worry about her more frequently, he'd tried showing up there, now and then: unexpected visits, bringing flowers or inconsequential little gifts to provide an excuse to check in on her. But he never seemed to be able to catch her. On those occasions when the door was answered at all, Kitty, the flatmate, invariably gave mumbled excuses for her before accepting the tokens on her behalf.

He realised he didn't know where she was a lot of the time. Does she have other men she's stringing along? he wondered, not for the first time.

Jo interrupted his thoughts, rousing herself enough to push her leg down and away from his moving finger. "Tickle," she protested, sighing a soft, hot breath into the shell of his ear. "Stoppit, luv..." She moved a hand to run lazily through his hair, petting him affectionately for the seconds it took her to slide back into sleep.

Guiltily, Greg closed his eyes and put the doubts out of his head. She's just got a rough schedule at work. She's never liked to be tied to a phone. She's independent and always has been...

All of that was probably true. But the unfortunate fact remained: Greg Lestrade was in love.

As soon as Greg passed out of uni, he took a second job, clerking and stocking shelves at a bookstore. He still worked the club every other weekend, but it made him feel more like a real person to work during the day: being in contact with people who weren't just out to party, having the occasional stimulating conversation with someone over their choice of reading material. Anytime someone brought one of his Pop's books up to the counter, Greg quietly smiled to himself—they were gaining popularity, although they were admittedly a little bit on the pulpy side. Personally, he found himself gravitating more towards true crime novels, and coffee table books full of glossy colour photographs, depicting worlds outside his dingy little flat. Greg was saving up most of his wages for a better place, one that was closer to Kings Cross; he knew he'd want to save himself a rough commute, once he entered training at Hendon the next spring and gave up working for anyone but the Metropolitan Police.

Jo was still coming around frequently. She'd changed jobs again, and their schedules meshed, but only to a certain extent: he usually got to see her a few weeknights, and she often dropped by for part of the afternoon on the weekends before going out to party with her friends. Greg felt like a bit of a stick in the mud, always having to work when she wanted to go out. Plus, every time he got down to the pub with his mates, they got just a little bit more incredulous about his "invisible girlfriend."

But it was all worth it. Greg could easily put up with Jo's erratic schedule; and the fact that when she turned up, she wanted to be with him and him alone—well, that was nothing to complain about, really. She drank in his attention like she was starved for it, and he was more than willing to provide.

Greg caught her actually snorting something off a little hand mirror, one day in May. She insisted it was only the second time she'd ever done it. He'd been around the club for a couple years by then; he knew plenty of people that seemed to be trying out everything at least once, so he didn't see a real reason not to believe her. Still, from that day on he couldn't help but get suspicious. He continued to wilfully ignore the signs as long as he could, but eventually Greg cottoned on to the pattern: she'd come to see him when she was up, and leave abruptly when she was coming off the high and didn't have anything left to sneak off and top up with. For a while, he tried a strategy of distracting her, trying to keep her in the room with him rather than let her get away; once she figured out what he was doing, she'd blown up and stormed out, unsurprisingly.

He slipped an emergency contact card into her wallet, one afternoon. He did it while she was locked in the loo, again—while he was left desperately trying to think of all the perfectly normal, reasonable things she could be up to in there. Greg knew that Jo would likely regard the contact card as yet another attempt at interference. Even as he tucked it in, watching the carefully neat printing of his own name and number disappear behind her driving licence, he was already bracing himself for the argument that would inevitably spark off when she eventually found it.

He worried, though; he couldn't help himself. She was unpredictable, and moody...and brilliant and intense and too goddamned much to keep up with, no matter how he tried. There were plenty of times, of course, when she'd seem to be just herself, and they would lie together and listen to the radio and talk; those days, he felt like things were good, like things were looking up. Those days, he almost, almost felt like he understood why she bothered with him in the first place.

Late on a quiet winter evening, Greg decided to make an offer. "You know, you could move across the city with me, next year."

Jo hummed from the bed, looking up from the magazine spread out over her crossed legs. "What's that, pet?"

"When I get my new place. It'll be bigger, you wouldn't have to tiptoe around Kitty anymore..."

"What, you want me to move in with you?" She sounded faintly incredulous, and he couldn't figure it out.

"Don't see why not," he pushed on stubbornly. "I mean, we spend so much time together already, and it's not like cohabitation before marriage is such a big deal these days..."

She didn't say anything for a while. In fact, she stayed silent for so long that his nervous tongue got the better of him.

"I don't mean...I'm not trying to say we should get married. I mean. I'm all for it, of course, but if you don't...Someday I might...But it's okay, y'know, I love what we've got. I just, er."

David Bowie's technicolour face slid off her knees and hit the carpet, staring up at Greg accusingly as Jo snatched up her little bag and puffy coat, sweeping silently out the door.

Greg had a note in his pocket with the address of the party. It had been simultaneously relieving and exciting to find it slipped into the jamb at his flat—it already felt like ages since he'd gotten any time with Jo. She obviously knew he could do with a little socialisation, and she also knew he would take her home afterwards and shag her silly...and God, his nerves could use that.

He'd been busy all week with courses and intensives, and working himself hard to meet the physical requirements of his third full week at Hendon. He'd been there barely five days before he'd made the firm decision to give up smoking, at least for the duration of his seventeen weeks of police training: the running would surely be easier, if he could breathe. And it was getting better—he'd already almost got back to the sort of endurance he'd had at sixteen—but the workouts weren't doing all that much to ease the jitters and cravings.

When Jo saw him, she waved and blew him an exaggerated kiss; he took a detour to find the source of the lager that was circulating in everyone's hands, and secured his own plastic cup. He returned to the den, then, and snagged an open seat on a cushy-looking sofa with some relief: it had been a very long Friday. From there, he could see Jo across the room, chatting with a girlfriend who was laughing loudly: the girl's hair was a giant teased and sprayed mass with a swath of pink through it. Greg didn't recognise her. For that matter, he didn't recognise more than two or three of the faces here, though nobody had been unfriendly. It hardly signified, in the end; he was here to relax and let himself go, and this loud, raucous gathering was just fine for that.

Finally, the pink-tufted girl latched onto a Billy Idol wannabe with entirely too many piercings; Jo made her way across the crowded room and leaned in to kiss Greg an enthusiastic hello, before sinking to sit in a relaxed sprawl against the front of the sofa and his legs. There was a strategically ripped hole in the thigh of her bleach-washed jeans, exposing creamy skin covered only by a few ragged, soft strings. He watched as she rubbed her hand over the raw edges of the opening, again and again, apparently mesmerised by the way it felt against her palm.

He asked her about her day, and she hummed and mumbled something, giggling. It was lost in the pounding of the music.

Greg frowned down at her, suddenly suspicious. "What is it this weekend, eh? Cocaine, still?"

"Baby, don't be like that." She leaned in to rest her cheek on his lap, but he was faster: he reached down and grasped her chin, stilling it, noting the wide blown pupils of her brown eyes.

"Come on, Jo. Don't mess me about. What is it?"

Jo jerked away from his grasp, sitting back on her heels. "Yeah, fine! It's coke, all right? Mostly."

"Mostly?"

"God, what does it matter to you? It's not like I ever asked you to do any. I know how you are."

"And how am I?"

"You're perfect, Greg. You'd never lower yourself to party like the rest of us. And I know that; I know you're nothing like Brian ever was. It's why I never asked."

For a jarring moment, Greg felt an unpleasant longing to be the sort of person who would; not for a high, but just for Jo to allow him into her whole life. He knew it would never happen. But that split second of helpless, twisted desire was an oily, slick tendril of nausea in his gut.

It's not so bad, he repeated to himself. She's not like this all the time. She works hard, and she just lets off steam on the weekends, yeh?

Greg looked down at her, and she glared back; her floaty blonde pixie cut and hoop earrings framed a deeply affronted expression. He held out against that gaze as long as he could, but in the end he simply couldn't stand to see her so unhappy with him. Grimacing, he broke the stare to turn away and take a swig of the beer in his hand.

"Perfect, huh," he said softly, "I doubt that very much."

She was kneading her delicate fingers at his knee. Out of the corner of his eye, there was an abrupt movement, and a ragged, drunken cheer rose over the music.

Greg wanted to be anywhere but here.

All through the winter and spring, he tried gentle reasoning, then firm logic, then desperate pleading, no longer caring how pathetic she might think him for it. Later they'd ended up in huge rows over it more often than anything else. She wouldn't listen, couldn't stop herself, needed the fix more than she needed Greg but never failed to string him along, use him and abandon him over and over. When they fought, he felt poised over a precipice; if he went too far, if he tried too hard, would she leave him forever?

But through it all, the good moments—those times when Jo was just Jo, when she'd look at him with those sweet, sad eyes and bite her lip just so—they kept him holding on. He couldn't reason with his heart.

Things seemed to be on the upswing when summer came around, though. They'd gone weeks without Greg noticing that glassiness in Jo's gaze, or the abrupt mood swings that tended to precede her disappearances. She even stayed over with him for an entire week, at the end of June; his flat seemed bright as sunshine, with Johanna there to welcome him home after each long workday. At the end of that week, she fixed him a stack of slightly burnt pancakes for his birthday supper and gave him a gift: she'd made it for him in the beginning pottery class she'd been taking at a nearby community centre.

"It's beautiful, love!" exclaimed Greg, turning the clay bowl around in his hands. It fit warmly in the curve of his cupped palms, its silvery gray glazing crackled under a smooth gloss, shot through with tiny flecks of blue.

"No, it's really not." Jo was in a twitchy mood again, biting at her fingernails and tapping her toes. "It's all slumped over on one side, and the glaze didn't come out evenly."

"It's beautiful, Jo, and I adore it, and I'm gonna keep it forever," he told her, setting it down and sliding up behind her to wrap his arms around her so-slim waist.

She smiled and relaxed her head backwards into his shoulder. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." Greg kissed her on the cheek. "I promise."

They stood there in his little kitchen, snugged up together for a quiet minute. Greg rested his chin in the crook of her neck and breathed deep, feeling the tripping flutter of her pulse.

Jo hummed and broke the silence. "Was it your folks on the phone with you this afternoon when I came in?"

He released her and moved to sit down at the table. "Yeah. Birthday wishes, Pop's next manuscript, Brian's promoted again. The usual."

"You haven't visited your parents in over two years. You should've gone, that last long weekend you got," she scolded him.

"Well, you wouldn't come with me. I didn't much see the point, Jo."

"They want to see you, not me. Especially now that you're a police constable, on your way to your brilliant career..."

"Brilliant? Right, for one thing, you know I'm only a probationer constable for another twelve and a half months. And when I finally get past that, chances are I'll be stuck working Traffic: and that's definitely what I was going for," he said, scowling. His brother was already making great strides in his investment banking career; Mum had talked with great pride about how Brian was making plans to manage Pop's book income for long term growth. Greg was glad, at least, that one of the Lestrade children would be doing something to take care of their parents.

"You're being too negative, Greg, stop limiting yourself. Didn't you say something about applying for CID after the two year service window? You know you'll get ahead eventually; you're too smart not to."

The complimentary statement was so offhandedly sincere, it lit a warm glow in the pit of his stomach. It was also incredibly lucid and logical—Greg hadn't even truly realised 'til that moment how infrequently he heard her sounding like this, anymore. He was struck by a wave of giddy, hopeful affection that propelled him back out of his seat to hug her again.

"Why won't you even let me tell Mum about us?" he whispered.

"Come on," she retorted, pushing away. "You really think that'll go over well? That I've just hopped from one of her sons to the other?"

"She's always adored you, Jo. She and Pop won't give a damn." A new thought occurred to him. "Oh, is it that you don't want Brian to find out, then?" His brother didn't visit home much, either, but Greg knew that Mum and Brian spoke frequently. On Greg's side of things, well, he got plenty of news about that self-absorbed git without having to talk to him.

"I told him myself, over a year ago. He didn't care."

That was a shock, all the way around. Greg was certain he'd be wondering about it, later, but for the moment he stayed focused. "Why not, then? There's gotta be a way I can convince you..."

"I'm not going back to Bristol, and that's final!"

Greg snapped his jaw closed. If the past four years had taught him anything, it was when to drop a subject for the greater good.

Greg stood outside on the tiny balcony landing in front of the door to his Islington flat. Douglas stood shoulder to shoulder with him—the only option aside from stepping down the concrete stairs that led down to the first floor of the building—and slipped a half-crumpled packet of cigarettes from his jeans pocket.

"Give us a fag, then, come on," urged Greg, holding out a hand.

"I thought you quit, mate?"

"Did, for awhile. It's a bit hit-or-miss. Mostly miss, at the moment—gimme."

They lit up together, and Douglas chuckled at what was no doubt an expression of utter relief on Greg's face. "You look wrecked, Greg," he said. "Glad to be through it?"

"You know it. It's been a long slog, these two years, but they sure know how to crank up the stress levels right at the end." Greg took another long drag and blew a satisfied cloud of smoke out into the half-enclosed stairwell.

"That's true of everything worthwhile, I expect. But hey, you've made it." His friend smiled, scratching long fingers into one side of his hi-top fade. "And tonight, we celebrate, Constable Lestrade!"

Greg nodded, grinning wide. "And I'm glad to have you here with me for it, Mister Bosch. You're a hard man to find, lately. How's the thesis coming along?"

Douglas made a face. "I am beginning to wonder what on earth possessed me to undertake such a course of study."

"You love it, don't lie! Go on, you haven't caught me up lately; tell me all about the current phase."

His friend obediently launched into a detailed update on his anthropological research; Greg listened with half his attention, letting the rolling cadence, soft sibilants and squeezing-stretching vowel sounds of the man's Johannesburg accent wash pleasantly over him. He watched the early evening sunlight deepening into gold against the row-houses across the street; where he and Douglas stood, the blocky, industrially-styled bulk of his own building closed them away from the summer sun on three sides, and the hard line of its shadow was slowly encroaching on the opposite pavement.

The two of them were waiting for Jo's arrival, and then their plan was to go out together for a celebratory dinner at the restaurant where Sean Watkins had recently been taken on as a chef. They were still waiting, nearly fifteen minutes later; Douglas had switched topics, now, and was telling about an attractive fellow grad student he'd met. "Her name is Kara," he said, and something in the way he shaped the name, caressing its two short syllables, made Greg look over and smile knowingly.

"What?" asked Douglas, interrupting himself mid-sentence, self-consciously straightening his windbreaker.

"Nothing, man," Greg laughed. He twisted his head over his shoulder to look back through the open door to his flat. "Wonder what's keeping Jo? She should've been here ages ago, and she hasn't called."

"I don't know. Sure you didn't tell her to meet us there?" Douglas pulled out his cigarettes again and tapped out a second one for himself, tipping the packet toward his friend in a silent offer.

Greg scoffed. "I've been stressed, sure, but not that stressed. Nah, more likely she lost track of time." He reached out and accepted the smoke, but didn't move to light it right away.

"She flake out on you often, huh?"

"No! I mean—" He clenched the unlit cigarette in his hand, running the other over the short-cropped hair at the back of his head. "Yes, but not lately."

"You used to make yourself sick, worrying over this girl. I remember. She was a real Houdini..."

"It's not like that, anymore." And it wasn't a lie, not really; her disappearances were no longer random, mysterious occurrences that kept him up at night believing he'd been dumped. Now, they were at least somewhat predictable, and he knew she was coming back. (She came back high more often than he liked to think about, but she always came back.) Greg had a truly terrible track record at actually stopping Jo from doing what she wanted—and it was agony for him, that he somehow just couldn't manage to put his foot down and stop it, stop her from ruining herself by inches—but he knew that if he tried too hard to assert his authority over her, she'd leave for good and the whole damn thing would be out of his hands. So he continued to skirt the edge; there were still ups and downs, but it was getting better.

It IS getting better—isn't it? he asked himself. With a guilty jolt, he realised he'd been staring silently down at the cigarette a bit too long.

Douglas gave him a sympathetic smile and leaned over to offer his lighter, bumping his shoulder against Greg's in solidarity. "Women, eh."

Greg was saved from a reply by his telephone, ringing from the open door behind him. "Finally," he breathed, hastily giving his friend the lit cigarette to hold while he pushed inside to snag the handset off the wall. "Jo, what's keeping you?"

The woman's voice at the other end of the line was unfamiliar: businesslike and matronly. "Is this Gregory Lestrade?"

"Sorry. Yes, speaking."

"I'm calling from University College Hospital; you've been listed as emergency contact for Miss Johanna Farshaw..."

His stomach dropped with a lurch; the blood drained from his face in a cold rush, and a hollow ringing started in his ears. He heard what the woman was saying, and he somehow made appropriate responses, but the words slid wetly around his skull without finding purchase in logical meaning.

...stepped in front of a moving car...

...broken leg and clavicle...

...tachycardic distress a possible cause of the stumble...

...apparently under the influence of a narcotic...

...full cardiac arrest, unable to resuscitate...

Greg hung up the receiver with a shaking hand.

He stared dumbly at the ugly yellow-beige plastic of it, the dirty, coiled cord: this impersonal, alien thing, this awful thing that had called with a stranger's voice to take his Johanna away.

"No," he heard himself whisper, as if from a distance.

A voice spoke from behind him. "All right? Greg? What's happened?"

He turned to look, and found himself unable to comprehend the image of the other man, framed in the doorway with a burning cigarette in each hand.