Coffee and crayons

Rating: ‘Green Cortina’/PG-13

Written for the 'hawkfromhandsaw' Altered Mental States ficathon on Livejournal, using Prompt 47-‘He waxes desperate with imagination’ Hamlet, Act I Scene IV. Spoilers for episodes 1.1 and 1.8 (series one finale) with small ones for 2.4.

Warning for extremely OOC Sam.

Thanks go to the lovely fanfic whore for beta-ing.

Disclaimer: I'm playing with characters created by men older than me. No money is being earned, and I havno money to offer if I was sued.

Ruth Tyler looked at the stranger in front of her with curiosity. The woman, who had introduced herself as Chloe, had hidden the same emotion underneath a warm smile.

They bought their coffees, Ruth choosing a simple Americano with milk and one sugar while Chloe picked a decaf cappuccino and sprinkled nutmeg over the top.

There was an awkward pause for a moment as they looked at the empty tables, before Ruth subtly gestured at the freshly vacated one next to the window and Chloe nodded before following.

The view was simply that of a large shopping district in the better part of Manchester. At that time of the morning there were only young mothers with their pushchairs and retired people. Ruth knew that she looked the same age as any of those ladies with their walking sticks and square tartan shopping trolleys. What would the woman stirring her drink in front of her look like to those eyes outside that she had learned to ignore so long ago? Her daughter, her granddaughter?

She turned her distracted mind back towards the present, to the raw solid facts. She was a woman who had been invited out for a coffee by her newly assigned social worker as she ‘could do with a little break’.

‘What happened to Miss Jones?’

The younger woman-a girl, really- looked up from her coffee spoon with empty, surprised eyes. ‘I think she transferred to Leeds. They didn’t tell me why, though.’

‘She’s got a divorced sister there and some nieces, she probably wanted to spend more time with them.’

Chloe nodded thoughtfully. ‘That explains the stuff I heard in the office, then. They were saying she left to be with a girl...’

Ruth laughed.

Chloe looked slightly more relaxed and continued, ‘Do you miss her? I don’t mean like that, butyouknow?’

‘She was a kind hearted woman. Yes, I miss her.’

Ruth’s coffee had begun to lose some of its steam. She cautiously took a few sips -ugh, still burns-before looking at the female in front of her again. Really, how old was Chloe? Twenty?

‘I’m curious...why did you want to meet me here?’

‘I wanted to meet you in a neutral place and our offices are horrible. The ceilings are all cracking apart and the pipes rattle when we’re trying to phone people.’

‘I suppose you’ve got a list of things to ask.’

‘Um.’ Embarrassed, Chloe moved her mug towards her mouth. ‘I...’

‘It’s alright’, Ruth added with a dry smile that sharpened the wrinkles in her round face. ‘You’re here to do your job. Unfortunately, my sister can only stay for another hour and it takes twenty minutes to get back home, so I’m afraid we’ll have to do this quickly.’

A very bemused Chloe nodded. ‘I understand...How’s your son at the moment?’

One week later

Chloe had managed to look more nervous on her second meeting with Ruth than she had on the first. This was probably something to do with the loud shouting that had been emanating from the house while she patiently waited on the doorstep.

The area she was in was a nicer one than that of the last family she had visited. They were a nice bunch; a brother and sister living with their mum, who had just suffered her second stroke and needed to be put into a hospice. Their meeting had been every bit as miserable as it sounded, with the sister in tears and the Mum left sitting on a moth-eaten armchair with drool falling out of her mouth.

No, that had not been a particularly validating trip for Chloe to make. At least Ruth was still a healthy lady; the memory of their first meeting still left her with a strong emotional mix of warmth and fear. At least she hadn’t done too badly for herself; the house was one of those nice little semi-detacheds that had filled this section of Manchester a few years ago, back when Chloe had been a sulky teenager living in Leicester with her squabbling parents.

While Chloe was thinking, the sounds had become more muffled. The door was suddenly opened by a woman with hair tied into a scruffy bun at the back of her neck, the grey roots just beginning to show underneath the blonde hair dye. She had thick spectacles in a slender square frame and traces of red lipstick around her mouth.

‘Chloe, isn’t it? Come in, Ruth’ll be down in a minute’, the woman said, turning around a few seconds later to dash up the stairs.

The social worker paused for a second, wondering if she had even seen anyone, before walking into the house and carefully closing the door behind her. She paused for a moment to listen but there seemed to be nothing left to hear. There was a broad flight of stairs directly in front of her that led up to a room with a closed door. Slightly to her left was a hallway, with some childish marks on the powder pink walls and a pair of brown stilettos cast aside on the carpet. More closed doors, a couple of watercolour prints, and then a half-open doorway at the end with a hint of a chrome hob glinting at her.

A kitchen, which meant tea. She didn’t need professional training to know that tea was almost always welcome, and it would be something better to do than sitting awkwardly on a chair waiting. So Chloe walked around the kitchen, busily opening battered cupboard doors and switching on an electric kettle, until Ruth finally came downstairs.

She looked a little fresher than the social worker had expected her to. The bags under her eyes were slightly deeper and her hair probably hadn’t been combed, but her movements were as quick as ever as she opened cupboards searching for cups.

‘What happened today?’

‘He was upset. The case isn’t going well; Avery was resisting arrest. Very energetically.’

The kettle boiled.

‘He ran off in the end, so there’s just a report to be made soon. I’ve given him some paper and blunt pencils, so he should be fine,’ Ruth explained as she reached over to switch the hob off.

‘Is this still his general state?’

‘Yes, most of the time.’ Chloe put some teabags into the pot and filled it.

‘No milk, thanks, she doesn’t like it in tea... Sometimes he looks at us like he knows us and we can have little talks and remind him of who he is.’

‘But most of the time, he considers himself to be in his own world.’

‘His post-traumatic amnesia world...’ Ruth frowned as she touched the teapot’s side.

‘That makes sense. As a police officer, he wants to feel like he was needed for something...’ Failing to notice the dark glare and stiffened spine of the woman next to her she continued, ‘Who opened the door for me? She didn’t stay long enough to mention her name.’

‘My sister Heather MacAvoy. She did not stay as she had to help me restrain my son from trying to arrest a bureau for obstructing the course of justice!’

The expression on Ruth’s face prevented even the tiniest of smiles from appearing on Chloe’s.

‘And how’, the older woman continued, ‘are you planning to explain why he now thinks he’s a DI in 1973? Why he has a set of brand new colleagues and different cases every freaking day?’

Pause.

Chloe was leaning against a cupboard. She suddenly realised somewhere in the back of her mind where those strange bumps behind her legs had come from- human fists.

She gulped. ’Mrs Tyler, I can’t explain that. Sorry about what I said earlier.’

Ruth nodded at her gently after a few more moments of tension.’ Apology accepted. Tactlessness is useless in your profession, though. Weren’t you taught how to speak to others?’

Chloe felt a simple relief when Heather walked into the room. Looking at the older women in front of her with their wrinkles and tired faces, she wondered why she had felt so scared a moment ago.

Heather warmly smiled at her while holding out her hand. ‘I’m sorry about running off earlier; I’m not usually so rude. I’m Heather.’

They shook hands. ‘Mrs Tyler told me who you are. I’m Chloe Finch, Sam and Mrs Tyler’s social worker.’

‘Ah, you’re the new one! How do you like your job so far?’

Ruth had turned away from the others as she carefully examined her tea preparations. At this point, she interrupted with a terse, ‘Shall we move?’

The sitting room was small but well furnished. This time, Chloe noticed more of the little details; the dents in the sofa legs and wooden mantelpiece as well as the cracked glass in the reproductions.

Heather carefully ignored the tense atmosphere as she made small talk, asking Chloe about her boyfriend and where she lived.

Eventually, Ruth looked up from her drink to speak. ‘Would you like to meet Sam now?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘We’ll come with you,’ Heather quickly added as she drained the dregs from her own cup and placed it on the saucer.

They walked up the carpeted stairs to the room straight ahead with the closed door that Chloe had noticed earlier. Ruth opened the door to reveal an ordinary looking bedroom, which contained an old fashioned poster bed with pine wood legs. These legs were scrawled all over with reds and browns and greens and blues.

Glancing around as she walked into the room, Chloe noticed that the colours were scattered everywhere, with random patches of scribbling on the walls and mismatched furniture. The bed quilt had bunched up underneath Manchester United covers, leaving a thick downy mass on one side and a loose cover on the other.

There was a rattling sound from a cupboard. As Heather briskly moved towards it, a man popped out from behind the cupboard with a loud laugh.

Man was probably not the right word to use. He had short brown hair which was starting to go a little at the front and lines around his mouth which reminded her that Sam was in his thirties. But the rest of him…

He was squashing a stuffed clown in one hand, its blue button eyes glinting up at the room. In his other hand there were little wax crayons, the sort that Chloe’s niece Hayley was always playing with when she came round on a Saturday afternoon.

'Hello, I’m Chloe', she said with a sideways glance at Ruth. The older woman's expression remained blank.

'My name is Sam. I'm your friend!’ he cheerfully added, dropping the clown onto the floor and holding out a hand. She held hers out; he grabbed it and kissed her short fingers.

'Charmed' he giggled, moving his head to one side to look at her. For a moment, Chloe thought that she saw something else in his eyes-an expression that she couldn't quite place. She saw the tears in his shirt and the small cuts on his hands.

Another moment and he was gone. ‘Annie! Where's that witness you were talking to a minute ago?' he called out to one of the bed posts before jogging out of the room.

There was a silent pause, with the sisters communicating through glances until 'Gene, what the fuck d'you think you're doing?' floated up the stairs. Heather snorted and walked out of the room to find Sam, leaving the still silent Ruth and an embarrassed Chloe behind.

Ruth stood next to a small potted plant with thick, spoon-shaped leaves that had somehow managed to survive in Sam’s bedroom. Some of them had fallen off and their yellow settled next to her fingertips. Chloe watched her absently pick at them, turning, twisting and squashing into little pulps.

Finally, Chloe broke the silence.

‘I’m sorry for being so tactless.’

‘Apology accepted… But please tell me that they haven’t sent you to visit anyone else yet.’

‘I couldn’t say that.’

‘No, no, I suppose that would be too much to ask.’

‘I really am sorry, and I’ll try to be careful’, Chloe said with an earnest expression in her eyes. ‘My mouth runs ahead of the rest of me half the time, all my friends have said so. I’m here to make sure that both you and Sam are getting the best possible care and support, not to make you feel bad for looking after him!’

‘Fair enough’, Ruth replied with a slightly quirky expression on her face. ‘But it’s been three months already, and the doctors said that he should come out of his amnesia soon.’

‘Brain injuries are always such difficult things, though…’ Chloe began before deciding to keep quiet.

They heard a scream from downstairs.

Heather followed her nephew as he stalked round the living room. He had always been her favourite, ever since he was a little boy happily running around with a policeman’s hat on his head. He had her sense of the… details, Heather liked to call it, though both her ex-husbands had described it with more unflattering terms.

Sam held up a tiny vase, carefully inspecting the base. Well, it made for a good policeman, that sense of the smaller things in life. She had been-no, still was- so proud of him when he passed his tests, when he was promoted... They all were proud of him.

He placed the vase back onto the mantelpiece with a final incongruous lick before moving onto the squishy armchair. As he bent down to examine the seat, he dropped onto the floor.

Sam held his aunt’s hand and stared at her red nails for a little less than a minute.

Then he started moaning again. ‘Annie no! No! Don’t do that don’t do that don’t run in there don’t...arrrgh...arrrggh...’

He had let go of her hand by now, clutching onto his own face with his hands as he shrieked and rolled on the carpet. He was moving his head dangerously close to the feet of the coffee table, then another curve to the left.

Heather carefully shifted Sam's head and glanced at the ceiling. She hoped that the shouting was loud enough to be heard. She hoped that it wasn't loud enough to be heard.

'Arrgh', he continued to scream, twisting in the grip of her strong, wrinkled hands before opening his eyes to stare at her red nails.

He paused, gasping for breath. ‘Auntie’, he whispered a moment later. ‘Auntie Heather…it hurts.’

Then he fainted.

One month later

Chloe silently accepted the tea. Today it was peppermint that Sam had pulled out of a cupboard when ‘searching for evidence.’ It tasted of dust and tiny dead things that collected in the back of her throat.

She gulped before looking at the woman in front of her.

‘I’m afraid it’s bad news.’

‘He’s... going?’

‘Next week.’

Ruth sank back into her armchair as her eyes developed a blank expression. Above them, Sam shouted ‘Found it Gene! Now who’s paying up?’

‘I’ll miss him, you know’, the whisper came.

Chloe stayed there as her mobile beeped and was silenced. She stayed while her other appointments became missed appointments and Sam ran around swigging from an empty squash bottle.

When Chloe left Ruth’s house that evening, she walked to her car and drove down a few streets before crying a little.

Then she switched her phone on again to check her messages.

‘1973’

Sam was sitting at his desk doing the paperwork while his colleagues milled around, smoking cigarettes, playing darts and generally acting like they were in a pub rather than a police station. Sam raised his head, looked around, and didn’t even bother hiding his sigh. They didn’t even seem to be bothered about failing to arrest Avery. Well, the Guv would be here soon enough to put them inline

He glanced up a few minutes later as the swing doors on the opposite end of the room swished open. WPC Annie Cartwright walked through the doors, calmly ignoring the wolf whistles and lewd comments about her uniform from the all-male crowd. She kept a slight smile on her face while moving towards Sam and it grew when she reached his desk. From Sam’s seated position, her curly brown hair frizzed out around her face and glowed in the fuzzy halogen lights.

Annie shyly began, ‘I was just talking to Gwen, and she says there’s a nice new restaurant in town. The chef’s really good, makes a nice salmon dish. ’

’ And you need someone to go with you?’, he smiled up at her with a coy expression.

Annie fumbled slightly with the hat she held in front of her. ‘That would be really nice...If you’re not busy or anything, of course...’

‘There’s just all this...’he waved a hand at the desk coated with beige coloured folders filled with reports and paperwork. ‘Yeah, why not? Anything would be better than the food in the canteen...’

‘Is tonight ok?’

‘’Course. Get away from my room for a few hours,’ he said, pulling a face.

One of the men on the other side of the room shouted out, ‘’Ey, you’ll have to tell us what she’s like to shag!’

They both blushed a little while the other men cackled knowingly, before Annie turned around and called back, ’You’ll have to bring in your new girl as well, Ray, so we can all know what you’re like too!’ Ray glanced around him at the other men, who were now chuckling at him, and uncomfortably shifted, in his seat while drawing on his cigarette. Another man with dark floppy hair seemed torn between laughter and sympathy; he settled for apologetic glances at the three.

Sam and Annie glanced at each other again before Annie walked off through the gaggle of plain clothes officers. The little smile stayed on Sam’s face until his boss Gene stormed in to ask how many illegals he had taken that morning.

The women didn’t appear for the rest of his day, as he wrote up, labelled, alphabetised and organised. There were no random hands patting his back or disembodied voices asking him asking him to stop when he was arresting a nonce or having another drunken punch-up with Gene.

The restaurant was really nice, too. Sam had just finished his starter of prawn salad and was waiting for the main course. Annie had put some effort in; she looked gorgeous in a long brown dress.

She grinned at him over her wine, before suddenly looking more serious. Leaning in, she quietly said, ‘How are the voices?’

Sam thought that this was a large shift in the conversation after talking about Annie’s sister-in-law’s geraniums, but tried to not let it show as he answered ‘Didn’t hear anything today. They’re usually angrier when I’m working with Gene and the lads. It’s when they cry that it gets to me, though.’ He shuddered slightly at the memories, and then quietly continued. ‘Sometimes I think it’s my Mum and Auntie Heather talking to me’.

Annie coldly stared at him. ‘You delusional freak,’ she snapped as she pulled a note out of her handbag and threw it onto the table. Some of the other customers noticed Sam was too shocked to stop her from walking out of the restaurant, but he recovered himself enough to run after her.

‘Annie, what is it? What did I do?’

She turned around.

‘I...don’t quite know, Sam...I’m sorry. Maybe it was the heat or something in the wine ...’

They moved towards each other.

‘Oh, Sam...’ came the sad voice. Annie was flickering in an out of his vision, like the image on a broken television screen. ‘Sam’, the voice pleaded again ’Wake up’.

He reached out to touch the flickering image on the shoulder. As soon as his fingers came into contact with her dress, she looked normal again and glanced down at his hand. Embarrassed about touching her and relieved that she now looked normal, he let go.

The voice that came from her lips wasn’t Annie’s, though.

‘Sam, why won’t you finish eating? Aren’t you hungry? You used to like prawn salad...why are you quiet?’

‘I’m not hungry, and I don’t want to listen to you any more. I’m trying to make a life here, and you’re stuffing it up!’

To Sam’s horror, the figure in front of him began to distort again. This time, Annie was flickering into something different-something shorter, with brighter hair that glinted underneath the street lamps’ orange glow.

This time, he put both hands on her shoulders. Ignoring the vague thought of ‘What the fuck?’ in the back of his mind, he shouted ’Come back! Come back, stop flickering! ’

A couple on the other side of the street stared at them, before shaking their heads-druggies- and walking on.

The vision, or hallucination, or whatever the hell it was, moved its own arms forward to cup its-no, her- hands underneath Sam’s elbows.

‘Please, Sam! Please! They’re taking you away from me!’ she claimed, flickering into place as someone he vaguely recognised. Was she a neighbour? Or a family friend?

She moved closer to him. ‘No’, he said, trying to be calm.’ You aren’t even real.’

The figure solidified into what it should be, what it should have been all along, into Annie.

‘Oh, thank God’, Sam all but shouted as he pulled her towards him in an embrace and closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, something was very wrong. There was a powder blue house wall in front of him, with some doodlings of policemen-Gene? Ray? scattered over fact, he seemed to be inside a house instead of outside. His instinct came to the fore as he moved back.

His eyes widened as he examined his new location. There was some furniture that was in a weird pale wood and looked battered. The floor was covered with carpet, and there was a prawn salad in front of him.

He almost remembered it.

It smelt like his mum’s house. There was a faint tint of furniture polish and potpourri, as well as her Sunday roasts. With parsnips.

There was his mother in front of him, staring back with tears falling from her eyes and an expression... oh, that expression, he hadn’t seen it since his dad left and never came back.

In he was four.

Which would mean...?

No.

Ruth watched her son’s eyes as they lost all expression. She watched as his body collapsed onto the floor and lay there. She couldn’t watch him as she shook him and slapped his face or when she sat by him on the floor holding her hand up to her mouth and screaming. There were too many tears in her eyes.

Sam looked at the confused woman in front of him. They were back on the pavement in 1973. He took a deep breath, smelling the polluted air, Annie’s perfume, and feeling the rough pavement underneath his body.

‘What the hell just happened?’ she angrily asked as she held an arm out to help him up.

‘I’m not sure but I know it’s alright now. They’ll never come back again.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I won’t ever let them.’ Sam replied as he draped a leather-clad arm around her shoulders.

Annie smiled at him, and this smile was from the depths of her imaginary heart.

I have a small request; if you’re planning to comment, could you please avoid s2 finale spoilers (or mark them clearly). Whether you choose to review or not, thank you for reading :)

Title: Coffee and crayons

Author: mstreesap

Fandom and characters: Life on Mars. Sam Tyler, Ruth Tyler, OC

Rating: ‘Green Cortina’/PG-13

Prompt and spoilers: Prompt 47-‘He waxes desperate with imagination’ Hamlet, Act I Scene IV. Spoilers for episodes 1.1 and 1.8 (series one finale) with small ones for 2.4.

Summary: What if events had gone differently after the car crashed into Sam Tyler? A.U after 1.1.

Ruth Tyler looked at the stranger in front of her with curiosity. The woman, who had introduced herself as Chloe, had hidden the same emotion underneath a warm smile.

They bought their coffees, Ruth choosing a simple Americano with milk and one sugar while Chloe picked a decaf cappuccino and sprinkled nutmeg over the top.

There was an awkward pause for a moment as they looked at the empty tables, before Ruth subtly gestured at the freshly vacated one next to the window and Chloe nodded before following.

The view was simply that of a large shopping district in the better part of Manchester. At that time of the morning there were only young mothers with their pushchairs and retired people. Ruth knew that she looked the same age as any of those ladies with their walking sticks and square tartan shopping trolleys. What would the woman stirring her drink in front of her look like to those eyes outside that she had learned to ignore so long ago? Her daughter, her granddaughter?

She turned her distracted mind back towards the present, to the raw solid facts. She was a woman who had been invited out for a coffee by her newly assigned social worker as she ‘could do with a little break’.

‘What happened to Miss Jones?’

The younger woman-a girl, really- looked up from her coffee spoon with empty, surprised eyes. ‘I think she transferred to Leeds. They didn’t tell me why, though.’

‘She’s got a divorced sister there and some nieces, she probably wanted to spend more time with them.’

Chloe nodded thoughtfully. ‘That explains the stuff I heard in the office, then. They were saying she left to be with a girl...’

Ruth laughed.

Chloe looked slightly more relaxed and continued, ‘Do you miss her? I don’t mean like that, butyouknow?’

‘She was a kind hearted woman. Yes, I miss her.’

Ruth’s coffee had begun to lose some of its steam. She cautiously took a few sips -ugh, still burns-before looking at the female in front of her again. Really, how old was Chloe? Twenty?

‘I’m curious...why did you want to meet me here?’

‘I wanted to meet you in a neutral place and our offices are horrible. The ceilings are all cracking apart and the pipes rattle when we’re trying to phone people.’

‘I suppose you’ve got a list of things to ask.’

‘Um.’ Embarrassed, Chloe moved her mug towards her mouth. ‘I...’

‘It’s alright’, Ruth added with a dry smile that sharpened the wrinkles in her round face. ‘You’re here to do your job. Unfortunately, my sister can only stay for another hour and it takes twenty minutes to get back home, so I’m afraid we’ll have to do this quickly.’

A very bemused Chloe nodded. ‘I understand...How’s your son at the moment?’

One week later

Chloe had managed to look more nervous on her second meeting with Ruth than she had on the first. This was probably something to do with the loud shouting that had been emanating from the house while she patiently waited on the doorstep.

The area she was in was a nicer one than that of the last family she had visited. They were a nice bunch; a brother and sister living with their mum, who had just suffered her second stroke and needed to be put into a hospice. Their meeting had been every bit as miserable as it sounded, with the sister in tears and the Mum left sitting on a moth-eaten armchair with drool falling out of her mouth.

No, that had not been a particularly validating trip for Chloe to make. At least Ruth was still a healthy lady; the memory of their first meeting still left her with a strong emotional mix of warmth and fear. At least she hadn’t done too badly for herself; the house was one of those nice little semi-detacheds that had filled this section of Manchester a few years ago, back when Chloe had been a sulky teenager living in Leicester with her squabbling parents.

While Chloe was thinking, the sounds had become more muffled. The door was suddenly opened by a woman with hair tied into a scruffy bun at the back of her neck, the grey roots just beginning to show underneath the blonde hair dye. She had thick spectacles in a slender square frame and traces of red lipstick around her mouth.

‘Chloe, isn’t it? Come in, Ruth’ll be down in a minute’, the woman said, turning around a few seconds later to dash up the stairs.

The social worker paused for a second, wondering if she had even seen anyone, before walking into the house and carefully closing the door behind her. She paused for a moment to listen but there seemed to be nothing left to hear. There was a broad flight of stairs directly in front of her that led up to a room with a closed door. Slightly to her left was a hallway, with some childish marks on the powder pink walls and a pair of brown stilettos cast aside on the carpet. More closed doors, a couple of watercolour prints, and then a half-open doorway at the end with a hint of a chrome hob glinting at her.

A kitchen, which meant tea. She didn’t need professional training to know that tea was almost always welcome, and it would be something better to do than sitting awkwardly on a chair waiting. So Chloe walked around the kitchen, busily opening battered cupboard doors and switching on an electric kettle, until Ruth finally came downstairs.

She looked a little fresher than the social worker had expected her to. The bags under her eyes were slightly deeper and her hair probably hadn’t been combed, but her movements were as quick as ever as she opened cupboards searching for cups.

‘What happened today?’

‘He was upset. The case isn’t going well; Avery was resisting arrest. Very energetically.’

The kettle boiled.

‘He ran off in the end, so there’s just a report to be made soon. I’ve given him some paper and blunt pencils, so he should be fine,’ Ruth explained as she reached over to switch the hob off.

‘Is this still his general state?’

‘Yes, most of the time.’ Chloe put some teabags into the pot and filled it.

‘No milk, thanks, she doesn’t like it in tea... Sometimes he looks at us like he knows us and we can have little talks and remind him of who he is.’

‘But most of the time, he considers himself to be in his own world.’

‘His post-traumatic amnesia world...’ Ruth frowned as she touched the teapot’s side.

‘That makes sense. As a police officer, he wants to feel like he was needed for something...’ Failing to notice the dark glare and stiffened spine of the woman next to her she continued, ‘Who opened the door for me? She didn’t stay long enough to mention her name.’

‘My sister Heather MacAvoy. She did not stay as she had to help me restrain my son from trying to arrest a bureau for obstructing the course of justice!’

The expression on Ruth’s face prevented even the tiniest of smiles from appearing on Chloe’s.

‘And how’, the older woman continued, ‘are you planning to explain why he now thinks he’s a DI in 1973? Why he has a set of brand new colleagues and different cases every freaking day?’

Pause.

Chloe was leaning against a cupboard. She suddenly realised somewhere in the back of her mind where those strange bumps behind her legs had come from- human fists.

She gulped. ’Mrs Tyler, I can’t explain that. Sorry about what I said earlier.’

Ruth nodded at her gently after a few more moments of tension.’ Apology accepted. Tactlessness is useless in your profession, though. Weren’t you taught how to speak to others?’

Chloe felt a simple relief when Heather walked into the room. Looking at the older women in front of her with their wrinkles and tired faces, she wondered why she had felt so scared a moment ago.

Heather warmly smiled at her while holding out her hand. ‘I’m sorry about running off earlier; I’m not usually so rude. I’m Heather.’

They shook hands. ‘Mrs Tyler told me who you are. I’m Chloe Finch, Sam and Mrs Tyler’s social worker.’

‘Ah, you’re the new one! How do you like your job so far?’

Ruth had turned away from the others as she carefully examined her tea preparations. At this point, she interrupted with a terse, ‘Shall we move?’

The sitting room was small but well furnished. This time, Chloe noticed more of the little details; the dents in the sofa legs and wooden mantelpiece as well as the cracked glass in the reproductions.

Heather carefully ignored the tense atmosphere as she made small talk, asking Chloe about her boyfriend and where she lived.

Eventually, Ruth looked up from her drink to speak. ‘Would you like to meet Sam now?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘We’ll come with you,’ Heather quickly added as she drained the dregs from her own cup and placed it on the saucer.

They walked up the carpeted stairs to the room straight ahead with the closed door that Chloe had noticed earlier. Ruth opened the door to reveal an ordinary looking bedroom, which contained an old fashioned poster bed with pine wood legs. These legs were scrawled all over with reds and browns and greens and blues.

Glancing around as she walked into the room, Chloe noticed that the colours were scattered everywhere, with random patches of scribbling on the walls and mismatched furniture. The bed quilt had bunched up underneath Manchester United covers, leaving a thick downy mass on one side and a loose cover on the other.

There was a rattling sound from a cupboard. As Heather briskly moved towards it, a man popped out from behind the cupboard with a loud laugh.

Man was probably not the right word to use. He had short brown hair which was starting to go a little at the front and lines around his mouth which reminded her that Sam was in his thirties. But the rest of him…

He was squashing a stuffed clown in one hand, its blue button eyes glinting up at the room. In his other hand there were little wax crayons, the sort that Chloe’s niece Hayley was always playing with when she came round on a Saturday afternoon.

'Hello, I’m Chloe', she said with a sideways glance at Ruth. The older woman's expression remained blank.

'My name is Sam. I'm your friend!’ he cheerfully added, dropping the clown onto the floor and holding out a hand. She held hers out; he grabbed it and kissed her short fingers.

'Charmed' he giggled, moving his head to one side to look at her. For a moment, Chloe thought that she saw something else in his eyes-an expression that she couldn't quite place. She saw the tears in his shirt and the small cuts on his hands.

Another moment and he was gone. ‘Annie! Where's that witness you were talking to a minute ago?' he called out to one of the bed posts before jogging out of the room.

There was a silent pause, with the sisters communicating through glances until 'Gene, what the fuck d'you think you're doing?' floated up the stairs. Heather snorted and walked out of the room to find Sam, leaving the still silent Ruth and an embarrassed Chloe behind.

Ruth stood next to a small potted plant with thick, spoon-shaped leaves that had somehow managed to survive in Sam’s bedroom. Some of them had fallen off and their yellow settled next to her fingertips. Chloe watched her absently pick at them, turning, twisting and squashing into little pulps.

Finally, Chloe broke the silence.

‘I’m sorry for being so tactless.’

‘Apology accepted… But please tell me that they haven’t sent you to visit anyone else yet.’

‘I couldn’t say that.’

‘No, no, I suppose that would be too much to ask.’

‘I really am sorry, and I’ll try to be careful’, Chloe said with an earnest expression in her eyes. ‘My mouth runs ahead of the rest of me half the time, all my friends have said so. I’m here to make sure that both you and Sam are getting the best possible care and support, not to make you feel bad for looking after him!’

‘Fair enough’, Ruth replied with a slightly quirky expression on her face. ‘But it’s been three months already, and the doctors said that he should come out of his amnesia soon.’

‘Brain injuries are always such difficult things, though…’ Chloe began before deciding to keep quiet.

They heard a scream from downstairs.

Heather followed her nephew as he stalked round the living room. He had always been her favourite, ever since he was a little boy happily running around with a policeman’s hat on his head. He had her sense of the… details, Heather liked to call it, though both her ex-husbands had described it with more unflattering terms.

Sam held up a tiny vase, carefully inspecting the base. Well, it made for a good policeman, that sense of the smaller things in life. She had been-no, still was- so proud of him when he passed his tests, when he was promoted... They all were proud of him.

He placed the vase back onto the mantelpiece with a final incongruous lick before moving onto the squishy armchair. As he bent down to examine the seat, he dropped onto the floor.

Sam held his aunt’s hand and stared at her red nails for a little less than a minute.

Then he started moaning again. ‘Annie no! No! Don’t do that don’t do that don’t run in there don’t...arrrgh...arrrggh...’

He had let go of her hand by now, clutching onto his own face with his hands as he shrieked and rolled on the carpet. He was moving his head dangerously close to the feet of the coffee table, then another curve to the left.

Heather carefully shifted Sam's head and glanced at the ceiling. She hoped that the shouting was loud enough to be heard. She hoped that it wasn't loud enough to be heard.

'Arrgh', he continued to scream, twisting in the grip of her strong, wrinkled hands before opening his eyes to stare at her red nails.

He paused, gasping for breath. ‘Auntie’, he whispered a moment later. ‘Auntie Heather…it hurts.’

Then he fainted.

One month later

Chloe silently accepted the tea. Today it was peppermint that Sam had pulled out of a cupboard when ‘searching for evidence.’ It tasted of dust and tiny dead things that collected in the back of her throat.

She gulped before looking at the woman in front of her.

‘I’m afraid it’s bad news.’

‘He’s... going?’

‘Next week.’

Ruth sank back into her armchair as her eyes developed a blank expression. Above them, Sam shouted ‘Found it Gene! Now who’s paying up?’

‘I’ll miss him, you know’, the whisper came.

Chloe stayed there as her mobile beeped and was silenced. She stayed while her other appointments became missed appointments and Sam ran around swigging from an empty squash bottle.

When Chloe left Ruth’s house that evening, she walked to her car and drove down a few streets before crying a little.

Then she switched her phone on again to check her messages.

‘1973’

Sam was sitting at his desk doing the paperwork while his colleagues milled around, smoking cigarettes, playing darts and generally acting like they were in a pub rather than a police station. Sam raised his head, looked around, and didn’t even bother hiding his sigh. They didn’t even seem to be bothered about failing to arrest Avery. Well, the Guv would be here soon enough to put them inline

He glanced up a few minutes later as the swing doors on the opposite end of the room swished open. WPC Annie Cartwright walked through the doors, calmly ignoring the wolf whistles and lewd comments about her uniform from the all-male crowd. She kept a slight smile on her face while moving towards Sam and it grew when she reached his desk. From Sam’s seated position, her curly brown hair frizzed out around her face and glowed in the fuzzy halogen lights.

Annie shyly began, ‘I was just talking to Gwen, and she says there’s a nice new restaurant in town. The chef’s really good, makes a nice salmon dish. ’

’ And you need someone to go with you?’, he smiled up at her with a coy expression.

Annie fumbled slightly with the hat she held in front of her. ‘That would be really nice...If you’re not busy or anything, of course...’

‘There’s just all this...’he waved a hand at the desk coated with beige coloured folders filled with reports and paperwork. ‘Yeah, why not? Anything would be better than the food in the canteen...’

‘Is tonight ok?’

‘’Course. Get away from my room for a few hours,’ he said, pulling a face.

One of the men on the other side of the room shouted out, ‘’Ey, you’ll have to tell us what she’s like to shag!’

They both blushed a little while the other men cackled knowingly, before Annie turned around and called back, ’You’ll have to bring in your new girl as well, Ray, so we can all know what you’re like too!’ Ray glanced around him at the other men, who were now chuckling at him, and uncomfortably shifted, in his seat while drawing on his cigarette. Another man with dark floppy hair seemed torn between laughter and sympathy; he settled for apologetic glances at the three.

Sam and Annie glanced at each other again before Annie walked off through the gaggle of plain clothes officers. The little smile stayed on Sam’s face until his boss Gene stormed in to ask how many illegals he had taken that morning.

The women didn’t appear for the rest of his day, as he wrote up, labelled, alphabetised and organised. There were no random hands patting his back or disembodied voices asking him asking him to stop when he was arresting a nonce or having another drunken punch-up with Gene.

The restaurant was really nice, too. Sam had just finished his starter of prawn salad and was waiting for the main course. Annie had put some effort in; she looked gorgeous in a long brown dress.

She grinned at him over her wine, before suddenly looking more serious. Leaning in, she quietly said, ‘How are the voices?’

Sam thought that this was a large shift in the conversation after talking about Annie’s sister-in-law’s geraniums, but tried to not let it show as he answered ‘Didn’t hear anything today. They’re usually angrier when I’m working with Gene and the lads. It’s when they cry that it gets to me, though.’ He shuddered slightly at the memories, and then quietly continued. ‘Sometimes I think it’s my Mum and Auntie Heather talking to me’.

Annie coldly stared at him. ‘You delusional freak,’ she snapped as she pulled a note out of her handbag and threw it onto the table. Some of the other customers noticed Sam was too shocked to stop her from walking out of the restaurant, but he recovered himself enough to run after her.

‘Annie, what is it? What did I do?’

She turned around.

‘I...don’t quite know, Sam...I’m sorry. Maybe it was the heat or something in the wine ...’

They moved towards each other.

‘Oh, Sam...’ came the sad voice. Annie was flickering in an out of his vision, like the image on a broken television screen. ‘Sam’, the voice pleaded again ’Wake up’.

He reached out to touch the flickering image on the shoulder. As soon as his fingers came into contact with her dress, she looked normal again and glanced down at his hand. Embarrassed about touching her and relieved that she now looked normal, he let go.

The voice that came from her lips wasn’t Annie’s, though.

‘Sam, why won’t you finish eating? Aren’t you hungry? You used to like prawn salad...why are you quiet?’

‘I’m not hungry, and I don’t want to listen to you any more. I’m trying to make a life here, and you’re stuffing it up!’

To Sam’s horror, the figure in front of him began to distort again. This time, Annie was flickering into something different-something shorter, with brighter hair that glinted underneath the street lamps’ orange glow.

This time, he put both hands on her shoulders. Ignoring the vague thought of ‘What the fuck?’ in the back of his mind, he shouted ’Come back! Come back, stop flickering! ’

A couple on the other side of the street stared at them, before shaking their heads-druggies- and walking on.

The vision, or hallucination, or whatever the hell it was, moved its own arms forward to cup its-no, her- hands underneath Sam’s elbows.

‘Please, Sam! Please! They’re taking you away from me!’ she claimed, flickering into place as someone he vaguely recognised. Was she a neighbour? Or a family friend?

She moved closer to him. ‘No’, he said, trying to be calm.’ You aren’t even real.’

The figure solidified into what it should be, what it should have been all along, into Annie.

‘Oh, thank God’, Sam all but shouted as he pulled her towards him in an embrace and closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, something was very wrong. There was a powder blue house wall in front of him, with some doodlings of policemen-Gene? Ray? scattered over fact, he seemed to be inside a house instead of outside. His instinct came to the fore as he moved back.

His eyes widened as he examined his new location. There was some furniture that was in a weird pale wood and looked battered. The floor was covered with carpet, and there was a prawn salad in front of him.

He almost remembered it.

It smelt like his mum’s house. There was a faint tint of furniture polish and potpourri, as well as her Sunday roasts. With parsnips.

There was his mother in front of him, staring back with tears falling from her eyes and an expression... oh, that expression, he hadn’t seen it since his dad left and never came back.

In he was four.

Which would mean...?

No.

Ruth watched her son’s eyes as they lost all expression. She watched as his body collapsed onto the floor and lay there. She couldn’t watch him as she shook him and slapped his face or when she sat by him on the floor holding her hand up to her mouth and screaming. There were too many tears in her eyes.

Sam looked at the confused woman in front of him. They were back on the pavement in 1973. He took a deep breath, smelling the polluted air, Annie’s perfume, and feeling the rough pavement underneath his body.

‘What the hell just happened?’ she angrily asked as she held an arm out to help him up.

‘I’m not sure but I know it’s alright now. They’ll never come back again.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I won’t ever let them.’ Sam replied as he draped a leather-clad arm around her shoulders.

Annie smiled at him, and this smile was from the depths of her imaginary heart.

Thank you for reading; reviews are always welcome.