vix_spes

It had been a bad case. The ones involving children always were, but this had been a particularly gruelling case and they had all found it tough, even Mansell who was inordinately soft-hearted for all his gruff exterior. Meg had been in tears at her desk more than once and they had all tactfully not commented when Kent had rushed away from one of the crime scenes to be sick in the nearest bin. Chandler had become hardened to gruesome sights in the years that he’d been stationed at Whitechapel but even his stomach had turned.

Still, they had managed to close the case through grim determination more than anything else. Any other case they would have celebrated with a team outing to the pub, but they were all just so drained that, for once, Chandler broke his own rules and poured them all a measure of scotch from the bottle in his office. They had all knocked it back in silence before going their own separate ways.

Chandler had stayed long enough to finish the paperwork before he headed home. He had struggled to settle though, and he had found himself wandering around his flat, nothing able to hold his attention. Images from the case were lodged in his brain and he couldn’t shake them, however much he tried. He considered one of the myriad bottles of spirit in his kitchen cupboard before abandoning the idea; he’d relied on alcohol once before and he didn’t intend to do it again. He didn’t want to become one of those police officers, needing the liquid support in order to get through each and every day. Instead, he had sent texts to the rest of his team checking in on them and, finally admitting to himself what he had wanted to do from the beginning, got in his car for the now very familiar drive to the Miles family home.

Once there however, Chandler proceeded to sit in his car on the driveway rather than getting out. It had been a compulsion, a need that had driven him here but, now that he was here, Chandler found that he was doubting himself. What right did he have to be here? Yes, he felt compelled to check on the boys and Elizabeth after the case that they had been dealing with, but he didn’t have any right to. Not really. He wasn’t related to them; he was merely their dad’s boss and sort of friend regardless of what Miles and Judy said about him being Elizabeth’s unofficial godfather. Did he go and knock on the door or did he just send Miles a message as he had done with the others?

His decision was taken out of his hands by a rap on the car window and he turned to see Judy standing there, dressed in her pyjamas with a warm dressing gown over the top. Winding down the window, Chandler opened his mouth to speak but was beaten to it by Judy.

“What are you doing sitting in the cold, Joe love? The kids are upstairs asleep and when you’re done checking on them, Ray’s out with his fish. I’ll have a hot toddy waiting for you both when you’re ready. You don’t have to explain a thing, just do what you need to.”