Chapter Fourteen | The End

A week later

"Who's having the margherita with extra ham?"

"Ham?" Rachel repeated, a trace of wine leaking from the corner of her mouth, "You come to a posh Italian restaurant with olives and smoked bloody pancetta and you ask for ham? What sort of idi–"

Kevin winced, "That's mine."

Gill had booked the whole restaurant for this evening. They were seated around a long table, all of the people she'd come to call her friends finally together. Julie would never have let her live it down if she'd found out, but it gave Gill a feeling of deep satisfaction to see them smiling, to know that they were all okay. It made her feel whole like she'd never really felt since she'd first found the sock that definitely wasn't her own in Dave's car.

Gill raised her eyebrows expectantly, and Kevin refilled her glass. He dribbled the last of the wine over her fingers as he tried to flick his wrist in the fancy way he'd seen Julie do once. Before he could open his mouth to stutter an apology, she'd reached out and squeezed his hand across the table, just briefly.

The pressure of her scarlet nails on his wrist made him suddenly ecstatic, until she kicked him under the table and normal service was resumed.

"What do you get if you eat Christmas decorations?" Janet was asking Taisie, who sipped her orange juice from a champagne glass, her eyes large and blue and beautiful like her mother's.

"I dunno."

"Tinsellitis."

Elise laughed, but Taisie rolled her eyes at Andy, as though saying 'Why the hell do you choose to date her? If I could, I'd run away.' Janet leant across and ruffled both her daughters' hair in turn; they both looked embarrassed, but their lips curved into modest smiles.

Gill allowed her eyes the luxury of scanning the faces around the table. Julie was to her left, and Sammy and Orla beside her. After Janet's family, Rachel sat with her brother, who was stuffing his face with chips and garlic bread, and Mitch and his wife sat with Pete and Lee a little further on. After that came Kevin, across from her, blowing bubbles into his coke.

Around the other half were the fangirls. She prided herself in knowing all of their names now, in recognising their accents, their little dimples. Jade sat next to Kevin, with tinsel draped around her neck, tucking into a healthy portion of lasagne and chips.

Gill couldn't quite imagine how it must feel to be free again, after whatever horrors she'd gone through locked up with those bastards. It was funny how you were always told not to get attached to cases, and yet with the fangirls she'd not quite managed that. She'd been emotionally involved from the off, and she didn't think she minded that.

Next to Jade were Lizzie, Hayley and Amy, squashed like sardines (Gill had always liked that simile) two seats between them because somehow there hadn't been quite enough chairs around the table for everyone. After Amy sat Sarah and Jill, who were fighting over the plastic moustache that had come out of a cracker. Sarah apparently won, and she shoved it up her nose with some sort of relish. Melissa sat next to Jill, and Sophie sat next to Melissa, and Melissa sat next to Gabby.

Somehow, some other girls had appeared beside them too, from various places around Britain. Emma, who liked to come up with nicknames for people – "something other than Godzilla, please?" Gill had requested – and Amanda, who liked Shakespeare, and Megan, who had thrown her arms around Rachel the moment she'd seen her. As you did.

Gill had never known the names of the little girls with the rosy cheeks and princess tiaras in her son's primary school class, but she knew the names of these girls. They were nice girls, special girls. Gill could see Melissa leaning across the table to talk to Rachel about working in the police force, and she felt a tinge of pride for these strangers, who weren't really strangers any more. She'd welcome them all onto MIT right now, if they weren't a little bit underage.

Her words echoed in her ears: "Okay, two things. A) why the hell are you filming me? B) I'm not entirely sure what a fungirl is, but I'm not sure it's something that a Detective Chief Inspector should be affiliated with." That seemed like so long ago now. She remembered how funny the girls had found it that she called them fungirls.

She felt suddenly that she was going to miss these girls terribly, when they went back home tomorrow. This felt a bit like a last supper, in a sense. They'd all promised they'd come back to visit, and Gabby had said she'd write Gill some fanmail (she hadn't known what that was, but didn't really like to ask), but it still felt strange, like a big part of her life was suddenly going to disappear. God, stop getting sentimental, Murray, they're just kids.

"I'm going to miss you all," Kevin said suddenly.

"Aw," Jade said, collecting pasta onto her spoon, "We'll miss you too."

Rachel smirked, "You can take him with you, if you like, Jade."

"Shuttup," Kevin muttered through stringy cheese, "Anyway, I think I should give you your presents now."

"Presents? Since when have you got anyone presents?" Janet spluttered.

"Well, it's not very much."

He gave them all carefully wrapped gifts. Some of them were pretty pointless, some of them were downright absurd, but they all meant things, a disposable camera for Amy (she'd finished the film within a few minutes; Gill would be interested to see the results) and a beautiful figurine of a dancer for Hayley. He gave Jade a necklace, and she clasped it in her fingers, and Gill averted her eyes because the girl looked close to tears. Kevin could be so sweet when he wanted to be, couldn't he?

He left Melissa until last, until after they'd all finished their ice cream, and were drinking coffee (and orange juice). Then he passed her a cardboard box with holes in, and a lizard poked its head up when she opened the lid.

"Aw, thank you!"

"Is it a he or a she?" Gabby asked.

Kevin shrugged, "Not sure if you can tell with lizards."

"Is that the animal where it's the man that has the babies?"

"That's seahorses," Gill said dryly, but inside she was laughing. She watched the lizard run up Melissa's arms, watched the happiness on the girls' faces, watched the people she loved around the table, and thought that, all in all, the fungirls had brought a lot of good into her life.

XxXxX

I know this trailed off towards the end, and I know I haven't updated in ages, but I love all of you inexpressible amounts, and I hope this expresses that in some dysfunctional way. Thank you for reading, reviews would mean a lot given that it's the final chapter!x