Ok, last chapter. I hope you enjoyed it. :)

Note: Chapter contains profanity.

Chapter Five

"I want to be scattered here after I die, always loved this place!"

"Mum, don't be so morbid!"

"Richard, I am only saying Darling! This is where Grandma Jane lived all her life, where Grandpa William made her that ring with gold he managed to get from Wales..."

Richard had rolled his eyes and fiddled with the single earring in his left earlobe he had pierced a few months back. Just after he had returned for a few days from Cambridge with that and his hair dyed blond, Richard had slammed his father up against a wall when he came in from a walk to find his mother nursing a broken arm.

The memory of that time always haunted him. Richard had just come in the door after travelling back from Cambridge. He had warned his mother in advance about his appearance but it seemed she had neglected to tell his father. Of course when Richard walked in, there was hell to pay and he had walked out again to cool down. He was so much more hot headed in those days. Not so afraid as he was now of his father, of life.

When he came back in, his father was sat at the kitchen table drinking a cup of tea while his mother was trying to iron clothes with one hand. Richard immediately saw that his mother had a broken arm, and guessing how it had happened, had flown across the room picking his father up out of the chair, clear up off the floor and hard against the nearest wall, his face inches from his father's.

"Don't you EVER lay your fucking hands on my mother again!"

But he stopped when his mother had started screaming at him to let his father go. Glaring at him, Richard had backed off. Eventually, he managed to get his mother to the nearest hospital to have her arm fixed. She wouldn't tell the casualty officer how she had come to break her arm, but Richard did, telling the doctor that his mother had been a victim of domestic abuse. It had earned him a terse response from his mother when he had asked her why the hell she did not make a complaint to the police.

"I won't complain about your father. I married him and made a promise to be faithful, it's my bed I have made to lie in and so that's how it will be.."

Now on a cold windy bluff twenty four years later, Richard looked out over the landscape of the Pennines. It was as wild and as desolate as any place could be, and his mother had loved it here. She had loved Bronte's Wuthering Heights but her 'Heathcliffe' turned out to an abusive bastard who had no heart. At least here, Richard had supposed, his mother could finally be free. There would be no memorial plaque but it would not be needed, the rolling countryside, the Dales and the Moors would be her memorial now.

He reached in to the car and pulled out the simple small casket box containing his mother's ashes. The wind was blowing behind him and sweeping down the hillside. Walking a little way from the car to a small craggy outcrop, Richard shivered a little and not just from the cold breeze. A few minutes later he was standing close to the edge and looked down, briefly entertaining the thought at how it would be so easy for him just fall forward and join her right now, how peaceful for him to spend eternity here too, but dismissed the idea as quickly as it had entered his head.

Then taking a deep breath, he unlocked the box, tipped out its contents and watched as they were swept up by the wind. For a moment the ashes seemed to coalesce in front of him but then were quickly carried down and across the wild Yorkshire countryside.

"Bye Mum." whispered Richard sadly, his heart starting to break in a thousand different ways he could have never imagined.

With one last backward glance, he headed to the car for the long drive back to London.

It had been another baking hot day in Honoré which was evident by the drop in reported crimes. Taking the bleep to be on-call for that night, Camille started to shut down her computer and tidy her desk. Dwayne had already changed out of his uniform and Fidel was pottering about as usual. The sun had not quite set but already the temperature had begun to drop from baking hell to merely stifling.

Suddenly Richard appeared in front of them. He stood in the doorway silently, briefcase in hand.

"Richard! We were not expecting you back until tomorrow morning!" Camille was rising out of her chair. Dwayne and Fidel joined in with their welcome. Richard smiled thinly and made his way to his desk.

"Er, thank you. It's good to be back. I've just come to pick up the keys." Richard said quietly, retrieving them from the desk drawer.

Camille approached him slowly, "Are you alright?" She asked.

Richard looked up at her and the rest of his team.

"We're sorry about your mother Chief." Dwayne added, with Fidel nodding in agreement.

Closing his eyes momentarily, Richard took a deep breath.

"Y..yes, yes, I'm alright. Thank you all...I..I. Look I'll be in the day after tomorrow, have to get over the jet lag you know.."

His head dropped again, he couldn't maintain eye contact with his team, his team who were *glad* to see him back, who cared.

"I..er..I had better go, got a taxi waiting.."

And at that he hurried out of the station, head down, not able to look anyone in the eye because he knew he was beginning to crack.

Camille frowned, her head to one side. He looked pale, drawn, she hated the sadness that was radiating from him and there was nothing she could do about it, nothing at all. Suddenly she snapped her head up. Richard hadn't noticed the small amount of mail that was sitting on his desk. Quickly grabbing the post, she hurried to the door calling out his name, but by the time she got there, the taxi was already turning out of the square and down to the main street.

Walking back in to the station, Camille sighed at her two colleagues, she would go out to the shack and drop the post off in a bit but first needed to close up the station.

Richard entered through the east side door, partially closing it behind him and stepped in to the shack in darkness. The sun had disappeared below the horizon quickly as did happen in the tropics, but Richard bathed in the night for a moment. He jumped a little at the sound of small skittering feet behind him. Reaching back to a light switch and seeing the room illuminated, Richard almost raised a smile as Harry, the small lizard who had almost become a companion appeared on the door frame behind him. It seemed to welcome him back.

"Glad to be..home..yes, this is home now isn't it."

The lizard seemed to regard Richard for a moment, then skittered back up the wall to the rafters.

Sighing, he went back on to the veranda carrying his his luggage in through the door. The rest of his mother's belongings and some personal items from Richard's own small maisonette would arrive later by post. But for now, he opened his case and started to lay out its contents.

But he stopped at the carefully packed jewellery box and a framed picture of him and his parents taken at his graduation from Cambridge two days before he was due to start at Hendon for his training to become a police officer.

Carefully placing both items over on the small table which served as a desk, another long buried memory surfaced with a vengeance. It made him gasp with the clarity and the shame of it.

"For God's sake Mum, stop it!" Richard groaned, as his mother reached up to fix the hood of his graduation robe and then had started to fiddle with his tie.

He became annoyed, through nerves and embarrassment that his mother was arranging his clothes as if he were a child again. He grabbed her by the wrists and none too gently pulled her hands off him. The slight gasp and look of pain on her face make him stop and realise what he had done. He had been physically rough with her.

"Sorry Mum, I didn't mean..."

"It's alright Richard, it's alright. I know I can be a bit of a fuss budget at times. Now go on, you need to get in to the hall!"

She had smiled afterwards, but Richard knew that something had been lost between them.

The memory made him gasp and he felt himself grow pale. Blindly he opened the doors to the front of the shack and almost stumbled out on to the veranda. He breathed in deeply, trying to focus but all he could see in his mind's eye was how roughly he had handled his mother on a day she should have been at her happiest.

He rested his hands on the rail and bent forward, his head sinking between his arms to try and stave off the nausea that was rising again. He eventually stood, holding on to the rail oblivious to the sound of a car pulling up beside the shack. His head started to spin at the sound of all the critical demeaning voices he had heard over the years, some of it his own.

Another thought hit him hard. He had wanted to go home months ago but after Doug Anderson and then returning back to the UK as a police escort to an indifferent team, made him realise that the home he wanted to go back to no longer existed, if indeed it ever did. At that precise moment, the full force of the years of rejection, loneliness, witnessing of abuse, never being part of the gang, never being able to fully integrate and everything about him open to ridicule because of his precise literal nature bore down on his soul with agonising intensity

"Richard. I've brought your post, you forgot to take it."

Her voice startled him. He straightened up but did not turn to face her.

"Thank you Camille, if you just leave it on the side I would be grateful."

Camille quickly moved past him and placed the mail on the desk. She looked up and noticed how he was still turned away from her and how tense he was. She slowly approached him.

"I am sorry about your mother, if there is anything I can do..."

Her hand reached out to him.

"Thank you, no, I'll be..be fine." He had replied.

"Richard..." She reached out again, touching his arm. He turned sideways to her.

"Please Camille, please don't make a fuss, I'm...I'm..."

At that moment, he felt his world suddenly crash around him and could no longer hold back. The touch of her hand on his arm was enough and the dam finally broke. His face crumpled and he began to sob.

Camille gasped as Richard's face suddenly became screwed up with pain and at the sound of a heart wrenching sob which seemed to come from deep within, tears streaming down his face. Instinctively she reached out and started to pull him towards her. He was rigid, his arms straight, his fists clenched as his body started to shake and the sobbing became more intense, but he did not resist as she whispered to him and placed her arms around his neck in an embrace to comfort him. Everything screamed in him to push her away, but he could not move, he didn't want to move. He had had enough.

Slowly his hands relaxed and he buried his head in to her shoulder as the tears came harder and his sobs grew more intense. He found his arms slowly rising and curling around her waist. Needing to hold her as he wept for everything that had hurt him for the last forty years of his life since a small child that could no longer stay buried. He had to finally accept he needed the comfort of another human being, whereas before he would have hidden himself away because the emotions were too intense to handle.

Camille felt him embrace her and she held on to him as he curled around her weeping. Her own eyes began to prickle as her usually reserved, closed off colleague and friend fell apart in her arms. She thought she could almost hear his heart break.

After what seemed to be an eternity, he felt himself calm down enough to raise his head. Camille had leaned back, still holding his arms and looking at him with tenderness.

"I'm sorry.." He whispered.

"S'ok, come and sit down." She replied, taking him by the hand and gently leading him through the door. He sat down in the wicker chair at the foot of his bed. Camille drew up in front of him with one of the table chairs, leaning forward a little and placing a hand on his.

"You ok? You want to tell me what happened?" She asked quietly.

Dabbing his eyes, Richard looked up at her. She was alarmed at how exhausted he looked.

"I went home and buried my mother." He said, trying to avoid answering her next question.

"No Richard, I want to know what happened." Camille insisted.

Richard's eyes grew distant.

"I went home. Dad had arranged everything, he does that. Mum was cremated but Dad and I had a huge fight afterwards. Y'see My..father wasn't just disappointed in me Camille, he's a cold bastard who abused my mum, sent me away and no matter how hard I tried, I could never please him. Its been the same all the way though my life. My mother, God love her always tried to make things right, always tried to make up for..."

He paused, drawing breath and then continued.

"He never loved her, she was a means to an end, a show piece for his lie of respectability. Then I arrived and of course, never came up to his expectations either. Well he finally got his way. Dad told me in no uncertain terms what he thought of Mum and I. And before you say it's his grief talking, it's not. My father is a sociopath Camille, who only ever regarded his family as a means to an end."

His voice then became a quiet whisper..

"Mum and I had a fight a few months back. She kept asking me when I would be coming home and I could never give her an answer, I was supposed to be home eight months ago Camille! But it didn't happen! The last time I spoke...to my mother.."

His voice began to crack..

"..she hung up on me saying I was like Dad, that I didn't want to come home, I didn't want to see..her. And God, you know something? She was right and you are right about my being like my father Camille... I tried to talk to her again but she didn't want to talk and then I left it. I didn't even try to contact her when I went home last month."

Richard looked up at Camille, he was gasping..

"..I should have gone home! I just wanted to go home.." Richard began to cry again, "just wanted to go home and but can't now it doesn't exist anymore, there's nothing left! Dad doesn't want to know, my work, everything has changed because I've been a stupid ...stupid..."

He couldn't continue. Camille leaned forward and put her arms around him again as he wept.

"Richard, I know it's not the same but we care about you here. You're amongst friends here. I know we can never be Croydon or replace your family, but you've become a part of ours and.."

Richard lifted his head responding silently to her words and he knew what Camille said was true. But for now the loss of all that he had in England was too strong and it had left him broken. He had no idea what would come next, but Camille was right. This was his home now and he was welcomed here, he was making a difference and was beginning to be glad of it.

He gently sat up and looked at her. Her eyes were shining and she had that beautiful smile, that confidence he so badly lacked in so many areas. But now, he needed to be alone.

"Thank you Camille and I am sorry about this evening, I didn't intend to..."

She shushed him, "S'ok, we're here for you, I'm here for you."

He nodded again and gave her a half smile.

"I know but I need to get this sorted out. But thank you again."

"Are you sure you don't want me to stay?" She asked, knowing what the answer was going to be.

Richard drew another deep breath, the offer was tempting but...

"No, I'm fine..I will be alright, I promise."

At that they rose and Camille headed towards the door.

"Ok, but I *will* call by tomorrow morning to check on you. I will not take no for an answer!" She said raising an eyebrow at him and smiling, "Goodnight Richard."

He looked down with a chuckle for a brief moment then back up at her.

"Goodnight Camille." He said as she left with a little wave.

Richard followed her out of the door then watched as she got in to the Defender and drove away. He turned to go back in but instead leaned on the door frame staring at the waves crashing up on the beach nearby, his heart grieving for a home that no longer existed and most likely never did.