Ever Present.

"She's nice."

Caroline wasn't surprised by the new voice. The truth was that it was ever present, just that occasionally it would take on a clearer quality. A form.

"Is she?" She asked nonchalantly, trying not to swivel around and stare at what she felt behind her, for fear that if she did she would send her away.

"Very." Kate nodded quietly, seeming to take a breath before she added. "She likes you."

Caroline let her eyes find the darker ones in the rearview mirror and shook her head. "I doubt it."

A tiny smile. "She does, I can tell."

"She likes Flora." Caroline stated.

Kate smiled patiently. "Everyone likes Flora! She's entirely too adorable. "

"True." Caroline agreed. "She's been singing a new song, Incy wincy spider..." A real smile now, delight.

"Except she pronounces it Pider." Kate finished.

"Yes." Caroline agreed. "She's growing so quickly."

"That's good, you'll be able to enjoy her more when she's 15." Kate teased.

"You are kidding? She'll make Lawrence look amenable"

"She takes after you." Kate reminded.

"She looks like you." Caroline stated. " More every day. Even her expressions, things she never got to see you do, I don't understand it." Caroline confessed.

"Are you going to call her?" Kate asked next.

"Kate she's very advanced for her age but she hasn't quite mastered the art of answering the phone yet." Caroline quipped.

"Her, the ... Rose. She gave you her number." Kate reminded.

"Did she?" Caroline shrugged. "Oh yeah, not sure where I put it..."

"I think you should. I think you should ring her." Kate said, her mouth a firm line.

"Perhaps..." Non commital. "I don't have time. I have Flora."

Kate shook her head. "Don't use her as an excuse. You're busy, so make time, for a drink, a chat."

A shrug. "Yeah. I probably will."

"Please." Kate requested quietly. "I want you too..."

"I'll see what I can do." Another thought. "If I need more persuading will you stick around?" She checked.

Kate smiled sadly, but no words. Caroline had turned her attention to the road as she approached a set of lights and as she stopped she quickly turned to search the empty spot where Kate had appeared. She reached out a hand to touch the dark fabric of the back seat as if it may still retain some of Kate's heat, as if it would be proof, proof of something. It was cold. She made a fist and slammed it down against the seat. She shook her head at the dramatics, tutting to herself as the car behind her gave her an impatient beep.

Xxx

"I knew this was a bad idea." Caroline grumbled, selecting another blouse from the rail.

"It'll be fine." Kate assured calmly from the bed.

"I can't go on a date, I haven't dated for years, I don't think I ever really did , we never went on dates...not until we got together." She went on.

"Caroline we went on tons of dates." Kate grinned. "You just didn't realise that that's was what they were." she chuckled a little at the recollection and beamed into Flora's face, placing her own close as if they shared a joke.

Caroline stopped as she examined her own memory. "Well that was different." She finally dismissed flicking her hair out over the collar of the blouse she had just put on.

Kate didn't argue, she continued to watch Flora as the toddler turned the pages of the Peter Rabbit book and pretended to be reading the story aloud.

"You wouldn't mind then? It wouldn't bother you?" Caroline asked the vision of Kate.

"What? You going on a date?" Kate asked. Turning her attention away from their daughter and moving towards where Caroline stood. Caroline saw her approach, slowly in the mirror, becoming clearer as she got close, coming into focus.

Caroline felt the prickle of her presence, a heat that she imagined came from Kate but which must have been all her, she let her eyes close and could faintly feel Kate's touch, fingers, a hand, on her waist.

"If I could take you on a date Caroline..." She heard, close to her ear, a whisper.

"Where would we go?" Caroline asked, her eyes fastened shut.

"Anywhere." Kate said huskily. "Wouldn't matter."

"We could just stay here?" Caroline said sweetly.

"Caroline!" Kate warned. "You are going! You want me to be jealous? I am. But I can't wish you to be alone. It isn't fair." Kate took two steps back and blurred until Caroline blinked and she was gone.

Caroline picked her hand bag up from the foot of the bed and held a hand out to Flora.

"Don't ever let anyone tell you that I was the bossy one when it came to me and your Mother Flora, it's not the case at all. Come on!" Caroline encouraged as she watched Flora slide down the height of the bed and land with a thump on her two feet. "Let's go and find Granny and Grandad. Looks like I'm going on a bluming date."

"Date!" Flora shouted. "Date, date, date!"

Xxx

Two weeks earlier...

"Hi, I heard you might be interested?"

"What?!" Caroline nearly swallowed her own tounge.

"The single mothers group." The brunette expanded, glancing down at the colourful leaflet she held out to the blonde.

"Oh,No. I'm not...not really a single mum, I'm a widow." Caroline explained.

The woman smiled patiently. "We don't discriminate. " She said teasingly. "We all have different stories, most of us haven't chosen to be on our own."

Caroline looked briefly curious as if she may ask what this woman's story was, but as she remembered her manners and the fact that they had never spoken until now, she remained silent.

"I did choose it." The woman went on, sensing the interest. " Sorry, I am Rose and that handsome little fella in the home corner is my son Simon." She pointed to a curly haired boy, a little smaller than Flora who was currently hurling plastic crockery into a pretend washing machine.

Caroline had noticed the pair once or twice before at the session. Rose seemed to chat happily to a lot of the other mothers, where Caroline would normally hide behind Flora in order to avoid too much socialising, they were here for Flora to begin mixing with her peers not for Caroline to make mummy friends.

"I'm sorry I haven't tried to recruit you in the past. I just assumed that Greg was your..."

"God no!" Caroline cut in. "He is Flora's Father, He has been helping out. It was never the plan... " Caroline trailed off, fearing an overshare. "I work so he sometimes brings Flora along, although I try to make it, at least once a week." Caroline hated this part. Having to try and explain the set up of her family without directly spelling it all out.

Rose nodded. "I've seen you."

"My wife had Flora, before she died." Caroline said finally, fully expecting a sympathetic look, a nod and then for the woman to suddenly find that her son desperately needed assistance, just at that exact moment.

The moment she would need a convenient escape. She wouldn't blame her, she didn't blame all the other women that reacted that way. She would have done the same herself before she found this happening to her. Death scares people off, probably even more than the gay.

"I'm Sorry." Rose offered. "That's...I can't imagine what that must be like...I'm so sorry." Rose seemed genuinely so.

"Thank you." Caroline accepted the sentiment as she had done so many times before, as a matter of course.

Xxx

"Flora's amazing, so independent and she's so pretty!" Rose gushed as they walked home from the local eatery that Caroline had suggested when she had phoned Rose.

"Yes." Caroline agreed, hearing the sadness in her tone and trying to drag the heavy corners of her mouth into a convincing smile.

"What?" Rose asked automatically. "Oh, you were thinking about her, Flora's birth mother. Sorry." Rose frowned as she apologised. "I mean, of course you were."

"She looks more like her every day." Caroline shrugged, her hands deep in her pockets. "Still it's better than looking like Greg I guess."

"How long ago?" Rose asks, not necessary to expand.

"Two years and four months." Caroline replied. "The day Flora was born."More steps, one foot, then the next, and on... "When people ask her age, I always think, that's how long it's been, how can it have been so long..."

"Was it? Complications..."Rose guessed.

"No! No. Road traffic accident." Caroline avoided the ugly details for now.

Rose shook her head. "Must have been...Such a shock..." She commented.

Caroline stopped and sighed, looking back for a moment, deciding whether or not to go on, nudging the ground with the edge of her boot.

"When I got home, from the hospital that night. Everything was as it was when she left the house. The tea cups we had used that morning, left to dry on the draining board where Kate had washed them up. Her glasses on the bedside table. Her pajamas under the pillow. Signs of her everywhere. Evidence...of her life. She couldn't be... If I hadn't had Flora..." Caroline set herself into motion again without finishing.

A silence. Rose seemed to be thinking. Considering.

"Sorry." Caroline said suddenly. "Not really a good topic of conversation for a da..." She managed to stop herself, they hadn't formally said what this was. It could just be a friend thing. Although she got the idea that Rose liked her, was attracted, she couldn't point exactly to what it was, but she felt it.

"I have heard better chat up lines." Rose shrugged. "but we can talk about anything you like. I don't mind. It must be strange? Being on a date?...unless...you've been on...others...many? Why shouldn't you?"

"It's the first one." Caroline confirmed. "Since." She offered. "So, no pressure." She teased lightly.

Rose looked suitably intimidated and was unusually silent.

"So, how about you and Simon?" Caroline ventured. "You implied he wasn't an accident, that you planned to have him on your own."

"Yes. My partner, she never wanted children, just wasn't part of the plan, she told me that from the start. I was okay with it. Until I wasn't. " Rose shrugged as they strolled.

Caroline was interested. "So she just left?"

"It's a deal breaker I suppose. We wanted different things." Rose explained lightly, however Caroline sensed the sadness behind the empty phrases.

"How long had the two of you been together?" Caroline asked.

"A while." Rose nodded. "Twelve years."

Caroline was shocked. To think that they had been together for so long and something as wonderful as wanting a child, wanting to be a family, had split them apart. "Do you keep in touch?"

Caroline had children with John so they were never completely out of each others lives. In one way she found that beyond irritating and yet in another it seemed right. To have someone who you shared that much of your life with just never speak to you again would be strange, knowing they were somewhere carrying on.

Rose suddenly looked a little uncomfortable and Caroline was unsure if the tremble she noticed was caused by the cool breeze that washed over them or in response to the line of questioning.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to pry..." Caroline began. She had wanted to come across interested, find out more about this woman. She had been remebering when she was starting out with Kate. She'd done everything wrong then.

"There are a million and one things you don't know about me, Caroline. Because you never ask."Kate's words, true and painful, both at the time and now. She'd thought a thousand times since Kate's death, if only. If only she had known, if only she had even considered the possibilty that they may not have long together, would she have taken the chance that little bit sooner? Held on just a little more tightly? All those stupid things she let get in their way.

"That's Okay." Rose came back to Caroline's attention."We don't, really, keep in touch. Anna and I. She was angry with me, for changing my mind, for choosing a baby instead of her, of us. I can understand, that it must have felt that way."

They had reached Caroline's drive way. "Do you want to come in? Coffee?" Caroline asked.

"It's late I should probably get back, my mum has to drive back to Leeds..." Rose explained.

"Sure." Caroline nodded in understanding. "I'm lucky to have Mum next door, well most of the time."

"I...I'd like to do it again though, sometime, soon. If you fancy..?" Rose asked casually, taking the car keys from her jacket pocket.

"Yeah, that'd be nice." Caroline agreed, meaning it for that moment. Meaning it until she got inside the house, took off her shoes, sent her Mother and Alan back around to their place and then slipped into her own bedroom.

She lay in bed, wide awake even after two glasses of wine. She felt the covers rise and a shot of cold air before she felt a familiar weight settle in the bed.

"I might've known you'd be here." She pretended to be put out.

"It wasn't all that bad." Kate argued.

"It was fine. She was nice." Caroline didn't want to argue.

"It'll be easier next time." She offered.

Caroline humphed and felt Kate's form lean over her slightly to watch her face. "I don't want to go out with her again!" She protested. "I tried it. It's not for me. I'm fine as I am."

"Caroline..." Kate began, about to launch another lecture..

"Kate!" Caroline said firmly. "I only want you."

The Kate ghost relented and curled into Caroline's back as the blonde finally found sleep.

Xxx

A/N- Not sure if I am emotionally ready to write this one, but it just won't go away. With that in mind, it won't be too long. For those reading my other fic, I'm still working on update, won't be long. X