It's far from being all over.

3 weeks, 1 day, 13 hours, and 10 minutes, that was what Rachel made it.

Three weeks and she had been out of the Job for that length of time, and she was already beginning to go mad without the routine that she had made of her life previously.

As she sat in her flat, drinking some lemonade which befitted the hot weather outside, Rachel wondered what she was going to do now. She had been doing the same thing for a while. At first she had gone on binge drinking sprees (her mother's death and how she had virtually drunk herself to death after tricking her that she had turned over a new leaf when Sean had told her that he had been keeping in touch with her ever since she had left her family, still haunted her, but not as much as how she had gotten drunk and Taisie had found her and Kevin going at it in the house, so she needed to be careful), spending time with Alison and her kids (she had always more or less avoided those two, now she had little common ground with them), watching movies, going shopping for bits and pieces, though it was usually just books and DVDs and a few CDs, going out to the gym, or just wandering around Manchester, dreaming that she was free at last.

No more autopsies, and spending a day going around stinking like disinfectant after spending hours watching cold, dead, bodies with their flesh and bones frozen stiff in rigour mortis, watching as their bodies are cut up, examined as thoroughly as a swarm of flies feasting and laying eggs on a rotting body left in the sun.

No more having to cope with the higher ups putting pressure on you to solve the cases as nicely and as politically correct as possible, no more having to justify the choices you need to make in order to solve a case, nor having to look to the potential repercussions of looking into suspects that have….something that the politicians in the Manchester met police did not like.

No more press releases - Rachel had always hated being in front of the cameras, but she had always hated it whenever there cases someone in an investigation passed information onto the press, and ever since that mess with the Bevan investigation after it was revealed Kevin had been the one to pass that sensitive information to the newspapers after Gill had insulted and hurt him after he learnt about his performance in the DS exams, Rachel had learnt over the years to be very careful how she treated those beneath her.

Okay, granted, she had not exactly been thoughtful towards those in Syndicate 9 when she had been given the acting DI post to deal with that online game, but that was because at the time she had been out of her depth when it came to command; Gill had taught her the ins and the outs of how to investigate a crime, she hadn't spent much time giving her advice on how she should lead. That had been a big disaster, but the case had been going so well before Mitch's casebook had gone missing.

It took time but Rachel eventually learnt from her mistakes, and a few years after she had dealt with that online game and delivered her baby and she had gained a new maturity to herself and had begun thinking more outside of the box and being more adult than the old Rachel Bailey attitude she had had where she was forever tripping up over her own feet.

Having Stephanie had done wonders for Rachel.

With a baby, she had realised that there was more to the world than what she had perceived and she had gained a bit of wisdom much like Janet had. Thinking about her dear friend made her close her eyes in sorrow.

"Stop it, Rachel," a familiar voice broke through her thoughts and she looked up.

Janet Scott was standing there, dressed as smartly as she remembered her.

"Hi, Jan," Rachel whispered.

"Hey, now what's happened, kid? Usually, you're louder than that?" There was a mischievous smirk on Janet's face, and Rachel laughed; even now Janet had a way of making her smile when she was at her lowest, much like whenever she herself helped Janet get through her own problems.

"I was just thinking," Rachel said, though she knew this was not Janet.

"About what?" Janet asked, moving slowly over to the couch to sit next to her.

"Everything. I mean, I've retired now. I miss the job," Rachel said; the last bit wasn't exactly a confession since she knew Janet would know precisely what she meant. Rachel had been there for all three of the trio when they had retired. Gill had been private about her problems, but Julie had been more….lost, and Janet had had troubles of her own, Taisie and Elise had made it incredibly hard for her to form new relationships with them since Janet had always had the stresses of the police.

Rachel had come to realise that, aside from the occasional rare case, like Sammy had with Gill, who had risen to become a good DI himself though Rachel had no idea for sure if he planned to go that much further with his career, the kids of police officers would never understand the profession. Elise, Taisie, and sadly Stephanie hadn't understood it.

And unfortunately, as much as Rachel had done her best to be there for her daughter while she had been growing up, there had been a rift between her and Stephanie. Typical stuff, really - Rachel had been too busy working, solving a crime, or she had suddenly realised something important about a case she had been working on, forcing her to lose track of time.

The experiences had made Stephanie take a look at the police as a career and found that she wanted nothing to do with the role. Rachel hadn't been offended. The realisation had come after Rachel had been injured when she had been part of a different unit, and her daughter had been a kid at the time.

The experience had made her daughter realise she would much rather be something completely different, and Rachel hadn't faulted her daughter for that decision. Rachel sighed and looked at her hands. She and Stephanie…. they always fought. Always. They loved each other, but ever since her daughter had hit her teens, it had been a virtual all-out war.

They were simply too much alike.

"Hey, what's wrong?"

Oh, right. In her reverie, Rachel had forgotten Janet's ghost was there. "Oh, I was just lost in thought," she admitted, not bothering to downplay it by being difficult or bolshy. "I was thinking about Stephanie."

"Ah," Janet replied. There was nothing else she could say, she knew the problems Rachel had had with her daughter.

Rachel rolled her eyes. "Yes. I want to reach out to her, but I don't… I just don't know."

The two were silent - whether because Janet was a ghost, a figment made by Rachel's imagination and waiting for the brunette to say something meaningful, was debatable as they thought about the problem. But then Rachel changed the subject. "Jan, when you left the police, did you feel lost?'

"Of course I did, you know I did. Rachel, I'm not really here - I'm not really here, but I think I'm part of your mind that tells you not to do stuff and give you advice. Just think of me as your conscience."

Rachel felt a little sad at the admission - she had hoped, well a part of her had hoped, Janet, Julie and Gill were actually ghosts, but she had guessed they were actually figments of her imagination. It would have been brilliant if they had been ghosts, but okay.

"I'm just lost," she said; even if the Janet here was not the real Janet she could still be a second opinion. "What am I going to do for the rest of my life? I've spent my entire adult life as a copper. I don't know how to adjust."

The image of Janet rolled her eyes sympathetically. "I know the feeling. You could try finding hobbies, little things to do. You know as well as I do that they can speed things up, but I don't think that will be enough for you, right Sherlock."

Rachel eyed the ghost curiously. She remembered how in the car Gill's ghost had called her that familiar nickname, but this time there was a bit more emphasis on the name. "Janet, why did you emphasise Sherlock when you just spoke to me?" she asked bluntly.

Janet grinned cheekily. "C'mon, figure it out."

Rachel went silent for a second, and then she realised what Janet was getting at. "You want me to become a private detective?"

"Why not? Rachel, you're bored. You have plenty of time on your hands. But you've got no direction. Rachel, don't let yourself become bored like I did," Janet said the last part seriously after spending the last minute being passionate about delivering her points. "I didn't want to become a private detective since I was trying hard to not be a copper after leaving the police when I retired. Gill wasn't bothered, but I was; she wanted to distract herself from growing bored, but I had my grandkids to do that for me."

Rachel grinned, but she became more thoughtful as she considered the idea of becoming a private detective, and she put considerable thought into the idea.

It wasn't a far-fetched idea, many retired police officers became investigators or security consultants because they couldn't get away from the job, and many of them succeeded because they had years of experience and judgement. Rachel herself had plenty of experience, and so it wouldn't be hard for her to set up a little firm.

Maybe she wouldn't investigate current things, or maybe she would, but there were so many possibilities. Rachel had always been interested in cold cases, it came from that time where Janet had roped her into the death of her old childhood friend, Veronica Hastings….

Janet smiled as she came downstairs and found Rachel already sitting at her table, going through a load of papers she recognised vaguely as what she'd collected on the Veronica Hastings murder; she hadn't had time to go through the collection of papers and documents and theories Tom Walters had collected and pieced together all these years since, but she could see a few clues here and there.

"You're up early," she commented.

Her friend jumped a bit and she smiled back. "I just wanted to have a decent breakfast - I'm usually on the go, but last night," she paused to yawn before she went on, "I was studying these. Hope you don't mind."

"I told you that you could," Janet chided, sitting down; she'd get some tea in a mo. "What do you think?"

"About the Veronica Hastings murder? I don't know; I mean, the only signs of physical contact was her squashed chest, but that is about all they had to go on," Rachel replied.

Janet frowned; ever since she had heard about how Veronica had died, she had been curious about what could have caused it.

"But one of the problems I can see with what you've got, is it's mostly guesswork," Rachel went on, "I can't see any sign at the moment of what could have caused all that.."

Janet had to admit she had a point. She had gone over Tom Walter's files for a while. He was thorough, she had to admit that, but what upset her the most was there wasn't anything there that she could find, even after all of this time. One of the biggest problems with cold cases was over the years, some of the documents went missing and sometimes they were vital.

Tom had had a point about cold cases; they could be lost, or very little could be found over the years. God alone knew how much information on this particular cold case had been lost because of a fire, or a flood, or because some of the documents had been lost because of the carelessness of people moving the files, and when someone else picked up the papers they didn't know where to put it, and so they either put them into a different file to clean up, or they threw them in the bin.

"I have to admit, cold cases do look interesting," Rachel went on.

Janet frowned as her mind processed the moment, the reverse, returning to the land of the living, and Rachel's comment. "I know they are," she replied before she realised when her mind had returned from la-la land, and she had a second to go over what Rachel had said. "Oh, you're thinking of going into cold cases?" Janet realised, feeling a bit sad since MIT would miss out, but with cold cases, Rachel would probably do brilliantly-

"No, I don't mean that, but I would like to try my hand at them," Rachel replied.

"What interests you the most?"

"Well, it would be interesting, I mean think about it; crimes going back years before forensics, computers, the internet, labs and decent autopsies where people have a better knowledge of the body," Rachel went on, "and in the case of the 20th century where crimes aren't even reported, or those that are unsolved either because of poor police work, or lack of shreds of evidence or there was something else no-one else can fathom… I dunno, I'd like to give it a shot. But I still want to be good at MIT."

Rachel had later asked Gill if it was possible to get a bit more understanding about cold cases, and her old SIO had been more than happy to help her gain a bit more understanding. The problem with cold cases particularly those which had been buried on shelves or in old computer files was that you could see time was going fast, suspects and actual perpetrators lived on and died. For years people who had committed crimes had gotten away with the whole thing because they had gotten lucky either because the investigation had led down into a dead end, evidence got lost because of bent coppers or because the coppers involved suffered from misfortune, or because simple mistakes had been made.

Rachel knew better than most that no copper was infallible, they were still human. Gill Murray had had 30 years experience, and yet she had made several mistakes during her last year, but what about the previous years? She had needed to rise up through the ranks, just like they all did, but none of them - Gill, Julie, and Janet - had been flawless.

Janet had made mistakes as well, dozens of them, well they all had during those years they'd worked together.

In the case of cases that had run out of steam, Rachel wasn't sure.

There were many things that could go wrong if she began taking on cold cases and tried to work on them solo unless she formed or joined a group that solved them; they shouldn't be hard to find. All she would need to do was type in a well-worded search on the internet for the Manchester met area, contact them, tell them she was an ex-copper now recently retired with decades of experience. They should snap her up instantly, especially since she had made the connections a long time ago to find the right kind of unsolved crimes to keep her occupied.

But at the time Rachel hadn't considered joining a little group, but now she had thought about it she was putting considerable thought into it, but what if she couldn't find such a group? Oh well, she would still have the PI job to look forward too. Sure, the prospect of following people around, particularly husbands or wives who were being unfaithful to their spouses seemed mundane, but for someone like Rachel, who had spent a whole career catching and interrogating criminals who had slit the throats of their victims, or committed other acts of brutality a mundane member of the public would never see outside of a movie or TV show, it was almost painful.

Then again, Rachel that when she did become a private investigator anyone would want to come to her concerning a murder - they had the police for that, and the police had resources she would simply not have access too.

Rachel took a deep breath and looked around herself. The image of Janet was gone, she was alone, but then again she had already known that, but it was still depressing her friend hadn't been there. It had shattered Rachel inside for months when Janet had died, she would have given anything to see her again, even if she were a ghost.

"Miss you, Jan," she whispered with a sigh, wondering to herself philosophically if that was what being a ghost entailed; nothing physical, no wind, no chill in the air, no strange sounds, but something simpler, something in the mind.

The doorbell rang.

Rachel sat up with a frown, who could that be? She wasn't expecting anything or anyone unless of course, Alison had decided to drop in on her, see what she was doing; she had realised very quickly that with her excuse of always being busy at the police no longer working, Alison no longer had any reason not to stay away.

Still she stood up and walked to the front door, her mind going through the possible list of people who could be outside her home at this time of night, cautiously she opened the door when she discounted most of them; Jessica and the others had their own careers and they probably had their hands full, if their new SIO was in command now, she didn't know the details, and so they would have their hands too full to disturb her.

Taisie and Elise had their own jobs, and Callum and Holly would not do it; she had driven too many wedges into her family-

She opened the door and gaped in surprise when she saw who it was.

"Steph?"

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Stephanie Bailey smiled awkwardly at her mother. With her long, dark hair and her brown eyes, her height and build she was a dead ringer for her mother, and Stephanie had inherited many of her mother's traits and habits, much to the chagrin of several people, including her Aunt Alison.

Rachel was proud of her daughter since Stephanie had managed, as far as she knew, to bypass the grief that came with the excessive drinking habits that had plagued her mother and grandmother, and she had successfully become a nurse at the hospital.

Stephanie had learnt early on that she didn't want to have anything to do with the police, and Rachel wondered if her daughter had seen something about the profession that she hadn't seen herself, because she had always had an aversion to the police, she hated talking about it, she hated talking about the cases, everything.

"Hi, mum," Stephanie whispered. "Can I come in?"

Rachel quickly stepped out of the way, "Of course you can, love. Do you really need to ask?" she said, hoping that this meeting with her daughter and only child didn't end up being an absolute disaster like last time.

When Stephanie was sitting on the sofa with her own cup of tea, Rachel sat in her armchair. For a long moment, neither spoke as if they were unsure how to begin. Stephanie sighed. She loved her mother but she was also infuriating, but then again she had to admit to herself that she shared many of Rachel's traits.

They were too much alike.

"I spoke to Auntie Alison, she told me you were retiring," Stephenie whispered.

Rachel sighed, envying her sister's gift for speaking to her daughter when she couldn't, but she wasn't surprised. She had made it clear to Alison she was going to retire, and that all her attempts to speak to Stephanie had resulted in a failure. Rachel had always had problems learning from her mistakes; her biggest had been when she had fucked Kevin and the other time when she had stalked Nick Savage all those years ago. It had taken a lot for her to grow up.

When she had become a parent herself, Rachel had found her life being juggled between caring for her daughter and being a copper.

Sometimes Rachel wished at the time that she had not been promoted so quickly. When she had been a DC she had had enough time on her hands, and she could have used that time wisely, but when she had taken her DS exams she had needed to buckle down and see that she couldn't do what she had done in the past - mess up unintentionally, and suffer the consequences. Unfortunately, and she had only seen this later, she had been promoted too fast.

Stephanie had been a one night stand, but Rachel had never regretted having a child, especially after what happened with the unborn baby she had had after that tryst with Nick, but Stephanie had made it clear she didn't want to be a copper. Rachel had not really minded. Stephanie's life was hers to live.

"I have retired," Rachel replied with a smile, wondering what Stephanie would make of the news.

Stephanie smiled, but suddenly she looked back pointedly. "Aunt Alison wonders if you're going to become a Private detective," she said.

Rachel winced, but Stephanie instantly put her at her ease. "It's okay mum, I don't have problems with them because they deal with things that are more closer to the real world," she said.

Rachel bridled a little bit at that, but she kept her mouth closed.

Unfortunately, Stephanie realised she had touched a nerve. "I'm sorry, that came out wrong," she apologised quietly, looking abashed. "I know how much it meant to you."

Relaxing and slightly mollified, for now, Rachel took a sip of her tea. It was almost cold, but it was still refreshing. "So how is it going with you?"

Why did Stephanie look awkward all of a sudden, Rachel wondered to herself.

She got her answer a moment later when Stephanie took out a familiar looking card…

Rachel gasped in surprise when her eyes studied the scan photo, and she looked up at her daughter, who was looking back at her awkwardly. "You're….?" her voice trailed off, this was too much for her to take in.

Stephanie nodded. "Three months along," she said in the same tone.

"Who's the father?" Rachel's voice had changed, becoming more challenging, more protective.

Stephanie looked annoyed but she replied. "Another doctor," she replied, "but he was moving to another city, so we had a late night stand." She shrugged. "I thought about marriage, but," she shook her head, "I can't see it, mum."

Rachel understood. She had realised not long - about a minute - after she and Sean had married that she wasn't the marrying type. It looked like it was genetic.

But what was important now was she had retired from the police and she and her daughter had a chance to repair their relationship.

"Mum, why did you retire from the police?" Stephanie asked.

Rachel was a bit upset about the question since it went back to a taboo subject that Stephanie really did not like, but she answered the question anyway.

"I left because I was tired," she began honestly. "I had been waking up to go to work every day, dealing with the same people over and over again, but also dealing with police officers who seemed more like politicians, having to constantly check and double check my words and my actions. It just went on and on. One of the problems with rising through the ranks is that you become more bogged down by politics. But I was getting tired of the job, and the stresses, having to lead a team, having to put up with their behaviour day after day…," she shook her head. "I decided it was a good as time as any to leave, while I still had my brains intact."

She chuckled a little bit at first to take the mickey out of herself.

Stephanie smiled back, and for the first time in a long while, she hoped their relationship became more amicable. When Rachel had been pregnant, she might have been bolshy, a bit careless about the baby and had endangered their lives during her first case as acting DI, but deep down she had put a lot of thought into the pregnancy.

She had remembered her own relationship to Sharon, but she also remembered how it had fallen apart. Rachel had sworn never to let her relationship with Stephanie fall apart in the same manner. But their relationship had suffered because of her job, something she had seen but hoped it wouldn't have happened, and as she had hoped when she had decided to retire Stephanie seemed willing to give her another chance.

Rachel only hoped that when her grandchild came along she didn't screw anything up there.

The End.