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It was a cold night in London, but Shirley Dander was flushed warm with rage.
"Fuck you!" she shouted at the bouncer who had carried her out of the club like a toddler throwing a tantrum.
Shirley had been around her niblings long enough to know drunk people and toddlers weren't that far off from each other. Wobbly on their feet and completely unreasonable if someone tries to tell them no.
"You're done," the bouncer told her. "Do not come back tomorrow, next week or next month. If you do, we'll call the police."
It was probably an idle threat, but Shirley liked Butch, Please and it would make it the third club she was banned from in as many months.
"As if I'd want to come back," Shirley scoffed. "Fuck you and your shitty club!" she shouted and punched the brick wall of the club exterior. "Fuck!"
Shit, that hurt. Pain shot up her knuckles through her hand, wrist and arm like a lit fuse and she doubled over at the waist, clutching her aching hand to her chest.
"Babe? Are you okay?"
Shit.
"Did you just punch that wall?"
Fuck.
Shirley didn't think Simone would have seen that. She hadn't thought much at all if she was being honest with herself. But she hadn't thought Simone would follow her from the fucking club after she got kicked out, but apparently the other woman had. She and Simone weren't exactly at the follow-each other-to-check-on-them part of their relationship. Or maybe Shirley just wouldn't have followed Simone if their roles were reversed. Shirley would've stayed and continued getting fucked up on the dance floor.
Maybe Shirley was just a bitch.
Simone wasn't.
She was nice. Simone was nice and a good fuck and had a normal job working in some office and wearing like pencil skirts and pointy heels to work. Simone donated to charities and smoked and looked fucking good doing it and always smelled good despite the smoking. Simone didn't get booted from clubs for getting in a fight in the toilets because someone may or may not have given her a dirty look.
Simone was nice.
Shirley wasn't.
"Go back in the club, Simone."
Shirley kept walking, her hand in agony and her heart aching, her good hand squeezing the wrap of coke in her pocket.
Shirley picked a really shitty time to get sober.
Sober from drugs at least.
It had been forty-eight hours since she had snorted anything when she punched the brick wall outside Butch, Please. She definitely wouldn't recommend breaking your hand right after deciding to get sober. Not that her hand was broken.
It probably, wasn't broken, at least.
So what if she couldn't really do more than twitch her swollen fingers and it hurt like a bitch whenever she moved her hand at all? Didn't mean it was broken.
Probably didn't mean it was broken.
"Are you alright?" JK Coe asked when she lowered herself into her desk chair and powered up her computer with her left hand.
"Fuck off," she told him.
The ice between them hadn't broken, even when Coe shot Marcus' murderer but both of them seemed to like the ice.
JK Coe put his headphones back in.
She was fine. Her hand was fine. Okay it wasn't fine. But it wasn't broken.
Probably wasn't broken.
By lunch, her reluctant probably had turned into a maybe.
"What's wrong with your hand?"
Shirley jumped as Louisa's voice startled her from the kettle, spilling hot water onto the counter.
"Louisa, what the fuck? Why are you tip-toeing around? I didn't even hear you."
"Just walking normally," Louisa said. "You were too busy staring at your bruised hand."
"It's not bruised."
It was bruised.
"Okay," Louisa said in a tone that managed to tell Shirley exactly how much she believed her in only one word.
Louisa stepped towards the counter, grabbing a paper towel to wipe the tea Shirley had spilled and take the kettle from her as she poured mugs of tea for both of them.
"It's fine," Shirley told her.
"Is that why you're not using it?" Louisa challenged as she added milk to both their mugs.
"I'm a lefty," she lied.
"No, you're not. I'm a lefty."
Shit. Shirley didn't know that. Maybe she should've known that. What kind of co-worker wouldn't know that? There were only eight – seven – of them. It felt like something she should know. She wondered if River knew. Then she thought, fuck Cartwright just as quickly.
"Okay," Shirley said.
Nice one.
"Are you going to tell me what happened?" Louisa asked, leaning against the counter and taking a sip of her tea.
"No," Shirley said turning and walking back towards her office but stopping when she heard Louisa's voice.
"Should we be expecting a visit from the Dogs?" Louisa asked taking another sip then turning towards the freezer.
"Not unless the wall filed a police report."
Louisa smirked at that and handed her the bag of frozen peas that had probably been there since Margaret Thatcher was in office. It was likely more freezer burn than frozen peas at the moment but the cold sent a wave of pain relief over her knuckles. A sigh escaped Shirley's lips before she could stop it.
"Thanks," she nodded at Louisa who was still studying her over the lip of the mug.
"You want me to take you to A&E?"
"Fuck, no. I'd rather watch Lamb clip his toenails."
Louisa chortled. "Fair, enough."
"Thanks for the brew," she lifted the cup in tribute and turned back towards her office before Louisa could say anything else, the peas still balanced on her hand.
"Don't mention it," Louisa called after her as she lowered herself to her desk.
Twenty minutes later the peas had sufficently melted and her tea was finished. JK Coe continued tapping away in the corner and her eyes fell on Marcus' desk. Her hand twitched. It ached, but not in the sharp way it had since last night. Something else ached inside her. Something that grabbed onto her ribs and yanked. Something that hadn't been right since January when Cartwright's psychopath brother killed Marcus.
Her hand twitched, again.
She wanted to punch something, again.
Or someone.
She hoped Cartwright didn't stick his head into their office at that moment, she might not be responsible for whatever her fists did after that. She knew Marcus' death wasn't River's fault, but sometimes when she looked at him, her brain remembered but her heart forgot.
Fuck.
"You should get that checked out."
Shirley nearly dropped her mug.
"I'm going to put a fucking bell on you," she told JK Coe, who stood over her desk like the world's worst gargoyle. "Leave me alone." Coe didn't reply and that was somehow worse than anything he could have said. "Fuck off," she added for good measure but his headphones were already in his ears.
The rest of the day passed in the type of agonizingly slow torture that was specific to Slough House. She had managed to hide in her office enough to avoid seeing Louisa again or anyone else besides JK Coe. Shirley had been relieved Catherine had been back but she couldn't have handled seeing her disapointed face or listening to her ask if Shirley wanted to join her for a meeting. Her face always turned into double disapointment when Shirley turned her down.
Normally, she would call someone a sanctimonious prick if they asked her to go to a meeting, but somehow with Catherine she didn't feel that way. And that somehow made it worse because Catherine genuinely just wanted to help her.
And Shirley didn't need any fucking help.
She didn't want any fucking help.
She shoved her hand into her pocket around the wrap of coke there. She could take it. Instead, she felt the warmth of the plastic in her hand and looked at Marcus' desk and decided not to. She had two days sober. She was very fucking close to three. If she made it a week she could take it to celebrate.
"Hey," Louisa said from the doorway.
"Hey," Shirley answered apprehensively as she flicked off her computer monitor and walked towards the door.
"I could really use a drink. You want to join me?" Louisa asked.
Shirley glanced around Louisa. Cartwright was gone, or at least not in his office. Catherine and Lamb were likely still upstairs. She didn't really give a shit where Roddy was but she knew Louisa would rather pluck out her eyelashes one by one than ever see Roddy outside of work.
"Yeah, sure."
They walked to the pub in silence, Shirley's hands shoved in her pockets. Her right hand still ached. She had iced it on and off all afternoon and she could move it slightly more than she could earlier. She was beginning to actually believe herself that it wasn't broken. Probably. Her left one rubbed her fingers over the wrap of coke like a security blanket.
"I'll get the first round," Louisa said when they walked in. "What do you want?"
"Jack and Coke."
"You want to grab us a table?"
"Sure. Get us some crisps, too."
Louisa rolled her eyes but Shirley was too busy walking away and thinking about crisps to care. She grabbed a table in the back, unzipping her coat and dropping into the wooden chair with a sigh. She was still a bit hungover from the night before but hair of the dog and all that. And it was Friday and Shirley wasn't sure she had the stamina for another club tonight – or figuring out which ones she wasn't banned from – and she wanted to go home even less.
Simone was still pissed at her, which was fine. She was a good fuck but Shirley wasn't a U-Haul lesbian, so she was fine with pumping the brakes for a bit.
"One Jack and Coke," Louisa said, depositing the drink in front of her and then a bag of crisps. "And a bag of crisps, as requested."
"Fuck yeah, thanks."
They drank their first few sips in silence, Shirley taking in the half-empty pub around them. It was only quarter past five so the after work crowd was likely on their way but it was too early for the regular Friday night crowd.
"You want to talk about it?"
Shirley groaned inwardly. She should've known this was too good to be true. Louisa didn't ask her to get a drink too often, especially not only the two of them, but her want for whiskey had outweighed her sense. Maybe the booze was dimming her brain.
"Talk about what?" she asked, purposely obtuse.
She certainly wasn't going to start crying about her feelings because Louisa bought her a drink and a bag of crisps.
"Why your hand looks like a Jackson Pollack painting."
"Not particularly," Shirley said into her drink.
"Shirley, come on. Talk to me, it'll help, I swear. I know it sounds stupid, but, I've been you. I know what you're going through."
"Jesus fucking Christ," Shirley chugged back the rest of her drink, depositing the glass on the table a little too loudly. "Yeah, and you handled that so fucking well, did you?"
"No, I didn't. I'm still not. But at least I'm trying right now and so I know what it looks like when someone feels like they're drowning on dry land."
Shirley pushed herself to stand, her hands automatically going into fists. Pain shot up her right arm at the motion and she forced herself to breathe through it as she trudged to the door. She shoved her hand into her pocket and found the coke but her hand trembled as she did so.
"Fuck," she mumbled to herself and turned just before she reached the door, stopping at the bar to order drinks before placing the vodka soda in front of Louisa. "Here."
Louisa didn't say anything which was almost more infuriating than what she had said earlier.
"I know it's not the same," Shirley told her. Louisa stared at her again. "Marcus. We were co-workers. I wasn't–," she swallowed thickly, "–it wasn't like you and Min."
"Doesn't mean it doesn't hurt," Louisa said, moving the straw from her empty first drink to the second. "Doesn't mean the world doesn't make less sense because he's gone. Doesn't mean there's not a piece missing to you that will never be replaced."
"Thought you were trying to cheer me up."
Louisa laughed, a sad, tragic thing that Shirley suddenly wanted to unhear. "There's no cheering up. It sucks. I'm not trying to tell you to pretend it doesn't. I'm trying to tell you there are people you can talk to–"
"Fuck that. I'm not talking to some shrink."
"That's not what I meant. I meant me. Catherine. River," Shirley gave her a look. "Okay, probably not River. But me anyway. I'm not going to tell you to move on or any shit. It's just. It sucks, but it's better to talk about it than fuck through it."
"Can't I do both?" Shirley smirked.
That got her another laugh, this one slightly less depressing than the previous ones. "You can, but sometimes they try and stay longer than you want them to or eat your ice cream without asking."
"That sound suspiciously specific."
"You don't want to know."
"I mean I do, but I'll let you tell me another time," Shirley said, taking another sip of her drink then munching loudly on a crisp. "I'm not really a talk about my feelings type, but I do appreciate you offering, alright?"
Louisa nodded. Silence fell over them again but this time it wasn't a noose but more of a blanket. Comforting, but could easily become too hot if left on for too long.
"I still miss Min," Louisa said. "It's ridiculous. He's been gone longer than we were together and some days feel like I'm still in my old flat opening the door to Catherine and I just knew before she even said anything, I knew he was gone."
"Same with Marcus. I heard the shot, and it could've been him, or he could've been hit in the leg or something, but something inside me knew it was that French bastard's shot and he was dead."
"I didn't know Marcus as well as you did, but I miss him, too," Louisa admitted. "I miss his stupid commentary in every staff meeting."
"And Lamb mocking him every fucking time, like he never learned to just not say anything. He was a glutton for punishment," Shirley smiled despite herself.
"Between him and River you think one of them would have learned. It was like they were competing to get Lamb to insult them worse than the other."
Shirley smiled into her drink, before feeling it fall away. She ran a finger down the condensation on the side. "I stare at his empty desk every fucking day and I wonder when some other unlucky bastard is going to fill it and I can't decide if I'll be relieved or angry when it happens."
"That's why I moved in with River," Louisa told her. "That's why I hardly ever go into your office. There's too many ghosts. And now there's one more."
"God, we're supposed to be desk bound at Slough House. We're not supposed to lose more colleagues than when we worked at the Park."
"No, we're not," Louisa said sadly. She lifted her glass. "To fallen friends."
Shirley cheersed her glass then threw back the remainder or her drink. "Another?"
"Yeah one, more."
They didn't have just one more. They didn't talk about Min or Marcus the rest of the night. They left together at last call, shuffling into the cold London night together. Shirley turned to leave before Louisa called after her.
"I'm going to yoga in the morning? You want to come?"
"Yoga?" Shirley raised her eyebrows in question. "Do I look like someone who does yoga? I fuck women that do yoga. I don't do yoga."
Louisa shrugged. "Come on. You get to sweat profusely and ignore the outside world for an hour."
"Fine," Shirley surprised herself, the whiskey answering for her. "If I get kicked out then it's not my fault."
"Who gets kicked out of a yoga class?" Louisa smirked.
Shirley wobbled her head noncomittially. "Is that a challenge?"
"Absolutely fucking not," Louisa laughed. "I'll text you the address."
Shirley shook her head and walked in the opposite direction. Yoga was better than she would admit to Louisa. The coke stayed in her pocket another day, and she spent the walk back to her flat thinking about how proud of her Marcus would be, a ridiculous thought that she couldn't get out of her mind.
Her hand still hurt, but maybe against all odds, her heart ached just a little bit less.