‘Now hold on, we aren’t talking about a lack of ramp access here. You were traumatized, as anyone would have been.’

‘Yes, but I got through that. I’ll get through this.’

‘Good. And you’ll be reinstated as soon as that happens.’

Hawkins doused a tremor of panic. ‘But the best place for me to do it is here, making a difference.’

‘I’m sorry. I don’t think you’re ready for that.’

She took out her warrant card, placed it between them on the desk, nodded towards it. ‘That’s the only therapy I need.’

‘Really? I remember forcing you to attend counselling sessions with Brian Sturridge.’

‘Figure of speech. It was Sturridge who said the best place for me was right here, doing my job. I’m merely suggesting the same tonic.’

‘Please, Antonia, you just lost a colleague – your fiancé. You look exhausted. I think it’s too soon.’

‘No.’ She half stood, feeling the emotion of the last few days wash over her. ‘What’s exhausting is sitting alone in the home we shared, with nothing to take my mind off the fact he isn’t there.’

Twenty minutes later, Hawkins drifted out of Becke House, and stood staring out over the car park.

Utterly lost.

Someone she didn’t recognize passed her, the lingering look she hardly registered indicating that even a stranger could see the level of distress she was failing so completely to hide.

Her phone rang, and she looked at the screen before rejecting her sister’s call. There were only a few days to go until Christmas and, even for someone so adept after years of practice, pushing family members away at this time of year when they knew what had happened to Mike felt difficult.

But she had just made things infinitely worse.

Her protracted and increasingly desperate attempt to persuade Vaughn that she was in any state to carry on working had just failed. Even she had heard the fragility in her voice.

And so had Vaughn.

This time he couldn’t back her consuming need for distraction.

Her and Mike’s lives hadn’t been the only ones at stake here, and in a job all about preventing further deaths, he just couldn’t sanction her return to a senior post if there was any risk at all she wasn’t ready. He had done it before, and at times since wished he hadn’t.

He wasn’t prepared to take that risk again.

Which meant that, once more Hawkins was at her counsellor’s mercy. Without Brian Sturridge’s sign-off, she was on compassionate leave until further notice. Vaughn said colleagues in similar situations had made the necessary breakthrough inside six months; that they were all back at work, some of them still in the force. But they both knew what was also possible …

That she might never be sufficiently fixed.