Gill was soon working on other jobs, but she kept in contact with Janet, dropping in on her way home from work, imagining the evenings must be hardest. All those hours without the demands of feeding and bedtime and the long, bleak nights when once you would have prayed not to be disturbed, prayed that the child would sleep through.
It was Gill who brought with her tales of police work that permeated the barrier of Janet’s indifference. Only a year apart in age, the women shared the experience of being young female coppers in the 1980s when it was still very much a macho zone.
Ade always welcomed Gill warmly. ‘It really helps,’ he told her one time, ‘you coming.’
As their friendship grew, Janet sometimes opened up to Gill about the impact of losing the baby. ‘My greatest fear was always losing my mind,’ she said once in that plain, quiet way of hers, ‘but this has been worse. What puzzles me is why didn’t it drive me mad? Why haven’t I ended up in the loony bin?’
Gill hadn’t had any slick answers to that. But as she learned about what Janet had been through as a teenager, she thought perhaps the breakdown had left her stronger. It was Gill who coaxed Janet back to work, arguing with her when she questioned whether she was still cut out to be a police officer. ‘I’d say this will only make you better at the job,’ Gill said.
‘You know I never put it on my application form – that I’d been in a psychiatric hospital.’
Gill had paused. That sort of misrepresentation could lead to a charge of misconduct, a termination of employment. She wished Janet hadn’t told her, but knew already that she’d honour the confidence.
‘There was so much prejudice,’ Janet said, ‘still is. I wouldn’t have got the job.’
‘Maybe so. But think about coming back. We need you, people like you, women – women with brains.’
And Janet had returned. Their career paths diverged, Gill moved into CID before Sammy was born and then to the crime faculty when he was four. Janet still on Division. But in 2004, once Taisie started school, Janet joined an MIT.
Now Gill was her boss as well as her friend. Janet had been there for Gill in the wake of the Dave debacle. And Gill would do the same if Janet’s marriage fell apart. But it was hard to imagine, after all that Janet and Ade had been through together, and Ade being such a good dad, happy to do all the parenting stuff when Janet had overtime or was working in the school holidays, that they wouldn’t find a way to get things back on an even keel. Or maybe that’s the problem, Gill thought, as she began checking through the mountain of paperwork that the case was generating. Maybe it’s been on an even keel for too long. Maybe it’s all got stale and boring. Whatever. Janet would tell her when she was good and ready.
