Perfect Circle

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

When Liv had given Chris the potted version of the events during the meeting with Stephen, Chris had seemed pleased but not overly optimistic. Liv couldn't even bring herself to mention it to Russell or Alistair. Stephen said nothing and she hoped that it was a good sign, she wasn't going to raise it with anyone until he did. But there was one person that she knew she had to speak to about her decision; her father.

Duncan Platt was a formidable man. He had always been gently strict with her, but when she followed him into the force, any questions regarding her job had prompted him to go into what Liv referred to as his 'business mode'. He spoke to her as though she was one of his young officers or detectives. He didn't even seem to realise it, but when he segued from a conversation about something casual such as going out for a meal, his whole body and mannerisms would change. She could almost picture him in his uniform. The problem was, he had grown so used to having everyone bow down to him, that he seemed to have forgotten that it was his daughter's turn to rise up the ranks by herself.

When she pulled up outside her father's house Liv took several minutes to compose herself. She hadn't mentioned her plans to him the week before when she visited for dinner; she had guessed that her father would learn quickly enough from one of his sources.

That morning while she had stood in the bathroom brushing her teeth, she had practiced over and over again what she intended to say to her father. Each time she thought she had covered everything, and all of his possible responses, suddenly the fictional father interviewing her in her mind would come out with something she had not been prepared for and she would be flummoxed again.

In the car she flipped down the sun visor and opened the mirror under the pretense of checking her make up. "Dad." She told her reflection. "I know you weren't keen on me returning to the Serial Murder Unit, but I enjoy my work there. My friends are there. It makes me happy. After everything with Kerr..." She paused, not wanting to use his name. "After everything I went through, you wanted me to get back to normal. Well... normal for me is the S.M.U. I can't not work there. And... well... now I'm hoping to return to full duty. I don you don't want me to, but I'm not your little girl any more. Please don't mess this up for me." She shook her head knowing she'd have to work on her ending.

Her father was nowhere to be seen when she got into the house. After calling out for him twice, she wandered through the kitchen, where pots and pans were gently simmering, and out into the back garden. Sure enough, her father was in the shed. Duncan Platt had adopted every stereotype that society had thrown at him. He was portly and jovial; the sort of person who would have been frequently asked to play Santa Claus at the Policemen's Christmas Party, had he not been so high ranking that it would have been seen as beneath him. Since his retirement his two main hobbies were golfing and gardening, in that order.

As cooking a Sunday dinner left little time for golfing, and the garden wasn't quite big enough for a nine hole course, Duncan had surrendered one love for another, and so Liv found him pottering around the shed he had lovingly constructed with his own two hands, repotting his clippings.

"I turned the potatoes down." Liv told him by way of a greeting as she leaned in the shed door. "They were threatening to boil over."

Duncan turned on his stool. "Good girl." He removed his glasses and gave her a smile. Nothing had changed; she was still six years old, gap-toothed with her hair in pigtails, being sent down to the end of the garden by her mother to call her father back up to the house. "Good week?"

Liv stood next to him, leaning against the workbench carefully for fear of getting soil on her jeans. "Fairly good, yeah." She hesitated, this was the crunch point. She had practiced what she intended to say at least a hundred times, if not more. But she hadn't actually decided when she should put this to him. Was now as good as ever, or should she wait until he was full of his Sunday roast and was enjoying his glass of red wine?