Lewis Ficlet: Ladies Who Lunch (and Solve Crimes and Kick Ass)
Title: Ladies Who Lunch (and Solve Crimes and Kick Ass)
Author: Mistress Kat / kat_lair
Fandom: Lewis
Characters/Genre: Hobson & Innocent, Gen
Rating: PG
Word count: 490
Disclaimer: Not mine, just playing.
Summary: Laura and Jean understand each other.
Author notes: Written for the ‘ Friendship and Familial Love’ theme for lewis_challenge’s Week of Love. Thank you to pushkin666 for a giving the ficlet a quick onceover!
Jean was already sitting at their usual table by the window when Laura got to the pub. No, not the White Horse, but one further away that was frequented neither by Robbie and his walking Shakespearean reference book of a sergeant, nor any other familiar faces from the force.
There was a pint of bitter shandy waiting for her and Laura drowned a third of it on one go.
“Rough day?” Jean asked, eyebrow quirked in a way that told Laura she already knew the answer to that.
“Aren’t most of them?” Laura reached for the menu, the thick paper soft and smooth from many hands, splattered with stains she chose not to inspect too closely.
They ordered food; a steak and onion sandwich for Jean who treated their bi-monthly lunch as an opportunity to indulge, and tuna Nicoise salad for Laura who hadn’t been able to stomach red meat since her first year at university.
It was easy and familiar. Sometimes Jean asked about Laura’s orchestra, sometimes she told her about a family holiday, but mostly they talked about work; office politics, gossip, cases, new procedures, changes to law.
Other than their jobs they didn’t actually have much in common and Laura doubted they would have become friends at all if it wasn’t for that.
She wiped her mouth with a napkin, leaning back to listen Jean talk about the possible ramifications of the anti-stalking legislation due to make its parliamentary rounds soon.
She wasn’t entirely sure the two of them were friends now, not really.
It didn’t matter though. In Jean she had something far more important: Someone who understood what it was like to do the kind of work they did, to hold a leadership position, to balance commitments and expectations, to shoulder the responsibility and yet rarely see the rewards - someone who understood what it was like to do all that as a woman in an organisation where even now, in the 21st century, that made you the exception.
Thames Valley with its female Chief Constable wasn’t nearly as bad as some of the other forces, judging by stories Laura had heard from colleagues. But it was still as male-dominated as the others; only a quarter of serving police officers in England and Wales were women. One couldn’t change almost two hundred years of police culture overnight.
After all, the medical profession had been around for much longer and things weren’t that much different, not when you scratched below the surface, not in a specialty like hers.
“Same time in two weeks?” Laura asked as they were pulling their coats.
“Definitely. You make sure to take time off so you can make that conference in London, alright? These things are important.”
Laura smiled and nodded, watching Jean climb into her car and drive off. Change might be slow in coming but it was easier to believe in when you didn’t have to do it alone.