"Chandler, nice to see you." It seemed an eternity before the next words came out.

"Hi, I’m Phoebe," said that lady, noticing the looks that were being flashed between Chandler and Monica. She wondered if Kendra had noticed them.

"Kendra," said a faint voice from by Phoebe’s elbow, giving Phoebe no doubt but that Kendra had noticed.

"Hi," said the girl that Rachel had introduced as Alice.

Before there was a chance for further conversation, Ross’ car drew up by the front gate, and he stepped out, followed by another man. Ben, Emily and Julia tumbled out from the back seat, and they raced up to the front door.

"Hey, guys!" Ross said, smiling. "Uh, this is Joey Tribbiani. Joey, these are my sister Monica, her daughter Kendra, and her friend Phoebe."

"Hi!" Joey said, brightly, and Phoebe giggled. Noticing that, Joey went over to her. "Hey, how you doin’?" he asked, and she giggled even more.

"F-fine," she finally managed to stammer out. "Uh, you’re gonna be living with Ross, right?"

"Yeah… pity. I’d like to get to know you better," Joey said, filling his speech with innuendoes.

Ben raced up to Kendra. "Hi!"

"Hi Ben," Kendra greeted him. She turned to Alice. "Uh, this is my cousin Ben."

"I saw him at the airport," Alice replied, quietly. She had a strong accent, but Kendra couldn’t quite work out what accent it was. It certainly wasn’t the stereotypical British accent.

"Let’s go inside," Ben suggested, grabbing a hold of one of Alice’s bags.

"Yeah!" Kendra enthused. "We can show you where you’ll be sleeping! Maybe you should get your brother as well?" she added.

"Neh," Alice disagreed. "He’s clingy… wouldn’t leave Dad." She clutched another bag into her hand, and followed Kendra.

"Wait," Ben said. "Kendra can’t come upstairs."

"But Mom ‘n’ I did the study out for Alice," Kendra replied. "Shawn and Chandler are gonna have the guestroom – you don’t mind?" she added to Alice.

Alice shook her head. "Be good for me to be away from Shawn."

At this point, Emily and Julia ran in. "Where ya goin’?" Julia asked.

"To see Alice’s room," Ben replied.

"Can we come?" Emily demanded.

"Sure," Alice said, laughing. "C’mon." They entered the room that Monica and Kendra had arranged for Alice. It was recognisable as a study, with a large desk, but also fairly recognisable as a bedroom. There was a sofa bed in there, made up as a proper bed, with a flowered duvet.

"Oh, you should hear what fun Mom and Phoebe and I had with this bedspread," Kendra laughed.

"What?" Alice and Ben said together.

"Oh, we were making up the bed this morning, and Mom insisted that the tag was at the left-hand bottom, and the flowers had to point upwards," Kendra explained.

"That’s not so bad," Alice replied. "Ooh, you should see my dad when ‘e gets going."

"Wait ‘til you hear why," Kendra continued. "Mom wanted the flowers to face upwards, y’know, to the head, cos that’s where the sun would be."

The children laughed. "She’s a freak!" Ben exclaimed.

Meanwhile, the grown-ups and Shawn were in the living room. "So, Chandler, what’s it like to be back in the good ol’ US of A?" Rachel asked, smiling.

"Yeah, pretty good," Chandler replied with a laugh. "I mean, I’m gonna hafta get used to driving different cars and stuff, but there’s much better TV here, if I remember rightly!"

"TV baby!" Joey cried.

Monica still seemed slightly dazed, but she woke herself up enough to ask, "So, uh, how long did you live in England?"

"I’ve lived there all my life," Joey replied. "My mom’s American, and my dad’s Italian, but I’ve lived all my life in England." Monica was shocked. He had an American accent, and yet he’d spent his entire life in England?

"I moved there about thirteen years ago," Chandler said, thinking hard. "It was just before I married Mary, I think. Cos she’s Joey’s sister, y’see, Mary-Angela, she wanted to go back to her home country."

"So, you-you’re brothers?" Phoebe asked.

"Eh, brother-in-laws. More like friends, really," Chandler said. "He’s been really good to me these past coupla months, y’know, since Mary and the baby died."

"Baby?" repeated Ross. "Ow!" he yelped, as Rachel kicked him.

"Eh, it’s okay. Mary was pregnant when she was killed – car crash," Chandler said, abruptly. "It was nearly five months ago, I’ve had time to cope."

"I’m sorry," Monica said, softly. Chandler caught her eye and smiled at her. She looked down suddenly, and blushed. Phoebe caught the look and the blush. Was there still a spark? Had there ever been one?

"So, uh, yeah, where in England did you live?" Phoebe asked, trying to find a happier subject.

"Birmingham," Joey replied. "Well, a little way away from there, actually. Called Walsall, it’s an awful place."

"Yeah, Alice had lots of friends there, she went to a good school," Chandler added. "Shawn had a few little friends too."

"What grade was Alice in?" Rachel asked.

"Grade?" Joey repeated. "You mean, like, class?"

"She just finished year eight," Chandler said. "That was why we waited ‘til now to come out here. Didn’t want to uproot her in the middle of a year. It would have been okay for Shawn." He looked at Monica. "So, uh, Monica, how old’s your daughter?"

"Kendra? She’s thirteen," Monica said, proudly. She wondered if Chandler had worked out that Kendra was his daughter. "She’s goin’ into tenth grade next year – she skipped eighth grade."

"Yeah, she’s not dumb," Ross added. "She’s a great kid, Kendra. She just takes everything – even the cerebral palsy – in her stride."

"What’s that?" Joey asked.

Monica resigned herself to explaining the ins and outs of Kendra’s disability. "Well, basically, she’s paralysed from the waist down, has been ever since she was about six months old."

"What caused it?" Chandler asked.

"She had meningitis," Monica said, not meeting his eyes. "Most kids recover completely, but Kendra didn’t. She hasn’t been able to feel or move her legs since she was six months old. The kind of cerebral palsy she’s got is called spastic diplegia. It’s not something she’s gonna grow out of, but she’s coping really well with it. I mean, she’s got these ambitions, right, she wants to be a writer when she grows up, or a journalist."

Chandler smiled. "Hey, I was a journalist."

"Cool," Phoebe said. "I reckon Kendra can be as well. I mean, uh, yeah, maybe it’s in her genes."

Monica shot her a glare. "No one in my family was a writer, Pheebs."

"Op, my mistake," Phoebe said, winking at Monica. Rachel saw the wink and wondered at it.

"So, uh, does journalism pay well?" asked Ross, after a slight silence.

"Eh, so-so," Chandler replied. "We were alright, I guess. I mean, Mary didn’t work, but we had each other, and we had the kids – and Joey. I mean, money can’t buy happiness, can it?"

Rachel shook her finger at him. "Ah, you just don’t know where to shop!"

"Daddy," spoke up little Shawn, all of a sudden.

"What is it?" Chandler asked, on the alert at once.

Shawn whispered something that none of the others caught. Chandler nodded. "Where’s your toilet?" he asked.

"Oh, he needs the bathroom?" Monica said. "Here, I’ll show you, it’s just down there. Hey, c’mon Shawn," she said, beckoning to the boy.

Shawn whispered something else to his father. Chandler nodded. "He wants me to come with him and wait outside," he said, apologetically. As they walked into the hallway, he added to Monica, "He’s very clingy – ever since, well, he was very close to Mary. Now he thinks that everyone he loves is going to leave him. He doesn’t really understand what death is."

Monica nodded. "Yeah, Kendra and Ben were like that when nana died. Kendra was about four, I think Ben was two." She broke off. "Here’s the bathroom, sweetie," she told Shawn.

"Are you gonna be okay, big guy?" Chandler asked him.

"Mmm," Shawn mumbled. He went into the bathroom, and Chandler and Monica were left alone. They looked at one another awkwardly. Then Chandler broke the silence.

"Monica, I, uh, I just wanna say that, well, if you’d rather I didn’t stay here, then, uh, I’ll find a hotel, I can do that tonight if you’d rather," he said.

Monica shook her head. "No, no, it-it’s okay, really. I was just, well, I guessed it was gonna be you, I mean, there can’t be two Chandlers in the world, can there?"

He laughed. "Guess not." He paused. "It was, it was a real shock to me. I, well, what are the chances? But, but seriously, things aren’t gonna be awkward between us?"

"Relax, it’s not like we dated or anything," Monica told him. "I mean, it was just one night – one very passionate night. I mean, there were no feelings involved or anything, and ‘sides, it was, what, fourteen years ago?"

"Yeah…" Chandler considered this. "Okay, let’s just be two people, meeting for the first time today. We had the no-strings-attached sex, right? So let’s forget all about the sex and just be us. That was all it was, right? No-strings-attached sex. We had one night, nothing else happened, and we’re meeting for the first time."

Monica looked him in the eye. "But it wasn’t."

"Wasn’t what?"

"No strings attached," she said, softly. "There was a string attached."

He looked concerned. "What?"

She took a deep breath. "Kendra."