"Cough."

"Your hand is cold."

"Sorry." Jim Coad's grin suggests he's anything but sorry. He removes his hand from where he's been cupping Harry's testicles, and stands back. "Any trouble with the waterworks?"

"None."

"None at all? No frequency, or difficulty urinating?" Jim rips off his disposable gloves, and throws them in the bin beside the examination table.

"None."

"What about …?" And this time Jim lifts his forefinger from being bent to the vertical.

Harry glares at him. "Of course not. And if I had you'd be the last person I'd tell."

"I'm your doctor. You can tell me anything." Harry continues to glare, so Jim Coad steps away from Harry. "You can get dressed now, and then we can have a chat."

Harry bends and pulls up his trunks, and then reaches for his trousers. In around ten minutes this most undignified, humiliating and unnecessary formality will be over for another year.

"If I didn't know better I'd say that you dread your yearly medical, Harry," Dr Coad says once both are sitting down.

"It's up there with a visit to the dentist," Harry says dryly, straightening his tie before he sits back in his chair, feigning confidence. Here we go, he thinks. It's the `you're too fat' talk.

"Now … about your weight."

Harry stares at Jim, although he suspects the section doctor is immune to such tactics, because he smiles back. "What about it?" Harry says.

Jim Coad has Harry's file open in front of him, and he is pretending to read it. "You need to lose around forty pounds."

"That's ridiculous."

"Thirty-five then. How about I devise a diet for you?"

"How about you don't? My diet is fine. If anything, I need to eat more."

"And drink less."

Perhaps he's right. "Can we skip the bit where you tell me what I should be eating and I ignore it?"

"Very well, but I strongly suggest you take at least a month's leave."

"A month? The country could descend into chaos were I to take leave for a month."

Again Jim Coad grins. The man is insufferable. "We both know that's bullshit, Harry. You could be gone for a year, and all they'll do is replace you with a numbers man who makes decisions according to some bottom line or other, and everything will tick along as normal. Am I right?"

Again Harry stares at the man. Unfortunately, he is right. Harry is replaceable and he knows it.

"Okay," Jim Coad continues brightly, "we can skip the diet talk, but you need to take leave. No-one can be expected to work indefinitely without a break, and your levels of stress are high. Stress has killed men younger than you."

"If you say so."

For an uncomfortably long moment Jim Coad stares at Harry. "Is there anyone in your life?"

"What do you mean? I have hundreds of people in my life." And most of them he'd rather were elsewhere.

"A woman, Harry. A partner. I'm sure you understand the concept."

"There .. might be."

"So … would this might-be-partner like a break also? I'm assuming she works with you. God knows you never leave Thames House."

How should he answer that? Perhaps now is the time for being truthful. "She works in my section, yes, but were we both to be away for a month -"

"- nothing untoward would happen."

"She's vitally important to the nation's security -"

"- and to yours also, I imagine. In fact, I suspect that she's vitally important to your emotional security."

Harry is staring at Jim, who returns his stare. Does the section doctor know about Ruth and him? Have members of his team been gossiping? Why would anyone share gossip with a section doctor? Coad's office is hardly the water cooler.

He is about to speak when Jim's face softens. "Your .. attachment to Ms Evershed is common knowledge, Harry. In my opinion you could both do with a holiday … preferably somewhere warm."

Harry feels like he's been punched in the stomach. "How did you know … her name?"

Jim Coad shrugs. "How does anyone know anything?"

Jesus, now he's the bedside philosopher. "It's just that .. we've been discreet."

"Truth?"

"If you could."

"Around six weeks ago I was sitting in my car at the traffic lights on the Kings Road in Chelsea. There are some rather nice restaurants nearby." Harry stares at the man, waiting, knowing what's coming. "I saw the two of you crossing the road together. Your hand was resting on Mr Evershed's back in a … proprietary manner."

Proprietary manner?! Bloody hell. "That doesn't say anything."

"Perhaps not, but the kiss you shared when you reached your car did."

Harry casts his mind back. Six weeks ago he had taken Ruth to dinner for the second time. That was the night they'd talked openly, deciding that they were (at last) both open to pursuing a relationship. "It was night time," Harry says aloud.

"It was, but it's 2011, and we have these things called street lights. They're ever so illuminating."

Jimmy always had been a smart bastard. According to Harry's scorecard Jimmy is one-nil up. "Very well. I'll run the idea past her."

"You need to do more than run the idea past her."

"What do you suggest?"

Harry watches as Jim Coad opens a drawer in his desk, and brings out an old-style prescription pad of the kind doctors used in the days before every doctor had a computer terminal on their desk, their scripts being spat out by a printer. Without looking at Harry, he takes a fountain pen from the breast pocket of his white coat, and writes on the pad in long, sweeping strokes, before signing at the bottom. Then he tears off the sheet, and passes it across his desk to Harry, who reads the scrawled `prescription'.

Patient: Mr H Pearce

4 x weeks leave

Somewhere warm

To be taken with a female companion. (Relaxation and enjoyment mandatory, sex optional)

Signed: J D Coad MBBS MRCGP

Harry lifts his eyes, and for the first time since entering the doctor's office, he smiles. For the first time in a very long time, he believes the doctor to be right.

The following day:

"That's impossible. You know how busy it gets at this time of year."

Harry clasps his hands on the desk in front of him, the way he does when he's running a meeting. "Every time of the year is busy, Ruth."

"I can't believe you're even contemplating such a thing. What will the others think?"

"The others, as you call them, already know about us."

Harry knows as well as Ruth that her difficulty in accepting the opportunity to holiday with him has more to do with her struggle to accept that he still loves her - after all that has happened – than it has to do with what others think. Ruth has struggled to move beyond her long held belief that she is intrinsically unlovable, and that she needs to spend the remainder of her life serving penance for her part in George's death, and by extension, Nico's loss of his sole living parent. As frustrating as he often finds her, he is prepared to tread gently around her, to allow her time to accept the love he offers.

Ruth suddenly gets to her feet, and with her head down, she moves quickly to the door. Harry is quicker, and reaches the door a moment before her, blocking her exit. He reaches out to place a hand on Ruth's arm. Her glare has him dropping his hand. "What's the worst that can happen?" he asks, his voice soft as he leans closer to her. When she lifts her eyes he sees fear in them. So she isn't so much angry as afraid.

Ruth hesitates before answering, her eyes fixed on a point on his right shoulder. "That there'd be a major attack on London, and we'd be far away, enjoying ourselves on some beach." Harry has a moment when he thinks if he has his way they'll be enjoying themselves indoors. He's looking forward to spending time with her in the bedroom.

"Then, if needed, we'll come home."

"So why go in the first place?" Ruth lifts her eyes to his, and he sees the determination there.

"Because we can," he says, "and because we must." Harry reaches into his inside jacket pocket and removes a slip of paper, "and because I have my orders," he says, handing her the prescription written by the section doctor.

Ruth takes the prescription from him and reads it, while he stands close to her, watching her face. As he'd hoped, a small smile softens her expression. "But this names you," she says, glancing up at him, "and not me."

"I have been ordered to take a female companion, Ruth, and my chosen companion is you."

"And he mentions having sex."

"I see nothing wrong with that."

"No, but the doctor will know."

"Of course he will, but I can guarantee he'll not be spending our leave imagining us having sex. I've met the second Mrs Coad, and I'm sure all his private fantasies involve her."

Harry watches while Ruth wars with herself. She is struggling to embrace this holiday, this time away from work. He believes it's time they both let their proverbial hair down, even if only for a few weeks. "Do you … think about her in that way?" she asks at last.

"Why would I, Ruth, when I have my own private memories of the two of us together?"

When a blush reddens the skin of her cheeks he knows he has won her over. Ruth may be shy, even coy at times, but to his continuing joy, she's delightfully responsive in bed, and were he to die tomorrow, he'd surely die with a smile on his face.

"And you're sure you want to take me?"

"Of course. There is no-one I'd rather be with than you."

Ruth is watching him, perhaps waiting for a `tell' which would indicate he's being disingenuous. Eventually she relaxes and smiles into his eyes. "I'd be honoured to be your holiday companion, Mr Pearce."

It is rather late in the evening, and there appears to be no-one left on the Grid, so despite his office blinds being open, Harry reaches out to pull Ruth into his arms, and to his relief, she offers no resistance. "I can think of nothing I'd like more than to spend a month with you, Ruth, away from here, far from chaos, far from prying eyes. There'll just be you and me, a hotel room, and an endless expanse of white sand."

And when he reaches down to kiss her, she responds by sliding her arms around his waist, and sinking against him, before returning the kiss.

A week later:

"So where are you holidaying?" Dimitri asks.

Harry chances a glance at Ruth, but she's distracting herself by pretending to read her own hand written notes from the meeting.

"As if they'd tell us," Calum says. "Were I going on holiday with a beautiful woman, I'd tell no-one."

At the words, `beautiful woman' Ruth lifts her eyes to Harry's, and he witnesses the struggle she is having in going public with their relationship. He wants to make this better for her, less painful, but he doesn't know how, other than to love her just that little bit more.

The remainder of the team file from the meeting room, while Harry watches Ruth as she avoids his eyes.

Tariq stops by Ruth's chair on his way out. "You know, if I had a girlfriend I loved as much as Harry loves you, then I'd be taking leave also. I guess you could say that my job is my girlfriend. How sad is that?"

Ruth lifts her eyes to Tariq and smiles into his eyes. "There has to be someone for you, Tariq. There's sure to be a lovely, intelligent young woman out there, waiting to meet you."

"Then I hope she's into encryption and technical surveillance," he says before he quickly leaves, leaving Ruth and Harry in the meeting room alone.

Harry smiles into her eyes. "That wasn't so bad, was it?" he says in his brightest voice.

She returns his smile. "I just hope there's no crisis while we're away," she says. He agrees, but even were there, where they are going they'll not know about it. He has carefully chosen their holiday destination to be so far from London that it will be as though they're on another planet.

Three weeks later:

Harry opens his eyes to the sun streaming through the gaps in the curtains. He turns his head to find he is in bed alone. Lying very still he listens, but hears none of the usual sounds of human habitation. There are no cars or buses or voices or electronic sounds of any kind, just the chorus of birds in the trees outside the cabin, and the relentless sigh of the tide as it slides up the beach and back again. He stretches his body, the sheets soft against his bare skin. He hadn't known life could be this good. He indulges himself for a moment in the memory of their lovemaking the previous evening, before he flings the sheet from his body, pulls on a pair of trunks, and steps onto the verandah which overlooks the sea.

"How can the sea possibly be so blue?" Ruth had asked on their first afternoon on the island. Harry had been watching her watching the ocean, her face relaxed, her ever-busy hands still. He could watch her for every one of his remaining days on earth.

Harry leans against the railing at the edge of the verandah, and squints towards the shore. He sees Ruth wading through the shallows onto the sand, where she bends to pick up her towel, wrapping it around her waist before she strides towards him. She wears a dark blue bathing costume, having refused to swim naked until after sundown. Some things are still a work in progress.

He watches her all the way, until she notices him, and smiles and waves. She is almost a different person to the woman he'd had to approach carefully and with delicacy before he could convince her to have dinner with him. He meets her at the top of the steps, pulling her to him, at the same time as he pulls her towel away.

"You'll get wet," she says against his ear.

"I don't care," he replies, and just as he is about to devour the skin of her neck, he hears the his phone's message tone. "I haven't heard that in a while."

All it has taken is one short electronic sound for the mood to be shattered. It has jarred their senses, reminding them that their other life waits for them, far from this remote island paradise.

"Check your message," Ruth says, as she gently draws away from him. "You know you want to."

He is curious, so he quickly kisses Ruth before searching for his phone in the outer pocket of his hand luggage. He opens the message, and seeing his face relax in a smile, Ruth approaches, curious.

"I take it this isn't a plea for us to return to London to help save our city," she says.

"Far from it," Harry replies, offering the phone to Ruth.

Ruth takes the phone from him and reads the message.

Addendum to original prescription:

To ensure optimum health, for the remainder of your leave the status of sex has been raised to mandatory, and must be indulged in at every opportunity.

Kind regards, Jim

"Wasn't it you who once described him as, and I quote, `a quack and a fraud, whose total body of health knowledge could be written on the back of a postage stamp, while leaving ample room for Hamlet's first soliloquy'?" asks Ruth, handing the phone back to Harry, who tosses the phone on the bed, and winds his arms around her, drawing her against him.

"I've changed my mind," he says, his eyes roving over the curves of her body. "The man's clearly a fucking genius."