Why on earth had she worried about the reaction of their friends and colleagues, Ruth thought. It was during the morning briefing, four months after they had moved in together, that their secret had been blown spectacularly out of the water. Harry, completely forgetting himself, had called her sweetheart, when asking her for her opinion on the subject that was being discussed.
Adam had grinned from ear to ear, Jo had screamed and then leapt out of her chair to give Ruth a hug, Malcolm had smiled as only he could and Zaf being Zaf had attempted to give a smug looking Ros a high five with the result that she had looked at him as though he were still attending primary school and the concept of something so childish was beyond her.
Mortified for a few moments and wondering how she would react or more importantly whether she would run headlong from the room, Harry put his head in his hands only to raise his head when a round of applause completed the congratulations.
Much to everyone's surprise and to Harry's great relief, Ruth was still sitting there and grinning at him. For reasons that she herself could barely comprehend, his unexpected endearment made without any thought as to where he was or what he was saying, gave her an unexpected sense of relief and an overwhelming feeling of love for the man sitting next to her.
Harry dismissed them with his usual 'well back to work everyone' as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened, wondering firstly if he was in for a both barrels from Ruth when they were finally on their own and how soon his revelation would cease to be chatter on the grid. He need not have worried as Ruth continued to smile at him lovingly and everyone else headed back to their desks, seemingly to continue with the job in hand.
At midday, there was a phone call from the Home Secretary asking Harry to call and see him later in the afternoon. Feeling somewhat peeved that having had a quiet day, his anticipated early return home with Ruth was not going to happen, he beckoned her into the office. 'Still love me?' He said with a grin, not normally seen on his face during working hours. 'I'll call you as soon as I am on my way home and seeing as I don't know when that will be, I'll bring us a take away' he suggested. With a nod of her head and another smile, she walked back to her desk.
By 5pm, Adam, Zaf and Jo were preparing to go home. Ruth glanced across to Harry who nodded, indicating that he was just about to leave. Quickly tidying her desk, she grabbed her coat and bag and joined him near the pods. The last thing they heard as they stepped into a pod together was a shout of 'enjoy your evening' from an obviously still overzealous Zaf.
As they walked from Thames House, Harry took her hand and tucked it into his arm. 'No more hiding,' he said, 'I love you'. Ruth's whose shyness seemed to have vanished over the course of just one day, stretched up and kissed him on the cheek.
Harry headed straight to the Home Office, hoping and praying that whatever the Home Secretary wanted to talk about wouldn't take long. Ruth headed home, contemplating the enormity of what had happened in the space of one day but still relieved by the fact that they no longer needed to pretend at work. After all she thought, Adam was married to Fiona and Zaf and Jo were showing every indication that their friendship was more than just colleagues. The fact that she and Harry were together really wasn't such a big deal and as far as the inevitable gossip was concerned, it would soon move on to someone else.
At 7.30, Harry arrived home with a takeaway and a couple of bottles of wine. Over dinner, he seemed lost in thought but when Ruth questioned him about it, he said it was just work and could wait until the briefing tomorrow. So heavy was the workload of Section D, that time spent with loved ones was always in short supply. Despite the fact that they had known each other for years, the last four months had been a time if discovery and getting to know each other in a way that up until then, both had only ever dreamed of. They settled on the sofa with a glass of wine as they did most evenings, enjoying the intimacy and the quiet they so craved by the end of each day. 'You do know how much I love you don't you and I'm sorry about what happened today', Harry said. Ruth leant in, wrapping her hands behind his head she kissed him. 'Does that answer your question' she whispered as they pulled apart, 'let's go to bed'.
All too soon, the alarm clock reverberated in their ears and the now familiar routine of getting ready to go to work together was there again.
Back in the meeting room only 24 hours since Harry's revelation, the expression on his face told them, that whatever he was going to say today, required their full attention. 'Cotterdam', he said, 'thoughts please'. After input from all but Jo Zaf and Ros, who had not been there when the fire at Cotterdam prison had taken place, he handed round a piece of paper. 'As you will see, it is alleged that a member for Section D was on the committee that authorised the extraction of prisoners for torture'. 'That's rubbish' said Adam and why is this being brought up now?' 'Those who were on the committee are either dead or have miraculously disappeared which only leaves whoever was the person from Section D, culpable and therefore able to be charged' said Harry. 'Mace and his cronies at six, have long wanted to hurt us and whether it be fact or by fiction, he will find a way to make this happen'.
Ruth immediately knew what Harry was about to suggest and that he was prepared to take the fall. The elation that she had been feeling for the past 24 hours disappeared as though through a hole in the floor and she felt suddenly dreadfully cold. Whatever happened, she could not let Harry do this, there had to be another way. The debate continued for most of the morning but as Cotterdam had happened before most of them had arrived at Section D, only Harry, Malcolm, Ruth and Adam, could possibly be in the frame. It was when they broke for lunch that Ruth sort out Adam and Zaf to instigate her plan. Despite their protests, they finally agreed that if Harry were to be imprisoned as he surely would be, then section D was as good as finished. The only solution she had told them was that she step up and take Harry's place. Despite their protests she was adamant that it had to be her.
Summoning all the courage she could muster and knowing that there was every likelihood that it would be months before she would see him again, Ruth walked into Harry's office and closed the door. Placing a pack of sandwiches on his desk along with a coffee, she held out her hand and gazed into his eyes. After a quick glance round and seeing an empty grid, he stood up and took her in his arms. Their kiss, which she knew to be their last for the foreseeable future, maybe months or even years, was long and filled with more love than she had ever felt possible. Saying that she needed to pop out for twenty minutes, she turned, walked through the door and joined Adam and Zaf who were waiting for her by the pods. She didn't once look back.
An hour later when everyone should have returned for the afternoon, Ruth and Zaf were still absent. Harry, wondering where Ruth had got to, called Adam into his office. As the colour drained out of Harry's face and he sank back into his chair, Adam seriously wondered whether he was going to faint or even worse was having a heart attack. 'Tell me where she is' he screamed or your life won't be worth living. Suggesting to Harry that they have this conversation away from the grid, Adam finally persuaded him to walk down to the Thames and find a bench where they could sit in relative obscurity. He told him what had been planned and that Zaf was staying with Ruth until the following morning. She was armed with a new identity and enough money for her to cope on her own for at least six months, giving them what they hoped was enough time to prove that the documents incriminating someone from section D had been falsified.
In the short term, once they were sure that Ruth was safely out of the country, Mace would receive an encrypted email telling him that she was the person from Section D that had sat on the committee. Their ultimate aim was to prove that Mace was responsible for the falsification of the documents and have him despatched to some far flung corner of the globe, allowing Ruth to come home.
Harry sat, immobile and speechless, pondering the stupidity of their plan. 'Tell me' he said in such a quiet voice that Adam struggled to hear him, 'if we can't find the evidence to discredit Mace, I trust that you have a Plan B, because I am not prepared lose her.'Adam had never ever seen Harry less than composed and this vulnerability and helplessness made him feel compelled to put his arm around Harry's shoulders. At any other time in his life, Harry would have cringed at the gesture but as tears rolled down his face, he just buried his head in his hands.
For five months, every spare moment that was available to them, they searched for a way to incriminate Mace. For Ruth's safety, Malcolm was the only person who knew where she was and above all knew what the separation was doing to both her and to Harry. She had managed to put together some semblance of a life, having found a job and somewhere to live, but Harry, looking across the grid and her now empty desk, had almost shut down and given up, something that continually worried his colleagues.
It was by chance that Zaf, whilst searching for something quiet unrelated to Cotterdam, stumbled upon a file that had eluded them until now. He went first to Malcolm to make sure that he wasn't imagining it and then without alerting anyone else as to what they were doing, asked Adam to join them in the forgery suite. Mace had made a mistake, they were sure of it, but the last thing that they wanted to do was to alert Harry and give him hope, only to have it quashed, should they be wrong. A week later, after endless out of hours discussions and paperwork, Adam finally requested a meeting with the DG.
A week after that, as Mace was being escorted from his house, Malcolm called Harry and invited him to come out for a drink. His mother couldn't cope with visitors anymore he said so suggested the Swan Hotel, close to where he lived. Reluctant as he was, Harry washed, changed and drove himself the short distance through the busy London traffic. It was the first time in nearly five months that he had been anywhere other than to work or back home. He spotted Malcolm as soon as he arrived, sitting in a comfortable armchair in the lounge. In front of him, obviously in anticipation of Harry's arrival was a glass of scotch.
A few moments later, Malcolm's phone rang and after a moment and with a smile full of warmth, he handed it to Harry, stood up and walked away. If, sometime later, Harry were to be asked how he felt when he heard her voice at the other end of the phone, he would be sure to say that at that moment, he stopped breathing. Their reunion a few moments later in the room that Malcolm had booked for them, was a something that they knew that they would both remember for the rest of their lives. The DG had sanctioned a weeks' leave for them both and on no account, they were told, were either of them to set foot in Thames house, no matter what.
As they lay together that first night, any fears or doubts that either of them had ever had that theirs was a love that wouldn't last, were gone. During the week that followed, in a cottage on the coast, they relaxed and did everything that they had both only dreamed of for so long. They walked on the beach, shopped in the village, eat in the local pub or just cooked at home. At the end of each day when they climbed the stairs to bed and made love they were for the first time able to discuss a future that was to be together.
A week later and Ruth with a ring on her finger having accepted Harry's proposal, they walked through the pods together. No one apart from Malcolm had seen Ruth for five months and Harry was quite happy to let her be the centre of attention for as long as their colleagues wanted. Section D was back to normal, well almost he concluded.