It isn't right to do this, she knows it isn't, but she can't help herself. Every new city, every new country, every new currency. Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Rome, New York, Ottawa... Now she stands in a public phone box on a frosty Edinburgh street, watching from behind the Perspex window as the city's inhabitants walk by, so alive and happy. She fumbles with a pound coin from her purse. She always controls the money she spends on him very carefully – a pound's worth of his breathing, and perhaps his voice, and the relief of knowing that he is alive and safe still.
She slots the money in and dials the familiar number, checking her watch as she does so. Eleven o'clock in the evening. He ought to be at home now, she thinks. The phone rings out, and the tension in the pit of her stomach builds, as it always does when she calls him. The thought that he might be dead. Injured. More lost to her than he is even at present. But in this situation, ignorance can never be bliss – she has to know. Beep...BEEP...beep...BEEP... "Hello?"
She bites her lip, swallowing the slight gasp of relief that bubbles up her windpipe at the sound of his voice. She can't speak to him, because dead people can't speak, and, anyway, the Service routinely and randomly checks the phone lines of their operatives. If she spoke to him once, she would have no willpower left not to do it again, and one night, they might be unlucky. She smiles bitterly. They had already been unlucky, so unlucky. Visions of a cold dockside float in front of her eyes, the feel of full lips on hers, his gloved hands on her waist, clinging desperately to her.
He never puts the phone down on her, and she wonders if, subconsciously, he realises that it is she who rings him every so often, trying in her quiet, inimitable way to let him know that she is safe. Alive. Trying to live her legend, a legend that must become her life now. So they stand there together for as long as possible, listening to the sound of each other's breathing, his deep and calm, hers shaky and quivering on the verge of breathless tears, as it always is. So near, and yet so far. Just one word. That is all it would take – just, "Hello," and she knows he would come for her, abandon their queen and country, and the defence of the realm, and just find her. For a moment, the impulse almost overwhelms her. But that would be selfish – Britain, and its millions of innocent citizens, need him far more than she does, and she knows that. And if she can't speak to him, then surely she is just making their parting ten, if not a hundred, times worse, for both of them?
This must be the last time, she realises, and suddenly every moment of his breathing becomes indefinably precious to her. She squeezes her eyes tightly shut and imagines that the cool phone cradled against her cheek is really his hand, that he is standing next to her, that she can hear his breathing because he is just an inch away. The phone beeps. Once, twice, three times, and then her money runs out. The call is disconnected. He is gone. She presses a slim hand first to her slightly parted lips, and then, briefly, against the receiver as she replaces it on the hook, glistening tears spilling icily over her cheeks. "Goodbye, Harry."
Outside, she melts into the crowd, and is gone.