A/N: I wrote the first 5 chapters of this rather quickly 5 months ago, and then got stuck. I came back to it 4-6 weeks ago, and gave it a middle and an end. Then I decided that the first chapter could be a one-shot, and maybe I should ditch chapters 2-12. Decisions, decisions. Here it is in its entirety, mostly Harry's internal life while he searches and waits for Ruth. Melancholy Harry is one of my obsessions. Not much plot, and what there is is a bit far-fetched. Enjoy anyway.

It had taken him such a long time to get to this place. It had taken six days of weaving across Europe, chiefly in trains, which he tolerated only marginally more than travelling by air. He would have preferred to drive, but the opinion had been that travelling by road would have rendered him vulnerable. He still disagrees. He likes to be in charge of how he travels from one place to another, and if this makes him a control freak, then so be it. He has plenty of anger at the ready for anyone brave enough to suggest such a thing.

In truth, it had taken him almost two years to get here …... to this brick-paved square, where he sits under the shade of an umbrella, protected from the midday sun. It is still too early for him to be relaxing. At seventeen minutes to one o'clock, he is anything but relaxed.

He takes out his handkerchief, and wipes his forehead, already beaded with moisture. Normally he enjoys the heat, but a ripple of nervousness through his being has him sweating more freely than usual, and he doesn't want her first sight of him to be sullied by signs that he is not only balding and ageing, but also sweating under the Italian sun. He wears beige coloured chinos and a short-sleeved blue shirt. He is Mr Average Englishman, enjoying a break from an unpredictable English spring. His passport claims he is Harry Baldwin, wine merchant.

Looking for distractions, he gazes around the other tables, taking in a couple in their twenties, sharing a large icecream in a cone, a middle-aged couple staring wordlessly past one another while they sip their lattes, a group of four people – older than he, perhaps in their early seventies – speaking animatedly in Italian, a lone young woman, a short black coffee in front of her, crowd-watching. Each table tells a story …... of friendship, new love, love gone sour, hope, loneliness.

So, what story encapsulates his stocky figure, as he sits alone at his table? What do others see as they glance at him, sitting alone with his British newspaper open in front of him, a cappuccino close to his right hand, his fingers fiddling nervously with the spoon? Does he emanate hope, or pride, or happiness ….. or nothing at all? Is he a product of his job – all mystery, with emotions so deeply buried that his countenance is a blank canvas – or is a perceptive person able to see the measure of the man inside his skin? She'd be able to read him. She always could, and she'd be able to read his current story in the time it takes her to say hello.

Saudade. It is a Portuguese word meaning that which is left behind after the object of one's love has left. It is a memory of love – now gone – a longing, perhaps a melancholy, an aching in one's heart, where once both hope and joy had lived in contentment and harmony. Sometimes he feels it dripping from him, through the pores in his skin, so that it pools at his feet, like melted snow. As closed as he is, he is sure saudade can be seen on him, swirling around him, tying his heart in knots, closing him off to feeling anything at all which resembles hope, and lightness of being. His heart is not only closed for winter, it is closed for spring, summer, and autumn as well. But he has hope, and that is why he sits at this table …... waiting for what, only a week ago, had seemed unlikely, even impossible.

12.57

His heart rate increases slightly, and again he takes his handkerchief from his trousers pocket to wipe his face and neck. It is not yet hot, being May. The estimated maximum temperature for that day is 23 degrees, which is not hot at all. The estimated maximum temperature for London that same day is 15 degrees. Suddenly, he misses London, and all that is familiar to him. He is in his element there. London knows him, just as he knows London.

He is distracted by a young boy of around ten, running past with a small dog on a lead. The dog leads, while the boy follows. He is reminded of he and Scarlet. Scarlet is staying with Gertrude, his Swedish neighbour, and her husband, Bill. He hopes his little dog doesn't miss him too much. He doesn't know how long he'll be away from home. Just to be on the safe side, he has taken leave for a month.

1.04

He hopes the clock in the clock tower is running fast. He takes his phone from his pocket and checks the time. 1.03. Then he turns his left wrist to see the time on his wrist watch. 1.03. He'd set his wrist watch by his phone, so no surprises there.

The waiter who had attended him over twenty minutes earlier returns for his lunch order. He asks the waiter to come back once his companion has joined him. "I'm expecting someone," he says in Italian. "I'll order food when she arrives, but I'd like another coffee now," he adds, almost as an afterthought. He feels guilty having a whole table to himself, having bought only one cup of coffee.

The outside tables in the square are beginning to fill. Some people at an accompanying table had asked could they borrow one of the spare chairs from his table, and he had nodded. He only needs a chair for himself …... and a chair for her.

1.12

He is nervous …... and worried. What if she doesn't come? What if she has changed her mind? What if something has happened to her? What if she doesn't know he is here? What if her invitation to meet him – by encrypted email, using Malcolm's email account – was a trap? What if he has less than a day to live? Less than an hour?

All he asks is that he be able to see her again. Surely that is not too much to ask. He acknowledges in that moment – when he accepts he may have been drawn into a trap – that the pain of missing her has been only partially staunched by the responsibilities of his job. As his tired body sinks into his mattress each night, his last thought before sleep takes him is always of her.

His saudade has made him careless, and a little foolish. Perhaps he is too desperate to see her. Perhaps she does not share his longing, his desperation.

1.19

He was always the punctual one, while for her, time was a necessary part of life's structure, but an annoyance, an interruption. She preferred her life to flow according to where her interests led her. Her mind was sharp and quick, and time more often than not was an obstruction. She had sometimes resented time. Time had cut short their relationship, their budding romance-that-never-was. In their case, time was a guillotine.

He looks around him, his eyes hidden behind the very dark lenses of sunglasses. While wearing them, he could be looking anywhere. He sees nothing which should not be in the square. He also can't see something which should. She is nowhere to be seen. Perhaps she watches him from a square-side window, and she is disappointed by him. Perhaps her memories of him are tinted with her own brand of saudade.

1.24

He goes back to reading his newspaper, but he comprehends very little. The realist in him has entertained the probability of her not making the appointment on time, and the spurned lover is wondering whether this may be a game that she has set up. The romantic in him knows that the realist and the spurned lover are one and the same …... they are the hurt part of him – the part of him which emerges late at night when he is near sleep, forcing him to see his history with her as it really is. She was never his. In his heart they have become star-crossed lovers, while his mind knows that `they' were never meant to be. They never could be. For a brief moment in time, they loved one another, and then she had to leave – perhaps forever. End of story.

Grow up, Pearce, he says to himself, as he again checks the time, this time on his wrist watch.

1.46

She's now over three quarters of an hour late. She's been late before, but only because of work, or a transport strike, or a bomb threat. When they had dinner together – almost two years ago now – she was a minute early. He'd been clock watching that evening as well.

He calls the waiter, and orders a small serving of mushroom risotto. This day, he will be eating lunch alone.