I didn't say all the things that I wanted to say
And you can't take back what you've taken away
'Cause I feel you, I feel you near me

("Damaged", Plumb)

2. We Never Will Be

The postcards come once a month, like clockwork. From Paris, Rome, Vienna. Cities whose names he can't pronounce. There is never a message – he even checks the stamps for hidden microdots – but the address is in her handwriting, and he knows.

He keeps the postcards locked in a safe; they are, after all, his only connection to her.

In the fifteenth month, there is no postcard, but a full week passes before he allows himself to worry. He takes leave, arranges for someone to look after the animals, and heads for Zurich, from where the last postcard had been sent.

It takes almost ten days to track her down. She calls herself Rebecca now; in her new life she is a translator.

In her new life she is in a coma.

He stands at the foot of her hospital bed, staring at her as the nurse explains what happened. His brain only registers fragments: walking home, drunk driver, no hope of recovery.

He sits next to her bed and watches her. It isn't fair. After everything she sacrificed for him, to end up the victim of a drunk driver—

(Later, he will investigate further and find out that the accident has Oliver Mace's fingerprints all over it. He will learn that Mace tracked Ruth through the postcards. He will go to Mace with the intention of killing him. But not yet.)

He holds her hand, so small and fragile in his, and he weeps for the loss of everything that could have – should have – been. He kisses her forehead and tells her he loves her, half-hoping that she will wake up like a fairytale princess and they can have their happily-ever-after.

She does not wake. The monitors do not change. The nurse takes pity on him and brings in a cot, but he does not move from his position in the chair.

He apologises for waiting so long to ask her to dinner, tells her how hard it was to let her go, and how hellish the last year and a half has been. He closes his eyes and prays for a miracle.

On the evening of his third day there, her heart simply stops beating. Doctors and nurses push him aside as they try to bring her back. His own heart is breaking.

An hour later, he kisses her one last time before pulling the sheet up to cover her face.

He should have looked for her sooner, he thinks. He should never have let her go in the first place. He should have gone with her. To everyone else she has been dead for more than a year, and Harry knows he must carry the burden of this death alone.

He keeps her necklace in the safe with the postcards and scatters her ashes in the sea. She is everywhere and nowhere, and sometimes Harry imagines he hears the ghost of her laughter in the wind.

(Oliver Mace confesses, and the following day the news reports his suicide.)