A/N: Thanks to readers, and to reviewers. I hope your enthusiasm for this fic will be justified as the story unfolds.
"You're a wonderful cook," Ruth said with a smile, as she ate the last of the rice which had accompanied her Chicken Tikku Massala, part of the Indian dinner Harry had ordered in.
He smiled back, and topped up both their glasses with red wine.
"You really don't want to try my cooking, Ruth. I never graduated beyond spag bol, and that's with ready made sauce."
They'd been almost silent while eating, and both recognised that they still had a lot to talk about.
"Harry," she began, "are you driving back to London tonight? It's just that we've already had a bottle of wine between us."
"I've booked a room at a hotel in Ipswich. I live less than an hour away, but I didn't want to risk driving home when I'm tired."
"You could have stayed here. I have a spare bedroom."
He smiled across the small round dining table at her. Ruth had noticed that he seemed much more relaxed than he'd ever been. Maybe that's married life.
"I didn't want to assume anything, Ruth."
"You said you live …... close by."
"I …... when I returned to the UK -"
"When was that?"
"Fourteen months ago. I bought a cottage …... an hour from here." Harry smiled at her, hoping she would remember her promise to him, on the day that everything had collapsed in on them. "It's not your cottage. It's outside a village, hidden away down a lane, behind a grove of trees. It has two bedrooms, and …... it's ….. Ruth, what is it?"
Ruth had suddenly felt a surging of grief from deep within her. A cottage in Suffolk? Two bedrooms? Hidden away? That was meant to be her cottage. That was meant for them – Harry and Ruth – not Harry and Her! Damn you, Harry. Damn you and your new life!
"I ….. all I can think of is that I was planning to buy a cottage in Suffolk, and that you and I …..."
She couldn't say any more. She didn't want to cry. Not in front of Harry. He'd already been through so much. She held her hand over her mouth, holding in her grief.
"Ruth …... I know what you're thinking ….."
"How can you? How can you possibly know how I feel …... what I'm thinking?" Ruth was annoyed that as she spoke, her voice had become angry, even shrill.
"I know that you're thinking about the cottage that we were meant to live in, and I know that you lost the chance to buy it. Ruth ….. I bought the cottage I'm living in to replace that one. It's -"
"But you bought it to share with another woman!"
"This is what I need to talk about with you."
"Why would I want to hear about that?"
Ruth got up from her chair, and turned to the kitchen counter, where she flipped on the electric kettle, and began to make tea. She was shocked by the power of her own reaction …... her intense jealousy, and after all this time, too. She was searching for a teapot, when she felt the warmth of Harry's body right behind her. He wasn't touching her, but he was standing close to her, and she felt him reach over her shoulder, and take the teapot from an overhead cupboard.
"When you've made the tea, come and sit down," he said gently. "There's so much you don't know. I promise that you will want to hear this …... if that photo you have of the two of us on your fridge means what I think it does."
By the time Ruth had made the pot of tea, and had placed it and two cups, and milk and sugar on the table between them, she had calmed down. She knew that she was making assumptions, leaping to conclusions. She tended to do that.
Harry poured tea into both their cups, and then he added milk and sugar to each. He checked before he added milk and sugar to her cup, just to make sure.
"You have it the same way as you always did," he noted quietly.
"You remember?"
"Of course. Did you remember how I had mine?"
"Yes. You now have less sugar. You used to have three sugars, and now you have just one."
"I lost my taste for sugar while in detention. The food was very bland, and we were allowed only water for much of the time."
"Was it …... awful?"
"Yes, Ruth, it was a terrible time. I can't tell you most of it. I don't want to tell you about most of it. I don't wish to hurt you."
"You don't wish to hurt me? Harry ….. it was you who were hurt. I …... all I had to endure was living a life without the chance of you returning to me. By comparison, that's …..."
"Do you want to know what kept me alive? What kept me sane? Do you know the image which I kept up here -" He tapped his head with his forefinger, "so deeply ingrained that no-one could reach it, no-one could take it away from me?"
Ruth slowly shook her head, although by this time, she was getting some idea.
"You, Ruth. I had an image of you at the Thames estuary, smiling at me with those blue eyes, the wind blowing your hair in your face, asking me to leave the service with you. That's what kept me alive, and that's why I'm here now. I'm here to offer you what you offered me five years ago."
Ruth began shaking her head. This is not happening. This is not true. Harry must have brain damage. Has he forgotten he has a wife?
"I'm not married, Ruth. I never married. Apart from Jane, of course. I never married Hope."
"Hope?" Ruth had never asked Calum the woman's name, and he had not offered to tell her. What she didn't know couldn't hurt her.
"This is what I needed to explain to you. I don't wish us to have secrets between us. It's the secrets that have done so much damage in the past. Her name was Hope McKay."
Was? He just said was.
Harry continued. "She worked voluntarily as a support worker for those being released from detention. Hope was a year or two older than me, and she was a widow, so we …... we hit it off. We understood one another, we both understood loss. I was ….. a mess when I was released. Early in my detention I was beaten, electrodes attached to my testicles - the usual thing - but I'd suffered that before. What did the most damage was being forced to spend long stretches in isolation. They'd put me in a plain cell, with no windows, and just a narrow cot, and a toilet, and I'd either have to stay in there for days at a time with the light on, or with the light off. Sometimes it was absolutely silent, and at other times, they played music through loudspeakers – yes, country music, or Indian music – I can never again listen to the sitar being played – or endless Middle Eastern music." He looked across the table at Ruth, and twisted his lips apologetically. "I hadn't planned telling you any of that. Sorry."
"Never be sorry, Harry."
"I was one of seven English prisoners who were granted amnesty. After fifteen months in detention, I was free. I couldn't go back home. I could barely look after myself. I'd spent fifteen months having absolutely no control over any aspect of my life. Hope took me back to her place – a rural property she and her husband had owned in North Carolina. She helped me come to terms with what had happened to me. She gave me a place to fall apart, and then to slowly put myself back together again. During that time I moved into her bedroom with her. It was her idea, and I agreed with her. I needed to know whether I could still function …... as a man."
"You mean sexually."
"Yes, Ruth. I mean sexually."
"And you …... could?"
"After a few months, yes. At first, I couldn't bear her to touch me, anywhere, but especially …... there. I'd pull away, and get out of bed, and rage around the house, getting rid of my anger. Eventually, I …... got there. I managed to be …... normal again. I'm telling you this, Ruth, because you need to know."
"Why? I don't understand any of this. What about Hope?"
"Hope was my George."
Ruth sat back with a start. It was like he had slapped her. "Don't bring George into this. George is dead."
"So is Hope."
Ruth stared at him in an effort to take it all in.
"What happened to her?"
"I'd been out of detention for around ten months, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. No sooner had she nursed me back to health than I had to look after her until she died."
"Calum said you'd married."
"No, we never married. Hope wanted us to be married, but I always made vague excuses. It was only when she was diagnosed as terminal - when cancer was found in her lungs - that I told her about you. I had to be honest with her. I even showed her your photo – the one I carry in my wallet. On being released from detention, my personal possessions were returned to me."
Ruth was silent for some time. She had dozens of questions, but one stood out above all others. She shouldn't ask it, but she had to. She needed to know.
"Did you love her?" she asked quietly.
Harry smiled across the table into her eyes. "Touché," he said. "If I tell you the truth, will you tell me the truth about whether you loved George?"
"Fair's fair. Did you love her?"
"In a way, yes. I loved her warmth, and her unconditional love for me. I loved how she looked after me, but I didn't love her enough to marry her. That would never have happened. You?"
"You're right. It sounds like she was your George. She did for you what George had done for me. He put me back together again, so that I could go on. I loved him, but had you come to Cyprus looking for me, I would have gone with you in a heartbeat. George was a good man. In some ways, he was too good for me. I think ... I think I've always needed someone who was flawed, like me."
Harry reached his hand across the table, but he could not reach her hand, so he quickly withdrew it. "Thank you, Ruth," he said. "I arranged Hope's funeral, and then dealt with her estate. Around six months after her death, I had done everything I could for her. I left the US, and wandered around Europe for a couple of months until I knew it was time for me to come home. I had a lot to sort out back here, but at the back of my mind was one thing. When I had my housing and my income sorted, and once I'd reconnected with my son and daughter, I had to find you. It wasn't until I met Calum that I was given the piece of information I'd been searching for."
Suddenly, Ruth remembered something, something she'd been told while she was still in hospital recovering from her stab wound. She looked up at Harry, and waited until she had his full attention.
"I didn't find out about your extradition until I'd been in hospital for around ten days. I asked Towers why you hadn't visited me, and he told me that you'd believed me to have died at the scene of my stabbing. But …... everything you're telling me points to that not being the case."
"At the time you were airlifted to hospital, I believed you'd died, yes."
"Oh, Harry, I'm so, so sorry."
"I was very …... I was grief stricken, and I went home, and poured whiskey down my throat until I passed out. Towers woke me at six in the morning, telling me that I was being extradited at eleven o'clock, and almost as an afterthought, he told me that you had been revived in the helicopter. I was too hungover to be angry, but I did briefly consider going to the hospital, and kidnapping you, and then running off somewhere the CIA couldn't find us."
"You must have been very hungover."
"I was. After Towers left, I rang the hospital to check on your condition, and they said that you were unconscious, and could not receive visitors. It was one of the highest …... and the lowest …... moments of my life. Such joy that you had lived, and could get on with your life as normal, but such sadness that I wouldn't be free to share it with you."
They had spent a long and rather difficult two hours sharing their hidden years. Ruth was tired, but she's wasn't that tired. Harry's story of finding out she was alive only a few hours before he would be taken by the CIA had brought tears close to the surface. She was determined to not cry in front of Harry. He'd already lived through enough. She could cry once he left. It's just that everything he had told her that night pointed to one thing, and one thing only.
"Harry …..."
"Yes?" Strangely, he looked nervous.
"Are you saying what I think you're saying?"
"I am saying something, Ruth. What do you think it is?"
"Since you're not married …... and I'd assumed you were, since Calum told me so -"
"Calum is not the source of all wisdom, Ruth."
"So it seems. Am I right to assume that your feelings for me …... for us …... have not changed in five years? Harry, are you here because you still want what I offered you that day I was stabbed?"
Harry's face broke into a wide smile. "I thought you'd never get it. Yes, Ruth, that's what I'm saying."
