"I….I…"
And that's where the sound ended. Where the comprehensible ended.
"Yes….?" Harry asked, tentatively.
Nothing.
"Are you okay, Ruth?"
Nothing.
"…Ruth..?'
"I just wanted..." she eventually stuttered.
And the world hung between them.
The planets turned and the stars spun and electronic data whizzed around their heads invisible and silent, none of it saying anything uselful.
"Harry… could you, would you…?
"Would I what... Ruth?"
Silence.
"…Would I what?"
"It's fine. Forget it. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have called."
And as her thumb increased its pressure on the red button below, his voice called quietly into the ether… "Ruth, it's fine…please?"
And then all was silence and he was gone.
"Fuck!'
She looked at the handset angrily.
"Fuck!"
She threw it at the sofa, where it bounced against a cushion and fell subdued and unharmed onto the plush carpet.
"Idiot!"
The cat looked up at her, wide eyed.
"Yes," she agreed," I am a total bloody idiot. How hard can it be?"
The cat blinked. It was right – it was bloody hard. It always was with Harry.
She headed onto the kitchen abandoning the empty glass of rioja - what did it know?
The kettle called wise words and she filled it, reaching for the sanity of a peppermint teabag.
Sense and sensibility. Sense and stability. Sense and …? No sense and no …ability! She was useless. Rubbish. Pointless. Useless.
She stirred the tea. It was a shade of green and didn't vary. It was as thin and pointless as her.
Why, for just once, could she not find the words?
Harry, I love you. How very hard was that to say? As hard as pouring hot water on a teabag. Yet it was all about timing, which they both well knew.
The water had to be boiling, really boiling, freshly, scaldingly boiling … only then would it brew properly, only then would the taste and the aroma be revealed. Proper boiling.
When had they ever come together other than at luke warm, or perhaps somewhere close to simmering … but not boiling.
Now she needed boiling.
The tea disappeared down the sink. The front door closed behind her. The night air stirred as she pushed through it, knowing that there was something different in the atmosphere.
Tonight was a night that something was going to happen.
Tonight was boiling.