"Do you snore?" she asked, taking his plate, even though he hadn't quite finished.
"Sometimes. Or so I've been told. Not that I'd really know, Ruth, I'm generally asleep."
She walked to the kitchen.
"Do you?" he called after her.
If there was a reply, he didn't hear it.
"I suppose we'll soon have the chance to find out," he murmured, quietly.
But it did not go unheard.
He glanced at his watch as she returned with a pot of coffee for him and a peppermint tea for her.
"It's getting a little late, Ruth, I should …"
"Who locks up?" she asked.
For a moment Harry was lost in the moment and not the legend, though he recovered himself imperceptibly.
"I do," he said, "as you usually go to bed first ..."
"To read," she offered.
He nodded approvingly.
"And by the time I follow you up you're often asleep with the book resting on your chin."
"It's an old French novel I can never get to the end of."
"Aah, the dreaded chapter 12."
She smiled, "Indeed."
"I take the book without waking you, set it down, open at the aforementioned and inevitably dreaded chapter 12 and then I fall asleep watching you, so that you are always the last thing I will ever see."
She was looking at him intently and he realised that he had gone a little too far.
"What side of the bed?" he asked, casually, trying to move on.
Ruth failed to answer, she was still staring at him.
"Which side do you sleep on?" he repeated, wondering quite where he was in the minefield that their evening had become.
"The middle," her tone was neutral.
"You have to have a side, Ruth."
Still nothing.
"Okay…" he said patiently, "…well, what side did you sleep on with George?"
Her eyes flared, "That has nothing to do with this."
"I need to know a side, Ruth," he snapped, "I'm not saying that I need to occupy it. I'm not saying I'm trying to replace him, I just need to know. To be real, I need to know."
"Right," she said, curtly.
Right, you understand? Or right –"
"I'm on the right."
"Thank you."
There was silence.
It lasted too long.
It was time for him to go.
She lay in bed, a book in her hand. It was not French but it would do. She wasn't reading it, even though it was open. Her mind was elsewhere.
He lay in bed, on the left hand side, his face turned to the empty pillow on the right and he tried to imagine a sleeping face beside him.
