She would have given anything for a good cup of earl grey, maybe it was something else she was going to have to learn to live without. Maybe she should make a list. Cats, decent tea, Tariq's grin, Adam's smile, Jo's jokes, Malcolm's crossword, her choir, the snow, reading on the top deck of the bus, the view from the roof of Thames House and him, always him.

After tea and a salad came what? She had no idea. She had no job, nowhere to stay, she had money and a passport. She could, she should, make her way into town but yet she found it difficult to leave the sea, as though being near it was still like being nearer to him.

She found herself by the harbour wall. There were two men in the distance trying to pull a small boat out of the water and up a slipway. She sat on the wall and swung her legs over the side, the sea beneath her. Her attention was focused on the complicated procedure far to her left.

Her thoughts wandered. She thought about what they were doing on the grid right now, if there was someone sitting at her desk, if he was missing her, if he was missing her like she was missing him. And she wondered about the fairness of it all, that it had taken this to make them come together before ripping them apart.

"Nice day for it."

There was a man sitting next to her, a man who looked like Harry, his voice sounded like Harry, he smelt like Harry.

"Harry?' she said.

"Hello, Ruth."

"Hi."

He swung his legs over the wall, he was wearing some light coloured cargo trousers and a pale pink polo shirt.

"How…..why…?"

"I told you I'd be lost without you."

"Harry why are you doing this?"

"I needed to see you, to talk to you, to explain things."

"No, Harry, I can't. You can't do this," and she began to swing herself round, back to the roadway.

"But Ruth, you don't understand."

"Don't make me do this again, it was hard enough the first time. You shouldn't have come." And she was running away.

"Ruth," he called and this time made sure he didn't let her go.

He caught her arm and her bag fell to the floor.

"You have to listen to me."

"It's not fair, Harry, please just let me go."

'No," he said firmly and backed her several paces back until she was pinned against the side wall of the harbour office.

He was in front of her, close to her, his hands gripping her arms, his face in her face.

"What do you want from me?" she asked in a plaintive, lost voice, as she wondered if she could survive saying goodbye to him again.

He was about to tell her but he found himself kissing her instead. Hard and strong, her head back against the wall, he pushed against her and she resisted, she tried to turn her face away, she tried to save herself the pain but in the end she didn't care about the pain to come, for this moment in time she decided she didn't care about all that she would have to face without him she only cared about his lips against hers and the need she felt for him. She stopped struggling and for several moments they were lost in a kiss the two of them had thought about since the day she left.

""Ruth, I've come to take you home," was, in the end, all he said.

"But…"

"There is no but. Adam's got a committee member to testify that there was no one from Section D in that meeting, Malcolm has proved without doubt that the footage of you pushing Maudsley was faked, Zaf has persuaded the woman on the tube to rescind her testimony…

"And you?" asked Ruth,

"Me, well, I'm here," he said simply.

Bit more to come of the fluffy variety